sammy & remmy ('12)

I always loved going to circuses throughout my childhood. Not only because I love animals but because some of my fondest childhood memories involve trips to the circus. This opera is a brief concentrated story about circus elephants being captured in the wild and then released in the end. It encapsulates the animals’  (elephants and lion) emotions behind the scenes.  

This story includes an animal trainer, Joanna. She is similar to a jail keeper as her role is to keep the animals in order and train them for shows. She sympathizes with the animals, but her morals eventually clash with her work as a circus trainer when the lion passes out from exhaustion. This results in her freeing all the animals in the end. 

Throughout the piece, there are evident reoccurring themes for individual characters that follow their inner emotional struggles. Besides their evident themes, there are overall shapes that depict each character – the elephants have rising melodies, while the hunters have falling melodies. Meanwhile, the lion has static melodies (often repetition on same notes) and Joanna’s melody is somewhere in between.