American Modern Opera Company brings 'zany' opera charting 300 years of Roman history to The Clark

Doug Balliett promises he didn’t have an allegory in mind when he started. No, really.

The composer behind “Rome is Falling,” which will receive a workshop performance, 4 p.m. Aug. 10, at The Clark Art Institute, knows how it looks.

Take the scene of two sparring ambassadors in a battlefield court of Attila the Hun, one of them a Roman turncoat.

“Your constitution is rotten,” our defector tells the imperial legate. “You have two sets of laws, one for the rich and one for the poor.”

“Yes, but these are barbarians,” he shoots back. “They eat different food!”

That’s not the word-for-word libretto, but it gets the gist, and Balliett said it rings true to the past — and present.