HUBBLE Man and Machine - Oratorio - 1. Part One – Trials of Man

 

LIBRETTO

 

 

 

 

HUBBLE

Man and Machine

 

Oratorio

in Two Parts

 

 

 

 

 

by

AC Benus

 

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Esecutori dell’oratorio

 

Four Soloists:

SOPRANO – bright but resonate range and color (think Ileana Cortubas, or Emma Kirkby)

TENOR – lyrical and sustained, moving and vulnerable (think Franco Corelli, or Richard Lewis – the Handel tenor)

COUNTERTENOR – spiritual, clear in the lower range (only one – Yoshikazu Mera)

CONTRALTO – to sing in a confident baritone range (think Hanna Schwartz, as in Hager’s 1979 recording of Betulia Liberata)

 

Operatic Chorus:

CORO: – large divided chorus: Sopranos, Contraltos, Tenors, Baritones and Bass

 

Choral Ensemble:

CORALE: – a group of four voices: two women and two men. They should form a non-operatic ensemble of a gospel type. They wear street clothes and represent the audience members' inner reactions/feelings to the oratorio/subject matter. On stage, they occupy chairs that face the other performers. They watch and react as the audience does, rising and facing them as called on to sing.

 

 

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Staging note:

No props, no costumes. The stage must be able to accommodate a large rear-projection screen. Images relating to Edwin Huddle’s work and the findings of the Hubble Space Telescope are noted at the head of each scene. The exact images, order, duration of showing, and other details should be worked out by the director and lighting designer. Broad moods are intended by the combination of image and lighting effects as the performance progresses. Individual scenes should have relatively unified color settings that progress based on the musical interpretation to the finale of the scene. New scenes; new colors. Inspiration will come from the Hubble images and the music.

 

Setting note:

The metres used throughout the poem generally indicate the delivery style/tempo intended for the oration. Ten syllable lines are meant to follow the natural cadence of everyday speaking tempo, while decreases in the syllable count of individual lines show progressively slower, more contemplative action. So, for example, a five-syllable line should take twice as long in performance as ten syllable ‘recitatives’ lines. Action with less than ten syllables per line are indicated in bold typeface.

All Recitatives are considered accompanied by the instruments.

 

Bibliography (as referenced in the footnotes):

HIST – Hubble, Imaging Space and Time, 2008 National Geographic Society Washington D.C.

HU – Hubble’s Universe, A Portrait of our Cosmos, 1997 Viking Penguin New York

EH – Edwin Hubble, Mariner of the Stars, 1996 University of Chicago Press Chicago

NW – NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope Website

PA – Pierre or the Ambiguities, Herman Melville, 1852 Harper Brothers New York (page numbers in parentheses refer to the 1971 Northwestern- Newberry edition where the source of the passage can be found)

 

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Part One – Trials of Man

Scene One:

(As the first number starts, a blurry black and white image slowly comes into focus on the screen – a photo Edwin Hubble took of a galaxy.[1] http://spaceinfo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/hubble_300.jpg

The lights come up, Soloists and the Chorale are not on stage yet. As the scene progresses, further images Edwin Hubble took appear:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fskyserver.sdss.org%2Fdr1%2Fen%2Fproj%2Fbasic%2Funiverse%2Fimages%2Fsombrero.gif&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fskyserver.sdss.org%2Fdr1%2Fen%2Fproj%2Fbasic%2Funiverse%2F&h=200&w=200&tbnid=sGKyWVNiyGmYMM%3A&zoom=1&docid=9z0oY7jS4AeGiM&ei=FKxrU_jLFIaOyAGgvICADw&tbm=isch&ved=0CGMQMyhbMFs4ZA&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=322&page=9&start=190&ndsp=22

http://www.sydneyobservatory.com.au/2007/the-milky-way-a-galaxy-with-a-bar/ )

 

 

No. 1 - Cavatina ed Corale

 

COUNTERTENOR:

(singing offstage)

Like a child, who in a classroom

Sits and stares at a blackboard far,

Where the characters faintly loom;

Where eyes are confined and ignored,

Unable to there decipher

Our Teacher’s indelible hand.

So, a child with knowledge smitten

Feels he has no place yet to land.

   

CORALE:

(drifting on stage)

Such is man in the universe,

Needing a pair of eyeglasses.

We sit, we squint, and then we curse

Useless cries to the stars’ masses.

 

 

No. 2 - Recetetivo

 

TENOR:

(walking onstage)

It is a supreme bit of irony

That so flawed a bit of machine was lunched

Christened with the name of a man, flawless.

At least so it seems. Edwin Hubble, born

To a wealth Missouri family, grew,

And knowledge was his supreme companion.

So smart, so clever a lad was sent then

To all the best of schools, including one,

Oxford, to be named, where he also picked

A British accent for himself, for life.

As scientist, he was celebrity:

De rigeur on every party’s guest list –

And as far as hardship – he suffered none.

But he turned his eyes to the stars and found

Great depth for our shallow humanity.

 

 

No. 3 - Arioso con Coro

 

TENOR:

There lurks the subtler secret –

From without, no wonderful effect

Can be wrought within ourselves

Unless some internal response

Rises itself to meet it.

 

CORO:

That the starry vaults surcharge

The heart with all rapturous marvelings,

Is only because we ourselves

Are greater miracles,

And the subtler trophies

Than all the stars out there

In universal space.

 

TENOR:

Wonder interlocks with wonder –

And then the confounding feeling comes.

No cause have we to fancy that

A horse, dog, or fowl can ever stand

Transfixed ‘neath the sky’s majesty.

 

CORO:

But these vaults, our soul’s arches,

Peg like, underfit into its

Greater arch, and so there prevents

The uppermost vault from

Falling on us with

Inscrutable likeness.[2]

 

(recap: “There lurks the subtler...” etc)

 

 

No. 4 - Cavatina

 

SOPRANO:

(walking on stage)

But in me thou hast provoked

Spells yet profounder

Than the same cause has evoked.

 

For in me hast uncovered

One infinite, dumb

Countenance to discover![3]

 

(about half way through No.5, we glimpse a view of the earth with a metallic object in distant orbit. The images transition from black and white to brilliant color:

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http%3A%2F%2Fd366w3m5tf0813.cloudfront.net%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2Fhst_over_earth_l.jpg&imgrefurl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.skyandtelescope.com%2Fastronomy-news%2Fhubble-upgrade-report-6-stargazing-from-orbit%2F&h=480&w=640&tbnid=i3rL-mqMKgoBBM%3A&zoom=1&docid=VCIQQv2CcBzI_M&ei=j65rU-vqBKqqyAHQ2oCIDQ&tbm=isch&ved=0CFcQMygFMAU&iact=rc&uact=3&dur=1756&page=1&start=0&ndsp=20

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/tag/edwin-hubble/

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hubble_Space_Telescope_and_Earth_Limb_-_GPN-2000-001064.jpg

As the number concludes, we see a crystal clear image of a close up the Hubble Space Telescope, and the blue Earth beneath it)

 

 

No. 5 - Recetetivo

 

SOPRANO:

On an April day in Nineteen-Ninety

Our glasses on the universe arrived.

Discovery placed the machine in orbit,

Above a baited-breath and waiting world.

A telescope in space: it was conceived

‘Bout the time Hubble’s career first started –

A German rocket engineer said so –

A lens free in space could see most clearly

And not magnify dust, as here on Earth.[4]

  

(during the following, images of the early design drawings for Hubble appear, but fade to black before the final three lines)

 

COUNTERTENOR:

(walking on stage)

Surfacing in the Forties and Sixties,

This idea was too grand to contemplate:

How to craft and launch something so precise?

But by Seventy-Seven, space shuttles

Promised new ways to adit and exit –

Quick and secure, the step to space stations.

Hubble as a project was launched, and then

Europe was brought in to help supply parts –

Better cost-cutting was not so present,

Forebear a sense of doom that none yet felt.[5]

 

 

No. 6 - Duetto

 

SOPRANO:

Find it thus wonderful

To trace the profoundest things

Back down to origins

Extremely trite and trivial.

 

COUNTERTENOR:

So strange the Human soul,

So much evolved from itself,

It makes the wisest man rash

Within his final thoughts and acts.

 

SOPRANO:

What can we, blind moles, see?

Man’s life seems but the acting

On mysterious hints

And thus we do. And thus we do.

 

COUNTERTENOR:

For surely no mortal

Chanced to go down in himself

Could afterwards pretend

His acts originate in him.[6]

 

SOPRANO and COUNTERTENOR:

According to what view you take –

It is gift gracious,

Or gift malicious,

From the great gods to man

That on the threshold of any

Enterprise new and momentous

Those intricacies,

All interior,

Imperils must conduct

Through her too-primal wilderness

Ignorant of the heart’s pitfalls.[7]

 

(the light fades on the soloists – End of Scene One)

 

 

Scene Two:

(the lights come up on the Chorale as they slowly rise from their seats and face the audience)

 

No. 7 - Corale

 

CORALE:

Why does it seem

Failure hounds us now?

Have we run out of steam –

Lost old-fashioned know-how?

 

Long time ago,

A man on the moon,

But now progress is slow –

As setbacks build and loom.

 

(recap: “Why does it seem…” etc)

 

 

No. 8 - Recetetivo

 

CONTRALTO:

(walking on stage – more black and white images of Edwin Hubble’s work)

The very concept we hold commonplace –

That this our universe is expanding

Springs from Edwin Hubble’s observations.

Though ridiculed at first by those cohorts

Of the ever fixed and unchanging model,

Hubble’s empiric data showed them wrong.[8]

 

 

No. 9 - Coro

 

CORO:

So history goes forward,

And retreats backwards,

As occasion calls.

Nimble men’s emotions –

Center as they fancy,

Circumferences elastic,

They must ever have it.[9]

 

 

No. 10 - Recetetivo ed Aria

 

CONTRALTO:

(images become colored – undergo redshift)

Through his red-shift photos, Hubble showed us

A cosmos certainly billions of years old –

Forever silencing doubt-casters, who,

Nat-like would plague pure science with matters

Orbiting round untouchable credence.[10]

 

Aria:

But what are surmises worth?

Oh, better a million times,

And sweeter the mysteries,

Than cold-stone surmises.

Though the mysteries

Be unfathomable,

It is still the

Unfathomable of surmise.

But the surmise,

That is but shallow,

And stays unmeaning emptiness![11]

 

Is it possible after all,

That spite of bricks and shaven faces,

This world is brimmed with wonders?

And I and all mankind,

Beneath our garbs of common-place

Conceal enigmas the stars themselves

That Seraphim could not resolve?[12]

 

(end of Scene Two)

 

 

Scene Three:

(the lights shift to the tenor and soprano and come up on the Chorale as they slowly rise from their seats and face the audience. The images progress through Hubble’s first pixilated photos)

 

 

No. 11a - Recetetivo

 

TENOR:

As the first images came back blurry,

NASA said it was glad to get anything –

A tweak here, a twist there, and all will be fine,

But one man knew to see serious problems

Showed on Hubble’s out-of-focus image.

 

No. 12a - Corale

 

CORALE:

All the world wanted

To see what we could do –

They laughed unabated

Before we were through.

 

No. 11b - Recetetivo

 

CONTRALTO:

Then other problems were present as well.

Two light-collecting panels, like potholes,

Expanded and contracted based on cold,

Shivering the camera while it tried to look.

“Badly designed” was the palmed-off answer.[13]

 

(the soloists gather stage center front)

 

No. 12b - Corale

 

CORALE:

Our glasses shunted

And nothing to do –

We were humiliated

At heart, through and through.

 

No. 11c - Recetetivo

 

SOPRANO:

Sad too that Hubble’s “guide stars” could not be found –

These the telescope needed to fix on

There locking a position immobile

While it snap-shot some far distant light source.

“Soft Ware” we were told. “That we can rewrite.”

 

No. 12c - Corale

 

CORALE:

Our hopes were blunted

As slowly our shame grew

They laughed unabated

Before we were through.

 

No. 11d - Recetetivo

 

COUNTERTENOR:

But the saddest of all was Hubble’s heart –

A million dollar blank precision lens

Polished with a ten-million dollar flaw.

This, untested, was put on the machine

As they say, penny-wise but pound-foolish.[14]

 

 

No. 13 - Quartetto con Coro

 

COUNTERTENOR and TENOR:

If among deeper significances,

Of pervading indefiniteness,

Which are wisely hidden from all,

Yet, the rarest adepts,

This present tragedy

Conveys one moral

Fitted to the everyday use of man –

 

CORO:

All meditation is useless

Unless it prompts action!

That it is not for man to stand

Shilly-shallying amid

Conflicting invasions

From surrounding impulses.

 

SOPRANO and CONTRALTO:

If among the earliest instant

Conviction is roused and

Man must strike, and if possible,

Strike with precision and force

So that Jove himself

Turns to witness the crash

Of that tremendous lightening-bolt.

 

CORO:

The intensest light of reason,

With revelation combined

Cannot shed light on

The deepest truths of man –

As those that proceed quietly

From ‘neath his profoundest gloom.

 

COUNTERTENOR, TENOR, SOPRANO and CONTRALTO:

Utter darkness is then his light –

Distinctly he sees all through

A medium mere blindness to

Common, affected vision.

 

CORO:

Wherefore have gloom and grief

Been celebrated of old

As the select chamberlain

To wiser and better vision.[15]

 

(together at recapitulation)

 

 

(Darkness - end of Scene Three)

 

 

Scene Four:

(the lights rise on CONTRALTO stage left)

 

No. 14 - Cavatina

 

CONTRALTO:

Appalling is the soul of man!

Better might he be pushed

To the material space

Beyond the uttermost

Orbit of our sun, than once feel

Afloat within himself.[16]

 

 

No. 15 - Recetetivo ed Aria

 

TENOR:

Uncovered yet are the profoundest things,

For who drops an angle in himself

When the outer stream of the world swims large?

Ten million things to us yet uncovered –

The old mummy lies buried, cloth in cloth,

And it takes time to unwrap Egypt’s king.

As far as geologist has yet gone,

Deep down into the substance of the world,

It consists of surface upon surface –

To its axis the world is nothing but

Superimposed superficies.[17]

 

Aria:

By vast pains, we mine

Into the pyramid,

By groping we come

Within its central room.

With joy we espy

The stone sarcophagus

But we lift the lid –

And no body is there.

Thus appallingly

As vacant and as vast

Is the soul of man![18]

 

Exalted by the willing

Sufferings of all mankind

To purer realms to possess

The ineffaceableness of stars.[19]

 

(recap: “By vast pains, we mine…” etc)

 

 

No. 16 - Recetetivo

 

SOPRANO:

Succeeds the man where his machine fails him.

Hubble who sat upon his mountaintop –

A mile above the Hollywood lightshow

Measured the speed of galaxies from us.

The farther away, the faster they moved –

To forty thousand kilos a second,

And distances almost beyond the ken

Of mere numbers to bind and contain.[20]

 

 

No. 17 - Recetetivo

 

COUNTERTENOR:

Hubble as sad isolated machine

Needed solutions it was not designed for –

To fix a mirror, some instated that

It must be snagged and brought back to the Earth –

Many knew, once down, she’d never return.

No. Tiny mirrors to correct the big,

Like bifocals in a general lens,

And a new camera to compensate –

All must be installed while she floats in space.

 

 

No. 18 - Corale

 

CORALE:

If only we can pull this off,

Some national pride can be restored.

Show our mental might ain’t gone soft,

That our problem-solving can’t be ignored.

 

 

No. 19 - Duetto

 

SOPRANO and COUNTERTENOR:

New hope blooms from our endeavors,

Though the road ahead is rocky.

Untried and untested methods

May leave us with less than we had.

But onward to the challenge

In hope for greater rewards.

 

 

No. 20 - Quartetto ed Corale a Coro ed Fuga

 

TENOR and CONTRALTO:

Are not all man’s attempts

Nothing but sheer vain folly,

Striving against the one who will

Collect his due in all our ends?

 

SOPRANO and COUNTERTENOR:

Are not all man’s concepts

Striving there for one jolly,

Nothing against the one fulfill

That life in death all amends!

 

(together at recapitulation)

 

 

CORALE:

Every day we meet the challenges at hand

Who has time to think about the infinite?

 

TENOR and CONTRALTO:

Are not all man’s concepts

Striving there for one jolly,

Nothing against the one fulfill

That life in death all amends!

 

SOPRANO and COUNTERTENOR:

Are not all man’s attempts

Nothing but sheer vain folly,

Striving against the one who will

Collect his due in all our ends?

 

CORO:

Decreed by Fate

Omnipotent it is,

Death should be

The last scene of man’s life,

Though it start

Valiant or comedy,

The curtain

Will fall on all alike.[21]

(together/together at recapitulation)

 

FUGA CON TUTTI:

Let all die –

So it may mix again.

Let all die –

So to begin again. [22]

 

 

 

(Darkness – End of Part One)