An Efficient Battle Plan for Wilson’s ‘Civil Wars’
Mr. Wilson has long begun any new production with a “workshop” months in advance, which allows him to get a feeling for the actors and to alter his conception if he feels it necessary. The fifth act of “The Civil Wars” had such a workshop in 1983, and the practice has accustomed him, now that he's busy all over the globe, to working in chronologically divided bits and pieces.
The Brooklyn production was negotiated only last May. The physical production was assembled over the summer, and Mr. Wilson worked intensively at the Brooklyn Academy for seven days in September.
Since then, a team of assistants has rehearsed the cast. This team has included Tom Kamm, co-credited for “scenic design”; Beverly Emmons, the lighting designer who has worked on many Wilson productions, and Julia Gillette, one of Mr. Wilson's regular assistant directors. They were able to work not just from the Italian and Dutch precedents, but from detailed notes, comparable to a choreographer's, that Mr. Wilson now prepares.
“The notation is quite thorough,” Mr. Wilson remarked on Tuesday. “Each hand move is coordinated win an exact count.”
Although he was bitterly disappointed by the collapse of the Los Angeles production, Mr. Wilson now credits the entire “Civil Wars” experience for the ideas and associates that are sustaining him through the 1980's. “I learned so much,” he said. “Especially my three trips to Japan and meeting new collaborators all over the world.”
His final overseeing of the Brooklyn “Civil Wars” production falls between a staging of Gluck's opera “Alceste” in Stuttgart and a “Salome” with Eva Marton next month at La Scala in Milan. True to his new, precisely plotted form, the “Salome” set has been built, the show has been lighted, and considerable advance rehearsal has already taken place with the soloists and the chorus.
With Mr. Wilson's success as an opera director in Europe - the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung hailed his Stuttgart “Alceste” as a triumph - he has been deluged with offers to direct the classics. But he's holding back.
“Right now, there are many things opening up in Germany,” he said. “I have to make a decision as to whether to continue working in opera. Right now, I want to get back to creating new works.”