the CIVIL warS: a tree is best measured when it is down is an opera created in the early 1980s by director Robert Wilson to music by Philip Glass, David Byrne, Gavin Bryars and others. The vast five-act work has never been performed whole.
Originally, The Civil Wars was conceived as a single daylong piece of music theatre to accompany the 1984 Summer Olympics. Six different composers from six different countries were to compose sections of Wilson's text inspired by the American Civil War. After initial premieres in their countries of origin, the six parts were to be fused in one epic performance in Los Angeles during the games, a parallel to the internationalist ideals of the Olympic movement.
The premiere of the full work was cancelled when funding failed to materialize (despite the Olympic Committee's offer of matching funds) and deadlines were not met. But four of the six sections had full productions under Wilson's direction in Minneapolis, Rome, Rotterdam and Cologne, with workshop productions of the other two sections in Tokyo and Marseille.
A documentary on the work's creative process, Robert Wilson and the Civil Wars, was released in 1987. It is out of print.
Read more about The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down: Minneapolis Section: The Knee Plays, Cologne Section, Rome Section, Rotterdam Section, Marseille Section
Famous quotes containing the words civil, tree and/or measured:
“The United States is just now the oldest country in the world, there always is an oldest country and she is it, it is she who is the mother of the twentieth century civilization. She began to feel herself as it just after the Civil War. And so it is a country the right age to have been born in and the wrong age to live in.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“It is, I fear, but a vain show of fulfilling the heathen precept, “Know thyself,” and too often leads to a self-estimate which will subsist in the absence of that fruit by which alone the quality of the tree is made evident.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“Our loss put six feet under ground
Is measured by the magnolia’s root;
Our gain’s the intellectual sound
Of death’s feet round a weedy tomb.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)