| Summary: | This dissertation is a chamber opera based on Mario Vargas Llosa's novel La Fiesta del Chivo, a visceral, highly charged and very moving work of historical fiction with several parallel narratives from past and present. My opera focuses on three of these. First is the story of Urania Cabral, who has returned to visit her dying father, an official close to Trujillo. Back in 1961 he feared the brutal consequences - for him and his family - of losing the dictator's favor, and felt he had no other choice but to give his then-14-year-old daughter to Trujillo as a sexual gift. She seeks catharsis for the horrific trauma she suffered at the hands of the dictator that night, but her father has suffered a stroke and is unable to communicate with her. The second narrative is the story of the officials involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Trujillo. Their stories are conflated into a single composite character: Lieutenant General Amado Guererro, nicknamed Amadito. Like the many regime officials in the novel, he has some degree of complicity in the atrocities committed by the regime. He is a timorous hero, driven to eradicate a demonstrably evil dictator but nearly paralyzed by fear of retribution against himself and others. The third narrative is that of Trujillo himself as an old man, struggling to hold on to his political power, health and masculinity. His was a reign of terror and brutality, and Vargas Llosa illustrates this with horrifying stories of the torture of those involved in the assassination conspiracy. In the opera these stories appear as anecdotes told by Trujillo, and later by a terrified Amadito following the assassination. Killing the Goat was premiered by the Contempo Chamber Players of the University of Chicago on May 16, 2014.
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