Today, Mathis Nitschke's second opera,
Happy Happy, will be performed at the Opéra Comédie in Montpellier. This opera is described by the composer as an 'operatic song cycle with party', and is written for soprano and chorus, chamber orchestra and electronics.
It is Nitschke's second opera after
Jetzt, first performed in Montpellier in November 2012. The composer wrote his own libretto.
There is no alternative. The public debate is under the seal of
fatalism. There is no other objective than that of universal
restrictions. The economy, the climate, overpopulation – the next
catastrophe lies in wait at every bend. Minute by minute, the modern
media feed us bad news. We know we should act but we feel powerless. We
reduce our sphere of activity. We cease asking for anything whatsoever.
We retreat into our shells. The link that would constitute values other
than economic ones is missing. What might we do ?
Happy Happy shows us a society in which efficacity has
become the determining value. It is a matter of favouring the formation
of synapses as early as possible. Schooling is shortened, studies must
be useful, work better organized. Music and the muses have lost their
freedom of mind as well as their playful innocence and find themselves
reduced to the simple functions to fulfil : they serve for learning more
efficiently, communicating more efficiently, relaxing more efficiently,
and procuring a real life more efficiently. Music has lost its
self-worth. Life, too, perhaps.
Happy Happy brings together, in a
sort of cabinet of wonders, impressions, quotations and scenes to become
the plea for autonomy and co-humanity. Going back to the origins of
Greek theatre, the play, written for a singer and a chorus, explores, in
so doing, the connection between individual and crowd. It turns out
that the person’s singing gets lost in the hot-tempered aspiration of
the multitude at the celebration. And life goes on, ‘Happy Happy’. (
reproduced from the composer's website)
Soprano Karen Vourc'h will be joined by the chorus of the Opéra national Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon and the Orchestre national Montpellier Languedoc-Roussillon. It will be conducted by Arno Waschk and directed by Urs Schönebaum.
