Biography

WORLD PREMIERE

January 10th 2010 - Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Roma, Italy - Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia - Antonio Pappano, dir. - Tenor, Bass, Baritone, quartet of men's voices (TTBB) - Ian Bostridge, tenor / John Tomlinson, baritone.

NOTES

At the edge of a city, at midnight, a stray dog from what was evidently a good home encounters a distraught man on the run. It emerges from the latter’s monologues that he has survived a difficult and humiliating period that is none the less shrouded in obscurity. He suffers unspeakably, and everything he says tells of bitterness, loneliness and distress. But we never discover the actual reasons for his pain, only that those reasons still exist. Pursued by a posse of policemen, the stranger kills the little dog in his distress and panic. A murderer, he now sinks appreciably from one qualitative level to another. On the one hand, the music ascends (for the ascension of our little dog), while on the other it descends into the unfathomable depths of the stranger’s soul. Franz Werfel makes it possible for his reader (and also for me, the composer) to read his poem on various levels. I have wanted to set his ‘dramatic poem’ The Sacrifice to music since the early fifties. This dream has now come true thanks to a commission from the Orchestra dell’Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome.
© Hans Werner Henze
 

WORLD PREMIERE

September 30th 2010 - Zeche Zweckel, Gladbeck, Allemagne - ruhrtriennale, ruhr 2010 - Pierre Audi, stage director / Christoph Hetzer, design; Steven Sloane, direction - Chorus - Sopran, Bariton, Tenor, Bass, Bariton, Mezzo - commissioned by Semperoper Dresden and ruhr 2010.

NOTES

Gisela, a young student of art history from the city of Oberhausen, visits Naples with her boyfriend Hanspeter and a group of superficial and arrogant students. They attend a commedia dell’arte performance in a folk theatre and Gisela is fascinated by the young actor Gennario who plays the role of Pulcinella. Gisela and Gennario encounter each other the next day and fall in love. They plan to flee from Naples and the group. Hanspeter, who had planned to propose to Gisela at a restaurant, hears that she has fled to Germany with Gennario.
Having arrived at the railway station of Oberhausen, Gisela and Gennario have nowhere to stay. Sitting on a bank, Gisela falls asleep and has a series of nightmare dreams. Suddenly Hanspeter and his friends appear and attack the couple. During the fight we see in the background Mount Vesuvius exploding and pouring its lava on stage.