Philip Glass & Robert Wilson - The Civil Wars - A Tree is Best Measured When it is Down (2006)

Philip Glass's breakthrough achievement in 1976 with Einstein on the Beach proved a milestone in contemporary opera, and Glass has been remarkably prolific--as well as uneven--in his various mutations of the genre ever since. This is the premier recording of one of Glass's more "operatic" ventures. The "Rome Section" is the fifth, final act of the CIVIL warS, originally conceived by Einstein director-designer Robert Wilson for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles as a multinational collaboration on themes of war and peace. Wilson's trademark theater of images--as opposed to narrative--took its inspiration from Matthew Brady's grimly eloquent photographs of the American Civil War and mixes figures from classical mythology with iconic representations of Abraham Lincoln and his wife, Robert E. Lee, and the Italian revolutionary Garibaldi. The familiar repetitive patterns of Glass's music here play a crucial role in integrating and connecting the text's dream-like montage of material: Seneca's tragedies, Hopi ritual, war narratives, and stream-of-consciousness monologues (narrated by Wilson and Laurie Anderson). Glass calls for high-flying, lush vocalism that at first sounds like a parody of operatic extremes, but over time its sustained emotional pitch creates a mesmerizing effect. The scoring is imaginative and garbs the composer's rhythmic cells and churning major-minor arpeggios in rich colors, with a particularly elegiac prominence given to trumpet and trombone. Dennis Russell Davies balances the large forces here--including some beautifully fluent choral writing--with a sweeping confidence that makes a kind of orchestral counterpart to the famous unanimity of Glass's own touring ensemble. Although the opera's total effect can truly be appreciated only in a full staging, this is an important document of Glass's ongoing experiments in music theater. --Thomas May