Instrumentation: voice and piano

Libretto by: Gregg Kallor

Duration: ~4 minutes

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Scene context

Victor Frankenstein has nearly completed building a companion for the Creature. The Creature, on the cusp of his dream coming true, sings to his unconscious beloved (“I now see myself before me”).

Character description

The Creature is an imposing and fearsome presence who towers over the humans with whom he so desperately wants to find kinship. Victor Frankenstein built him to be superhuman — immune from disease and stronger, faster, and more agile than humans; instead, the Creature is treated as subhuman by almost everyone he meets, including his creator. Constructed from the body parts of human corpses, his physical appearance makes his resemblance to humans seem monstrous; yet he is deeply intelligent, self-reflective, and eloquent. After learning to speak and read, the Creature gains insight into humanity’s capacity for both greatness and horror. He struggles to find his place in the world; self-knowledge increases his loneliness and his suffering. His desire for companionship is repeatedly and violently rejected, and he’s driven to respond in kind — killing the people his creator loved most. Frankenstein is a horror story, but not in the way people often think of it; the real horror is the agony of a living being who is callously abandoned by the man who created him.

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