Judge's House, The - Vocal & Orchestral Score by Derry Pope

A fully orchestrated version of the 70 minute opera based on the short horror story by Bram Stoker.

For a full conductor's and vocal score please contact Derry for details at: derrypope@hotmail.co.uk or visit: http://derrypopesinging.com/index.html

 It was April and John Moore was studying for an important examination, so he decided to find a quiet town and read by himself. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going because he didn’t want to be disturbed. There is how Moore arrived at Benchurch and rented a big, old, seventeenth-century house. When he told it to the landlady, she threw up her hands in horror ‘not the Judge’s House!’ She said, and she grew pale as she spoke. He asked her ‘why its name and doesn’t anyone want to live in it?’ So she sad that ‘a long time ago a Judge lived there, I’ve asked but nobody could tell me or certain, she advertised him to didn’t stay there, but he thought it was foolish stories. At his first night in the house he studied in the dining room without stopping until eleven o’clock. Then he put more wood on the fire and also made a pot of tea. At the first time the rats were making a lot of noise and a curious face of a rat stared at him, however was a rope of a great alarm bell on the roof. The noise of the rats had stopped. He looked around the room and sows an enormous rat. It was sitting on the great high-backed chair by the fire; it was staring at him with hate in its small red eyes.  Moore picked up a poker from the fire and before he could hit the rat it run up the rope and disappeared. Strangely the noise of the rats began again. On the second night Mrs. Dempster, the old servant of the house, asked if did he has a good night, So he told her about the rat, and she said ‘dear God, an old devil sitting by the fire, take care sir’ Moore started to laugh and went home. On the second night the same thing happened. Moore lit a lamp and lifted the rope of the alarm bell he noticed how pliable it was ‘you cold hang a man with it’ he thought. He started study again and was disturbed by a sudden silence, the great rat dropped room the rope onto the old oak chair, he picked up a book and aimed it at the rat, than threw another book without success, with a third book in his hand the rat with a squeak of pain an fear made a great jump onto the rope and disappeared in one of the great pictures on the wall. Moore looked for the book that’s made it be afraid it’s his mother’s old bible. On the third night Moore decided look a great picture where the rat was disappeared, It was showed a judge, he realised that he had the same eyes of the rat and there in the Judge’s chair, sat the rat again. One hour later the figure of the judge has disappeared of the picture and there on the great high-backed oak chair sat the judge, as the clock struck twelve, he put a black had on his head. And he picked up a piece of rope from the floor. The rope of the alarm bell was covered of rats. He felt the Judge’s icy fingers and the pliable rope against his neck.
When the alarm bell began to ring soon hundreds of people came running to the house and there at the end of he bell rope hung the body of the student.