The Dizozza/Dante Afterdeath -- Lissa Moira Description and A Biblical Supplement Essay
LISSA MOIRA DESCRIPTION: The Afterdeath, a mini opera by Peter Dizozza, is a surrealistic take on the 5th Canto of Dante’s Inferno employing fabulous voices, in which oddly enough (unlike in Dante’s version) love manages to stand up to everything, even the second circle of hell. A Biblical Supplement Dante’s “Divine Comedy” (published in 1321), which he divided into three books, Inferno, Purgatory and Paradise, is one man’s attempt to establish order in an afterlife. His attempt is so vast that it melds into and becomes part of the theology that inspired it. Like Milton’s Paradise Lost (circa 1670), defining the heaven of God and his Angels as a prequel to Genesis, Dante's Divine Comedy embeds afterlife doctrines (including those from Greek “Mythology”) onto one of the major sects of Judaism, Christianity. The 5th Canto of Dante's Inferno describes people who let reason (of their minds) be guided by lust (of their bodies), a sin of incontinence. Dante assigns th