The judge and his executioner (opera)
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| Title: | The Judge and His Hangman |
| Shape: | Opera in a prelude and 12 scenes |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Franz Hummel |
| Libretto : | Sandra Hummel |
| Literary source: | The judge and his executioner by Friedrich Dürrenmatt |
| Premiere: | November 8, 2008 |
| Place of premiere: | Theater Erfurt |
| Playing time: | approx. 1 ¾ hour |
| Place and time of the action: | Switzerland, mid-20th century |
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The judge and his executioner is an opera in a prelude and 12 scenes by Franz Hummel . The libretto of Sandra Hummels is based on the detective novel of the same name by Friedrich Dürrenmatt . The opera was commissioned by the Erfurt Theater and premiered on November 8, 2008.
action
foreplay
No man's land, like a battlefield. The main characters move disoriented in space, followed by their shadows. On the floor the body of the murdered policeman Schmied.
Scene 1
Dürrenmatt gradually brings his characters into play. Inspector Tschanz, charged with the murder investigation, is talking to Anna, the dead policeman's fiancé. Anna's life is broken, her future seems lost. Gastmann and Commissioner Bärlach meet. During his entire professional life, Bärlach did not succeed in bringing Gastmann to court for a murder he committed decades ago in Istanbul. A conversation unfolds about coincidence: Bärlach believes that coincidence will one day bring Gastmann down, but Gastmann feels protected by coincidence. Bärlach pays a visit to Mrs Schönler, Schmied's landlady.
Scene 2
Police chief Lutz and Bärlach talk about Bärlach's past. Lutz is concerned about Bärlach's state of health and asks about the investigation into the Schmied murder.
Scene 3
Anna is alone, lost in thought of her late fiancé. When Tschanz approaches her, she leaves him alone.
Scene 4
Tschanz appears to Bärlach as a doppelganger of the murdered colleague Schmied.
Scene 5
When Tschanz is alone again, he ponders Bärlach's investigation. Tschanz speaks full of hatred of Schmied, whom he envied for his education, his car, the beautiful Anna or his tailored suits.
Scene 6
Party at Gastmann. Rich and bored industrialists, bankers, artists, diplomats from Switzerland and the Near and Far East stay at Gastmann's house. A discussion broke out among the party guests about the true identity of the shot blacksmith, who in their circles incognito as “Dr. Prantl ”. Gastmann himself is soon leaving his own party for the Zurich Opera, accompanied by the “famous” singer Lucy Netrapko. Dogs barking in the garden, then a shot is fired. Bärlach appears at the party to start investigating.
Scene 7
Gastmann surprises Bärlach in his living room, leafing through the "Gastmann file" that Schmied had made. Bärlach announces his near end to Gastmann. He will judge him: not for a crime he has committed, but for one he did not commit.
Scene 8
Gastmann remembers the common past with Bärlach. He tells of the murder in Istanbul forty years ago when he pushed an innocent man off the bridge who drowned in the river. He still feels safe and does not believe Barloch's threats.
Scene 9
Anna is alone, sunk in deep sorrow. Tschanz makes another attempt to get closer, but is rejected by Barlach, who subjects Anna to an interrogation.
Scene 10
Alone and half asleep, Bärlach is plagued by a nightmare. The objects around him seem to be turning him around. Suddenly a letter opener dagger flies through the room next to Bärlach and gets stuck in the wall, whereupon Bärlach fires shots from his pistol in dire need. Enter Tschanz. He complains that his investigations against Gastmann are hindered. Bärlach also closes the clues of the younger colleague. Disappointed and provoked by his inaction, Tschanz is determined to find the murderer himself.
Scene 11
Dürrenmatt interferes in the action. When asked about Gastmann, he replied: "For him, evil is not instinctive, but a creative expression of his freedom".
final
Again in no man's land. You can see open graves, the corpses of Gastmann's bodyguards and the corpse of Tschanz, who hanged himself. Police chief Lutz only stammered and finally made an eulogy.
He accuses Barlach of illegally suspecting Gastmann. Frau Schönler, too, only utters confused sentences. The scenery increases to a grotesque, gloomy dance of death. Anna's life is finally broken. She is left alone, surrounded only by the shadows of the past.
layout
The opera does not depict the plot of the novel in a linear fashion. The authors see the real attraction for their version in the "nightmare world, this [r] twin sister of everyday schizophrenia and its faults, even its anti-logics". She questions reality and asks about the influence of chance on the people involved. The 21 chapters of the original were reduced to eleven scenes with a prelude and a finale in “No Man's Land” for the opera, although the order does not correspond to that of the novel. Some scenes process elements from several chapters. A danced “shadow” is assigned to almost all figures.
Unlike in the novel, the “state of shock of crime” determines the opera from the start. It begins with Anna's words "Future, future, she has long since been taken from me", sung in ⁵ / ₈ time, which is contrasted with syncopation and triplet figures in the orchestra .
The orchestral setting is “compact”, “tightly woven”. A wide variety of musical styles such as popular tunes, tangos, waltzes, chorales and arioso elements are combined like collages. The music dramaturge Berthold Warnecke described the style in the program booklet for the Erfurt premiere as follows: “Stylistic overlaps, the juxtaposition of familiar sounds and sharp clusters, the hard, sudden change from calmly flowing melodies to rhythmic distorted images that only contain rudimentary fragments of melody and periodic ones Taking order patterns ad absurdum - in short: the musical panopticon that Hummel spreads out in front of the listener's ears presents itself as a composed interpretation of Dürrenmatt's worldview ”. Musical highlights are an aria by Gastmann accompanied by the solo violin and flute, the “Solothurn Police Song” and the “Himalaya Song”.
Work history
The opera was commissioned by the Erfurt Theater . It is based on the detective novel of the same name by Friedrich Dürrenmatt . The music is by Franz Hummel and the libretto by Sandra Hummel.
The work was premiered on November 8, 2008 in the Erfurt Theater by the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Erfurt Opera Choir under the musical direction of Gerd Herklotz. The production and the choreography came from Rosamund Gilmore , the stage and costumes from Carl Friedrich Oberle. The actors were u. a. Petteri Falck (Bärlach), Jochen Vogel (Bärlachs Schatten), Marwan Shamiyeh (Tschanz), Sandra Lommerzheim (Tschanz 'Schatten), Alice Rath (Anna), Elodie Lavoignat (Anna's shadow), Robert Wörle (Gastmann), David Laera (Gastmanns Schatten), Máté Sólyom-Nagy (Mrs. Schönler), Michael Kitzeder (Mrs. Schönler's shadow), Nadja Dagis (Schmieds Geist), Dario Süß (Lutz), Olaf Müller (Dürrenmatt), Manuel Meyer (pastor / clergyman), Stefan Wey ( von Schwendi).
Web links
- The judge and his executioner (premiere November 8, 2008) at the Erfurt Theater ( memento from April 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- Liquidation of the criminalists. Performance review at Opera and Dance 2008/06
- Performance review and table of contents at Operapoint
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c program booklet The judge and his executioner. Theater Erfurt, season 2008/09.
- ^ A b Frieder Reininghaus : Dürrenmatt as an opera. Review of the premiere. Report from November 10, 2008 on Deutschlandfunk , accessed on March 27, 2016.
- ↑ The judge and his executioner (premiere November 8, 2008) at the Theater Erfurt ( memento from April 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).