Production notes

Rights: The composer and co-librettists have permission from CBS television to develop this project for limited non-commercial presentations. We confer with CBS regularly, who support the project and would like to see it grow — this attitude is consistent with their long history of supporting Star Trek spin-offs. We’re currently seeking a collaborating company for a commercial world premier, and we are optimistic that CBS will set reasonable terms, to the benefit of the Star Trek brand.

Adaptation: Our story differs a little from the 1966 double-episode “Menagerie”. Most significantly: to create prominent soprano, mezzo, and alto roles, a number of women characters have been created or expanded. The role of Vina is made more central to the plot, and two male characters are remade as women: Dr. Boyce and Commodore Mendez (now Zuna Tor). In the television episode, Captain Pike expressed himself only through lights indicating yes or no; in our version he communicates emotions along a gamut from affirmation to negation, attraction to repulsion, through his visible neural activity—foregrounding the original episode’s overarching message about the mental union of virtual and actual life. Behind those developments, however, we maintain one of Star Trek’s most compelling emotional landscapes: that of Spock’s evolving sense of self and purpose in his mostly human surroundings.

Concept: Menagerie is a play within a play. At its core is a story of an early voyage of the Enterprise—told in the lifelike evidence that Spock presents to his jurors. The journey—with a young Captain Pike at the helm, is loose echo of the Orpheus myth that dominates the history of opera. Pike is lured to Talos IV on a rescue mission, where he finds a woman, trapped in an underground cave, a specter of his lost fiance. Like Orpheus, he can only hope to rescue her by grappling in a battle of wits and persuasion. And like Eurydice, Pike’s lost finance—really a fantasy conjured from within him—cannot be resurrected.

The larger story is yet another Orpheus story—with genders reversed. The older Pike, whom Spock abducts, is in his own sort of underworld, his fully aware mind trapped in a lifeless body. Spock, we soon learn, is intervening like Persephone on behalf of the now older Vina, who, among the Talosians, has Orpheus’ power to make fantasy real. Like Orpheus’ divine voice, which “allured the trees, the savage animals, and even the insensate rocks, to follow him” (Ovid, Metamorphoses X)—the Talosian technology represents a chance to restore to Pike a full, unencumbered life. Like Persephone to Orpheus, Spock must help Vina (and her godlike Talosian accomplices) sway the hearts of a reluctant court whose rules are absolute in their prevention of her lost love’s return.

Production: A successful production of Menagerie would be 2 hours in length excluding intermissions, and could be realized with a relatively small budget, with projections making up the majority of the set and a reduced orchestra. However, the conception expressed in this libretto and score follows the tradition of grand opera. We propose a technique whereby characters can be “beamed” to the stage through lighting effects on temporary cylinders of opaque cloth. We suggest a modular, two-level set design which can transform the hallways of a space station hospital into the bridge of both the old Enterprise and a new one. For Pike, we suggest a rich display of brain imagery that would act as a kind visual music in concert with the orchestra’s “singing” of his thoughts. Although these features would be costly, we also anticipate that public excitement for a Star Trek Opera would be an unprecedented force in the history of fund-raising for the theater.