La grande magia (opera)
| Opera dates | |
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| Title: | La grande magia |
| Shape: | Opera in five pictures |
| Original language: | German |
| Music: | Manfred Trojahn |
| Libretto : | Christian Martin Fuchs |
| Literary source: |
Eduardo De Filippo : La grande magia |
| Premiere: | May 10, 2008 |
| Place of premiere: | Semperoper Dresden |
| Playing time: | approx. 1 ½ hours |
| Place and time of the action: | Italy, indefinite time |
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La grande magia (German: “The great magic”) is an opera in five pictures by Manfred Trojahn (music) with a libretto by Christian Martin Fuchs . It is based freely on Eduardo De Filippo 's play of the same name from 1948. The world premiere took place on May 10, 2008 in the Semperoper Dresden.
action
The opera shows a broken Italian extended family who are “entangled in lies, out of joint territory”. Each individual wishes for a different life than the one in which they are trapped in reality. The reviewer of the Deutsche Bühne described the work as a “psychological tragedy between love and longing, reality and illusion”.
Unless otherwise stated, the following table of contents is based on the information in Heinz Wagner's Great Manual of the Opera and the 2009 program of the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen.
First picture
The extended Di Spetta family moved to the Italian lakeside hotel “Metropole” for their summer vacation. On the terrace, Matilde and her brother-in-law Marcello Polvero watch the younger generation of the family. Matilde has two grown-up children: Calogero (married to the former singer Marta) and Rosa (married to the future politician Oreste Intrugli). Marcello has arrived with his non-biological son Gregorio, a "misstep" of his wife. The marriages of Cologero / Marta and Oreste / Rosa have been in crisis for some time. Oreste cares more about his career than about his wife. Rosa, who previously had a relationship with her uncle Marcello, is now flirting with Gregorio. Marta is bored in everyday life and would like to perform as a singer again. Gregorio becomes jealous when young Mariano D'Albino casts an eye on her.
Other guests are the survivor Arturo Recchia and his alleged daughter, the terminally ill Amelia. These two rave about the magician Otto Marvuglia, whom they have already seen elsewhere and who is supposed to perform that evening. When Otto arrives exhausted, he turns out to be an impoverished artist. Mariano hires him to conjure up Marta, whom he admires, for a quarter of an hour during the performance so that he can meet her undisturbed. Otto's wife Zaira is hoping for a permanent job for her husband at a theater or variety show.
Second picture
Marta dreams of a better life. Otto explains to her the advantages of the illusions that he opposes the inescapable passage of time. During the evening performance, Marta climbs into a box and Otto conjures it away for the audience's delight. Contrary to what had been agreed, however, she does not return, but spontaneously flees with Mariano. Otto doesn't know what to do other than hand the impatient Calogero a box in which his wife is supposed to be, provided he is sure of her love and loyalty. Calogero leaves the box closed despite pressure from relatives.
Third picture
Marta sees Mariano, who is in love, only as a means of escaping her marriage and being able to sing on stage again.
Fourth picture
Otto, Arturo and Amelia live together in poor conditions. In a fever, Amelia is talking to a cage bird, whom she addresses as the groom. Calogero wants to know from Otto what's going on with his wife Marta. Otto assumes that Calogero actually believes in the magic. He explains to him that time has stopped and that in reality they are still on the hotel terrace. Calogero responds by bringing the conversation to the terminally ill Amelia. This cannot die as long as time stands still. However, Arturo and Zaira soon find out that they are dead.
Fifth picture
After seven years, Calogero still lives in the supposed world of illusion and dreams of an ideal woman. The family is now completely dependent on him because all plans have failed. Otto, Zaira and Arturo now live with Calogero. Zaira has found Marta again: she sings in the city theater. When Calogero finally opens the box, his wife, whom Zaira has just fetched, suddenly stands in front of him. She explains to him that the spell was only made for an adventure. Nevertheless, he insists that it is an illusion: "Adventure became my life".
orchestra
The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:
- Woodwinds : two flutes (2nd also piccolo ), two oboes (2nd also English horn ), two clarinets (1st in Bb, 2nd in A, both also basset horns in F), bass clarinet , two bassoons (2nd also contrabassoon )
- Brass : two horns , trumpet , trombone
- Timpani , percussion (one player)
- Piano , celesta , harmonium (two players)
- harp
- Strings : six violins , four violas , four cellos , two double basses
- Stage music : clarinet in Bb, accordion , tuba
Work history
La grande magia is Manfred Trojahn's fourth work for music theater. He wrote it on behalf of the Semperoper Dresden. Like two of his earlier pieces, it is based on a Neapolitan drama, in this case Eduardo De Filippo's La grande magia from 1948. Christian Martin Fuchs wrote the libretto .
At the world premiere on May 10, 2008 in the Semperoper, Marlis Petersen (Marta Di Spelta), Rainer Trost (Calogero Di Spelta), Andrea Ihle (Matilde Di Spelta), Sabine Brohm (Rosa Intrugli), Gerald Hupach (Oreste Intrugli), Jürgen Commichau (Marcello Polvero), Jonas Gudmundsson (Gregorio Polvero), Christoph Pohl (Mariano D'Albino), Urban Malmberg (Otto Marvuglia), Barbara Hoene (Zaira), Tom Martinsen (Arturo Recchia) and Romy Petrick (Amelia). The conductor was Jonathan Darlington . The production came from Albert Lang and the equipment from Gudrun Müller ( rosalie ).
In March 2012 the work was performed in a new production by Gabriele Rech at the Musiktheater im Revier Gelsenkirchen. The set was designed by Dieter Richter and the costumes by Renée Listerdal. Lutz Rademacher directed the New Westphalia Philharmonic . Alfia Kamalova (Marta Di Spelta), Daniel Magdal (Calogero Di Spelta), Christa Platzer (Matilde Di Spelta), Sylvia Koke (Rosa Intrugli), Lars-Oliver Ruhl (Oreste Intrugli), Piotr Prochera (Marcello Polvero), E Mark Murphy (Gregorio Polvero), Sejong Chang (Mariano D'Albino), Urban Malmberg (Otto Marvuglia), Noriko Ogawa-Yatake (Zaira), William Saetre (Arturo Recchia) and Alexandra Lubchansky (Amelia).
reception
The reviewer of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung noted "many impressive moments, especially in the lyric" in the music. There are also "occasional excursions into the parody" with echoes of Richard Strauss' operas Der Rosenkavalier or Ariadne auf Naxos as well as three stage musicians with " Klezmer- like tones". The opera stands between comedy and tragedy and uses a "parlando-like conversational tone". He criticized, however, that although the authors "thoroughly turned inside out" the 60-year-old original and "thinned out the folkloric moments [...]", they retained the extensive list of people, which resulted in the audience having some problems following the complex network of relationships. He found the staging of the world premiere to be unsuccessful due to the lack of a personal tour and wished the play “a more valid scenic test”.
The reviewer for the Austrian music magazine described the score as "of a fragility and transparency that is paradigmatic for the life of the protagonists". He too felt reminded of Ariadne on Naxos and the Rosenkavalier . "Much has been retained" and "pushed forward" from its "tonality, which is pushed to the edge". The staging and equipment of the world premiere reflect "the sensitive, even neurasthenic of the sounds" and "the composer's colossal feeling for what one would like to call the vocalises of the soul".
After the Gelsenkirchen performance, the reviewer who wrote the German Theater , that they "almost continuous Parlando singing" Opera Strauss of the Capriccio recalled. The a-cappella quintet at the beginning of the fifth picture depicts "pretty [...] the hopelessness and boredom". However, the audience needs "a lot of concentration".
In an interview Trojahn confirmed that the orchestral line-up largely corresponds to that of Ariadne on Naxos . But it also has a lot in common with that of his older opera Enrico . He denied any intentional further relationships between La grande magia and Ariadne , although one could probably "argue" such. The only connection is that he too is attached to an "action theater".
Web links
- Performance information from the music theater in the Gelsenkirchen district with sound samples
- Collection of newspaper reviews for the premiere on publicopera.info
- Set images of the Gelsenkirchen production on the website of the director Gabriele Rech
- Thomas Molke: Between Illusion and Reality. Review of the Gelsenkirchen performance in 2012. In: Online Musik Magazin
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jürgen Otten: Out of Time - Jürgen Otten on the magic of the Dresden premiere of Manfred Trojahn's music theater "La grande magia". In: Opera world . July 2008, p. 8.
- ^ A b c Marieluise Jeitschko: The magic was just made up ... Review of the performance in Gelsenkirchen 2012. In: Die Deutsche Bühne . March 30, 2012, accessed August 27, 2018.
- ↑ Heinz Wagner: The great handbook of the opera - supplementary volume 2009 for the 4th edition. Noetzel, Wilhelmshaven 2009, ISBN 978-3-7959-0914-7 , pp. 146-147.
- ↑ a b La grande magia. Program No. 54. Musiktheater im Revier GmbH, 2012.
- ↑ Information on works from Bärenreiter-Verlag , accessed on August 27, 2018.
- ^ A b Jürgen Otten: Trojahn "La grade magia" in Dresden. In: Austrian music magazine . Volume 63, Issue 7, 2008, pp. 65-66, ISSN 2307-2970 (online), ISSN 0029-9316 (print), doi : 10.7767 / omz.2008.63.7.65 (accessed via De Gruyter Online).
- ↑ May 10, 2008: “La grande magia”. In: L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia ..
- ↑ Georg-Friedrich Kühn: The woman in the box. Review of the premiere. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . May 16, 2008. Retrieved August 27, 2018.
- ↑ "I'm attached to a plot theater". A conversation with Manfred Trojahn about his opera “La Grande Magia” based on Eduardo De Filippo on takte-online.de, accessed on August 27, 2018.