Rome Section
The Rome section includes all of Act V. It is a full operatic setting by Philip Glass, and Wilson collaborated with Maita di Niscemi on the text, which is in Latin, Italian, and English. The Rome section premiered in March 1984 at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, conducted by Marcello Panni, with Luigi Petroni as Garibaldi.
The act is divided into a prologue and two scenes. In the prologue, the Earth Mother and a Snow Owl duet before being joined by Abraham Lincoln in a prayer for peace. In Scene A, Giuseppe Garibaldi (who fought for the unification of Italy) sings while his soldiers face off against a group of Hopi dancers. Scene B is dominated by two spoken narrations: the first by Robert E. Lee (who spins weightlessly as if in outer space as he speaks), and the second by the grieving, mentally ill Mary Todd Lincoln. Throughout, an octet of characters from Greek mythology comments with excerpts from Hercules Furens and Hercules Oetaeus by Seneca the Younger.
Philip Glass began composing the music for the Rome section late in the creative process, after Robert Wilson had already planned and videotaped a complete silent version of the drama. Glass's role was similar to that of a film composer, tailoring his music to the rhythm of the action rather than imposing his own tempo. Glass would later repeat this process with La belle et la bête (opera), an opera intended to be performed as a synchronized soundtrack to showings of Jean Cocteau's classic film.
The Rome section was documented by the American Composers Orchestra in 1999 under the influence of Dennis Russell Davies. The cast was as follows: Robert Wilson as General Lee, Giuseppe Sabbatini as Garibaldi, Laurie Anderson as the Young Mrs. Lincoln, Denyce Graves as the older Mrs. Lincoln and the Earth Mother, Zheng Zhou as Abraham Lincoln, Sondra Radvanovsky as the Snow Owl and Alcmene, and Stephen Morscheck as Hercules. The Morgan State University Choir sang under the direction of Dr. Nathan Carter.
Read more about this topic: The Civil Wars: A Tree Is Best Measured When It Is Down
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