Documents about HK Gruber's last opera 'Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald'

Following the world première performance of HK Gruber's new opera Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald in Bregenz (see below), I have acquired the following items related to the composer and his opera :

- Andrea Zschunke : HK Gruber - Musik in Kommunikation, Verlag Lafite, 2014 ;
- HK Gruber : Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald, program book from the Bregenz Festival ;
- HK Gruber / Michael Sturminger : Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald, Boosey & Hawkes, libretto.

New productions or revivals of recent operas (4)

During the 2014-2015, several recent operas will be performed with new productions or revived :

- Julian Anderson : Thebans, directed by Pierre Audi, Bonn, June 2015. It will be a revival of the original production first performed in London (ENO), in May 2014 ;
- Jake Heggie : Three Decembers, directed by Emma Griffin, Atlanta, May 2015. The opera was first performed in Houston in February 2008. Also performed in Berkeley and Fort Worth ;
- Hans Werner Henze : Phaedra, directed by Florian Lutz, in Halle, March 2015. The opera was first performed in Berlin in September 2007. Other performances followed in Brussels, Firenze, Copenhagen and Duisburg ;
- Toshio Hosokawa : Matsukaze, directed by Matthias von Stegmann, Kiel, May 2015. New production. The opera was first performed in Brussels in May 2011. Since then, it has also been performed in Berlin ;
- Kevin Puts : Silent Night, directed by Eric Simonson, Montréal, May 2015. Revival of the world première production in St. Paul (MN) in November 2011. Production also performed in Philadelphia (February 2013) and Cincinnati (July 2014). The second production, directed by Octavio Cardenas, already performed in Fort Worth last May will be revived in Kansas City in February 2015. A third production, directed by Tomer Zvulun, will happen in October 2014 in Wexford. It will be the European première.

Today : world première of Marc-André Dalbavie's 'Charlotte Salomon' in Salzburg

Today, the second opéra composed by French composer Marc-André Dalbavie will be performed for the first time in Salzburg at the Felsenreitschule.

 

 ‘A person is sitting beside the sea. He is painting. A tune suddenly enters his mind. As he starts to hum it, he notices that the tune exactly matches what he is trying to commit to paper. A text forms in his head, and he starts to sing the tune with his own words, over and over again in a loud voice until the painting seems complete.’ This is how Charlotte Salomon describes the genesis of her fascinating series of paintings, Life? Or Theatre? The young Jewish artist had fled to southern France following the Kristallnacht pogrom in Berlin on the night of 9/10 November 1938, where she joined her grandparents. She was living in Villefranche when the Second World War broke out. Afraid of the troops who were drawing ever closer from Nazi Germany, her grandmother threw herself to her death from an upstairs window. Her grandfather then told her that when Charlotte was nine her mother had ended her life in the same way. Even worse, she now discovered that a whole series of other relatives had committed suicide. Charlotte sensed that if she, too, was not to fall victim to the family curse or to go mad, she would have to do ‘something altogether insanely special’.

(reproduced from the Salzburger Festspiele website)

Dalbavie's first opera, Gesualdo, based on the life of the famous composer was first performed in October 2010 in Zurich. His second opera has a libretto written by Barbara Honigmann, after Charlotte Salomon's own work, then translated into French.

The cast includes Johanna Wokalek, Marianne Crebassa, Jean-Sébastien Bou, Frédéric Antoun, Vincent Le Texier, Cornelia Kallisch, Eric Huchet. The composer conducts the Mozarteum Orchestra Salzburg and Luc Bondy directs. The first performance will be broadcast live by Austrian radio Ö1.

Today : World première of HK Gruber's new opera in Bregenz

Today, Heinz Karl Gruber's fourth opera will be performed for the first time in Bregenz, Austria. The libretto for Geschichten aus dem Wiener Wald (Tales from the Vienna Woods) has been written by Michael Sturminger, after Ödön von Horvath's play.

 

Gruber's previous operas are : Gomorra (1993), Gloria von Jaxtberg (1994) and Der Herr Nordwind (2005).

The opera is in 3 acts and lasts about 130 minutes. It requires a quartett of main soloists and 9 other singers, as well as a large orchestra of 23 winds, 3 percusionists, harp, piano, 40 strings, a stage band and a cabaret band. The publisher is Boosey & Hawkes.

Tales from the Vienna Woods is the title of a charming waltz by Johann Strauss (the Younger). The title was borrowed by the Austro- Hungarian writer Ödön von Horváth for what became his best known and often filmed play which was premiered at the Deutsches Theater, Berlin, in 1931. A bitter satire about the mendacity and brutality of the petite-bourgeoisie, ironically named after the forested highlands near the Austrian capital that are so idealised in the waltz. In the play, Viennese Gemütlichkeit becomes a hollow phrase; the tragic, brutal story of the sweet girl Marianne and the deeply conventional butcher Oskar reflects the hardships and anxieties of the late 1920s during the global economic crisis.

(from http://bregenzerfestspiele.com)

The opera will be conducted by the composer and directed by the librettist, with the following cast : Ilse Eerens (Marianne), Daniel Schmutzhard (Alfred), Jörg Schneider (Oskar), Angelika Kirchschlager (Valerie), Albert Pesendorfer (Zauberkönig), Anke Vondung (Mother), Anja Silja (Grandmother), Michael Laurenz (Erich), Markus Butter, David Pittman-Jennings, Alexander Kaimbacher and Robert Maszl.

The first performance will be broadcast live by the Austrian radio Ö1.