TRAVELS (1994) 2hr

Subito Music Corp; ASCAP
Librettist: Ann Goette
Soloists: sop, mezzo, 2 ten, bass-bar
chorus SATBB, dancers
1.1.1.1-2.1.0.0-timp.perc-pno-str
Piano vocal score available
Prem: 5/18/95; Opera Roanoke, Roanoke, VA

From Victoria Bond's 1995 opera "Travels" as performed by Opera Roanoke. The next trip brings Gull to an upscale health club called "The Golden Calf". A sexy woman welcomes him with a sensuous strip tease, stripping down to her spandex workout outfit promising to transform Gulls' flabby flesh into muscle. He enters the club and begins to work out on the machines, who are singers dressed in metallic outfits. But they menace him, criticizing him, giving him conflicting orders until he is completely confused and exhausted. He tries to take part in an aerobic exercise class which gets more and more frantic as the leader demands increasingly difficult steps, and he drops out. This section features the dancers as well as the members of the chorus. As chorus people drop out, the dancers are left to perform a virtuoso ballet. After they leave, a beautiful young woman enters and begins to exercise in front of the mirror. He is enchanted with her and tries to get her attention, but she is only interested in her own image. They sing a duet about her body, each describing it in opposite terms. He sees her as soft, helpless and feminine, and she sees herself as strong and muscular. He is frustrated because she does not even notice him, and he leaves, returning to the train.

Nicholas Loren, baritone
Diana Walker, soprano
Robert Osborne, bass-baritone
Dean Anthony, tenor
Margaret Lisi, mezzo-soprano
Composer: Victoria Bond
Librettist: Ann Goethe
Director: Jonathan Alan Arak
Choreographer: Carol Crawford Smith
Conductor: Victoria Bond