The Seven Deadly Sins (1980)

PROLOGUE
No. 1 Sloth
No. 2 Pride
No. 3 Anger
No. 4 Gluttony
No. 5 Lust
No. 6 Covetousness
No. 7 Envy

EPILOGUE
The opera takes place over a period of seven years, in modern times.

Anna I and her sister, Anna II, have beer packed off by their God-fearing family in Louisiana to seek their fortune in the wicked world. In the Prologue, the talkative Anna I explains that she and her sister are in fact one divided being, whose contrasting personalities make up one whole person Anna I (soprano) is a s1eely realist, never at a loss; her alter ego, Anna II (dancer) is a dreamy idealist, naive to the ways of the world. They make their way through seven cities, each a rung on the ladder to success. Each city represents one of the traditional seven deadly sins – but with a twist The only real sin for the Annas’ middle-class family is failure to climb the social scale, and so the whole catalogue of “sins” is turned upside down. Thus, sloth is the failure to keep your nose to the grindstone: pride, the refusal to compromise in order to get ahead. and so on. Anna II is a stick-in-Ire-mud, but urged on by the cool-headed reason of her sister and buttressed by the moralizing interjections of the family back home, she learns how to play the game of worldly success. Their fortune made, the two Annas return to their “little home beside the Mississippi.”