Arvo Pärt and Robert Wilson's Adam's Passion at Fuksas's Nuvola in Rome

The Teatro dell'Opera di Roma staged Arvo Pärt and Robert Wilson's Adam's Passion for two consecutive nights at the Auditorium della Nuvola, the EUR convention center designed by Massimiliano Fuksas. The collaboration between the Estonian composer (born 1935) and American director (born 1941) began after they met in November 2009 at a Vatican event convened by Pope Benedict XVI, which gathered 260 artists at the Sistine Chapel. Adam's Passion premiered in Tallinn in 2015 and dramatizes the passion of Adam as humanity's progenitor, reflecting on the moment when things began to worsen. Pärt's score comprises four compositions: Sequentia (2014), Adam's Lament (2010), Tabula rasa (1977), and Miserere (1989/92), embodying his sacred minimalist 'tintinnabuli' style. Wilson's staging creates an evocative, open space with minimal elements—a ladder, a house, an upside-down tree—suggesting precarity without narrative. The production integrates dance, movement, light, sculpture, music, and text, evoking Wagner's Gesamtkunstwerk.