THE DIFFICULTY OF CROSSING A FIELD

Special Event June 15 & 18
Long Beach Opera

David Lang
Libretto by Mac Wellman

A slave owner in the pre-civil war American South walks across his field and disappears, in plain view of his family, his neighbors and his slaves, forever altering the relationships among them. Everyone around him has his or her own sharp view of what that disappearance means, of why it had to happen, and of what will happen now that there is a 'hole' where a man used to be. Based on a one page story by the writer Ambrose Bierce.