Sympathies asks the question: what is a birthright? This link between the physical and the metaphorical is tenuous but ineluctable; Esau asks, "And what profit will this birthright give to me?" as if to suggest that the materiality of his father's blessing was inconsequential.
Death, an inevitable aspect of any birthright, provides an ending to the physical, but eschatology seeks to realize an ending to the metahporical as well. We are confronted with a modern eschatology that has transformed from a linear, "down deeper," search for meaning into an amorphous coagulation of multiple implications. This has manifested in politics (the disaster provided by the "end of history"), in religion (fundamentalism and its discontents), and in all forms of art, where re-use becomes the new use.
The opera is for four singers and twelve instrumentalists, and could possibly be performed in many different orchestrations. The most important part is the juxtaposition of brass, wind, and percussion with a small string ensemble; the instrumentation may be arranged with any of these setups. It has yet to be staged, but a concert version was performed at Willamette University in April, 2009, with the indicated instrumentation (and electronics). These recordings are from that performance.