The Deity Of The Opera

It was evening already, and Zeus, Apollo and Hades could not reach their seats in the balcony. They were on an official business trip to Earth to check upon the affairs of the mortals, which is not so official anymore. For them, it was a way to escape from Olympus for some time, away from the usual and the monotonous business of sitting on their thrones and yelling at each other. When Hades and Zeus came to a town, they decided to see if the new show on the road is really as good as all the mortals say. “They used to do it so much better in Athens, you know.” said Hades to Zeus as a minor conversation starting line, while they stood in a line, waiting to buy their tickets. “All of the recent dramas are equally… worthless. Nowadays, they do not even mention us, and even if they do, they make a caricature of us instead of the real us. Especially me.” said Zeus in a fit of anger, provoking a lightning bolt right next to him.

Finally, when they reached the guy at the ticket counter, Hades asked for three tickets instead of two, confusing Zeus. When he asked the reason, Hades said “Well, you see, brother, Cerberus hasn’t come out since the dawn of man, and he is so bored out guarding the Underworld. So, I thought I could give him a break for the next two hours, you know.”. As a response, Zeus showed Hades the ‘No Pets Allowed’ sign. Undeterred, Hades asked the ticket counter guy if he could bring Cerberus to the theatre. When inquired about who Cerberus is, Hades darkened the room and said, “He’s the meanest, strongest, most dangerous three-headed dog guarding the Underworld from the evils of all the realms.”. Expecting scary faces and thunderous applause, Hades stood there, bringing on the lights once again. But the guy at the ticket counter simply replied, “So, sir, Cerberus is a dog. So, Cerberus is not allowed. I’m sorry. I’m sure that you would have seen the board that says ‘No Pets Allowed’ outside.”. “Some theatre. Fine. Three tickets at the balcony.” retorted Hades, and explained that the third seat is for Apollo, who is overdue for a holiday for almost two hundred years.

After getting the tickets, Zeus proceeded to summon Apollo from his slumber using his lightning storm. Apollo came in a very tired God. “I was in the middle of an important work” said the Apollo while yawning. “All right, To our seats. I will take the middle seat” said Hades in unusual non-morbid enthusiasm, and the duo followed him. They went into the open theatre’s and decided to follow the directions shown by the arrows. The thing was, thanks to the four-way arrows everywhere, they went to every nook and corner of the theatre except the balcony. In the middle of the fight against their newest enemy – unclear directions, Hades grew angry and tore open the ground below him. Apollo calmed him down by playing his favorite tune, and Hades closed the hole underneath him. After an hour or so post sundown, they found their balcony and took their seats in place.

They just went in time for the opening number by the Maestro. Just as they sat down, the announcer came in announced, “Welcome to the greatest stage show of the world!” to which he received an immediate backlash from Zeus who yelled “It better be!” to which Hades replied, “Or we will burn the place down!” and started to laugh. The announcer murmured “Darn hecklers” and went in. “This place is even more complicated than Minotaur’s labyrinth” quipped Apollo to his theatre mates before the first act began.

It opened with a bang sound, before a guy in a tunic sang “Oh life! Oh, my life! Why? Oh, my life! Mother! Your boy is coming home!” which made Apollo shut his ears. After the opening number, Act One commenced, much to his relief. The same guy in his tunic ran up a flight of stairs in the stage and in the process, fought three soldiers in hilariously bad attires.

The guy then went to meet the heroine of the play, and unlike any sane man, decided to stand on the vines adjacent to the staircase. As heroine came out of the door in the set, Hades yelled, “She is even more hideous than Medusa” to which Zeus finished “And you can’t even look at her” and laughed. For the unversed, if you look at Medusa, you turn into a stone sculpture of yourself.

The conversation between the pair, in short, went like this: “Hello”, “Hello”, “I love you darling”, “No, I don’t love you, dear”, “No, I do love you more”, No I do” and so on until a point where Hades yelled, “It is so cheesy that I could dip my fries in it” and laughed. The play paused and the announcer said over the mic, “Security, evict the gentlemen from the balcony please”. Apollo intervened and apologized for the disturbance caused by his ‘Friends’. The announcer said this will the final warning and with one more sound, they will be evicted.

Then the play continued, with couples’ cheesy talk going on forever, Apollo felt it too, and said the other two to sleep if they found this boring. “But, no snoring” was the request. Then the Act Two followed, where their parents find the truth and go to a wizard, where he curses the guy in the tunic, to cross three bridges which are made of something. When the guy inquired what it was made of, he got a snore as a response, not form the magician, but from Zeus, who was snoring thunderstorms. Apollo masked the sound somehow, but he wasn’t sure that he masked it well enough.

Then came the third act, which made Apollo uneasy. For being the God of medicine and bringing plagues, he was unusually soft, crying for sad movies all the time. Hades and Zeus woke up, the alarm being the massive eighty men orchestra that the Maestro is composing. It involved the couple running away, with the magician fast closing in on them, wanting the girl for himself. The magician spoke some gibberish, and some men, acting as dead spirits, chase them with the thunder following them, or at least that’s what the light and sound effects seems to indicate.

Hades got up asking, “Who is in charge of prosthetics, the lighting and the sound mixing? It is terrible. Pathetic”. And then, Zeus got up, yelling “I am done here.”, and started to smile like a villain. “Oh no. This is not going to end well.” Thought Apollo, as Zeus, in the top of his baritone voice, yelled “See our show!” and started to shoot storms and rains next to the acting couple, while Hades brought up the dead to chased them, as any normal God of the Dead would.

The crowd panicked and ran all directions. To perfectly encapsulate the situation, Apollo played ‘The Storm’, which was originally composed by Tchaikovsky. When their own performance ended, all they could see was a burnt theatre which was deserted and filled with absolute emptiness and darkness. Seeing the obliterated stage, Apollo remarked “Well, that was dramatic”.