2017 June/December

The Raven by Toshio Hosokawa (*1955),Text by Edgar Allan Poe
Chamber opera in English

Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern in cooperation with
Théâtre National de Luxembourg

Premiere Kaiserslautern 18 June 2017
Premiere Luxembourg: 7 December 2017


Musical direction and rehearsals with orchestra members

at Pfalztheatre Kaiserslautern: Johannes Witt
Musical direction with United Instruments of Lucilin in Luxembourg: Jonathan Kaell

Director: Martina Veh
Set design: Christl Wein
Lighting Design: Harald Zidek
Dramaturgy Elias Glatzle

Draughtsman on stage: Freddy Engel

with: Polina Artsis (mezzo-soprano)
 
A double project with two directly contemporary chamber operas shows quasi crossover moments of cultural encounter between Asia and the Western world. (together with "Heart Sutra" by Christian Jost, see projects)

The Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa (*1955) chose a poem by Edgar Allan Poe as the basis for his mono opera "The Raven", premiered in Brussels in 2012, and finds analogies to Japanese Nō theatre here. It tells of a young man's mysterious nocturnal encounter with a raven, which becomes a medium to contact his deceased lover.

 
"And the raven, never flitting,

still is sitting, still is sitting
On the pallid bust of Pallas

just above my chamber door" (Edgar Allan Poe)


The atmosphere of the uncanny:
It is about the extraordinary return of the dead, which affect the fate of the living.
Curse of the past, the effect of a committed misdeed.

The dark double.  In the split, he feels morally superior to the dark double.
The double is the siren song of death. The double stands for the encounter with one's own death, which is own death, which is inherent in life. The artist in the psychodrama seems to experience his own death himself.
Ritual of the mask.  Obsession is nothing other than the extreme form of one's own alienation in the desire of the Other.

The artist's loss in the hermetic world of his imagination!
The boundaries between reality and surreality become blurred.

The production was so successful that the audience wanted to buy the artwork by Freddy Engel created during the performance, so an exhibition was held in Kaiserslautern:

September 2017
 
Exhibition "THE RAVEN" in the Fruchthalle Kaiserslautern.
Vernissage on 29.9.17 at 6pm.

"The large-format paintings by Freddy Engel were created in the context of the production
of the chamber opera "The Raven" by Japanese composer Toshio Hosokawa, a setting of the famous poem by Edgar Allan Poe in the production by Martina Veh at the Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern, premiere 18 June 2017."

PAINTING MEETS MUSIC
The artist Freddy Engel as a live painter and performer together with the
mezzo-soprano Polina Artsis on stage at the Pfalztheater.