Einstein (opera)
| Opera dates | |
|---|---|
| Title: | Einstein |
The director Ruth Berghaus rehearsing for the premiere in 1974 |
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| Shape: | Opera in three acts, prologue, two interludes and epilogue |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Paul Dessau |
| Libretto : | Karl Mickel |
| Premiere: | February 16, 1974 |
| Place of premiere: | German State Opera , East Berlin |
| Playing time: | about 2 hours |
| Place and time of the action: | In Germany and the USA, 1933–1945 |
| people | |
Intermezzi and epilogue
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Einstein is an opera in three acts , a prologue, two interludes and an epilogue by Paul Dessau (music) with a libretto by Karl Mickel . It was composed between 1955 and 1971–1973 and was premiered on February 16, 1974 in the German State Opera in East Berlin.
action
The opera is about the development of the atomic bomb during World War II . It is being completed in America with the support of Albert Einstein . Although it was only intended as a deterrent, it is used in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The system that Einstein uses to fight fascism turns out to be barbaric itself. He feels betrayed and destroys another piece of his work to prevent further abuse. At Einstein's side are two other physicists: an old opportunist who allows himself to be absorbed by the current system at any time, and a young idealist who ultimately opts for socialism. In the interludes, the figure of Hans Wurst, a representative of the people, meets the allegorical figure of a crocodile who successively embodies the systems of fascism and American imperialism. In the epilogue, Hans Wurst literally dances between the systems on the knife's edge.
prolog
With the words “Something horrible happened”, Hans Wurst introduces the opera as a representative of the people: first books were burned, then war broke out. Einstein fled into exile and got there “false friends” (“The philanthropist in league with all humanity enemies”). He realized his mistake too late.
first act
Scene 1. In front of a crowd, books in uniform burn on the square in front of the opera house (“Ho-haho tascha-bo Nuba-wumdä hohä-wam”). A thin woman complains to a fat woman that her husband has been held in the basement by the SA for three weeks. A man was assigned to build tanks. When two physicists watch an Einstein doll being thrown into the fire, they decide to warn him.
Scene 2. Fifty-year-old Einstein is sitting at the table in his study. The two physicists warn him of the impending danger from the Nazis. The two jump out of the window in fear. Einstein seeks advice in his books: Galileo Galilei (“a follower of solitary confinement”), Giordano Bruno (“the burnt one”) and Leonardo da Vinci (“he was a hundred years old”). He pockets Leonardo's book and leaves.
Scene 3. Three SA men ravage the room.
Scene 4th night, open field. Einstein is on the run to America. The two physicists appear. Although they are already badly battered, they want to stay in the country: "It's not that bad".
Scene 5. Soldiers exercise on the square early in the morning and sing frivolous songs. The old physicist thinks that the war will also wipe out the canaille. He wants to hide in his house that long. The young physicist hopes to avoid military service through illness or injury. A noseless hooker promises to infect him with her plague. Instead, she delivers him to the Gestapo.
Scene 6. The young physicist was brutally interrogated by the SA in prison. He is accused of undermining military strength. An adjutant picks him up to show him to the Führorr.
Scene 7. In the headquarters of the Führorr a messenger reports that “the city of the reds” has finally been conquered after heavy losses. The Führorr orders a victory celebration. Immediately afterwards, when a second messenger reported that the enemy had recaptured the city with even higher losses, the Führorr ordered the eight-year-old children to move to the front. The two physicists enter. The Führorr proclaims total war and orders them to destroy “the continents that oppose me”. While the people outside are cheering, the physicists have no choice but to agree to develop the required weapon. The young physicist alone shows scruples.
Intermezzo I: Hans Wurst's execution 1
Graceful landscape, in the middle of a quiet pond. On the left the motorway, on the right a so-called rock pulpit.
The crocodile E. Treu introduces itself to the audience. It complains about its "eternal cycle": if it eats someone, it has to cry - if it cries, it has to eat. The bailiff brings the shackled Hans Wurst to the rock pulpit. He was sentenced to death for unspecified "most obnoxious" crimes. His last wish is to call the bailiff “You poor chandelier!”. But with the verbatim execution it then fails. After he finally succeeds, the bailiff notes the execution, throws it into the pond and drives away. The not yet hungry crocodile asks Hans Wurst for a sad story. Instead, Hans Wurst tells the “best idiot joke of the day”. When the crocodile holds its stomach laughing, Hans Wurst is able to flee. The crocodile bites its tail and eventually devours itself.
Second act
Scene 1. On the Pacific coast, Einstein thinks he can hear the roar of war from the other side of the world.
Scene 2. In Einstein's study, his black housekeeper reports a visit from a gentleman from Germany. It is the young physicist who has now also gone into exile. He reports that the old physicist in Germany tried to develop the atom bomb with the help of Einstein's writings. Einstein would like to withdraw his work. Two senators forbid him from any political activity. Einstein again seeks advice from Galileo, Giordano Bruno and Leonardo da Vinci, but they cannot help him. Galileo: “I crawled to the cross. My life was hell ”- Bruno:“ I resisted. Hell was my death. ”- Leonardo:“ See you there! ”(According to the Gospel of Matthew 27: 3-5: Judas regrets his betrayal and receives this answer when he wants to return the pieces of silver).
Scene 3. (a) Einstein and the young physicist try to get an audience with the American president, but have to pass several cops in the anteroom. The very first cop denied them entry. Einstein gives him a document, which the cop reads and then puts in the pneumatic tube. (b) Standing in the doorway, the young physicist distracts the cop. (c) The two get into the next, larger anteroom, where they meet the second, larger bull. Einstein puts two papers on the table, which the cop ignores. When Einstein mentions his name, the bull laughs at it - they only allow rocks, no stones. (d) In the door to the next room. (e) In this even larger anteroom they meet the fifth bull. Einstein has no more papers, but the cop recognizes him and asks for autographs for his children. Then he presses a button, whereupon two wallpaper doors open in the background. A big voice commands that the famous guests should be treated “like famous guests”. Two tiny servants serve coffee and cognac, but Einstein and the young physicist are invited in.
Scene 4. The president promises Einstein money, a desert and employees for his work on the atomic bomb.
Scene 5. Early in the morning Einstein recognizes a theoretical way of saving the world in the balance of horror .
Scene 6. Rock gorge, above a baroque church with organ. In Germany the situation is hopeless. Three technicians from the underground atomic laboratory plan to escape. Low-flying aircraft attack. The old physicist urges the technicians to keep working and goes to the organ to play. All withdraw into rock holes. The young physicist comes in an American uniform with two white and three black GIs. They shoot cannons into the rock holes until the old physicist they need as an atomic specialist comes out. The GIs arrest him and then get drunk. The three technicians come out of the holes seriously injured and run away.
Scene 7. In a transatlantic nuclear plant, workers nail up boxes marked with skulls. Einstein announces the impending peace and sends her home. The workers refuse - after having lost their husbands and sons in the war, they fear unemployment. The young and old physicists come in. They want to finish the atomic bomb "before the war is over".
Scene 8. Concrete bunker, longitudinal front parallel to the ramp. Bright sun. The atom bomb is tested in the presence of the physicists. The sun turns black. Darkness.
Scene 9. Darkness. Two choirs complain about Hiroshima and Nagasaki "with all possible intonations and combinations of stresses".
Scene 10. Empty stage, bright light. Einstein, now a hundred years old, slowly comes up to the ramp from behind. In English and German he laments the disaster he has caused through his development: “It was me! It's me! I am the death that steals everything. ”He hadn't wanted to see his work being abused.
Intermezzo II: Hans Wurst's execution 2
As in the first interlude, the tied up Hans Wurst is brought from the bailiff to the rock pulpit. His last wish is canceled, the bailiff throws him into the water and drives away. The crocodile is still not hungry, but neither is it in the mood for a story. Although Hans Wurst tells "the best horror joke of the day" and the crocodile laughs tears, Hans Wurst eats it.
Third act
Scene 1. In a free square, a crowd of people calls for an end to the wars: “Make love not war.” One turns to debauchery. Casanova tries to seduce virgins. After a first failure, he convinces the women with the words: "Before love overcomes them, the bomb could come over them." Each receives a business card. The two physicists comment on the event.
Scene 2. In a barrack, three cops hold judgment over the physicists who signed an appeal to ban the atomic bomb. While the old and young physicists give in and retract their statements, Einstein stands firm. He is sentenced to eternal glory for the weapons he developed.
Scene 3. Immortality. Over a beer, Galileo, Giordano and Leonardo await the arrival of Einstein. Giordano puts the beer cold for him.
Scene 4. In Einstein's study, the young physicist complains that he has to continue developing weapons against his will. The black woman sings a lullaby and refers to the nature god Khavum.
Scene 4a. For the young physicist, this is not the solution. He decides to emigrate to the GDR and sings a verse from the Internationale , which he had already got to know in the Nazi prison. Since his first formula led to the world fire, Einstein burns a second formula that he has worked on for twenty years - he wants to prevent further abuse. The black woman leads a seven-year-old boy to him who wants to be taught by Einstein. Einstein answers: "The world riddle is a word". He is satisfied that the boy does not understand him.
Epilogue: Hans Wurst's resurrection
In the landscape of the two intermezzi, the bailiff rides the crocodile and pats it. The resurrected Hans Wurst proclaims his teachings from the rock pulpit: “Never yell at dead bailiffs”, “You have to make jokes, but [...] made to measure” and “A walk on the razor is also fun.” A huge razor folds over the pond up, and Hans Wurst dances on the cutting edge. He confesses: "I like to live."
layout
Instrumentation
In the main plot, Dessau uses a reduced orchestra without violins, oboes, clarinets, bassoons and horns. Rough sounds without a lot of color and sharp contrasts dominate. In contrast, the instruments used in the intermezzi and epilogue correspond roughly to those of Mozart's time. Here Dessau also allows for “more picturesque” elements.
Main storyline
- Woodwinds : four flutes (all also piccolo , 4th also alto flute)
- Brass : four trumpets , three trombones
- two pianos (if possible concert grand )
- Timpani
- Strings : six violas , three cellos , four double basses
- guitar
Intermezzi and epilogue
- Woodwinds: two flutes, two oboes , two clarinets (2nd also bass clarinet ), two bassoons
- Brass: two horns , three trumpets, two trombones
- Sirloin
- Timpani
- two pianos
- Strings: ten violins 1, eight violins 2, six violas, three cellos, four double basses
Cast of the tape recording
- Woodwinds: two flutes, alto flute, clarinet
- Brass: four trumpets, four trombones
- Percussion (two players)
- two pianos
- organ
- Tenor (the Führorr)
- two mixed choirs
- three boy's voices
music
A total of four different versions of the finale were published, which differ in the way out of the messed up situation presented. Dessau itself authorized those of the piano reduction from 1973 and the studio recording from 1978. The other two versions were published by Karl Mickel ( People's Decision 7 Pieces, Leipzig 1987). Mickel's first version from 1965 ends with the two physicists' utopia of destroying the world but withdrawing themselves to another star. In the 1970 version, however, the young physicist propagates a renewal of the Communist International . In the piano reduction from 1973 the opera ends with an aria by Einstein on Brecht's poem And I Will Not See The Land (No. 6 from To the German Soldiers in the East ) - Humanism is lost. In the final version, Einstein's black housekeeper counters this resignation with her hope for a god of nature. The end remains open.
Dessau's opera contains a multitude of musical quotations. In addition to Mozart and Vivaldi , music by Johann Sebastian Bach , whose music stands for humanism, can be heard particularly often . When the SA men break into Einstein's room (first act, scene 3), Bach's Doric Toccata for organ is played, which is overlaid with the heavily alienated organ chorale Vom Himmel hoch, since I come from , during the devastation of the room . Here the music symbolizes the “annihilation mania of the SA hordes against everything humanistic”.
The "BACH" motif is used almost as a leitmotif . The music and theater scholar Sigrid Neef described its introduction in the prologue and further development between the intermezzi as follows:
“With the words 'Einstein, our hero, escaped' the last syllable ends on the note H. The trombone continues in an extreme register change with the notes BAC, the double bass confirms the BAC in the following bar. The two Hans Wurst intermezzi end with the tone formula BH; The B is struck by the kettledrum or brought by the full orchestra, and in the Hans Wurst epilogue the missing C tutti and with kettledrum are then handed in. "
The “BHC” motif also sounds as an introduction to the first and only complete occurrence of the opera's twelve-tone series and instrumentally before Einstein's answer to the use of the atomic bomb. The complete motif can be heard most clearly in the alto flute at the end of the opera, when Einstein speaks to the seven-year-old boy.
Echoes of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos serve to "ironize culinary opera and late bourgeois feeling". More melodic folk music is assigned to the workers of the atomic factory. On the other hand, the respective rulers and their representatives are characterized by aggressive sounds. The music of the title character Einstein is singing.
libretto
Mickel's libretto also contains many quotations. He uses some passages from the Gospels of Matthew and John that also appear in Bach's corresponding passion music. Mickel also quoted from works of the German classical period such as Friedrich Maximilian Klinger's novel Fausts Leben, Thaten und Höllenfahrt (first act, scene 2: “A wonderful night to let the indignant imagination run wild”) or from Goethe's Faust (the description of the scene “Night , free field “in the first act, scene 4). The soldier's song “Amor, arise, noble hero” (first act, scene 5) comes from Des Knaben Wunderhorn . There is even an original quote from Hitler in the scene in which the Führorr orders the physicists to build the weapon (first act, scene 7). Einstein's initially English reaction to the atomic bombing (second act, scene 10) comes from Lord Byron's poem Darkness .
Work history
In 1955 the composer Paul Dessau read an obituary for Albert Einstein, which inspired him to write his own libretto on the subject. He made several attempts to do this. First he wrote a draft with the title All people will be brothers with reference to Beethoven's 9th Symphony and the French Revolution . He then wrote a full text, The Promised Land, which meant not only Palestine but America as well. He passed this text on to Bertolt Brecht , who was thinking about the subject himself at the time. Brecht commented on Dessau's text in a letter.
Dessau commissioned the writer Karl Mickel in 1965 with the libretto for the opera Einstein. Work on it continued with interruptions until 1973. Mickel took over some of Brecht's suggestions, but rewrote the text and added the interludes about the popular figure Hans Wurst, with which he emphasized the parable-like elements of the opera.
Dessau created the composition between 1971 and 1973 on behalf of the German State Opera Berlin . He dedicated the opera to his wife Ruth Berghaus , who also directed the premiere on February 16, 1974. Otmar Suitner was the musical director . The set and costumes were from Andreas Reinhardt . Sigrid Neef described them as "as succinct as they are artistic, of emblematic severity and almost organic sensitivity". The total of 62 roles were first class, including Theo Adam (Einstein), Peter Schreier (young physicist), Reiner Süß (old physicist), Eberhard Büchner (Casanova), Annelies Burmeister (crocodile and blacks) and Horst Hiestermann (Hans Wurst) . In this production Einstein became one of the most successful operas of the time. There have been guest appearances at the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (1976), Stockholm (1977), in Hamburg, Wiesbaden and Lausanne (1978) and at the Dresden Music Festival (1979). In 1978 a studio recording of the opera was released on vinyl.
In West Germany, the opera was first performed on June 15, 1980 at the Ruhr Festival Recklinghausen. It was a guest performance by the Gelsenkirchener Musiktheater im Revier . Uwe Mund was the musical director, Jaroslav Chundela directed , and Joshua Hecht sang Einstein. There were further performances in Meiningen (1980), Schwerin (1981) and Weimar (1989). In 1995 Einstein was given in the Vorpommern Theater in Greifswald / Stralsund. In 2006 there was a new production of the Dortmund Opera in a production by Gregor Horres and stage and costumes by Kirsten Dephoff. The Dortmund Philharmonic and the Dortmund Theater choir were directed by Dirk Kaftan . Oskar Hillebrandt (Einstein), Jeff Martin (young physicist) and Vidar Gunnarsson (old physicist) played the leading roles .
Recordings
- May 30, 1976 (live from Florence): Otmar Suitner (conductor), Orchestra of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino . Reiner Süß (old physicist), Theo Adam (Einstein), Henno Garduhn (Hans Wurst), Eberhard Büchner (young physicist). Opera d'Oro OPD 1371 (2 CD).
- 1978 (studio recording): Otmar Suitner (conductor), Staatskapelle Berlin , choir of the German State Opera Berlin . Horst Moye (adjutant), Reiner Süß (old physicist), Renate Hoff (worker and virgin), Hannerose Katterfeld (worker), Edda Schaller (worker and noseless hooker), Ingeborg Springer (worker and young woman), Ernst Gruber (bull, SA man, technician), Horst Lunow (bull, technician), Erich Siebenschuh (bull, SA man), Peter Olesch (Büttel), Günter Kurth (Casanova), Gertraud Prenzlow (fat woman), Peter Bindszus (black GI) , Harald Neukirch (black GI and young man), Jutta Vulpius (thin woman), Theo Adam (Einstein), Kurt Rehm (Führorr), Günther Fröhlich (Galilei and SA man), Günther Leib (Giordano Bruno and technician), Henno Garduhn (Hans Wurst and President), Nils Lunow (boy), Peter Schreier (young physicist), Sieglinde Jahn (virgin), Annelies Burmeister (crocodile and black), Martin Ritzmann (Leonardo da Vinci), Heinz Reeh (SA man) , Joachim Arndt (Senator), Erich Witte (Senator). Berlin Classics CD: BC 9109-2.
Web links
- Libretto as full text (PDF) at Brilliant Classics
- Work data on Einstein based on MGG with discography at Operone
- Heinz Josef Herbort: Walk on the razor. Review of the first performance in the period of 22 February 1974
- Max Nyffeler: The opera Einstein by Paul Dessau. Review of the West German premiere at the Ruhr Festival 1980 in Recklinghausen in the Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger on June 19, 1980 on beckmesser.de
- Stefan Schmöe: Death is a Hanswurst from Germany. Review of the 2006 Dortmund performance in Online Musik Magazin
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d Einstein. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 187-188.
- ↑ a b c d e f Eberhard Schmidt: Einstein. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 1: Works. Abbatini - Donizetti. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-492-02411-4 , pp. 719-721.
- ↑ a b c d e f g h i j Sigrid Neef : German Opera in the 20th Century - GDR 1949–1989. Lang, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-86032-011-4 , pp. 101-110.
- ^ Peter Czerny : Opera book. Henschelverlag Art and Society, Berlin 1981, pp. 429–431.
- ^ Ulrich Schreiber : Opera guide for advanced learners. 20th Century II. German and Italian Opera after 1945, France, Great Britain. Bärenreiter, Kassel 2005, ISBN 3-7618-1437-2 .
- ^ Program booklet Einstein of the Dortmund Theater, 2004.
- ↑ a b Paul Dessau. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all opera complete recordings. Zeno.org , volume 20.