Year 2 Male Voice Piece “Swan Song”

I grew up that day. And dear, it cost me Nikitushka! After that little incident…after her…I lost all sense of aim and direction. I stumbled on without looking where I was going. I played fools and scoffers, I clowned, I sowed corruption – yet what an artist I was, what a talent I had! I buried that talent, I cheapened myself. I coarsened my language, I lost the divine image and likeness. That black pit opened its jaws and swallowed me up! I’ve never felt it before, but tonight…I woke up and looked back, and there were sixty-eight years behind me. Old age! I saw it tonight for the first time. My song is sung! (Sobs.) My race is run! But what a talent I had! What power! You can’t imagine! What diction, how much feeling and grace, what a range of emotion inside this breast! (He strikes his chest.) I was overpowering! Listen, listen…Wait, let me get my breath…King Lear, say…The sky black, rain, thunder – boom, boom! – lightning striping the blackness – zzzz! – then:

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers and oak-cleaving thunderbolts,

Singe me white head! And thou, all-shaking thunder,

Smite flat the thick rotundity o’the world!

Crack nature’s moulds, all germens spill at once

That make ingrateful man!

(Impatiently.) Quick, the Fool! (Stamps his feet.) Come on, come on, the Fool’s lines! Quick, quick!