The Silent Soprano, a Comic Opera in 3 Acts

The plot.

The younger sister of the phantom of the opera takes revenge on the lead singers, by stealing their voices and selling them to a troop of monkeys who are in town for the annual fair.

The monkeys, now possessed of speech, find gainful employment as bankers and the financial service sector sees a huge turnaround.

The opera singers find that without a voice, they stop bitching and backstabing and cooperate to try to get work - the prima donna decides that the show must go on, so they start to perform the world's first Opera in Mime - it is a tremendous success.

However, yearning to be heard, a young understudy baritone succeeds in stealing the voices back from the monkeys, wreaking havoc with the world's economy, and re-introducing turmoil and strife at the Opera House.

He is universally condemned and in the final scene, he is forced to give the voices back to the monkeys and then beaten with blank music manuscript paper until the staves and clefs leave indelible marks on his face and hands.

The tunes.

Phantasmagoria I&II from Jeff Buckley.
etc etc

The Libretto

short, and sweet- the monkeys could, for example, recite lines from the Enron trial transscript.

roll over linaues

john daugman informs me that
In the 'Celestial Empire of benevolent Knowledge'(c.f. Jorge
Luis Borges in Book of Imaginary Beings
animals are taxonomised thus:
(a) belonging to the emperor, (b) embalmed, (c) tame,
(d) sucking pigs, (e) sirens, (f) fabulous,
(g) stray dogs,
(h) included in the present classification,
(i) frenzied, (j) innumerable,
(k) drawn with a very fine camelhair brush,
(l) et cetera, (m) having just broken the water pitcher,
(n) that from a long way off look like flies.

much better than Fire, Women and Dangerous Things