Europeras
Europeras is the title of an opera series by the composer John Cage in five parts. They are kept in his typical experimental style. The opera stage is divided into 64 squares, which form the scheme for the stage sequence. The positions of people and objects on the stage are random. With the help of the oldest Chinese oracle book I-Ging, random time units were determined during which the individual participants carry out their actions within a precisely specified duration of the performance .
Europeras 1 & 2
In his operas Europeras 1 & 2 from 200 operas in 64 images, John Cage deconstructs the language of the classical operas of the 18th and 19th centuries by means of random operations. Cage summarized the concept as follows:
“The Europeans sent us their operas for 200 years. Now I'm sending them all back. "
He not only subjected the music to the random generator, but also the stage design, props, lights, dance figures and opera arias. The music was randomly selected by him from over 200 operas and is performed without a conductor. The 28 musicians are free to decide when to play them within fixed time blocks. The opera arias are selected at random every evening and sung by 19 soloists at different times and locations on the stage.
The playing times are exactly 90 or 45 minutes, which are displayed on a digital clock so that all those involved can keep their bets exactly.
Europeras 1 & 2 are Cage's largest and most radical music theater work. There is no plot, but a Dadaist- style summary compiled from operatic libretti. It represents an anti-opera to which the audience can hardly be introduced. None of the sheet music was composed by Cage in the original sense ; he only uses material from other composers that is no longer protected by copyright. Cage "avoids ... in his composition process any semantization and only in the combination of the individual levels that cannot be influenced by the composer does random and incalculable semantic references arise".
The work is a commissioned work by Heinz-Klaus Metzger and Rainer Riehn . The world premiere took place in December 1987 at the Frankfurt Opera under Gary Bertini . The work is seldom performed and has never been recorded. In 2012 Heiner Goebbels opened the Ruhrtriennale with him . In 2017 it was performed as an overture at the Braunschweig State Theater with 4'33 ″ , and in 2019 at the Wuppertal Opera under the title PLAY * Europeras 1 & 2 , directed by Daniel Wetzel from the collective Rimini Protokoll .
Europeras 3
Europeras 3 is a dramatic, dense, Wagnerian opera.
Europeras 4
Europeras 4 is an artistic, Mozartian, enjoyable chamber opera .
Europeras 5
Europera 5 is the most reduced form. Two singers, a pianist and a gramophone player each interpret six works from the opera literature selected by them. These are randomly conducted independently next to each other. The performance lasts exactly 60 minutes.
John Cage heard the premiere of his last opera in the garden of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, it was the last performance he saw.
In 2001, all parts were performed together for the first time at the Hanover State Opera in a production by Nigel Lowry, which, however, was judged by the critics to be a "fiasco" that was not true to the work.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Braunschweig State Theater (ed.): Europeras 1 & 2 . Program booklet. 2017.
- ↑ a b 'John Cage Europeras: a light- and soundscape as a musical manifesto' by Stefan Beyst. Retrieved November 26, 2017 .
- ↑ a b Braunschweiger Zeitung: Ruhrtriennale opens with John Cage's «Europeras 1 & 2» . ( braunschweiger-zeitung.de [accessed on November 26, 2017]).
- ↑ a b Hanusa: State Opera Hanover: Cage: Europeras / Online Music Magazine. Retrieved November 26, 2017 .
- ↑ Documentation on the staging on the Rimini Protokoll website [accessed on March 21, 2020]