The Bassarids

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Opera dates
Title: The Bassarids
Original title: The Bassarids
Shape: Opera seria with intermezzo in one act
Original language: English German
Music: Hans Werner Henze
Libretto : WH Auden ,
Chester Kallman ,
Maria Bosse-Sporleder
Literary source: Euripides : The Bacchae
Premiere: August 6, 1966
Place of premiere: Large Salzburg Festival Hall
Playing time: approx. 2 ½ hours
Place and time of the action: Courtyard of the royal palace in Thebes and Mount Kytheron, mythical time
people
  • Dionysus / Dionysus, also voice and the stranger ( tenor )
  • Pentheus , King of Thebes ( baritone )
  • Kadmos / Cadmos, his grandfather, founder of Theben ( bass )
  • Teiresias / Tiresias, an old blind seer (tenor)
  • Captain of the Royal Guard (baritone)
  • Agaue / Agave, Kadmos 'daughter and Pentheus' mother ( mezzo-soprano )
  • Autonoe , her sister (high soprano )
  • Beroe , an old slave, formerly wet nurse Semeles and Pentheus' (mezzo-soprano)
  • a young woman, a slave in Agaue's household ( silent role )
  • a child, her daughter (silent role)
  • Servants, musicians
  • Bassarids (maenads, bacchants), citizens of Thebes, guards, servants ( choir )

intermezzo

  • Venus (mezzo-soprano, singer of the Agaue)
  • Proserpina (high soprano, singer of the Autonoe)
  • Kalliope (tenor, singer of Teiresias)
  • Adonis (baritone, captain's singer)

Die Bassariden (English original title: The Bassarids ), Opera seria in one act with an intermezzo, is a literary opera by Hans Werner Henze , based on the tragedy Die Bacchen des Euripides ; in the intermezzo the legend The Judgment of Calliope is presented. The libretto is by WH Auden and Chester Kallman . A German version by Helmut Reinold (furnishings) and Maria Bosse-Sporleder (text) was performed at the premiere on August 6, 1966 in the Großer Festspielhaus Salzburg .

action

prehistory

After Kadmos killed a dragon in battle, the goddess Athena ordered him to plant its teeth in the earth. Armed men sprouted from it and immediately fought. Together with the five survivors, Kadmos built the city of Thebes , of which he later became king. Kadmos had four daughters: Autonoe , Ino , Semele and Agaue . He married the youngest, Agaue, to Echion, one of the city's founders. The two had the son Pentheus . Semele, on the other hand, fell in love with the god Zeus and became pregnant by him. Zeus' jealous wife Hera awakened in her the desire to see her lover in his true divine form. However, Semele could not stand its shine and burned. Zeus saved the unborn child by sewing it into his thigh. It was named Dionysus .

First sentence

The people await the arrival of Pentheus, whom his aging grandfather Kadmos has appointed as his successor as ruler of Thebes. A distant cry heralds the appearance of the god Dionysus on Mount Kytheron, and the crowd rushes off to pay homage to him. The old blind seer Teiresias is also fascinated by the new cult and its dances. He advises Kadmos not to despise the young god, as he will soon gain power. Agaue, however, doubts the divinity of her nephew Dionysus. Beroe , the wet nurse of both Pentheus and Dionysus, holds back her opinion. Kadmos is undecided. There is no way he wants to get into trouble with the gods. Then the captain of the royal guard appears and reads out a proclamation from the new ruler Pentheus: The latter declares Dionysus a deceiver and forbids the cult in the strictest terms. All followers are threatened with the ban. In order to emphasize his prohibition, Pentheus personally extinguishes the flame on the altar of Semele's tomb. Agaue is impressed with her son's determination. But then a voice beckons to the Kytheron. The people cannot resist her, and Agaue and her sister Autonoe also join the crowd as if under a spell.

Second sentence

Kadmos warns his grandson once again against disregarding the gods. He believes in the divinity of Dionysus and basically honored all gods during his own reign. Pentheus, however, considers the new cult to be a lie. He orders the captain to arrest all supporters and bring them to him. Refusals are to be punished with death. He explains to Beroe the main features of his faith: For him only truth and goodness count. Dionysus, on the other hand, is an “ungod” and “enemy of light”. Pentheus swears to Beroe that from now on he would do without wine, meat and women. The captain introduces a group of Bacchantes (followers of the Dionysus cult) to the king, including Agaue, Autonoe, Teiresias and a young mother with her daughter. Pentheus notices a young man because, unlike the others, he is not in a trance. Pentheus orders the captain to torture the prisoners to find out the whereabouts of their leader. He asks his mother Agaue himself, but receives only an ecstatic aria in response. The captain's torture methods are also unsuccessful. Beroe tries to point out to Pentheus that the strange young man is Dionysus himself. Pentheus does not want to hear them, however. He has his mother and aunt locked up and banished Teiresias. Then he turns to the young man to hear him out. He claims that Dionysus is right with him. His name is Acoetes, a Lydian merchant's son and who met the god on Chios. There he found a beautiful child and brought it to Naxos at his request (Dionysus' sea voyage). Pentheus also has him taken away for torture.

Third sentence

First part

The prisoners can escape during an earthquake. The sacrificial flame on the Semeles tomb ignites again suddenly. Pentheus seems increasingly fascinated by the young man's beauty, but continues to reject his rites. The young man has Beroe bring his mother's mirror and shows Pentheus what is happening on the Kytheron.

intermezzo

Garden with mythological statues, framed by a proscenium arch and side boxes of a rococo theater

Agaue, Autonoe, Teiresias and the captain dress up for the shepherd's game The Judgment of Calliope. In it Agaue plays the goddess Venus , Autonoe plays her rival Proserpina and the captain plays the beautiful young man Adonis, whom they both adore . Teiresias mimes the referee in the form of Calliope , the muse of epic poetry. She asks the two women to justify their claim. Venus begins: King Kinrys of Cyprus boasted of the beauty of his daughter Myrrha, whom he declared to be more beautiful than Venus. She took revenge for this insult by making Myrrha in love with her own father. When Kinrys was badly drunk one night, Myrrha took the opportunity to sleep with him - and became pregnant. Her father was so upset about it that he wanted to kill her. In her need, Myrrha called on Venus for help. When Kinrys struck her with the sword, Venus transformed Myrrha into a myrtle, which was broken by the blow and released little Adonis. Venus was thus significantly involved in its birth. Proserpina asks her to tell the rest of the story: Venus realized that the child would later become a beautiful youth and that it would be endangered. So she locked it in a box that she took to the underworld, the realm of Proserpine and Plutus . There Proserpina opened the box and taught the boy the art of love. Kalliope recognizes that both women have an equal right to Adonis, but that Adonis also needs time for himself. Therefore, he should live a third of the year (under Capricorn) with Venus, another third (under the snake) with Proserpine and the last third (in Leo) be free. Venus, however, ties Adonis to herself with her magic ribbon all year round. Her jealous husband Mars kills Adonis in the form of a boar. The game ends with a mourning song from all participants.

Second part

Pentheus feels repulsed by what has been seen. However, he is not sure if he can trust the mirror. He can only learn the full truth by going to Mount Kytheron himself. The stranger advises him to dress up as a woman to be on the safe side. Beroe realizes that Dionysus wants to lure his cousin into a trap. With reference to the fact that she was their wet nurse, she asks him to spare his cousin. Dionysus doesn't want to hear about it. He accuses Beroe of failing to protect his mother Semele. On the mountain, the disguised Pentheus observes the wild goings-on of his subjects, while Beroe is already complaining about his loss in Thebes. The old Kadmos worriedly decides to watch outside the temple. On the Kytheron, the Bassarids ecstatically praise Dionysus. A voice tells them that a stranger has been hiding among them. Pentheus is recognized and the crowd pounces on him. His own mother Agaue kills him believing it is a lion and takes his head as a trophy. The others celebrate what they did.

Fourth sentence

Still in a trance, Agaue brings the supposed lion's head to Thebes and shows it to Kadmos. Beroe demands an explanation from her about the whereabouts of the king. To resolve their rapture, Kadmos reminds them of their past and family and encourages them to take a closer look at the head. Only now does Agaue realize that she killed her own son. Meanwhile, the captain's people have found the rest of the body at the Kytheron and are bringing it into town. Agaue desperately desires death herself. The people, however, do not feel guilty about what happened. Agaue addresses her dead son and explains that their actions were the will of the gods. Dionysus now openly reveals himself. He banishes the royal family from the city and orders the captain to burn the palace. His vengeance for his mother's death is now complete. He asks Proserpina on behalf of his father Zeus to release Semele. Together with his mother, now called Thyone , he ascends to heaven. Two statues remain in front of Semele's tomb, in front of which the people prostrate themselves in adoration.

layout

orchestra

The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:

In 1992 Henze created a version with a reduced orchestral line-up.

music

The opera is to be played without a break. Formally it corresponds to a four-movement symphony . Accordingly, the individual parts are not referred to as acts , but as sentences . They testify to Henze's preoccupation with the works of Gustav Mahler . The first movement is in sonata form . The two opposing principles of Pentheus and Dionysus are presented in the exposition . Pentheus has "block-like, dense sounds" with fanfare motifs, while Dionysus has "buzzing, luxuriant soundscapes". The two characters are assigned different "twelve-tone modes": that of the rational Pentheus is kept more diatonic , while that of Dionysus contains more chromatics . The two topics do not follow one another as blocks, but are interwoven in a complex way. The second movement is a scherzo with orgiastic dances. The aria of Dionysus quotes the beginning of the saraband from the first part of Johann Sebastian Bach's keyboard exercise . The third movement, in which the two opponents meet, is an adagio. It is interrupted by an intermezzo of completely opposite character and ends in a fugue . In the duet between the two protagonists, this movement contains a quotation from Mahler's 5th Symphony . The fourth movement is a complex Passacaglia that leads to a funeral march . The rhythm of the latter also shapes the apotheosis of Dionysus. Henze called this music the " Dies irae of the gods" and "Lacrymosa des Eros".

The individual movements of the opera flow seamlessly into one another. The transition to the second movement, for example, is the seductive voice that lures the people to Kytheron. There are also flowing transitions at the beginning and end of the intermezzo. The processing of the two opposing themes pervades the entire opera. The musical material of Dionysus gains more and more importance and eventually supplants that of Pentheus.

In addition to the examples already mentioned, there are further quotations from Bach's St. Matthew Passion and his English Suite in D minor. For the rhythms, Henze was inspired by southern Italian folk songs.

The choir is assigned an important role in Henze's opera. He not only comments on the plot like the ancient Greek theater choir , but also provides a “magical sound background”. The call of joy "Ayayalaya" of the Eskimo language can be heard over and over again. Some of the positions assigned to the choir in the Euripides model were assigned to soloists: the nurse Beroe, the captain and Agaue's sister Autonoe. The roles of Agaue, Kadmos and Teiresias are expanded and more complex than in Die Bakchen .

Work history

Hans Werner Henze's “Opera seria” Die Bassariden was commissioned by the Salzburg Festival . The libretto was written by WH Auden and Chester Kallman , who also wrote the text for Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers . One goal of the two was to stimulate Henze to study Richard Wagner's musical drama , and Auden specifically pointed out his Götterdämmerung . The basis of the new text was the tragedy The Bacchae by the classical Greek playwright Euripides . During the rehearsals for the elegy in 1962, Auden Henze pointed out this possible subject for another joint project. A few months later, Henze dealt more closely with the proposal and was "immediately carried away by the power of the scenic situations that the work offered". He had the libretto at the end of August 1963. Due to other activities, however, he did not begin composing until the end of 1964, for which it took him almost a year.

The original language of the opera is English. A German version by Helmut Reinold (furnishings) and Maria Bosse-Sporleder (text) was performed at the premiere on August 6, 1966 in the Großer Festspielhaus Salzburg . The Vienna Philharmonic and the Vienna State Opera Choir played under the musical direction of Christoph von Dohnányi , with Loren Driscoll as Dionysus, Kostas Paskalis as Pentheus, Peter Lagger as Kadmos, Helmut Melchert as Teiresias, William Dooley as Hauptmann, Kerstin Meyer as Agaue, Ingeborg Hallstein as Autonoe and Vera Little as Beroe. It was a co-production with the Deutsche Oper Berlin , which showed the work as a German premiere in the same year. Gustav Rudolf Sellner directed, Filippo Sanjust took care of the stage and costumes , and Deryk Mendel provided the choreography.

Despite some critical voices, the performance of Henze's first symphonic opera was a great success. Objections were particularly concerned with the libretto, saturated with gloomy allusions, the staging or the outmoded classicism, but not the extraordinary complexity of the composition. Several critics now saw in Henze a worthy successor to Richard Strauss . The reviewer of the Tagesspiegel wrote: "Everything merges into a unity of a full and powerful overall sound, shaped by the personality of the composer, who has managed to concentrate his creative powers so far in the greatest concentration of his creative powers in mastering this great and terrible subject." Henze felt himself of the enthusiasm and especially the Strauss comparison rather confused and misunderstood. He said: "It was suddenly as if I was invited to play a role, a restorative one that didn't interest me at all." The strict symphonic form was just as neglected as the political content of his opera in which he was according to his own statement, dealt with topics of freedom / lack of freedom or repression / revolt / revolution. In it, the work already anticipated the 1968 movement . In his subsequent works, such as the oratorio The Raft of Medusa , Henze took an even more clear stand for his political convictions. Due to the huge cast, the high demands on the performers and the willingness of the audience to record a work of this length and complexity in a concentrated manner without a break, doubts were often expressed about the repertoire of the bassarids . Nevertheless, there were a number of other productions. The 1974 production in London, directed by Henze himself, had an unrestricted success. The music critic William Mann put the importance of the bassarids on a level with Alban Berg's Wozzeck and Richard Strauss' Die Frau ohne Schatten . It is noticeable that in the first few years the plant met with interest, especially abroad. The reluctance at the time in Germany is apparently due to Henze's political orientation, which was rejected by the German music business. It was not until 1975 that the Bassarids were shown again in Frankfurt.

Henze had already canceled the intermezzo during the performance he directed in Santa Fe in 1968. He considered this version, which was about 20 minutes shorter from 1992, to be definitive. Instead, the revised score contains a section lasting only seconds, while the intermezzo has been declared a separate work. A new, smaller instrument line-up enables performance at smaller opera houses. There is also a version of the intermezzo for harpsichord and mandolin created by Henning Brauel in 1974 for the London performance.

Recordings

literature

  • Wolfram Schottler: "The Bassarids" by Hans Werner Henze - the path of a myth from ancient tragedy to modern opera (dissertation from the University of Hamburg). WVT Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, Trier 1992, ISBN 3-88476-044-0 .
  • David E. Anderson: The Bassarids. Hans Werner Henze. In: The Opera Quarterly. Vol. 9, Issue 3, Spring 1993, pp. 186-188, doi: 10.1093 / oq / 9.3.186
  • Christiane Krautscheid: On the history of the reception of the Bassarids. First printing: Program of the Bavarian State Opera, 2008 ( PDF from Schott Music ).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k Monika Schwarz: Die Bassariden. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater . Volume 3: Works. Henze - Massine. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-492-02413-0 , pp. 3-6.
  2. ↑ a b The Judgment of Calliope - The judgment of the Calliope. In: Schott Music : Hans Werner Henze - A guide to stage works, p. 36 f. ( online at ISSUU).
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i The Bassarids. In: Harenberg opera guide. 4th edition. Meyers Lexikonverlag, 2003, ISBN 3-411-76107-5 , pp. 365-367.
  4. ↑ a b c Wulf Konold : The Bassariden. In: Rudolf Kloiber , Wulf Konold, Robert Maschka: Handbuch der Oper. 9th, expanded, revised edition 2002. Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag / Bärenreiter, ISBN 3-423-32526-7 , pp. 292-295.
  5. ↑ a b c The Bassarids. Video stream at Operavision, accessed on November 15, 2019.
  6. ↑ Information on works from Schott Music, accessed on March 31, 2019.
  7. ↑ a b Archive of the Salzburg Festival , accessed on March 31, 2019.
  8. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l Christiane Krautscheid: On the reception history of the Bassariden. First printing: Program of the Bavarian State Opera, 2008 ( PDF from Schott Music ).
  9. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q work information from Schott Music , accessed on March 31, 2019.
  10. ↑ a b c d Hans Werner Henze. In: Andreas Ommer: Directory of all complete opera recordings (= Zeno.org . Volume 20). Directmedia, Berlin 2005.