ACT ONE: PROLOGUE — AUVERGNE, FRANCE — 1774
(On a dark stage, we hear sounds of a battle between a pack of wolves, a man and his dogs. As the sounds of the battle fade, we see an establishing photograph of a snow-covered field on the edge of a forest. We hear a voice in the darkness.)
[Lestat:]
In the winter of my twenty-first year, I set out alone on horseback to kill a pack of wolves.
(The lights come up on a gasping, bloodied, battle-worn young man. LESTAT DE LIONCOURT is tall, handsome, with striking blond hair and an aristocratic bearing. He has a slain wolf draped over his shoulders. Falling snow dusts him.)
Song: From the Dead
[Lestat:]
Before today, this bloody field was my own hunting ground.
I stalked my prey, I tracked it down, and moved without a sound.
Then, like a plague, this wolf pack came and tipped the scales of change.
How strange to be the hunter and then become the game.
What I set out to kill found me and, henceforth, blood did flow.
My horse came out from under me, my dogs die in the snow.
But fear was never present, I was calm and unafraid.
The man I used to before this fight is ever changed today.
My blood, it roars like thunder in this mortal breast,
Purified by battle and the smell of death.
The blood-red smell of slaughter fills my lungs.
And from the dead a new awakening comes.
And from the dead I feel a strength I've never known,
A thrill that fills my heart, yet chills me to the bone.
And from the dead, the power of the wolf is torn.
It seems as if from death a whole new world is born.
See me: Wolf-killer! [His words echo.] Wolf-killer… Wolf-killer… Wolf-killer…