Instrumentation: voice and piano

Libretto by: Gregg Kallor

Duration: ~3 minutes

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Scene Context

Elizabeth writes a letter to Victor, who has mysteriously disappeared back into his laboratory following William’s death. She begins with gentle platitudes, but grows increasingly frustrated at not being able to fully express her despair to him. After voicing her true feelings in an impassioned outburst (“You’ve gone away again”), Elizabeth writes the forcibly calm letter that she will actually send to Victor.

Character Description

Elizabeth Lavenza is Victor Frankenstein’s fiancée. Empathetic and loving, she is the caretaker of her family who looks after Victor’s younger brother and aging father while Victor secretly pursues his dream of — and obsession with — building a creature and bringing it to life. 

Mary Shelley wrote Elizabeth as an angelic character, showing her empathetic nature in stark contrast to the callousness and violence that surrounded her — and, undoubtedly, to appeal to the 19th century male perception of how women “should” be, since men were the primary reading audience when Frankenstein was first published in 1818 (it was still a radical idea that women should be taught to read). In my adaptation of the novel into an opera, I wanted to modernize Elizabeth, while preserving her essence. 

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