The enclosure

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Opera dates
Title: The enclosure
Shape: "A night scene"
Original language: German
Music: Wolfgang Rihm
Libretto : Botho Strauss
Literary source: Botho Strauss: final choir
Premiere: October 27, 2006
Place of premiere: Bavarian State Opera
Playing time: about 40 minutes
people

The enclosure is an opera - monodrama (Original name: "A night scene") for soprano and orchestra in an act of Wolfgang Rihm . In it he set the last scene from Botho Strauss ' drama final chorus to music . The world premiere took place on October 27, 2006 in the Bavarian State Opera .

action

The final choir plays on the eve of German reunification. The protagonist is named Anita von Schastorf. The eagle is a symbol for the federal eagle .

Late in the evening a woman visits an aviary with a golden eagle in the zoo. She had already been there in the morning when a school class teased the eagle "down to the blood". Now she has come back to rescue the bird. To do this, she cuts a large hole in the wire mesh with a knife. She is fascinated by the animal and seems to be sexually obsessed with it right now. Although he doesn't understand a word, she talks to him all the time. Since the eagle makes no move to leave the aviary, she reaches into it. The foreground of the stage darkens. In the horizon you can see the shadow of the bird that settles on her arm after a long gliding flight. The woman throws him a few swear words and threatens to bind him to burning coals. It gets dark again and the bird flies again. When it got light, the woman was lying on the floor. She props herself up on one elbow while the eagle sits menacingly on her head or shoulder. She performs the "begging movement of the griffins" with her head and asks him to play with her, to inflict a "sweet wound" on her in order to eat her. Because of their dense clothing, however, the eagle has no way of getting through to their skin without choking on the fabric. The stage is darkened a third time. The eagle's shadow crashes. Then you see the woman standing in the feathers with a bleeding face. She killed the eagle and is holding the clipped muzzle in her hand. She comments: "Forest ... forest ... forest ... forest ..."

layout

The music critic Wolfgang Schreiber compared the music of Rihm's Das Gehege in his premiere review in Opernwelt magazine with the expressionist sounds of Arnold Schönberg's monodrama Expectation . He further wrote:

“Rihm piles up all of his orchestral skills in a virtuoso-calculated manner, activates a particularly ingenious percussion apparatus. The music of the fin de siècle from Debussy to Strauss is, even with lightning-like sprinkled quotes, as close as ever to the state of ecstatic or even ironically broken drunkenness. "

The settlement of the original text in the time of German reunification is reflected in individual distorted musical fragments from the national anthem, Beethoven's 9th symphony or a march.

For Peter Hagmann of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, the “simultaneously sensual and modern music” seemed like a “ counterfacture ” to Richard Strauss' music, with whose Salome the enclosure was combined at the premiere. Both composers use a large and “masterfully controlled” orchestra that is not limited to an accompaniment, but “is in active interaction with the soloist on stage”. Here, too, there are “hard hits and sharp dissonances” as well as “very melodious lines and radiant major triads”.

In an interview with Die Zeit , Rihm stated that he also saw the political aspect of the original in his music, but that it also had “other dimensions” and “abysmal ambivalence”. He had the plan to summarize the work as the middle part of a trilogy of monodramas with the possible title Three Women , of which the first piece is Aria / Ariadne and the third the Penthesilea monologue. The appearance of Bacchus at the end of the first piece turns into the eagle in the enclosure , which is torn in it and in the last part becomes the torn Achilles .

orchestra

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

Work history

The enclosure with the subtitle “A nocturnal scene” was commissioned by the Bavarian State Opera . Rihm composed it between 2004 and 2005. As a libretto he used the end of the third act (“From now on”) of Botho Strauss's final chorus . Rihm had seen Luc Bondy's production of the final chorus in Berlin in 1992 and immediately thought of turning it into a monodrama. In a conversation with Strauss he learned that he had incorporated subliminal references to Arnold Schönberg's monodrama Expectation . When Kent Nagano asked him many years later about a piece that would be suitable as a prelude to Richard Strauss' Salome , he suggested this final scene.

At the world premiere on October 27, 2006 in the Bavarian State Opera , the Bavarian State Orchestra performed under the direction of Kent Nagano. Gabriele Schnaut sang the woman, and the dancer Todd Ford played the eagle. The work was combined with Richard Strauss' Salome as planned .

The Dutch concert premiere took place on December 10, 2011 in the Concertgebouw Amsterdam. Hellen Kwon sang the woman. The Radio Filharmonisch Orkest played under the direction of Edo de Waart .

In 2018, Das Gehege was combined with Luigi Dallapiccola's short opera Il prigioniero in a co-production between the Stuttgart State Theater and the Brussels Opera House La Monnaie / De Munt . Directed by Andrea Breth , the stage was from Martin Zehetgruber , the costumes by Nina von Mechow and the lighting design by Alexander Koppelmann. Sergio Morabito was responsible for the dramaturgy . The woman was portrayed by Ángeles Blancas Gulín. Franck Ollu directed the Stuttgart State Orchestra and the symphony orchestra of the Brussels Opera House.

Recordings

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Indication in the score.
  2. ↑ Susanne Kaufmann: Disturbing chamber plays from the Cold War. Brief review from April 27, 2018 on swr.de, accessed on May 19, 2018.
  3. ^ A b Wolfgang Schreiber: Cool turning point. Review of the premiere. In: Opernwelt , December 2006, p. 8.
  4. ^ A b Peter Hagmann: "Salome" and her new sister. Review of the premiere. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung , October 30, 2006, accessed on May 19, 2018.
  5. ↑ a b Claus Spahn and Thomas Assheuer : "Despair is something big". A conversation with the composer Wolfgang Rihm about productive loneliness, the predominance of entertainment and his new monodrama “Im Gehege” . In: Die Zeit , October 26, 2006, accessed on May 19, 2018.
  6. ↑ a b work information of Universal Edition , accessed on May 19, 2018th
  7. ↑ Information on works at IRCAM , accessed on May 19, 2018.
  8. ^ A b Rihm: The enclosure in Amsterdam. Performance announcement on Universal Edition website , accessed May 19, 2018.
  9. ↑ Performance information ( memento from May 20, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) of the State Theater Stuttgart , accessed on May 19, 2018.
  10. ↑ Performance information of the Brussels Opera House La Monnaie / De Munt , accessed on 19 May 2018.
  11. ↑ Wolfgang Rihm. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005, p. 15144.
  12. ↑ Il prigioniero & the enclosure | La Monnaie / De Munt , accessed May 19, 2018.