Plot

9/10: Love Before the Fall is a bittersweet, loving, ultimately cathartic evocation of a perfect moment in the lives of four New Yorkers the night before the attack on the World Trade Center.

The myths of Orpheus and Charon are interwoven with the entirely sung story of four friends dining in an Italian bistro who are fated to perish the next morning in the attack on the Twin Towers. At meal's end, through magical realism, the restaurant's mysterious strolling violinist is revealed to be Charon, hand extended, awaiting payment. Complying, each reconciles with death, and departs to the sounds of the next morning's busy signals and the calls of first responders.—Daron Hagen

On the drizzly autumn evening of 10 September 2001, a strolling violinist named Charon arrives at Passaggio, the cozy restaurant in Manhattan's Little Italy where he busks for tips. Affectionately greeted by his longtime friends, bartender Orfeo and server Lulu, he unpacks his violin as a recording by a 30s chanteuse named Eury singing a setting of a lyric by Christina Rosetti called "Ferry Me Across the Water" plays on the jukebox.

Bibi, an actor who works as a server at the World Trade Center restaurant Windows on the World, and her friend Tony, a chef there, arrive. Trina, an attorney with offices at the World Trade Center, arrives next, explaining that she's just come from drinks with clients and her law (and life) partner Cory, who is still with them. At last Cory arrives, in high spirits. As Lulu presents and removes courses, Orfeo tends bar, Eury sings overhead, and Charon comments on his violin, they exchange memories, dreams, and hopes for the future. Over dessert, there is a surprise double marriage proposal. "Remember tonight," they sing, "for it is the start of everything."

As Charon extends his hand to each of them for a tip, the four begin to realize that they are perhaps in a sort of bardo, or transitional state between modes of existence. The other diners are either fellow souls in passage or otherworldly observers. Each intuits that more than a few pennies are at stake-perhaps it is their souls that are in transition. Sounds of first responders and disconnected telephone calls foreshadow the fates that will befall them the next morning.