Mark Morash is a conductor and pianist originally from Halifax, Canada. He currently serves as the director of musical studies for San Francisco Opera Center. He has also led productions and concerts with the Merola Opera Program and Western Opera Theater. In recent years, Morash has also led performances of Rigoletto with Opera Colorado as well as Don Giovanni and The Turn of the Screw for the Lincoln Theater in Yountville, California. His work with the San Francisco Opera Center has included such varied repertoire as Così fan tutte, Die Fledermaus, The Merry Wives of Windsor, Donizetti’s Rita, Pasatieri’s The Seagull, Pergolesi’s La Serva Padrona and Ibert’s Angélique. As a collaborative pianist, Morash’s performances have taken him throughout North America, Japan and Russia. He has collaborated with such renowned artists as Michael Schade, Tracy Dahl and Sheri Greenawald, and he has accompanied numerous emerging singers in San Francisco Opera Center’s esteemed Schwabacher Debut Recitals. Morash has also been involved with the Opera Center of Pittsburgh Opera, Wolf Trap Opera, the Banff Centre, and Hawaii Opera Theater and is a former faculty member of the University of Toronto.

Joe Goode is a choreographer, writer, and director widely known as an innovator in the field of dance for his willingness to collide movement with spoken word, song, and visual imagery. He was awarded a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in 2007, and the United States Artists Glover Fellowship in 2008. In 2006, Goode directed the opera Transformations for the San Francisco Opera Center. His play Body Familiar, commissioned by the Magic Theatre in 2003, was met with critical acclaim. The Joe Goode Performance Group, formed in 1986, tours regularly throughout the U.S., and has toured internationally to Canada, Europe, South America, Africa, and the Middle East. Goode is known as a master teacher; his summer workshops in "felt performance" attract participants from around the world, and the company's touring teaching residencies are hugely popular. He is a member of the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley in the department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies. Goode's performance-installation works have been commissioned by the Fowler Museum of Natural History in Los Angeles, Krannert Art Museum, the Capp Street Project, the M.H. de Young Museum, and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. His dance theater work has been commissioned by Pennsylvania Ballet, Zenon Dance Company, AXIS Dance Company and Dance Alloy Theater among others. Goode and his work have been recognized by numerous awards for excellence including the American Council on the Arts, the New York Dance and Performance Award (Bessie), and Isadora Duncan Dance Awards (Izzies).

Dressing room.
Uberto, an elderly bachelor, is angry and impatient with his maidservant, Serpina, because she has not brought him his chocolate today. Serpina has become so arrogant that she thinks she is the mistress of the household. Indeed, when Uberto calls for his hat, wig and coat, Serpina forbids him from leaving the house, adding that from then on he will have to obey her orders. Uberto thereupon orders Vespone to find him a woman to marry so that he can rid himself of Serpina.

Same dressing room.
Serpina convinces Vespone to trick Uberto into marrying her. She informs Uberto that she is to marry a military man named Tempesta. She will be leaving his home and apologizes for her behavior. Vespone, disguised as Tempesta, arrives and, without saying a word, demands 4,000 crowns for a dowry. Uberto refuses to pay such a sum. Tempesta threatens him to either pay the dowry or marry the girl himself. Uberto agrees to marry Serpina. Serpina and Vespone reveal their trick; but Uberto realizes that he has loved the girl all along. They will marry after all; and Serpina will now be the true mistress of the household.

As a jazz trio praises the joys of suburbia, Sam and Dinah, who have been married for 10 years, quarrel over breakfast, as they are unable to prevent themselves from doing every day. Dinah accuses Sam of being excessively interested in his secretary and he denies it angrily.  She reminds him that they are due to attend a school play in which their son has the leading role, but he says he can't come, as he is due at the gym, where he hopes  to win a gold cup in the handball tournament.  She accuses him of being selfish.

As he leaves for the office he suggests they try to stop brawling and talk things over that night, but he becomes angry when she asks for money to pay her analyst, whom he accuses of being "an out-and-out fake." He goes to the office and she to the analyst.  He is pleased with a firm business decision and an act of generosity and the trio sardonically hails him as a genius and an angel.

On the analyst's couch, Dinah describes a dream in which she was unable to get out of a garden gone to seed and full of weeds and unable to find a beautiful garden, a quiet place, promised by the voice of a singer. Checking with his secretary, Sam finds she remembers an occasion, which he has forgotten, on which he made a pass at her. Dinah remembers falling in love with Sam at the age of 17 and the feeling that love would lead to the quiet place.

Sam and Dinah meet in the street and each pretends to have a prior engagement.  They wonder why they felt the need to lie to avoid spending an hour together, where the mystery and delight of their marriage have gone and why they can't find the garden, the quiet place. Dinah goes to a film, Trouble in Tahiti, but as she reflects on its stupidity, she finds herself caught up in a song from it, Island Magic, then snaps out of it, declaring once again that it was a terrible movie. Sam has won his cup, but reflects that he now has to pay for it with another domestic scene.  The trio accompanies Sam and Dinah's attempt to discuss things which degenerates into trivia.  Dinah admits that she too failed to attend the school play.  As a way of escape from one another, Sam suggests they go to a movie.

Although they went to a film the night before and she has seen this one, Dinah accepts the suggestion, and they set off to see Trouble in Tahiti, seeking on the silver screen a substitute for the happiness they are still unable to find together.