NOTES BY COMPOSER ROGER ZAHAB:

Uncovered by Night, a ghost opera in six scenes is a window on the hidden intersection of constantly shifting time through which the traces of many spirits of the village of Peninsula, Ohio and the Cuyahoga Valley reach out
to us. From the massacre of Moravian Indians in the eighteenth century to the notorious 19th century con-artist and Justice of the Peace James Brown, these are stories of people uncaught in the net of history, seething with ambition or despair, and brought to life by fear or love.

Uncovered by Night was originally written to be performed in the small 1839 Carpenter Gothic Bronson Memorial Church in Peninsula, Ohio. The place seemed to be quite haunted even in broad daylight and during some research there I found a hymn book next to the harmonium (which had been used there since just after the time of the Civil War) and used a text from it to point out a central conflict of the work. It is interesting that after one of the evening performances (around the time of Midsummer) I got to meet a rather elderly woman with a radiant face who with another woman friend had taken over the role as congregants in the church (which is nearly at the center of the town) when the last two remaining members (both men) went to serve in the Second World War. Neither of the women was particularly religious, but their involvement in the life of the town and their sense of the vibrant spirits of the past in and around the church (as well as their friendship with the men) compelled them to an act of steadfast devotion.