My Partner has left me, because I writing an opera with my dog and cat....

[Chris Newman]

No my canine and feline friends are much more inclusive than that....It's about Ants....The male lead once while flipping through the Penguin Complete Esays of Montaigne, came across an essay about Ants , but has never again been able to find that essay on Ants....was it a dream ?.... how far can a cat and a dog go in extending the metaphor of the Ants[and their Anthill ] to be seen as humans and their hill of beans....I may get involved in the stage design. I see a set a bit like that Guiness advert where you swirl around then return to what appears to be the workings of a clock, but then you see that bloke from Bladerunner sitting there like it's his front room, but no it's just froth....

Are you confusing Montaigne with Maurice Maeterlinck? He wrote works on insects as well as stories like Pelleas et Melisande:


La Vie des abeilles (The Life of the Bee) (1901)
La Vie des fourmis (The Life of the Ant) (1930)
La Vie des termites (The Life of the Termite) (1926)

According to Wikipaedia Maeterlinck upset Sam Goldwyn when he tried to write a script based on one of them:

On 15 February 1919 Maeterlinck married Dahon. He accepted an invitation to the United States. Samuel Goldwyn asked him to produce a few scenarios for film. Only two of Maeterlinck's submissions still exist; Goldwyn didn't use any of them. Maeterlinck had prepared one based on his The Life of the Bee. After reading the first few pages Goldwyn burst out of his office, exclaiming: "My God! The hero is a bee!"

The book on bees is superb and set Konrad Lorenz off on his studies of birds.