Packed one night in April 2022 into the 33’ x 22’ dining room of La Storia, an Italian restaurant in Chicago, were a pre-blocked cast of seven—one of whom played the violin; two were mute; and four who sang—and about thirty diners. Far from being “extras,” some were donors—”angels,” and some were simply souls —”anime,” if you like, who I told beforehand only that they were having dinner in a bistro in Little Italy on the evening of September 10th, 2001 and that an opera would unfold around them. I told them where the stationary coverage cameras were emplaced (and not to look directly into them), and to ignore the steady-cam operator (director of photography Talal Jabari) as he passed fluidly among them capturing closeups like a dancer carrying a fifty pound partner. I told them, “this is the opposite of dinner theater: feel free to eavesdrop.” Smiling, I then admonished them, “but you are New Yorkers, so you know how to give others their privacy.”

Searching their faces, I revealed to the supers before the cameras rolled that their bartender was named Orfeo, and that the hostess was named Lulu; that the strolling violinist who would play periodically was named Charon, and that the woman singing on the radio was named Eurydice. A light chuckle from one of the guests, who recognized immediately that Orfeo worked here because this was as close as he could ever get to being with his wife again. A story told in another opera. Doubling down, I explained that I, a mishappen, portly Detective Columbo-like character in a tweed jacket instead of a raincoat, was the proprietor of the restaurant, which was called “Passaggio,” and my name was Mors. A glimmer of understanding in the eyes of those diners who had read the classics in high school.

During the filming that ensued, some gathered gradually that the recurring Christina Rossetti lyric sung by Eurydice on the radio about a boatman and a pretty young passenger was about their current situation. Others only realized what was going on at the very end when, as the four friends came to terms with who the violinist was (and by doing so came to terms with their own deaths) left the restaurant, the transformation from bar to bardo was complete and a strangely mournful pre-recorded message repeated, again and again, “We’re sorry, but your call cannot be completed as dialed.”

Into a setting as intentionally claustrophobic and in-your-face as a John Cassavetes film this Shakespearean “flight of angels” was comprised of people who either “knew” that they were in the bardo—human souls who were transitioning (or had just done so?) from one state of being to the next, like DeLillo’s falling man—or were there to observe the four singers’ transformation into not-so-distant cousins of Damiel and Cassiel, the angels from Wim Wenders’ Der Himmel über Berlin. (For those so-inclined, the link between Cassavetes and Wenders is Peter Falk, who portrays a fallen husband for the former, and himself as a fallen angel for the latter.) Who knows? There may be gods seated at the bar. Well, here at Passaggio, there actually are. But Charon will be paid in the end, and the Serling-esque surprise you feel in this Twilight Zone is all yours. In other words, the living sing; the dead do not.

9/10: Love Before the Fall is a sequel to Orson Rehearsed, my operafilm about the final moments of Orson Welles’ life. Welles’ wildly creative mind dreamed up a bardo that filled the inside of an empty theater in which his dazzling intellect could come to terms with what was to come next. The four characters in 9/10 are ordinary people. Instead of a heart attack cutting their lives short, they will, the next day, die in the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers. Tony is a talented young chef at Windows on the World; his partner is Bibi, a soubrette from Los Angeles who waits tables there. Cory, a lawyer-turned-arbitrageur who “traded his shingle for a single” shares law offices with his partner Trina, an attorney with whom he fell in love when they were students at Stanford. After four arias during which each takes stock of their life, the men propose. When the women say yes, Cory realizes at once that they are “alive in a moment,” echoing Auden’s four solitary wartime drinkers in Age of Anxiety. They sing Dante’s line, “Remember tonight, for it is the start of everything.” Its promise of love as “a reward for persisting through life so long alone” is in sharp contrast to what happens next: Charon’s inevitable, entirely understandable, unsentimental demand for payment.

The shooting script and score of 9/10 were supported by a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. I staged it as a traditional opera with graduate students at the Chicago College of Performing Arts while simultaneously shooting the film on location with members of my New Mercury Collective. I am deeply grateful for the support of Rudy Marcozzi, dean at the time of CCPA, of Thomas Kernan, the present dean, and 534 Productions. The film is currently in post production and will be released to festivals on September 10th, 2023. Learn more.