Rubato Press
Read-along books · stolen time for the page

Read the opera
before you hear
a single note.

Each book is an opera told as a novel — prose paced to a named recording. Press play, begin to read, and finish exactly as the music finishes.

Edgar Degas, The Orchestra at the Opera — musicians in the pit with ballet dancers visible above the stage.
Plate · the pitPublic domain

Edgar Degas, The Orchestra at the Opera, c. 1870 — the music made visible, an instant before it sounds.

Movement I · The Overture Series

Operas, told as novels.

Live now — four titles by Wilson Pruitt, with five more on the way. Read them in the weeks before you go, or read alongside the recording itself.

Parsifal — An Overture, after Richard Wagner

Parsifal

An Overture · after Richard Wagner

A wound that will not close, a cup that will not empty, and the holy fool whose only gift is pity.

Afterword · “Made Wise Through Pity”
≈ 4 hr 15 · timed recording $10Read along ▸
Don Giovanni — An Overture, after Mozart & Da Ponte

Don Giovanni

An Overture · after Mozart & Da Ponte

One last night, an endless catalogue, and a man too purely himself for any words to hold.

Afterword · “The Devil You Cannot Narrate”
≈ 2 hr 55 · timed recording $10Read along ▸
Tosca — An Overture, after Giacomo Puccini

Tosca

An Overture · after Giacomo Puccini

A singer, a painter, a chief of police — and one night in Rome that refuses to be ashamed of itself.

Afterword · “That Shabby Little Shocker”
≈ 1 hr 55 · timed recording $10Read along ▸
La Bohème — An Overture, after Giacomo Puccini

La Bohème

An Overture · after Giacomo Puccini

A garret, a guttering candle, a cold little hand — and the youth you only know you had once it is over.

Afterword · “The International Opera”
≈ 1 hr 50 · timed recording $10Read along ▸
Le nozze di Figaro — An Overture, after Mozart & Da Ponte

Le nozze di Figaro

An Overture · after Mozart & Da Ponte

A count who would take back the old right to his servants’ brides, and the long mad day that ends with the master on his knees, begging his wife’s pardon.

Afterword · “The Revolution in the Master’s Knees”
≈ 2 hr 55 · timed recording Coming soon
Carmen — An Overture, after Georges Bizet

Carmen

An Overture · after Georges Bizet

A soldier who has done everything right, a woman who lives by no law but her own freedom, and the cards that will not lie.

Afterword · “Free She Was Born, Free She Will Die”
≈ 2 hr 40 · timed recording Coming soon
Tristan und Isolde — An Overture, after Richard Wagner

Tristan und Isolde

An Overture · after Richard Wagner

A cup poured for death that pours love instead, a torch put out by hand, and two souls who want nothing the daylit world can give.

Afterword · “In Love with the Obstacle”
≈ 3 hr 55 · timed recording Coming soon
Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg — An Overture, after Richard Wagner

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

An Overture · after Richard Wagner

A whole Nuremberg Midsummer, a guild of singing tradesmen, and the cobbler-poet who could keep the girl and gives her away instead.

Afterword · “Holy German Art?”
≈ 4 hr 29 · timed recording Coming soon
Das Rheingold — An Overture, after Richard Wagner

Das Rheingold

An Overture · after Richard Wagner

Three careless river-maidens, a dwarf who forswears love to forge a ring of limitless power, and the gods who rob the robber — the first wrong of the world.

Afterword · “The World’s First Wrong”
≈ 2 hr 25 · timed recording $10Read along ▸
Die Walküre — An Overture, after Richard Wagner

Die Walküre

An Overture · after Richard Wagner

A weaponless man finds his own lost twin at a stranger's hearth and a sword left in the tree; and the god who made the law must punish the daughter who kept its deeper love.

Afterword · “The Lock That Hides Its Own Key”
≈ 3 hr 49 · timed recording $10Read along ▸
Siegfried — An Overture, after Richard Wagner

Siegfried

An Overture · after Richard Wagner

A boy who has never known fear forges his father's shattered sword, kills the dragon on the hoard, and breaks the god's spear on the road to the fire-ringed rock.

Afterword · “The Fearless and the Fearful”
≈ 3 hr 49 · timed recording $10Read along ▸
Movements II – IV · Forthcoming

An expanding catalogue.

The read-along method, carried into dance, devotion, and music that tells no story at all.

II

Ballets

Famous ballets retold as prose, each chapter paced to the dance as it unfolds on stage.

In preparation
III

Sacred Works

Devotional reflections timed to the movements of sacred masterworks — Bach’s Mass in B minor, the cantatas.

In preparation
IV

Absolute Music

A story built to the beats of music that carries no story of its own — beginning with Beethoven’s Seventh.

In preparation · experimental

Rubato

“stolen time”

Rubato is the freedom a performer takes within the beat: time borrowed from one note and paid back to another, the pulse never lost. These books borrow that liberty for the page — and give the listener back the time a performance cannot spare.