Appomattox is an opera in English based on the American Civil War, composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by the playwright Christopher Hampton. The work had its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera on October 5, 2007, with a cast that included Dwayne Croft as Robert E. Lee, Andrew Shore as Ulysses S. Grant, and Chad Shelton as Brigadier General Edward Alexander. The piece is about two and a half hours long, in two acts, with a prologue a...
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Appomattox is an opera in English based on the American Civil War, composed by Philip Glass, with a libretto by the playwright Christopher Hampton. The work had its world premiere at the San Francisco Opera on October 5, 2007, with a cast that included Dwayne Croft as Robert E. Lee, Andrew Shore as Ulysses S. Grant, and Chad Shelton as Brigadier General Edward Alexander. The piece is about two and a half hours long, in two acts, with a prologue and an epilogue.
The opera is set in the final days of the American Civil War.
The prologue begins with Julia Dent Grant (soprano) singing of her fears for her husband, Ulysses, and her sense of foreboding. She is soon joined by Mary Custis Lee (soprano) and her daughter Agnes Lee (soprano) who worry for their way of life and hope the war will be over soon. Mary Todd Lincoln (soprano) appears and asks her black servant Elizabeth Keckley (mezzo-soprano) to interpret a nightmare her husband, the President, has had. All sing of the sorrows of war...
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