Woman in red becomes woman in orange last night, but Ariadne continues to appear...
I dreamt that I was having a première in a major opera house. The after party was in the lobby because people was so exhilarated that they just wanted to celebrate right there. An opera singer who was in the audience, quite corpulent in an orange gown, was seated on the red carpet. Beside her on the right-hand side, there was a silver champagne bucket on a stand. A music critic, a skinny man in a tuxedo was earnestly discussing the music. He had a small moustache. He resembled the science fiction editor J.J. Pierce.
"I wish I had a score," he said.
"Take mine!" I said I handed him a huge pile of bound manuscript, printed on the recto pages and with a mass of scribblings on the verso.
"But if only I had a libretto," said the critic. I said, "it's all there it's all there. It's in the scribblings." The scribblings what a cloud of words written in every direction, like a verbal galaxy. I pointed to one word after another and they resolved into a libretto.
In the opening scene, there was something mythological going on. A queen or goddess was languishing. She was in the story also dressed in orange, In flowing ancient robes. She sang of terrible grief. At first I thought she was Ariadne, but there was also something of Penelope in her. Because, she was waiting for someone, a king. The way the words were arranged on the page brought to mind an old edition I used to have as a child of the Gilbert Murray translation of MEDEA (that begins something like "O, that the Argo had not wended its way" or something). But those were not the characters.
As the critic examined the score, The music began to sound right there in the lobby. The fact opera singer began to sing along with it. She sounded like Jessye Norman. But, she was Caucasian with long blonde hair. It was a huge, Straussian score.
We were all awestruck that this person who was only in the audience remembered the music after one hearing. After her arietta, there were a few lines from a handmaiden bringing her news. The woods began either "oh queen" or "oh Diana." (I remember think wait a minute it's not Diana, suggesting that maybe she is Ariadne.) From a sweeping marble staircase above, the words of the handmaiden were being sung by Kaleigh Rae Gamaché who was swooping down in a black evening dress. She wore pearls. She had a huge bottle of wine. She was practically floating down the steps.
As she sang she altered the words to "my lady, the king commands you to accept this bottle of wine from the cast party upstairs." She poured wine for the opera singer.
We were all exhilarated, laughing and full of joy. It was a heady dream, as if portending some great artistic success.