| THE MISSION OF VIRGIL |  |
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THE MISSION OF VIRGIL THE MISSION
OF VIRGIL is a ballet in seven parts, which reflects certain images from
the INFERNO cantica of Dante's DIVINE COMEDY.
It was commissioned by the New York City Ballet for choreography
by Peter Martins, and is the first of a projected collaboration of three
ballets. The score is
dedicated to Peter Martins. The first
part of Dante's great poem serves as a stimulus for the score, but the
music is in no sense a narrative, not even especially programmatic; nor
is the idea behind it a "story on the stage".
Rather, certain isolated incidents, relationships, images,
remarks, names are made the springboard for a musical fabric which also
reflects certain basic aspects of the poem's word-structure: its
eleven-syllable lines, its three-line stanzas, its rhyme scheme, its
obsession with the number seven, and so forth. I treat
the infernal aspect of the poem (as I translate bits of it into musical
terms) more formally than expressionistically -- my score reflects the
irony with which the poet treats many of his subjects in hell; there is
a certain mocking quality to the vision I present, more ridicule than
horror. The titles of
the work's seven sections refer to the poet's flight from the beasts and
encounter with Virgil in the Dark Wood, the account Virgil gives of his
divine commission (this is the "Mission of Virgil"), the
progress of the two poets into Limbo, their meeting with Paolo and
Francesca, various monsters encountered as they near the bottom of hell,
Satan (also a monster), and their final emergence into the light at the
foot of the Mount of Purgatory. |
Prelude I.
Flight from the Three
Beasts II.
The Mission of Virgil III.
Limbo They enter Limbo (a)
Poets (b)
Warriors (c)
Philosophers Leaving Limbo segue to IV.
Paolo and Francesca (a)
Arrival (b)
The Story (c)
Departure V.
Monsters of the Prime (a)
Geryon (b)
Nimrod (c)
Antaeus VI.
Satan VII. Journey through the Center |
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