The curtain opens on a large backdrop made of painted ASC - Sceno muslin.

It will be the background to the Knee Plays, the scenes that Robert Wilson uses as opening and interludes between the main scenes in various plays by him.

The first Knee Play is titled The Writer with two ravens ...

... and in it the Writer introduces the main theme of the opera, the voyages of exploration and geographical discoveries.

The action then leaps back to 1499, to the court of the rulers of Portugal ...

... where the announcement of the discovery of India and of its treasures.

But the announcement mentions the grief that the dangerous journey caused to the explorers and the violence they inflicted on indigenous peoples.

The gloomy interior of the royal palacet is represented with stylized a loggia, a framed backdrop ...

... which columns stand out against the light of a Rear-illuminated cyclorama made up of RTE - Temporale film.

In addition to the courtiers, the Queen, Vasco da Gama, the King ...

... and a Cardinal are on stage.

The rear illuminated backdrop and the backlight are among the stylistic elements preferred by Robert Wilson.

He will also use them frequently in his subsequent productions ...

... in which his proverbial scenographic minimalism, actually of extraordinary visual richness, will begin to use the new lighting fixtures developed with LED technology ...

... which will allow the creation of strips and light bars with which Wilson will accentuate the stylization of his stagings even more.

The Rear-illuminated backdrops, with their amazing chromatic variations and the backlight ...

... will remain a constant in any case.

The sailors are those of the exploratory voyages of the first period of the modern age, while the masked characters behind them represent dancing African natives.

The opera is in fact ...

... a reflection on the discoveries, starting with the geographical ones resulting from the expeditions of the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama.

And it raises various questions ...

... on the effects that the discoveries have produced, mainly on colonialism and postcolonialism.

The character with the sequin dress is that of Native Queen, an indigenous queen.

The backlit backdrop ...

... in a later scene will be masked by an ASC - Sceno muslin backdrop painted with a tropical forest, before the action moves out of Africa ...

... in order to go to the Indies, with the entrance on the scene of a Ground row nade of painted ASC - Sceno muslin depicting a rocky ridge, a horizon along which the silhouettes of wild animals flee ...

... pursued by archers and oriental knights.

There are, as always, the appearances of odd characters such as ...

... in this case, accompanied by a rooster, none other than Judy Garland and Tin Man, the protagonists of The Wizard of Oz, the famous Hollywood film of 1939.

The RTE - Temporale backdrop is the background ...

... also to the following scenes Underwater exploration ...

... and Exploring black holes in the sky, in which Miss Universe will be dropped from the heaven aboard a crescent moon.

The sphere on the ground in the center ...

... will be picked up by a child, before the action moves again ...

... to the court of the kingdom of Portugal.

The Writer, himself in the guise of a raven in the Knee Play entitled The Writer as raven, will extract two long tongues from the mouths of the Siamese Twins ...

... before they take off the mask that hides their face.

In Night visitors the child crosses the scene from one side to the other with a boat, while the backlit background is crossed by a shaded horizontal line of light, another stylistic element often present in the subsequent stagings by Robert Wilson.

The proscenium is transformed into the jaws of a gigantic shark, ten Set pieces made of framed and painted ASC - Sceno muslin depict its teeth.

In a new Knee Play the Writer confronts his own shadow projected on the painted muslin backdrop.

The title of the opera The white crow, symbol of lost innocence, alludes to an episode in Greek mythology in which a crow betrays the friendship of the god Apollo who, as a punishment, transforms its colour from white to black.