Raoul (opera)
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| Title: | Raoul |
Raoul Wallenberg |
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| Shape: | Opera in two acts |
| Original language: | English (American) |
| Music: | Gershon Kingsley |
| Libretto : | Michael Kunze |
| Premiere: | in concert: April 30, 2004 scenic: February 21, 2008 |
| Place of premiere: | Concert: Goethe Institute New York, scenic: Theater Bremen |
| Playing time: | about 2 hours |
| Place and time of the action: | Budapest, towards the end of World War II |
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Raoul is an opera in two acts by Gershon Kingsley (music) with a libretto by Michael Kunze . It deals with the life of the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg , who at the end of the Second World War saved thousands of Jews from death in the concentration camp in Budapest with the help of protective passports. The scenic premiere of the opera took place on February 21, 2008 in the New Schauspielhaus of the Bremen Theater.
action
first act
Soloists and choir introduce the plot: the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands of lives in Budapest towards the end of World War II. When the Soviet army marched into Budapest, he disappeared without a trace. There is no evidence of his death. Josef Stalin himself confirms the arrest of Wallenberg.
Raoul comes from a traditional banking family. Nevertheless, he decided to work as a businessman. He travels a lot, especially by train. This is possible despite the war, as Sweden remains neutral. At a train station he witnessed a deportation of Jews in which a child was shot. Raoul is then ashamed of not having intervened. The commanding officer is firmly convinced that he is merely doing his duty.
Raoul is impressed by Leslie Howard's film Pimpernel Smith , in which the title character frees inmates from concentration camps. When his friend Jeanette wants to deepen their relationship, Raoul rejects her because his humanitarian goals have become more important to him.
Raoul receives an offer to go to Budapest to rescue Jews. That suits him well because he is fluent in German and he already knows the city. Officially, he is supposed to work as a Swedish diplomat , but unofficially he is supposed to receive his assignments from the American government.
The emigrated Russian nobleman Mikhail Kutuzov-Tolstoy introduces himself to the audience. The choir pushes him back because his time has not yet come. Kutuzov will later make friends with Raoul and betray him.
Raoul travels through Germany to Budapest, where he arrives in July 1944 and offers the Jews protective papers. They are initially suspicious. Serge Eisenmann in particular has doubts, but is convinced by his girlfriend Rachel Strauss that there is an opportunity here.
When Adolf Eichmann was preparing a new transport, some of the Jews presented Swedish papers. He has no choice but to accept this.
Raoul meets Per Anger , who is already issuing a limited number of Swedish government protection papers to Jews, but who urges caution. That is not enough for Raoul. He decides to significantly increase the number of passes.
Budapest is one of the last cities where there is still night life. Per Raoul introduces the influential Baron Gábor Kemény and his wife Elisabeth. When Raoul tells the latter about his mission, she promises him her support. Here Raoul also meets Kutuzov, who also promises to help him.
Rachel and Serge flee Budapest. They trust that Raoul will be there in time for their rescue.
Another transport of Jews with children takes place. The prisoners sing the Shema , while the supervisory shouts commands. Raoul intervenes and threatens diplomatic measures. He claims that there were also Swedish citizens among those deported, shows papers that prove this and takes many of the Jews away. He deeply regrets that he cannot save everyone and gets into a conflict of conscience over the necessary choices.
Eichmann fears that he will not be able to achieve the required number of deported Jews. The officer reports to him about Raoul's intervention. Eichmann orders to "get rid of him".
In an emergency wedding in the ghetto , Raoul wed Rachel and Serge together. Kutuzov appears with the news that Hungary has broken away from Germany and the war is over. But hope is quickly deceived. The Arrow Cross coups, arrest the previous head of state Miklós Horthy and replace him with Ferenc Szálasi, who collaborates with the Germans . Kutuzov again promises help.
Serge wonders if he should feel guilty about still alive despite so many others perishing in the Holocaust. He and Rachel decide never to give up hope.
Second act
Winston Churchill and Stalin negotiate the post-war order and the future of Hungary. Despite seeming similarities, they deeply distrust each other. Stalin insists that Hungary belongs in his sphere of influence. He also brings the speech to Wallenberg, who is still unknown to Churchill. Stalin distrusts its supposedly humanitarian intentions.
Raoul meets again with Elisabeth Kemény, whose husband is now foreign minister. He reminds her of her promise to help and asks her to stand up for his cause with her husband. Elisabeth thinks her husband is a good person, but she doesn't think he has enough influence to make a difference. Kutuzov watches the two of them. He still gives assurances that he wants to help, but secretly he tries to spy on Raoul. On October 13, 1944, the Foreign Minister announced on the radio that Hungary would recognize the Swedish protection passports.
Raoul receives a call from Eichmann, in which he boastfully announces the dissolution of the Budapest ghetto. Raoul went there with Per Anger and Kutuzov and asked the Jews to come to him, even if they did not have their protection pass with them. Their names would be on his list. He regrets not being able to save everyone.
Kutuzov betrays Wallenberg to the Soviet leadership and urges him to be interrogated. Wallenberg is presumably an American spy who, like any banker, wants to make a profit.
Raoul then receives a call from a stranger who calls on him to help rescue Jews. There is a car accident while driving over a bridge. Raoul and the other inmates survive.
Arrow crossers beat Rachel and Serge up, ignoring their papers. Serge still feels guilty. He doesn't want to leave his people alone in the ghetto and asks Rachel to flee without him. He wants to take his fate into his own hands, even if it should cost him his life.
When the Soviet army was just outside Budapest, Raoul invited Eichmann to a personal meeting and tried to get him to rethink. But even the offer of American money cannot induce Eichmann to give up his plans for extermination. Instead, he threatens to storm the ghetto.
The Jewish refugees, including many children, are in front of a bridge over the Danube at night. They are afraid of crossing, as the bridge is guarded by Arrow Crossers. When shots are fired, Serge says goodbye to his wife to look for Raoul. Eichmann and most of the Germans have since fled, but the Arrow Cross continue to rage in the city. Raoul appears and, with reference to international law, demands the release of the children. But it is too late for them. The Arrow Cross members also picked up Serge and executed him as a Jewish spy.
In the headquarters of the remaining part of the German army, General Schmidhuber thinks about his tasks. Raoul calls on him to protect the Jewish ghetto from the attacks of the Arrow Cross. He points out that the Allies would otherwise charge him with murder and genocide. Schmidhuber, who wants to prevent a massacre of the Jews, puts the ghetto under the protection of his few remaining people.
When Budapest is finally liberated by the Soviet army, everyone cheers. But they can no longer find Raoul Wallenberg. Raoul is arrested and interrogated by the Soviets. When asked why he was still in the city, he replied that the surviving Jews in the city were not yet completely safe.
In the final scene, the soloists and choir announce that the world can be saved if there are 36 really good people.
layout
Raoul is largely a choral opera. In addition to the three main solo roles of Raoul, Serge and Rachel, there are more than twenty smaller roles that are filled with choir singers. These step out of the group during their performance and then reintegrate into the choir.
The authors understand Raoul explicitly as an opera . However, there are also formal and stylistic borrowings from the dramatic musical , the spoken theater and the oratorio . The Threepenny Opera is also quoted. The musical language is kept tonal. Kingsley said in an interview that he “deliberately didn't want to do anything intellectual”, “but something from the gut”. He himself grew up as a Jew in Germany and “experienced the Holocaust from a different perspective”. There is a lot of Jewish music in his music, but also German music. It is "a kind of musical autobiography." The opera contains dances, atmospheric duets and melancholy songs.
Work history
After Tierra, Raoul is already the second opera by the German-American composer Gershon Kingsley , who has become known primarily for electronic and synthesizer music . It was created without a specific order. In 1998, Kingsley's piece Voices From the Shadow , based on poems from the Holocaust , premiered in New York . The librettist Michael Kunze attended one of the concerts, then suggested working together and in a few days created a first script with the basic idea. Kingsley then set the finished libretto to music without any further changes. After the opera was completed in 2001, the two searched in vain for a possible performance for a long time.
The opera was first performed in concert on April 30, 2004 with Jerry Hadley , Suzan Hanson and Theodore Lambrinos in the leading roles at the Goethe-Institut New York.
On February 21, 2008, the theater premiered in the New Playhouse of the Bremen Theater . Due to the requirements of the Bremen directorship, Kingsley had to limit himself to 16 musicians and thus perform the work in a chamber music style, although he had actually thought of a large ensemble. The conductor Tarmo Vaask led the Bremen Philharmonic . Julia Haebler directed. The set was designed by Monika Gora and the costumes by Ildikó Debreczeni. The three main roles were sung by Alexej Kosarev (Raoul Wallenberg, in other performances of the production also with Wolfgang von Borries), Karin Neubauer (Rachel Strauss) and Alberto Albarrans (Serge Eisenmann). The performance in the almost sold-out house was received with great applause from the audience and also judged very positively by the critics.
The production was played in November 2008 as a competition entry for the first Opera Competition and Festival with Mezzo Television in the National Theater Szeged (Hungary). In this context, a video recording was made and broadcast internationally by Mezzo TV . The main roles were played by Marcin Habela (Raoul Wallenberg, Habela won the audience award for best actor), Violaine Kiefer (Rachel Strauss) and László Beöthy-Kiss (Serge Eisenmann). The other singers were Achim Rikus (Per Anger), Can Tufan (Staffan Söderblom), Kim Hyung-Jin (Josef Stalin), Allan Parkes (Winston Churchill and German officer), Daniel Wynarski (grandfather), Robert Neil Lichtenberger (Adolf Eichmann) , Zlatina Taralova (Jeanette), Johannes Scheffler (Michail Kutuzov-Tolstoi), Heinrich Bröckerhoff (Iver Olsen), Astrid Kunert (Elisabeth Kemény), Zoltán Melkovics (Gábor Kemény), Daniel Ratchev (General Schmidhuber), Martina Parkes (1st narrator ), Tatjana Kluge (2nd narrator) and Karin-Maria Brenner (3rd narrator). The Szeged Symphony Orchestra was directed by Márton Terts.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Peter Bäumler: World premiere of the opera “Raoul” on February 21, 2008 about the Holocaust by Gershon Kingsley and Michael Kunze at the Bremen Theater (PDF). In: Medaon - magazine for Jewish life in research and education. Issue 2/2008, accessed on December 12, 2017.
- ^ A b Priit Kuusk: Premiere of Kingsley's "Raoul", conducted by Tarmo Vaask. Estonian Music Information Center's performance announcement , March 10, 2008, accessed December 12, 2017.
- ↑ a b World premiere: “Raoul” illuminates the life of the Jewish savior Wallenberg. In: Märkische Onlinezeitung from February 22, 2008, accessed on December 12, 2017.
- ^ A b Benno Schirrmeister: "Raoul" performance in Bremen. “This opera - that's me”. Interview with the composer. In: taz from February 20, 2008, accessed on December 12, 2017.
- ↑ Gershon Kingsley's biography on his website, accessed December 12, 2017.
- ^ Newsletter of April 2004 on the website of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, accessed on December 12, 2017.
- ↑ Program for the Opera Competition and Festival with Mezzo Television 2008 (PDF), pp. 20–22.