Catherine M. Pratt

In rural France in 1789, Pridament, nearing the end of his life, visits the cave of the sorcerer Alcandra and asks him to help find his estranged son Clément who ran away from him ten years before. Alcandra agrees to show Pridament three visions that will explain his son’s whereabouts under the condition that he does not disrupt the visions in any way. The first vision shows Clément in an antic romance with Isabel that is not approved by her father Geronte. The second vision leaps ahead in time to 1987 when Clément is involved in a domestic dispute in a penthouse and is shot and killed. Pridament is grief-stricken, but Alcandra then reveals that Clément is an actor; that the first vision was of a Commedia Dell’Arte comedy in which he was performing and that the second is of an evening soap opera he was filming. In the third and final vision, Alcandra shows Clément in the present day. He has given up his life as an actor and now lives on a goat farm in Vermont with his husband and child. In an opera about the power of love to transcend time, father and son are finally reunited.