Program Note:

"I see new torments and new souls in pain
about me everywhere. Wherever I turn
away from grief I turn to grief again.

I am in the Third Circle of the torments.
Here to all time with neither pause nor change
the frozen rain of Hell descends in torrents.

Huge hailstones, dirty water, and black snow
pour from the dismal air to putrefy
the putrid slush that waits for them below.

Here monstrous Cerberus, the ravening beast,
howls through his triple throats like a mad dog
over the spirits sunk in that foul paste.

His eyes are red, his beard is greased with phlegm,
his belly is swollen, and his hands are claws
to rip the wretches and flay and mangle them."

-Dante Alighieri, "Canto VI," in Inferno, trans. John Ciardi, (New York: Penguin, 1954), 54. 

Performances:

• Evan Wright, Jonathan Thomas, and Martin Yang, Britton Hall, Ann Arbor, Michigan, April 11, 2017.