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Home About the opera Music Samples: Sample 1 Math Lecture (Act1) Sample 2 Closer and closer (Act 3) Back to Compositions index Contact |
 An opera in three acts Libretto & Music by Peter Elyakim Taussig About the opera A satirical opera about finding the ultimate equation that describes everything in the Universe, the effect that the discovery has on the world, the mysterious outbreak of sudden non-violence, love, and kindness it triggers worldwide, and the threat this poses to people in power. But mostly it is a tale of a different kind of discovery that the opera’s protagonist, a mathematician, must make, finding in the end the real answer to how the Universe works not through math but through music and the power of love. Synopsis When Norm, a mathematician, substitutes musical notes for the numbers of the Fibonacci Series, a remarkable mathematical set that underlies much of Nature, and then uploads the tune to the Internet, all hell breaks loose. The music affects anyone who listens to it. Soldiers stop fighting, millions leave their dreary jobs, everyone starts caring for everyone else. To the military-corporate-political establishment it’s Armageddon, an attack on its very existence. Norm becomes a fugitive, running from people who either want him dead, or want to turn his musical code into a weapon. He is saved in the nick of time by Athena, a kind waitress in a Greek restaurant, with whom he falls in love, not realizing that she is the goddess Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. When the FBI shoots Athena by mistake, Norm is devastated (not realizing that you can’t really shoot a goddess). It takes the rest of the opera for him to realize Athena’s true identity, and the lesson she came to teach him, namely that you can never encapsulate life with your mind alone, because the true perfection of the universe lies precisely in the things that don’t fit, in the “loose ends of our lives”. Norm becomes a composer and is writing the very opera that we are watching on stage. About the music Most of the music for the opera was actually generated from Fibonacci series numbers, making what we see on stage mimic the actual process of composing the opera. Surprisingly, the pure mathematics of the Fibonacci numbers produces music that is both varied and melodic. Why this should be so adds to the mystery of the Fibonacci Series and its role in nature. Production facts at a glance
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