Programme Note	Synopsis
Librettist's Reflections on Setting & Cast	A Note on Act Divisions

A Note on the Spoken Text

Programme Note An opera must, of course, begin with the story. On the surface, John Steffler's libretto is quite simple: two Scottish slaves, deeply in love with each other, brought to Vinland against their will under terrible circumstances, must now decide whether to go back with the Vikings or to remain in Vinland and take their chances. A closer examination of the libretto reveals, however, a much more complex psychological drama. Each slave keeps hoping to persuade the other to his or her point of view. This prompts some "creative" dialogue between the two, neither of whom really wishes to offend the other. Set against their dialogue are the aspirations of the other characters: Tyrkir, the German rune-stone carver who longs to be back in Europe; Decker, the modern archaeologist, who desires to make a career on the remains of the past; and Agnes, who has come to "Vinland" to get away from the world yet finds that it will always remain within her. In the end, the conflicts and emotions that these characters express are common to us all. We all wish to find our "home" in this world, to find the place where we belong. For many of us, that place always seems to be somewhere else. The Vikings, Tyrkir, Decker, Agnes, Haki and Hekja are all trying to find that "somewhere." It is hoped that their search within this drama reflects our search for that elusive peace of mind we all crave. In the tradition of opera, I have used several musical motifs throughout the work representing love, the land, the desire to stay, the desire to leave, the rune-stone, etc. Finally, prefacing John Steffler's libretto in the opera I have included a short prologue in which that passage from Eiriksaga that John used to devise the plot would be sung in the original Icelandic along with an English translation.

Curtain calls following the first concert performance of The Visitor:(left to right) Lyric Baritone David Malis (Haki), Mezzo-Soprano Sandra Graham (Hekja), librettist John Steffler, composer Michael Parker, Conductor Marc David, Actor Berni Stapleton, Bass Baritone Desmond Byrne (Decker).

Synopsis Dramatis Personae (in order of appearance) An Icelandic Bard (Bass Baritone) An Interpreter (Speaking Part) Haki (Lyric Baritone) Scottish slave of the Vikings, a runner with supernatural speed and endurance Hekja (Mezzo-Soprano) Wife of Haki, also a slave of the Vikings and a swift runner Tyrkir (Bass Baritone) A German, a skilled craftsman and carver, who has lived among the Vikings as one of them. In Vinland he is the first to make wine from wild berries Agnes (Speaking Part) A modern doctor Arnold Decker (Bass Baritone) A modern archaeologist Prologue As the Prologue opens, ocean waves are heard washing onto the shore. In the distance, a white-throated sparrow is singing. An Icelandic Bard is seated at a table singing from the original manuscript of Eiriksaga. A present-day interpreter reads from an English translation. The Bard tells of the voyage of Leif Eiriksson to Vinland and how two Scottish slaves, Haki and Hekja, were taken along because of their great running speed. Scene 1 As the first scene opens, we are in Vinland, a remote place on the Atlantic coast of north-eastern North America, 1000 AD. The Vikings are preparing their ships to abandon their North American colony in Vinland and return to Greenland. Haki, looking offstage, sees the German Tyrkir carving a rune-stone. Haki and Hekja discuss whether to take their chances and stay in Vinland or to return to Greenland with the Vikings. Haki feels they will fare better with the Vikings even though they treat them as slaves. Hekja feels their great speed will help them survive in the wilds of Vinland. Besides, she cannot trust the Vikings after what they did to their families years earlier. In an aria, she sings of the beauty of Vinland and how it gives her a new sense of self. Haki insists that staying in Vinland will destroy the love he and Hekja have for each other. He hopes they can return to Stronsay in Scotland and rebuild their lives there. Scene 2 Suddenly Tyrkir and several Vikings arrive. In fear, Haki and Hekja hide themselves. Tyrkir and the Vikings set up the rune-stone which Tyrkir has been carving and then walk around the stone, pouring libations, after which the Vikings leave. Tyrkir is glad to be leaving Vinland at last. He hates the people he has come in contact with there; at the same time, he has enjoyed the wild grapes of Vinland from which he has made wine. He reflects on the fact that humans rarely find peace in the world; they keep wandering and searching for the ideal place, but it never seems to be realized. He imagines he is back in civilized Europe, strolling with his wife. Forever restless, he longs to be out at sea again and en route to Greenland. Scene 3 After Tyrkir's departure, Hekja is even more eager to get away from the Vikings. In frustration and anger, she pushes the rune-stone over and it crashes to the ground. She fears that she and Haki will end up like the Vikings if they stay with them. Haki, in spite of his concerns, at first agrees to stay in Vinland with Hekja; but he quickly recants and reinforces his desire to get away from the place. On her part, Hekja too tries to accommodate Haki's desires and at first says she will go back to Greenland with him; but finally, she too cannot deny her strong desire to stay in Vinland where she sees freedom for her and Haki. In the end, they both decide that they cannot stay where they are. Scene 4 Consumed by their conflicting emotions, Haki and Hekja try to draw the other either towards the Viking ships or into the woods. As they do so, the time gradually changes to 2000 AD, even though Haki and Hekja remain. Agnes arrives and sits on the toppled rune-stone, admiring the scenery. She is clearly upset. Eventually, Haki and Hekja introduce themselves to Agnes. They tell her how the Vikings killed their families and brought them as slaves to Vinland. Agnes tells them that her husband and daughter were recently killed by rebels in Zaire and that she has come to this far-away land to find some solace. Hekja and Agnes are especially drawn to each other. The three of them are interrupted by Arnold Decker who arrives to inspect Tyrkir's rune-stone, now, of course, 1000 years old. He too can see Haki and Hekja, whom he constantly insults. He chastizes Agnes for sitting on the rune-stone, while also becoming lost in a dream about what this discovery will mean to his career. It soon becomes clear that he has arranged for the stone's removal to a newly-built museum; he also expresses his certainty of becoming the director of some Institute for Norse Studies because of this discovery. Soon the sound of a helicopter is heard; Decker attaches cables to the rune-stone in preparation for its removal. Agnes is distressed at his verbal abuse of Haki and Hekja and at his cynicism; she wonders why people cannot leave the past alone. As the stone is removed, Agnes follows Decker offstage. Scene 5 Left alone once again, Hekja recalls the brutal murder of her family by the Vikings and expresses her love for Haki who saved her life at that moment. Haki reiterates his love for Hekja. Nevertheless, they acknowledge that they still have profound differences concerning staying in Vinland or returning to Greenland. In the end, they both realize that they are meant to be together. As night falls they urge each other onward.

The Librettist's Reflections on the Setting and the Cast The Setting Vinland, a remote place on the Atlantic coast of north-eastern North America. The time period includes both 1000 AD and 2000 AD. Characters from the two eras interact in the same unchanged geographical setting. The action takes place in a forest clearing. Tall conifers, such as black spruce or balsam fir, enclose the three inner sides of the stage. The open playing area should be perhaps no greater than 20 to 25 feet wide by 15 to 18 feet deep. The trees are loosely aligned on stage left and stage right and staggered or louvered upstage so as to create a wall of green through which the audience cannot see. Throughout the opera, the audience can detect the presence of people standing behind or among the trees. Only glimpses or hints of these people should ever be visible to the audience. Their feet (perhaps some bare, some in sneakers, some in boots), seen under the lowest boughs of the trees, are normally the only parts of them that betray their presence. Occasionally the edge of an arm or leg could be glimpsed; never their faces. Sometimes their bodies could stir the trees. Parts of the people might sometimes be noticeable high up in the trees. It would be best to have at least seven of these tree-people, all changing and exchanging positions from time to time, silently and unobtrusively, behind the set. They can double as stage hands. Above the trees, or across or through their tops, a river or train of clouds flows from stage right to stage left. Perhaps some arrangement of scrims receives a projection of a time-lapse film of moving clouds. The movement of the clouds should be slow enough and the light and colour in them subdued enough not to distract the audience from the on-stage performance. Occasionally, large animals can be faintly seen passing above the stage along with the clouds or just below them. The impression is of normal atmospheric turbulence - a broad stirring of natural energy - not a storm, nothing melodramatic or gothic. The animals should not be in static postures, but drawn out, somewhat distorted or blurred in flight, perhaps twisting, pouring through space. A variety of creatures could be represented: large animals such as bears, moose, caribou, wolves, large birds such as eagles and gannets, flocks of small birds, swarms of insects, perhaps also aquatic creatures - whales, walruses, fish. The animals might rise and rotate like stars in the sky, warp and shift away. The creatures should appear often enough for the audience to become used to them but not be continuous. Their appearance should be random, detached, not timed to coincide with key events in the action. All of the features of the set mentioned above constitute background. The performers never notice the images overhead or the people in the trees, nor are they influenced by them. The object is to contrive a set which is alive, potent, and mysterious, but which does not detract from or diminish the on-stage performance. The Cast Haki and Hekja Together since childhood, they were captured in their late teens by Viking raiders on their home island of Stronsay, taken to Norway, and sold to King Olaf Tryggvason who gave them as a gift to Leif Eiriksson when he was visiting Norway. Leif Eiriksson took Haki and Hekja back to Greenland with him and later loaned them to Thorfin Karlsefni to aid him in his expedition to Vinland, which is where we find them in this opera. They are in a sense one person and rely on each other's companionship to endure their slavery and exile. Their slavery, however, which has lasted for over ten years, is somewhat paradoxical because, being swifter than deer, they could simply run away from the Vikings on one of their scouting missions. Part of the problem has been that in the rugged countries of Iceland and Greenland where the Vikings have taken them, Haki and Hekja have had nowhere to run to where they could survive on their own. The other factor is that running together gives them a sense of freedom which allows them, temporarily at least, to transcend their pain and deny the real condition of their lives. Hekja especially has entrenched in her character the state of shock they experienced when their families were slaughtered and they were taken to a foreign country in chains. Their exceptional ability as runners, in fact, is an outgrowth of that shock, an expression of their desire to escape the horror the Vikings brought on them. Thus, ironically, they have accommodated their slavery. Their skill as runners that has made them valuable to their masters has also been their own solace. But in Vinland Hekja sees the possibility of escape and transformation. Although Haki is deeply tempted, he continues to be more inclined to accept the conditions of Viking society and to hope for freedom within it. What he longs for is to return to their ancestral island in Scotland, to continue their family's interrupted history there. Hekja still feels herself propelled away from her old home by the horror that destroyed it; only more distance and more change will satisfy her. They both vacillate in their wishes; both feel they have been weakened by collusion and dependency. Tyrkir Trained as a carpenter and wood-carver in Germany, Tyrkir has been accepted in Norse society as a craftsman, small-time trader and mercenary soldier. His fundamental goal, he believes, is to become rich and return to his homeland to live in comfort and security. The excitement of voyaging with the Vikings and the pursuit of immediate pleasures normally allow him to ignore how far he is from attaining that goal. Tyrkir is clever and resourceful; his energies and appetites make him naturally resilient and self-affirming. Agnes A daughter of ordinary middle class people, Agnes has worked hard at developing herself, becoming successful and admirable in a variety of ways: professionally, ethically, politically, socially, and in love and family life. But now her life has crashed, and she is troubled not only by loss and grief but also by a guilty awareness that she did not fully appreciate her husband and daughter while she had them, that she has lived too much in the future, in work, in the habit of planning and training, in pursuing socially prescribed goals. She and her doctor husband went to Zaire partly out of a genuine desire to help disadvantaged people; but also out of fashionable idealism, to be better than mere bourgeois doctors, to be colourful. The experience took more from her than she had ever imagined it could. Now she has come to this remote place to mourn and go into retreat. She wants to live with her feelings, give them freedom to declare themselves and spread out in a way she has never allowed before. Perhaps in losing her family, she feels she has lost a whole version or construction of herself and must now permit another self to emerge and grow from within. But she is not a dreamy or passive person. Issues catch her attention, yank her back into human affairs and relationships before she is even aware of it. This is a sign of her vitality; it also points to the way she has used busyness - a kind of running - to avoid deep contact with others, including her daughter and husband. Decker Meant to be played by the same performer who plays Tyrkir, Decker, in some ways, is a kind of late 20th century Tyrkir. He is more motivated by personal ambition than by scholarship and curiosity about the past. He is single-minded, competitive, energetic and content to measure his success largely in worldly terms. He is much less capable than Agnes of having a deep sympathetic relationship with another person. If he has doubts about the lasting value of his scholarship or about his personal approach to life, he is quick to bury them under work and careerist scheming. John Steffler

A Note on Act Divisions The opera takes roughly 100 minutes to perform (approximately the same length as Strauss' Salome). It is intended that there be no intermission or break in the performance. However, for those who may wish to have an intermission in the work, I have written a short passage (in the form of a first ending) to conclude scene 3 to allow for an intermission at this point. Conveniently, this divides the work into the 1000 AD and 2000 AD sections. It also means that both parts are about equal in length (50 minutes for Prologue/Scenes 1-3; and 50 minutes for Scenes 4-5).

A Note on the Spoken Text Spoken text occurs primarily for the characters of An Interpreter (in the Prologue) and Agnes (in Scene 4), both of which parts are to be taken by the same performer. There is also a brief passage of spoken text for Tyrkir in Scene 2. The pace with which the dialogue is to be delivered by the performer is fairly free. However, it is necessary that the dialogue begin and end at the indicated points in the score. To assist the performer, I have used three methods of presenting the text in the score. a) Text contained within bar-lines Various portions of the text tend to be contained WITHIN EACH BAR, rather than spread across the entire page. This does not mean that the text MUST be kept within each of these bars; this method is simply used as a general indication of pacing. b) Text spread across bar-lines Sometimes (for brief passages of text), the text is spread across the bar-lines. Again, this simply indicates that the passage should be fairly freely delivered, making sure that it ends at approximately the place indicated in the score. c) Text with rhythmic notation In Agnes' long monologue at the end of Scene 4, I have indicated the rhythm of the text with musical notation. The reason for this is to co-ordinate the spoken text as closely as possible with that portion of the "duet" which is sung by Hekja. Again, this indicated rhythm is simply a general guide to the performer concerning the pacing of the text.