{"product_id":"glass-philip-waiting-for-the-barbarians-0801837003925","title":"Waiting for the Barbarians","description":"Philip Glass's 2005 opera, 'Waiting for the Barbarians' is based on the 1980 novel by Nobel Prize winning South African author J M Coetzee, with a libretto by Academy Award winner Christopher Hampton (Dangerous Liaisons, Atonement). Waiting for the Barbarians is a harrowing allegory of the war between oppressors and the oppressed. Philip Glass says: \"My aim was to preserve Coetzee's bold allegorical approach while dramatizing the classic themes of confrontation, crisis and redemption so the audience itself is left weighing the meaning of good and evil in their own lives.\" The protagonist is a loyal civil servant who conscientiously runs the affairs of a tiny frontier garrison town, ignoring the threat of impending war with the \"barbarians\", a neighbouring tribe of nomads. But with the arrival of a special unit of the Civil Guard spreading the rumour that the barbarians are preparing to attack, he becomes witness to the cruel and il treatment of prisoners of war. Torture is used to obtain confessions from the barbarian prisoners, thus \"proving\" the necessity of the planned campaign against the tribe. Jolted into sympathy for the victims, the old man decides to take a stand. He attempts to maintain a final shred of decency and dignity by bringing home a barbarian girl, crippled by torture and nearly blind, and subsequently returning her to her people - an act of individual amends. This dangerous, exhausting expedition brands him forever as a traitor, after which he himself becomes a victim of public humiliation and torture. This live recording from a performance in Amsterdam in 2006 is by the Chorus and Orchestra of the Erfurt Theatre, Germany, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies with Richard Salter as the Magistrate and Eugene Perry as the diabolical Colonel Joll. The two-disc double-digipack, featuring photographs of the German production, contains a 40-page libretto.","brand":"Orange Mountain Music (Note 1 Musikvertrieb)","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":53930583654742,"sku":null,"price":0.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":false}],"url":"https:\/\/www.momoxbooks.com\/products\/glass-philip-waiting-for-the-barbarians-0801837003925","provider":"momoxbooks","version":"1.0","type":"link"}