VIDEO WEBCAST

The Nitrate Hymnal (excerpt)

(2003) 8'28"
Bob Massey Project Page | David M. Wilson Project Page | Add Webcast to My Artbox

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Words and Music: Bob Massey
Film and Projections: David Wilson
Director: David Schweizer
Producer: Jean Cook for Anti-Social Music

The Nitrate Hymnal is in four acts. Its five characters are Mimi, her husband Robert, their grandson Michael, the Nurse, and the Lover.

Scene: in a hospice facility

Michael, an aspiring filmmaker, visits his grandmother on her deathbed in hopes of completing a documentary about her life. He finds Mimi almost incoherent and watched over by a mysterious Nurse. Desperate to rouse her memories, Michael begins to project the family's old home movies. As they roll, we follow Mimi deep inside her head, where bits of actual history mixes with never-realized aspirations, and her nurse transforms into an otherworldly agent. Toward the end of each dream-memory, Mimi's dead husband, Robert, leaves her a reel of film purported to show the true essence of their relationship. Afraid of what this hidden moment might reveal, Mimi refuses to watch the film. Every act of the opera moves the story farther back in time, probing beyond the postcard happiness of the home movies and culminating in a truer picture of the life Mimi and Robert made together.

Creators Note: The characters in this production are fictional. Art mines life for details, and the home movies are real, but the situations and characters portrayed are not. They are solely the product of the authors' imaginations. They are not meant to convey any private information about any real people.