events from the story is strictly adhered to, but on the other hand musical associations are handled with great freedom, as a result of Nunes‘ very personal reading of the Märchen. The radiant symbolic force of Goethe’s Das Märchen is conveyed through musical means. Quite apart from the masterly orchestration and the very demanding, virtuosic instrumental parts, a conspicuous feature of this opera is its enormous complexity. The network of countless internal relationships creates continuity and unity within the musical discourse. Aspects of the Staging By 1995, Nunes already had an idea of how the Märchen material should be transferred to the stage. Either in alternation or simultaneously, it should be effected (a) choreographically, (b) through theatrical and (c) through musico-dramatic actions. The magical components of the story, its fairy tale aspect, should be conceived and interpreted through choreography, acting, and scenography (including sets and costumes), though in fact, at the premiere in Lisbon in 2008, other approaches were taken to the staging. Applause for Peter Rundel and performers after Das Märchen in 2008
In addition there is a young prince who, have lost all his possessions, wanders restlessly from one bank to the other, like an ‘errant shadow’. Two restless, cheeky will o’wisps disperse coins, and at crucial moments in the plot a hawk appears. All the characters are affected by a curious, mysterious magic, which denies them a carefree life. They are all waiting for a transformation that they have heard about, though they don’t know exactly how and when it will occur. The man with the lamp knows all the steps and rituals that will need to be taken and implemented at the time of transformation, but he doesn’t know when that time is. In the tale, all the characters experience a metamorphosis and overcome the magic, they acquire new or renewed capacities, and ultimately gain access to a free existence. The overall construction of Das Märchen displays a dramatic structure that sets out from an initial, disorderly state of tension and imperfection, and after a critical moment of crisis finds its way to a new order, harmony and universal perfection. The Opera Das Märchen is Emmnuel Nunes‘ only opera to date. Typical features of his music over the past twenty years are manifest here, but he also opens up new expressive possibilities. In Goethe’s Märchen Nunes discovers an artistic and spiritual substance that matches his own ideas, the enigmatic and complex aspects of many of his works, the diverse connotations of his sonic language and its association with transcendental elements. All the same, Nunes’ starting point is not one of concepts or philiosophical abstractions, but of the concrete images, sentences, words and syllables that are a feature of the story. The imagination with which Goethe shapes his characters, locations, paths and goals is matched by Nunes‘ equally imaginative invention of a melodic ‘style’, a lexicon of harmonies assigned to objects, and by the way he devises timbres and spatial concepts. The impressive score of Das Märchen shows that on the one hand the sequence of
In Nunes‘ view, in this opera the choreography has three functions. In the first instance the events in the basic text should be transferred without introducing new strands into the plot. On the other hand, the danced parts make no direct reference to the plot, but should be inspired by specific analyses of the text. Moreover, a mobile or immobile scenario onstage has to produce a symbolic relationship to the text. The acting dimension should produce a confusing verbal ‘interference’, since some texts will be sung by the singers, as well as being declaimed by the actors. Nunes himself speaks of a ‘supertext’, revealing two ‘subtexts’ which in turn result from a semantic and sonic interpretation of the original text. Round About Das Märchen Numerous satellite works are directly related to this two-act opera, since they are reworked excerpts or fragments (see Fig. 2). The series Épures du serpent vert I-IV, based on the 1st Act, retains the temporal course of the score exactly. By eliminating the voices and the extensive percussion parts, other specific qualities come to the fore. La main noire for three violas concentrates on Scene 3 from the 1st Act, in which the hand of a character from the opera is coloured black after it has been dipped in the river. Mort et vie de la mort, with its three movements, pursues a different logic: here 41 fragments from the opera are brought together, each being organised according to a field of associations: Desire –The Word – Death. Satellite works
Taken from:
Épures du serpent vert I
Prologue and Scene 1 / Tableau 1 (Act I)
Épures du serpent vert II
Scene 1 / Tableau 2 and 3 (Act I)
Épures du serpent vert III Scene 2 (complete, Act I) [planned] Épures du serpent vert IV Scene 3 (complete, Act I) La main noire
fragments from Scene 3 / Tableau 1
Mort et vie de la mort
41 fragments (Acts I and II)
Fig. 2: Satellite works of the opera Das Märchen
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