This piece began life as a commission for the International Society of Bassists to write something featuring the double bass. I managed to forget that they asked for a running time of 6 minutes! Being a songwriter, the beast naturally enough, grew into a song cycle, and then into something with elements of theater, which is how it is now presented, not quite a song cycle, an opera, a musical, a musical play or a bass concerto. A folk oratorio? A folkatorio? Perhaps better left unlabelled. -RT

The audience seems to have passed from life into death, and find themselves at a reception for the freshly deceased. The Keeper of the Underworld likes to welcome the new intake with some entertainment, so he drags reluctant souls out of the darkness to sing. After each song the Keeper and his assistants sing their own short song of contempt for human foibles. As the humans yearn for the sweetness of life, the jaded Keepers contemplate torture as a better way of passing eternity.

The scene is the Underworld: a drab, cold, colorless place where souls gather, waiting out eternity. The Underworld is run by The Keeper, a jaded and rather cruel administrator, and his mischievous and cynical assistants, Grympale and Malpensio. The audience has slipped from life into death; and seem to be the Underworld's fresh intake of souls.