Neil Weisensel – City Workers in Love

City Workers in Love is a one-act comic opera about a street repair work crew and their pursuits of love and public service during a typical day. An innocent prank backfires, and the crew must overcome bureaucratic and romantic obstacles to find true municipal happiness.

Music by Neil Weisensel, lyrics by Michael Cavanagh. First produced in July 1992 at the Warehouse Theatre, Winnipeg, Canada.

Tracks 1–6 are drawn from City Workers in Love. Track 7, Ruth’s Aria, is a bonus track from Weisensel and Cavanagh’s 1993 opera The Bachelor Farmers of the Apocalypse.

TRACKS
1. What a Fine High-Spirited Bunch (feat. Christopher Dunn) 1:54
2. Every Day I See Her (feat. Nolan Kehler) 4:25
3. I Know What Love Is (feat. Joanna Loepp Thiessen) 5:02
4. That Is Truly a Sad Story (feat. Christopher Dunn) 2:43
5. We Met Last Year (feat. Grace Budoloski) 3:09
6. The Mayor Has Spoken (feat. Matthew Pauls) 4:08
7. Ruth’s Aria (feat. Joanna Loepp Thiessen) 3:13

CREDITS
Music by Neil Weisensel
Lyrics by Michael Cavanagh
neilmusic.com

Christopher Dunn, baritone (tracks 1, 4)
Nolan Kehler, tenor (track 2)
Joanna Loepp Thiessen, contralto (tracks 3, 7)
Grace Budoloski, soprano (track 5)
Matthew Pauls, baritone (track 6)
Neil Weisensel, piano (all tracks)

Recorded at Paintbox Studios, Winnipeg MB
Recording engineer: Lloyd Peterson

Project financing provided from a Canadian Mennonite University Internal Grant.

City Workers in Love is available for pre-order from

ARIA NOTES & LYRICS

1. What a Fine High-Spirited Bunch
Christopher Dunn, baritone

Al, the city Crew Foreman, sings of his love and admiration for his Street Repair Crew, and how he is concerned about one member in particular, Romeo.

What a fine high-spirited bunch! Only those who spend their working days in the service of society have such a love for what they do. I worry though, that somehow they may be misunderstood, that people may not see their selfless devotion to this neighbourhood.

They toil in glad obscurity on every path and thoroughfare, with pride of stewardship and painstaking care. They mend and tend and overbackwards bend and often it affects their own affairs.

That young man there, he seems too melancholy for his age. I’ll find out why, for my duty is to ensure the health and happiness of my earnest crew. Inner turmoil robs them of the energy they need to serve the City as best they can.

2. Every Day I See Her
Nolan Kehler, tenor

Romeo, a lovestruck junior member of the Street Repair Crew, sings of his longing and love for Mavis the Grasscutter, who he only sees from afar and has never met.

Every day I seen her mowing down that gentle slope,
She moves with perfect grace like a steel-toed antelope.
The mower does her bidding like an eager child
As she glides over boulevard and lawn.
She was born to mow the grass, and I was born to love her.

She has limbs both bronze and lithe,
Their tan-lined beauty I extol
Her eyes, I cannot describe
For tinted are the windows to her soul
Her hair shines reflecting the sun
As brightly as a signal flare glinting off my safety vest.

When the blades of grass hear her engine accelerate
they rise and strain to greet her, trembling to meet their fate.
They smile as they surrender to the whirling scythe
And desperately yearn to grow again
So that soon she’ll reappear, and they’ll succumb anew

How I long to be that sod, each day as she floats by like a dream.
If you saw her you’d be awed by the beauty that’s captured my whole being.
Her hair shines reflecting the sun
As brightly as a signal flare glinting off my safety vest.
(repeat verse 1)
She was born to mow the grass, and I was born to love her. (2X)

3. I Know What Love Is
Joanna Loepp Thiessen, contralto

City Supervisor Mrs. Demers sings of her love affair with a hot young clerk named Peter, and how their paths eventually separated after she lost touch with him.

Yes! I know what love is, too well. I have known its awful power. Love has been filled out in triplicate on my heart, my mind, my soul. It was thrust into the inbox of my psyche when I needed it most. But now… the file is dead. It was terminated through gross romantic mismanagement.

I have filed it in the nethermost folder in the furthest reaches of the bottom box in the very deepest drawer of the dark and dusty archive of my bleak and empty life.

It stared several years ago, when a hot young clerk was hired to assist me. At first, it was his dark good looks that booted my lustful mainframe, but soon it became more than that.

He was an artist in the office. He filed with dash and moxy, cross-referencing with an abandon that made me blush. His grasp of knowledge process outsourcing was a gift from God. Ah! He drove me wild with interdepartmental desire. I couldn’t help myself, I called him into my office and… I mentored him.

Our office ran with passionate efficiency. Soon, of course, I was promoted. I wanted to tell him that he would be promoted too. But first I had to get away, for my annual ten days in Vegas.

When I got back, he was gone. He had transferred out of my life forever. I wandered the endless corridors of City Hall, calling his name, to no avail. I had won in my career, and at blackjack, but lost in life.

4. That Is Truly a Sad Story
Christopher Dunn, baritone

After hearing Supervisor Demers’ tale of love and loss, Al shares a story of his own.

That is truly a sad story, Mrs. Demers, but life must go on. I too can tell as sad a tale, as can everyone else here. Here’s mine:

We knew we were meant to be right from the start. Our souls connected on so many levels. We shared uncounted common interests: Hutterite music, Inuit cooking, those little porcelain figures you can buy in magazines. We shared our hopes, our dreams, our lives. But now it’s all over…. we finally met in person.

Reopen that file, Mrs. D. The road to love has many cracks that can be filled with the tar of understanding. Now you’ve heard my sad story, Mrs. D., and life must go on.

5. We Met Last Year
Grace Budoloski, soprano

Mavis, a young psychology student who works as a city Grasscutter to put herself through school, sings of her unhealthy relationship with Pete the Garbageman.

We met last year, our routes crossed paths all summer long. I saw in him more anger than I knew was healthy. His rage was a pathetic cry for help. If he would open up to me, I thought, the expression of his feelings would set him free. Ah! I would enable him to nurture his wounded inner child. I would enable him to meet his developmental needs. Instead, I became an enabler.

I can’t help him, I can’t help Peter. We have to help ourselves. His rage was a cry for help. I would enable him to nurture his wounded inner child. But we have to help ourselves. We are family!

I have to get back to work now. Nice to have met you, Romeo.

6. The Mayor Has Spoken
Matthew Pauls, baritone

Devastated after the Mayor issues a proclamation ordering him to “cease and desist his oppressive relationship” with Mavis the Grasscutter, Pete the Garbageman tells his own tale of woe and lost love.

The Mayor has spoken, it’s over. My long nightmare has reached its nadir. No, don’t say anything, there is only one thing left to do. I must quit the City. No, no, this is the end. My demise was a foregone conclusion, ever since that darkest of days.

Life used to be so good, I lived in municipal paradise. I was good at my job, the future was bright and most of all, I found love. Not a love like our, Mavis, all twisted and impure, but bona fide binding guaranteed love. We were partners, in our office, in our lives. My partner did so well that she was promoted. I arrived at the office, my arms full of flowers.

But she was gone. “She went to the desert”, they said. There was no promotion for me, there was nothing, nothing. I had to get away. My white collars mocked me with the lipstick smears of my betrayed love. I fled to the bottom of the City’s barrel. My life was garbage, so trash became my life. I tried to love again, but the toxins had poisoned the watertable of my soul. Now the dump is closed, the gulls and rats can have what’s left. I must resign, I must resign!

7. Ruth’s Aria (Oh Lord, I’m So Worried)
Joanna Loepp Thiessen, contralto
Bonus track — from the opera The Bachelor Farmers of the Apocalypse

Faced with barren fields after her adulterous husband made a gamble on some unproven seeds, farmer Ruth Seal tries to make sense of her life.

Oh Lord, oh Lord, I’m so worried. All summer long I’ve watched those fields and nothing’s even begun. I can barely breathe.

Why? Why is it? Why when at home it seemed so easy, and John was full of fire, and hope, and I was so in love? Because there, I had others to share with.

Basked in the glow of their faces. I loved that time, and I want to live it here, with the man I love, and a family. Why is it? Why is this doubt growing? I feel afraid, O God! Everything’s up to me. Without You, we’re alone.

I swear to You, I will try to be strong, try to build something here, for us. Try to prove that we have a future. With your help we will, we will. I’ll try.

ABOUT NEIL WEISENSEL

Neil Weisensel is a composer and Associate Professor of Music at Canadian Mennonite University in Winnipeg. His catalogue spans opera, choral, chamber and orchestral music, with a long-running collaboration alongside librettist Michael Cavanagh that produced City Workers in Love (1992), The Bachelor Farmers of the Apocalypse (1993) and Gisela in Her Bathtub.