Waiting For The Barbarians

"Composer Philip Glass has received a 15-minute standing ovation at the world premiere of his new opera, Waiting for the Barbarians, in Germany. The US composer earned the appreciation of the audience in Erfurt, as did his librettist Christopher Hampton.

Based on the novel of the same name by [Nobel Laureate] South African writer JM Coetzee, it was Glass' 21st work for the stage....

Examining state-sponsored torture and repression, the opera explores the way in which modern-day white society is coming to terms with its legacy of centuries of repression of indigenous black cultures.

The "Barbarians" of the title are nomadic people deemed by the "civilised" whites to be socially and racially inferior.

Glass previously said he saw the opera as a critique of President Bush's administration and its war against Iraq...."

BBC News September 12, 2005


















Ancient Greek ruins in Chersonesus, Ukraine. Ancient Chersonesus was the last Greek colony to emerge on the north coast of the Black Sea --it was founded in 422 B.C.E. In the words of Cicero it was "like a border sewn on the barbarian lands."

It was to Tomi on the the northwest Black Sea region of ancient Ukraine that the Roman Emperor banished P. Ovidius Naso (Ovid) in C.E. 8, at the height of his career.

The literary works of P. Ovidius Naso (Ovid)[43 B.C.E. - 17 C.E.] include: Amores, Heroides, Ars Amatoria [The Art of Love], Medicamina faciei femineae, Medea, Remedia Amoris [Cures for Love], Metamorphoses, Fasti, Tristia, and Epistulae ex Ponto [Letters from Pontus].