PROVING UP: Uncle Sam's Farm, Prologue to the opera by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek

The haunting prologue to composer Missy Mazzoli's acclaimed 2018 opera Proving Up, featuring baritone John Moore. Mazzoli creates an eerie electronic landscape around an 1850 text by Jesse Hutchison, Jr., a text originally written to encourage westward expansion. This cheerful text takes on a somber and creepily prescient tone in the context of modern-day America. ("Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm... The people do the voting and the children go to school...") Shot on location by the composer and librettist Royce Vavrek in Nebraska and South Dakota in August, 2020.
Proving Up is based on a 2013 short story by Karen Russell, from her collection Vampires in the Lemon Grove. The work was commissioned by Washington National Opera, Opera Omaha and New York's Miller Theatre, and the album was released on August 21, 2020 by Pentatone: smarturl.it/MazzoliProvingUp
LYRICS:
Come along, come along, make no delay;
Come from every nation, come from every way.
Our lands, they are broad enough - don't be alarmed,
Uncle Sam is rich enough to give us all a farm.
Of all the mighty nations in the East or in the West,
This glorious Yankee nation is the greatest and the best.
We have room for all creation and our banner is unfurled,
Here's a general invitation to the people of the world.
Come along, come along…
We're bound to lead the nations for our motto's "Go ahead,"
And we'll tell the foreign paupers that our people are well fed;
For the nations must remember that Uncle Sam is not a fool,
For the people do the voting and the children go to school.
Come along, come along…

[@anastasiaegorova7561]

I felt suddenly so sad and excited, I want to cry because I feel something very important and beautiful ruind. I don't know the context, I'm not American, but I think I received that message and now I want to watch the whole opera

[@StarkbotTV]

beautiful

[@moosemeat9185]

Ayooooooo