With eleven instruments-4 woodwinds, string quartet, piano, harp and french horn–Michael has completed the lush composition we both imagined (he in his way and I in mine) as we wrote…and rewrote…and rewrote…this opera. The transporting score creates gorgeous operatic pleasures, while remaining true to a libretto in English that is a dramatic play, with words that must must be heard.  This amazingly talented composer has elevated our tale to be more passionate, more desperate; the characters and actions more archetypal yet more complex; every dilemma more nuanced; and life’s questions and outcomes deeply inscrutable, as indeed they were in medieval Padua and are today. Bravo, Michael!