Mother Noah – An Opera in Three Acts
Tucked away in that ancient account of Noah and the Ark is a major and curious void; an inexplicable omission. References to Mother Noah – Noah’s wife – are restricted to just that: “Noah’s wife”. It is as though she had no existence otherwise. But she did!
What is more, she would have played an indispensable role in that ancient episode. she would have been the Mother of the new Human Race. For that antediluvian story tells us that all of humanity, excepting Noah, his wife, three sons and their wives, were drowned in the flood.
This odd omission stimulated the imagination of this opera’s authors. This void begged to be filled with additional narrative, development of characters, assumed and fabricated situations – all set to music and mounted as a contemporary opera. It invited the exploration of a monumental question. “If the Flood and its ensuing death and destruction was meant to cleanse the Earth of violence, evil, greed and all human corruption, what went wrong?”
When the plug was pulled and the Flood subsided, those less desirable characteristics of the human species remained. And so did the commendable virtues! The struggle within the human family between good and evil, enlightenment and confusion, nobility and degradation continued. The antiquated account suggests that the sole human family (Noah and his clan) were still tainted despite the purifying intent of the Flood.
What about Mother Noah? What role did she play in the unfolding drama that began when the Ark ran aground for the last time? What must have been the tangle of relationships and conflicting values that filled those early years that followed the emptying of the Ark?
It is to this tantalizing deletion in that aged Old Testament narrative that Ralph Stone and Dale Ramsey directed their creative efforts. The result after several years of writing and composing is their opera, Mother Noah.
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