Resurrection by Tod Machover

There’s an intriguing moment in Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park, when a scientist -- played by Jeff Goldblum in the film version -- describes “chaos theory.” Here’s how it works: a butterfly on the west coast of Africa flaps its wings six times instead of the usual five. That one extra flap causes a stir of air that in turn creates a stronger-than-usual breeze. As the breeze moves toward the Atlantic coast, it grows in velocity, as usual. But this time, with the butterfly’s contribution, it turns into a gale-force wind by the time it hits the Canary Islands. The storm grows as it moves west across the ocean, and by the time it reaches the Florida Keys, it’s a deadly hurricane that across moves Florida into the Gulf of Mexico, causing millions of Texans to flee for their lives. All this, remember, because a butterfly beat its wings one too many times.

OK, so that scenario seems just a little far-fetched. Yet, it might seem a little less fantastic if we think for a moment of how the things individual people do in their everyday lives really can change our world.

For example, many of us continue to smoke cigarettes, even though we know we should give them up. A man might smoke a pack-a-day for 30 years - that’s 219,140 cigarettes, if you count the leap years - and show little or no ill effect. Then one day, he lights that 219,141st smoke. That one initiates a toxic overload in his body, leading an inoperable tumor. The poor guy’s dead before the year is out. But that’s not the end. When the guy dies, his small business goes under, leaving 35 people unemployed. Two of them happened to be married to each other. Without jobs, they decide not to have the baby they were planning, who might have grown up to be - who knows? President, maybe? Or maybe the researcher who cures cancer - or at least would have cured cancer.

And than there’s the one about an aristocratic in 19th-century Russia who gets called for jury duty. It’s murder trial, and he thinks he recognizes the prisoner in the dock - a prostitute accused of murder. He’s right. She’s an inncoent girl he seduced and abandoned years before. One of many, really, and ‘til now, he’s never set eyes on any of them again. When she’s convicted, he fells a little guilty, and tries to help her appeal the verdict. In the process he finds out that she carried, and lost, his baby; that her family threw her out; that she was forced to sell herself; and that forced her into the scheme that ended with an innocent man dead, a trial for murder, and a life in Siberia. The smug aristocrat realizes - to his horror -- that it was his callous act that set in motion all these events. So he decides to put things right. In the process, he starts another series of events that lead to happenings no less astounding than the resurrection of the dead. That story was told in the the final work by Leo Tolstoy, the author of War and Peace. And now it’s a brand new opera by composer Tod Machover. Named for Tolstoy’s novel, it’s called “Resurrection.”

This week At the Opera, host Lou Santacroce helps us prepare for this new work by talking Tolstoy with Professor Julie Buckler of Harvard University - an expert on Slavic literature. Next, we’ll sit down with Tod Machover himself, to talk about the compositional process, and learn what inspired him to set this particular novel. As we get closer to curtain time, conductor Stewart Robertson will guide us to the opera’s musical points of interest. Then, stay tuned for NPR World of Opera, and the World Premiere production of Machover’s new work, from Houston Grand Opera.

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