Written on skin

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Work data
Title: Written on skin
Lauren Snouffer as Agnès and Mark Stone as Protector in a production of Opera Philadelphia, 2018

Lauren Snouffer as Agnès and Mark Stone as Protector in a production of Opera Philadelphia, 2018

Shape: Opera in three parts
Original language: English
Music: George Benjamin
Libretto : Martin Crimp
Literary source: anonymous Occitan explanatory text Guillem de Cabestanh - Le cœur mangé from the 13th century
Premiere: July 7, 2012
Place of premiere: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence
Playing time: approx. 1 ½ hours
Place and time of the action: 13th century in Provence
people

Written on Skin is an opera by George Benjamin that premiered on July 7, 2012 at the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence . The opera was performed in this production in London and Paris the following year. The premiere performances were each conducted by George Benjamin himself. The opera's libretto was written by Martin Crimp , with whom George Benjamin had already written the opera Into the Little Hill .

action

First part

1st scene: "Chorus of Angles"

Three angels are watching a married couple in the real world. They tell that Agnès was married to her husband, the wealthy Protector, at a very young age. The Protector is prone to "purity and violence" and regards his wife as his property.

2nd scene: "The Protector, the Boy and Agnès"

The Protector would like to see his exploits and his story immortalized in a book. That is why the first angel enters the real world as “the boy” and offers his services as an illustrator. It describes possible scenarios for images to the Protector, which is enthusiastic because it appears generous and powerful in all images. Agnès is suspicious of the situation, she rejects the boy.

3rd scene: "Chorus of Angels"

The three angels recall the brutality and misogyny of the biblical creation story.

4th scene: "Agnès and the Boy"

Agnès sneaks into the boy's room to look at his work - as an illiterate she is fascinated by the boy's art. When he shows her a picture of Eve, she laughs and asks him to paint a picture of a “real” woman like herself. An erotic tension arises between the two.

5th scene: "The Protector and the Visitors - John and Marie"

It is winter. The jealous Protector noticed his wife's change in behavior. The other two angels visit him in the form of Agnes sister Mary and her husband John. Mary tries to stir up the Protector's distrust of the boy by holding him against how immoral it is to have this young man in the house next to his wife. The Protector is already so convinced of the boy's work that he won't let anything come of him.

6th scene: "Agnès and the Boy"

Agnès is alone in bed. The boy comes to show her a picture. The picture shows a house and a woman lying sleepless in her bed. Agnès is enthusiastic about the idea of ​​being part of a picture. The two sleep together.

Second part

7th scene: "The Protectors bad dream"

The other two angels visit the Protector at night and give him nightmares: They complain about the cost of the book, and it has a hidden page that shows Agnès and the boy together in a “secret bed”. Again they stir up his distrust of the boy.

8th scene: "The Protector and Agnès"

When the Protector wakes up, Agnès is not lying next to him, but looks out the window. Outside, she sees her husband's subordinates commit terrible atrocities. Houses are burned down and children are impaled on spears. When she asks her husband, he tells her not to look out.

Agnès begins to make advances to her husband and asks him to touch and kiss her. He gets angry and keeps repeating: “You are a child!” Finally she replies that she is not a child and that he should ask the boy who she is.

9th scene: "The Protector and the Boy"

The Protector follows the boy into the forest, where he looks at his reflection in a knife. He tries to find out from him what happened. When he gets angry at the boy's vague answers, the boy replies that he will never harm him because he protects and loves him.

When the Protector collapses and asks the boy directly whether he is having an affair with Agnès, the latter claims that he is having an affair with Mary.

Enter Mary and John, and Mary begins describing their sexual desires.

10th scene: "Agnès and the Boy"

Agnès found out about the boy's alleged relationship with Mary. She goes back to his room, where she confronts him. The boy can calm her down. She then asks the boy to paint a picture of her love with which she wants to confront and destroy her husband. The boy initially refuses, which makes Agnès jealous again. This time she accuses the boy of loving her husband. Finally the boy agrees.

third part

11th scene: "The Protector, Agnès, and the Boy"

The boy introduces his book and shows Agnès and the Protector one page of cruelty after the other. When the protector impatiently asks for pictures of paradise, the boy replies, surprised, that there are representations of paradise on earth that should remind him of his own surroundings.

Agnès asks him about the special side with which she wants to show her husband her relationship with the boy, and the boy gives her a written side. Agnès, who cannot read, is desperate.

12th scene: "The Protector and Agnès"

The Protector reads the page. In it, the boy describes his relationship with Agnès in great detail - exactly as Agnès had wanted. The Protector is devastated. Agnès asks him unmoved to show her the “word for love” on the sheet.

13th scene: "Chorus of Angels and The Protector"

The angels recall the cruelty of God who created man out of dust and then drove him to despair with contradicting wishes. They visit the Protector and ask him to follow the boy into the forest to murder him there.

14th scene: "The Protector and Agnès"

The Protector tries to bring Agnès back under his control. He serves her a meal and forces her to eat. Again and again he asks her how she likes it. After she eats something, he reveals to her that it was the boy's heart. Agnès replies that she doesn't want to eat anything else after this meal.

15th scene: "The Boy / First Angel"

The boy, now again the first angel, shows one last picture. In it, the Protector attacks Agnès with a knife. She jumps out of the window and dies.

layout

Instrumentation

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

libretto

The core content of the libretto is based on a legend from the 13th century from the anonymous Occitan explanatory text Guillem de Cabestanh - Le coeur mangé: According to legend, the well-known troubadour Guillem de Cabestany was the lover of a certain margarida or seremonda, which, however, shared with Raimon von Rosselló was married. When Raimon found out about the affair, he killed Cabestany and fed his wife's heart. After he told her what she had eaten, she committed suicide by jumping out the window. The story was also processed in the Decamerone (around 1350) and other works such as Ezra Pound's cycle of poems Cantos .

The librettist Martin Crimp supplemented this plot core with scenes from a modern world of the 21st century, in which three "angels" slip into the roles of the artist, Agnès' sister and her husband and repeatedly leave the plot. As a result, they form an external framework in which they “invent” the actual story themselves, just as the boy invents his book in the inner story.

music

According to the composer George Benjamin , the composition contains “no imitation of medieval music”, but at most allusions to “something archaic” through certain “pure” intervals. The orchestra mainly serves to support or color the vocal lines and only rarely unfolds its “full power” in tiny interludes that usually take place within the scenes, and more rarely in between. In memory of the “art of illustration”, which is so important for the plot, Benjamin used a large color palette and added two instruments, which are seldom used today and which are reserved for certain moments of the opera, with the bass viol and the glass harmonica . The orchestra has an unusual structure. Some enlarged groups of instruments, such as the clarinets, trumpets or percussionists, are juxtaposed with a slightly reduced string group. For the first time in one of his works Benjamin used a countertenor whose voice “automatically has something supernatural, even mythical - from another world”. Benjamin found “its own atmosphere, specific sound and idiom” for each individual scene. He dispensed with leitmotifs, but used recurring "harmony types" to create a "context and tension" across the entire opera.

Work history

Guillem de Cabestany

George Benjamin wrote the opera Written on Skin in 2012 as a composition commission from the Festival d'Aix-en-Provence , the Nederlandse Opera Amsterdam , the Théâtre du Capitole Toulouse , the Royal Opera House Covent Garden London and the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino . Martin Crimp wrote the libretto .

The world premiere took place on July 7, 2012 in Aix-en-Provence. The composer himself directed the Mahler Chamber Orchestra . Christopher Purves (Protector), Barbara Hannigan (Agnès), Bejun Mehta (First Angel / Boy), Rebecca Jo Loeb (Second Angel / Marie) and Allan Clayton (Third Angel / John) sang . The staging was by Katie Mitchell .

The premiere was a great success. The French daily Le Monde described Written on Skin as the best opera since Wozzeck . It was honored with the International Opera Award 2013 and named "World Premiere of the Year" of the 2012/13 season in the critics' survey by Opernwelt magazine .

In the following years, the world premiere production was taken over by the initially cooperating theaters and festivals as well, so in 2013 at the Wiener Festwochen and the Munich Opera Festival , in Tanglewood (concert version) and in the Paris Opéra-Comique, and in 2015 in the New York David H. Koch Theater. A recording of the 2013 performance at the Royal Opera House has been released on DVD. Here Victoria Simmonds took on the role of Second Angel / Marie.

On a tour in the spring of 2016, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra under the direction of the composer played a semi-staged production by Benjamin Davis a.o. with most of the leading actors from the world premiere. a. in the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona, ​​in the Teatro Real in Madrid, in the London Barbican Hall , in the Konzerthaus Dortmund and in the Cologne Philharmonic . The Orchester Philharmonique de Radio France played the work in February 2020 under Benjamin's direction in concert at the Philharmonie de Paris and in the Wiener Konzerthaus .

There were also several new productions:

  • 2013 in the Theater Bonn . Musical direction: Hendrik Vestmann , production and equipment: Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka. Evez Abdulla (Protector), Miriam Clark (Agnès), Terry Wey (First Angel / Boy), Susanne Blattert (Second Angel / Marie), Tamás Tarjányi (Third Angel / John). The piece had already been bought “blindly” for this production before the premiere.
  • 2014 at the Landestheater Detmold as a co-production with the Royal Stockholm Opera (performed there in 2015). Musical director: Lutz Rademacher, production: Kay Metzger , equipment: Petra Mollérus, video design: Martin Kemner. Andreas Jören (Protector), Vera-Lotte Böcker (Agnès), Bernhard Landauer (First Angel / Boy), Anna Werle (Second Angel / Marie), Markus Gruber (Third Angel / John).
  • 2015 in the Theater St. Gallen . Musical direction: Otto Tausk, production: Nicola Raab, set design: Mirella Weingarten. Jordan Shanahan (Protector), Evelyn Pollock (Agnès), Benno Schachtner (First Angel / Boy), Theresa Holzhauser (Second Angel / Marie), Nik Kevin Koch (Third Angel / John).
  • 2017/18 at the Opera Philadelphia. Musical direction: Corrado Rovaris , production: William Kerley. Mark Stone (Protector), Lauren Snouffer (Agnès), Anthony Roth Costanzo (First Angel / Boy), Krisztina Szabó (Second Angel / Marie), Alasdair Kent (Third Angel / John).

Web links

Commons : Written on Skin  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Preface believes score on fabermusic.com .
  2. ↑ Written on Skin at Theater Bonn , accessed on December 31, 2016.
  3. ↑ a b c d e f Program booklet of the "Zeitinsel George Benjamin" from 10. – 12. March 2016 in the Konzerthaus Dortmund (PDF).
  4. ↑ a b program of the performance on March 13, 2016 in the Cologne Philharmonic (PDF).
  5. ↑ Written on Skin - review. In: The Guardian, July 8, 2012, accessed January 1, 2017.
  6. ↑ Written on Skin at the Royal Opera London , accessed January 1, 2017.
  7. ↑ a b Written on Skin - Benjamin at the Barbican with the Mahler Chamber Orchestra ( Memento from January 1, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on January 1, 2017.
  8. ↑ August 2013. Concert schedule of the Mahler Chamber Orchestra , accessed on January 2, 2017.
  9. ↑ Balance of the year: strong teams or: what remains of 2012/13? . Retrieved October 17, 2016.
  10. ↑ Productions of Written on Skin at Operabase (productions, cast, calendar) ( Memento from January 3, 2017 in the web archive archive.today ).
  11. ↑ Information on the DVD of the Royal Opera House , accessed on January 1, 2017.
  12. ↑ Performance information of the Gran Teatre del Liceu , accessed on January 1, 2017.
  13. ↑ Performance information of the Teatro Real , accessed on January 1, 2017.
  14. ↑ Program of the Philharmonie de Paris on February 14, 2020 , accessed on February 17, 2020.
  15. ↑ Program of the Wiener Konzerthaus on February 16, 2020 , accessed on February 17, 2020.
  16. ^ Regine Müller: Wohlklang im Bunker - Benjamin: Written on Skin Bonn / Theater. In: Opernwelt from November 2013, p. 44.
  17. ^ Regine Müller: Signs and bodies - Benjamin: Written on Skin Detmold / Landestheater. In: Opernwelt from June 2014, p. 39.
  18. ↑ Clemens Prokop: From afar the sound floats - Benjamin: Written on Skin Sankt Gallen / Opera House. In: Opernwelt from July 2015, p. 46.
  19. ↑ Written on Skin at Opera Philadelphia , accessed March 9, 2018.