Bremer Freiheit (Opera)

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Work data
Title: Bremen freedom. Singwerk on a woman's life
Gesche Gottfried in prison, lithograph by Rudolph Suhrlandt, 1829

Gesche Gottfried in prison, lithograph by Rudolph Suhrlandt , 1829

Shape: Chamber opera in nine phases for singers, orchestral instruments and additional instruments
Original language: German
Music: Adriana Hölszky
Libretto : Thomas Körner
Literary source: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Premiere: 4th June 1988
Place of premiere: Munich , Gasteig , Carl Orff Hall
Playing time: approx. 70 minutes, two short, well-composed “breaks” (instruments) after phase IV and before phase IX.
people
  • Geesche Gottfried ( mezzo-soprano )
  • Miltenberger, first man ( baritone )
  • Timm, father (deep bass )
  • Mother ( old )
  • Gottfried, second man ( tenor )
  • Carpenter, friend (tenor)
  • Rumpf, Freund ( lyric tenor )
  • Johann, brother ( baritone )
  • Father Markus (bass)
  • Bohm, cousin (baritone)
  • Luisa Mauer, girlfriend ( lyric soprano )
  • Chorus (alto)

Bremer Freiheit is a chamber opera by the Romanian-German composer Adriana Hölszky (born 1953) based on the eponymous stage drama Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945–1982). It was created on the occasion of the Munich Biennale for New Music Theater founded by Hans Werner Henze in 1988 and is dedicated to him. The plot is based on a true chapter of the 19th century Bremen criminal history about the serial killer Gesche Gottfried , who poisoned 15 people - family and friends - within 14 years. The premiere of the opera made Adriana Hölszky "internationally famous in one fell swoop".

Emergence

In 1971 Rainer Werner Fassbinder's stage drama Bremer Freiheit premiered and filmed in 1972. Hölszky set to music in 1987 (Cooper was 5 years previously deceased), the commissioned work as "Sing work on a woman's life" for the first Munich Biennale 1988. The libretto by Fassbinder drama directed the playwright of the Deutsches Schauspielhaus Hamburg , Thomas Körner one.

“The starting point of 'Bremer Freiheit' is the authentic case history of Gesche Gottfried, a woman who became a murderer in 19th century Bremen by using people to create 'order' and to 'free' herself poisoned their surroundings in turn. This subject was dramatized by RW Fassbinder in his tragedy 'Bremer Freiheit'. "

Fassbinder was exclusively concerned with the question of Geesche Gottfried's motives for killing her closest relatives, while the Bremen trial and her beheading in 1831 on the Bremen Domberg in front of 30,000 spectators - after three years of imprisonment and interrogation - played no role in his stage work. By in vain in his civil tragedy Geesche Gottfrieds "focus on the claim to love and happiness", he conformed to the "second" women's movement of his time. She could “ not formulate her claim to emancipation and her utopia . In the spirit of Fassbinder's opera theory, it was a good idea to develop an opera from the story of the poisoner. ”In 1976, Fassbinder theorized about his idea of ​​an opera of his own

"[...] that an opera can only begin where people no longer have the opportunity to speak, where their feelings become so overwhelming that they can just sing."

music

Even before the premiere of Bremer Freiheit in Munich, the festival director and avant-gardist Hans Werner Henze formulated his impressions of Hölszky's music: “The listener is provoked, disturbed, it gets on his nerves, on his kidneys. There are low blows and shin kicks. It hurts, but it is wonderfully consistent and rigorously directed against the traditional ideas of good and bad. [...] and I wish [...] that the composer succeeds in using her music to steer our sympathies towards the murderess [...]. "

In contrast to Fassbinder's feminist interpretative approach, Adriana Hölszky's music was not about the psychological screening of people on stage, but about the sonic evocation of their existential sensitivities. According to the musicologist Beatrix Borchard , feminist thinking was far from Adriana Hölszky.

“She didn't write a social drama or a psychological study. The way in which she treats the material is not an apotheosis of a woman's liberation, which is ultimately not one. "

score

The heavy, large, 280-page score, bound in sturdy yellow cardboard, measures 77 cm high and 35.5 cm wide; Publisher name: AVB 6287, Astoria Verlag (Berlin 1988).

At the beginning there are 5 pages of "instructions" which fill the page height almost to the edge. The participants, the instruments and the sound instruments are listed as well as the graphic symbols with their meanings for the voice or sound instrument:

  • Persons (11 and one alto)
  • Instrumentation of the instrumental ensemble ("orchestra" = 15 players)
  • The instruments of the vocal ensemble (each with up to 20 additional sound instruments)
  • The instruments necessary for the stage
  • Instructions for the voices (over 70 graphic characters)
  • Instructions for the strings (around 70 graphic characters)
  • Instructions for the wind players (around 70 graphic characters)

The dimension of the terrible

In view of the new music theater in the 20th century, one can sometimes read of the “ surrender of the purely musical” to “world conditions” which can no longer be “understood” with “conventional” musical means. In contrast, Adriana Hölszky does not capitulate to the unbelievable nature of the subject, but instead transforms Geesche's struggle for freedom into a “liberation of sound” for the realization of precise musical ideas. The composer Brunhilde Sonntag recorded - in 1987 - essential ideas of Hölszky, which give an idea of ​​the way he was composing: “[...] the composer (must) create instruments in his disciplined and painstaking handling of the [sound] material in order to achieve the diversity of the to be able to control the aspects that have to be taken into account. ”And Hölszky emphasizes that“ intensive thinking does not exclude intensive feeling ”.

In Bremer Freiheit there are no definable human feelings such as those found in B. in the baroque affect catalog are musical guidelines for the opera, also not “narrating along a text aimed at plane comprehensibility”, but rather the composer develops a musical “ chaos ” through unexpected, constantly different sound structures , which merges with the stage actions . 9 phases are shown, which (supported by light direction) "stand out sharply". Hölsky masters the chaos of experimental vocal and instrumental working methods in order to represent the “uncertainty of everything human” through this “negatively disturbing side of art” [...]. A suggestive “centering force in chaos” arises , which is comparable to the network of relationships between atoms in nature. The musical constant is the regularly repeated sacred song Welt ade, I am thy tired, which Johann Sebastian Bach already wrote in his cantata Who knows how near my end is? (BWV 27) had processed.

The "orchestra" consists of permanent präsentem drums, the individual instruments strings and horns, vocal ensemble from the participants, where the victims continue to participate, speaking choir (the same), piano, accordion, dulcimer , organ.

Additionally (selection): car horn, cow bell, frying pans, rattles, gutter parts, hairbrushes and nails to work on strings, tape playback. Through the voices of the singers ( Ute Büchter-Römer : "Sound generation possibilities of the vocal apparatus") the language is "pulverized, atomized and connected with the instrumental sound". Just as the singers also act with sound instruments (e.g. Geesche sweeps the apartment with a broom to which a rattle is attached), instrumentalists participate in the language, e.g. B. with laughing, panting. The boundary between vocal and instrumental music dissolves.

action

Fassbinder's morality from the poisoner Gesche Gottfried

Bremen "freedom"

In the nine phases of the opera, the inarticulable circumstances of a woman of the 19th century, and how she revolted against them, are brought to mind through the breathless chaos of the musical means: The woman must not have sexual desires of her own - the woman's value lies in her association with one Man - The woman must submit to the man - The woman may only love with the blessing of the Church - The woman may not run a business alone - The woman has no opinions and beliefs of her own to represent - The woman may seek the man she is loves, not choosing herself - the woman has to have children with the man she has been assigned, with whom she desires she is not allowed to.

course

Geesche is humiliated, tortured and raped by her husband and his friends - all of them drunk. Her husband then dies with a terrible stomachache. Geesche's obituary is dictated to Geesche by her father. The friends express their condolences and Geesche's friend Gottfried moves in with her. Geesche's mother curses her daughter for living ungodly with a man. The mother dies. Geesche's children are too loud for Gottfried and he wants to find his own apartment again. Suddenly the children are silent. The father renounces his whore daughter. When Geesche is expecting a child from Gottfried, he insults her. Then he feels dying. Shortly before he dies, the wedding ceremony takes place. Geesche confesses to the father that he poisoned him. The father wants to marry her off to his nephew. Geesche doesn't want that. Father and nephew die. Geesche runs the business alone, which is going well. Zimmermann wants back the money he lent her. He dies. Geesche's brother Johann returns home from the war. He wants to find her a husband and take over the company. But the man that Geesche carries in his heart has not yet been born. Johann dies. Luisa, Geesche's friend, is visiting, and there are contradicting opinions about a life worth living. Geesche tells her that she poisoned her, she thinks it's a joke. She really dies. Rumpf has finally discovered small spheres in the coffee and had them examined. Now it is Geesche's turn to die.

The work consists of one act. After the 4th and before the 9th phase, well-composed, instrumental “pauses” are integrated.

Reviews

literature

  • Hans Werner Henze (Ed.): New Music Theater. Almanac for the 1st Munich Biennale , Carl Hanser, 1988, ISBN 3-446-15174-5 .
  • Gisela Gronemeyer: »You have to build the secret«. Adriana Hölszky - a composer portrait. In: Almanach 1988, pp. 79-82.
  • Michael Töteberg: Fassbinder's morality from the poisoner Gesche Gottfried. In: Almanach 1988, pp. 95-98.
  • Gerhard R. Koch: The raw and the refined. Adriana Hölszky and her opera Bremer Freiheit. Booklet text from CD Wergo / Schott 1992, pp. 8-14.
  • Ute Büchter-Römer: Adriana Hölszky's “Bremer Freiheit” - Singing work on a woman's life… From the 'chaos of feelings' to the 'chaos of music'? In: Martina Homma (ed.): Frau Musica (nova). Compose today. Studio-Verlag 2000, ISBN 3-89564-066-2 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ see first page of the score.
  2. ↑ Beatrix Borchard : Bremer Freiheit , in: Udo Bermbach (Ed.): OPER in the 20th century. Metzler Stuttgart, Weimar 2000, ISBN 3-476-01733-8 , p. 631.
  3. ↑ Harenberg opera guide . Dortmund 1997, 4th revised edition, ISBN 3-611-00496-0 , p. 164.
  4. ^ Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation: Advertisement Bremer Freiheit
  5. ↑ From Adriana Hölsky: "Bremer Freiheit." About the work. (Introduction) In: Hans Werner Henze (Hrsg.): New Music Theater. Almanac for the 1st Munich Biennale , Carl Hanser, 1988, pp. 83–93.
  6. ↑ He added the 2nd "e" of their given name.
  7. ↑ Harenberg Opera Guide 1997, p. 365.
  8. ↑ Michael Töteberg : Fassbinder's Moritat from the poison mixer Gesche Gottfried. In: Almanach 1988, pp. 95-98, p. 98.
  9. ↑ Quoted from Töteberg, interview with Wolfram Schütte 1976: Almanach 1988, p. 97.
  10. ↑ Hans Werner Henze: Introduction. In: Almanach 1988, p. 8.
  11. ↑ Harenberg Opera Guide 1997, p. 365.
  12. ↑ Beatrix Borchard, in: Udo Bermbach (Ed.): Oper im 20. Jahrhundert , p. 631.
  13. ↑ Klaus Ebbeke, quoted in Udo Bermbach (Ed.): Oper im 20. Jahrhundert , 2000, p. 599.
  14. ^ Beatrix Borchard: Adriana Hölszky. In: Opera in the 20th Century. 2000, p. 631.
  15. ↑ Brunhilde Sonntag in: Approaches II to seven female composers. Furore-Edition 805, Kassel 1987, ISBN 3-9801326-4-1 , p. 21. Quoted from: Adriana Hölszky: Komposition und Utopie , (unprinted?) P. 1.
  16. ↑ Jörn Peter Hiekel in MGG 2, Vol. 7, Col. (255–) 257.
  17. ↑ Ute Büchter-Römer 2000, III. The “chaos of feelings” causes the “chaos in music” , p. 252.
  18. ↑ Harenberg Opera Guide , p. 365.
  19. ↑ Büchter-Römer 2000, wording based on Horst Bredenkamp . P. 252.
  20. ↑ Compare Büchter-Römer 2000, p. 253.
  21. ↑ Büchter-Römer 2000, Musikalische Gestaltungsmittel , p. 250.
  22. ^ Title of Michael Töteberg's essay in: Almanach 1988, p. 95 (–98).
  23. ↑ Büchter-Römer 2000. p. 245.
  24. ^ Based on CD booklet Wergo / Schott 1992, p. 30.