Overture (This Is The Army / Original Broadway Cast)

[On a late night in the spring of 1827

The city of Vienna is experiencing the largest lightning storm in its long history

Within a large disheveled room

Ludwig Von Beethoven is slumped over his piano

And on the piano sits the just completed manuscript for his tenth symphony

It is his final, and he is certain, his greatest work.]

Since the time when ra and isis

Raised the sphinx out of the sand

And apollo dreamed athena

And men began to understand

That when darkness folds on darkness

In the restless tides of night

And lightning raises shadows

And for moments gives them life

It's been said by those who ponder

That it surely is a sign

That a life touched by the stars

Is now running out of time

And that somewhere in that darkness

In the heart of that great storm

The world returns a soul

That the gods caused to be born

And this was such a storm

The kind one rarely sees in life

For in a room now filled with shadows

The great Beethoven was spending

His last night

[From the shadows a beautiful spirit, fate

And her deformed dwarf son, twist

Emerge to inform Beethoven of what he has already deeply suspected

That this is to be his last night on earth

They are accompanied by numerous spirits and ghosts from his past.]