Senza sangue (opera)

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Opera dates
Title: Senza sangue
Shape: Opera in one act
Original language: Italian
Music: Péter Eötvös
Libretto : Mari Mezei
Literary source: Alessandro Baricco : Senza sangue
Premiere: May 1st, 2015 (concert)
May 15th, 2016 (scenic)
Place of premiere: Cologne Philharmonic and Avignon Opera
Playing time: about 50 minutes
people

Senza sangue ( Without Blood ) is an opera in one act by Péter Eötvös (music) with a libretto by Mari Mezei. It is based on the second part of the novel of the same name by Alessandro Baricco , published in 2002, and is designed for a joint performance with Béla Bartók's one-act play, Duke Bluebeard's Castle . The concert premiere took place on May 1st, 2015 in the Cologne Philharmonic . It was staged for the first time on May 15, 2016 at the Avignon Festival.

action

The prehistory of the opera takes place during a civil war in an unnamed country. The little girl Nina has to see her family being killed by fighters in their apartment. Nina only survived because she was in hiding. One of the murderers had tracked them down, but spared them. She spent the following years in a kind of schizophrenic state. During this time she gradually took revenge on all murderers except for her savior.

The opera itself takes place many years later. The stage represents a town square. On one side there is a small kiosk, in the middle the terrace of a café, on the other side a small hotel. Here the two meet again for the first time.

Scene 1. In the kiosk, a 72-year-old man sorts lottery tickets. An elderly lady comes in to buy a bill. They start a conversation. The woman knows that he calls himself Tito and invites him to have a drink with her. Tito suggests the café across the street and they both walk over.

Scene 2. On the café terrace, they both remember the terrible events of their childhood. He is the last survivor of the attack. She says that when she was a child she was called Nina. Her father had told her to hide under a trapdoor and she saw her family killed. The man shot her father first. Then he opened the trap door and aimed the gun at her. He was twenty years old at the time, and neither could his comrades forget the experience later.

Scene 3. Monologue. While the man gets drinks, the woman ponders the incomprehensibility of life. One always seems to want to return to the hell from which one once came.

Scene 4. The man returns. He remembers how his comrades were killed. At first, Salinas died in a strange way. It was believed at the time that his doctor had poisoned him. The woman talks about her childhood in a dispassionate tone: she grew up in a kind of orphanage until Uribe took her with him and told everyone she was his daughter. Later he lost it to Count Torrelavid in a card game. She was married at the age of fourteen.

Scene 5. The man remembers how people talked about her back then. They were afraid of her and thought she was crazy. Years later, when the count was killed in an accident, it was believed that she had been taken to a sanatorium. However, a few years later she disappeared. Four years later, El Gurre was shot. A note with her name was found in his pocket. Since then, he's been counting on her showing up and killing him too after talking to him.

Scene 6. The woman remembers that night again. He had fired the first shot, the second Salinas and the last El Gurre. The man justifies himself by saying that there was a war then and they were soldiers. They would have believed in a better world. The woman, however, thinks that the war was over by then. You would have won it - but is it a better world now? She thinks they killed out of vindictiveness. The man points out that she is also being driven into revenge herself. She should do what she must, but leave him alone. He is not afraid, just tired.

Scene 7. Both sit in silence for a while without looking at each other. Then the man says that when he found her in her hole, he felt a strange peace that he later never found again. The woman suggests going to a hotel with her. He doesn't need to be afraid. The man accepts and gives his real name for the first time: Pedro Cantos. The woman would like to be called Nina again. They both get up and go to the hotel.

layout

In the program booklet for the New York performance, the composer Péter Eötvös explained his opera: Since both characters have been preparing for their meeting all their lives, every single spoken sentence is full of tension. The relationship between the two is constantly changing. In this respect, the work of Béla Bartók's one-act act is similar to Bluebeard's Castle . The division into seven scenes and the wave-like arc of tension also correspond to that of Bartók's opera. While this ends gloomy, however, there is a possibility in Senza sangue that light will show itself for the couple in the end.

Instrumentation

According to the composer, in contrast to his previous operas, he placed less emphasis on a colorful palette of sounds, but aimed at sharp contrasts and shades of "black, gray and white", which he compared to a black and white film. Apart from the missing organ, the instrumentation is identical to that of Duke Bluebeard's castle . The sound should appear rather massive. Often many instruments play the same line. Polyphony, however, takes a back seat. Eötvös compared this to Japanese calligraphy.

The orchestral line-up includes the following instruments:

Work history

Senza sangue is Péter Eötvös ' tenth opera. It was composed in 2014/2015 as a commission for KölnMusic and the New York Philharmonic . The score contains a dedication to the composer Henri Dutilleux, who died in 2013 : “Invocation to Henri Dutilleux”, who shared the financial share of the 2011 Marie-Josée-Kravis Price for New Music with Eötvös and two other composers. The opening notes of the opera HD are also intended as a tribute to Henri Dutilleux.

The opera is based on the second part of the 2002 novel of the same name by Alessandro Baricco . The librettist Mari Mezei kept its text largely true to the original. From the very beginning, Eötvös saw the opera as a prefix to Béla Bartók's one-act play, Duke Bluebeard's Castle , to which it is related in spirit, style and dramaturgically.

The concert premiere took place on May 1, 2015 as part of the Eight Bridges Festival in the Cologne Philharmonic . Anne Sofie von Otter and Russell Braun sang . The New York Philharmonic played under the direction of Alan Gilbert .

The work was staged for the first time on May 15, 2016 at the Avignon Festival in the local opera house. The Orchester Region Avignon-Provence played there under the direction of the composer. The production was by Rébert Alföldi, the costumes by Danièle Barraud and the set by Emmanuelle Favre.

There were further performances in 2015 in New York, in 2016 in the Gothenburg Concert Hall , in the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and in Pécs and Budapest as part of the Armel Opera Festival . A recording of the performance there on June 27, 2016 was shown as a webstream on Arte Concert . For a performance at the Hamburg State Opera in 2016, Eötvös revised the work by thinning out the orchestral setting and integrating a horn solo into the fourth scene. It was played in London in 2017 and in the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest in 2018 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Program booklet of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra (English, PDF) ( Memento from August 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ a b c d e work information from Schott Music , accessed on January 28, 2019.
  3. ↑ Performance information for the Armel Opera Festival ( Memento from August 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on August 5, 2016.
  4. ^ "Senza Sangue" by Péter Eötvös and "Bluebeard's Castle" by Béla Bartók at the Armel Opera Festival at Arte Concert ( Memento from December 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).
  5. ^ Albrecht Thiemann: Couples, passers-by. In: Opernwelt from January 2017, p. 14.