Mooch The Magnificent

Commissioned, premiered, and frequently performed by Roundabout Opera for Kids, Mooch the Magnificent is a 40-minute opera (with a 30-minute alternate version), scored for SATB principal roles, extra speaking and non-speaking parts, and an ensemble of Clarinet, Cello, Percussion, and Piano. It may also be performed in piano reduction. In a zoo of the future, populated not by animals but by robots in animal form, Mooch, an orphan girl, convinces the zookeeper to hire her to fix the robots when they break down, but she is actually reprogramming them to be increasingly wild. The opera takes place in a dome-covered city that is part of a worldwide network of such cities, connected by travel tubes, sealed off from the outside. The time is late twenty-first century, after human beings, afraid of the wilds, have moved indoors.