Posted inOpinion

The Case for a New Music Theater

I. “You Want to Stop Listening” 1996, Bregenz Festival.  The semi-staged world premiere of my opera “Nacht” on texts by Friedrich Hölderlin. The journalist Reinhard Kager predicted that the work would have a great future.  Looking back, I understand why. Thanks to the spare scenic means (different plot strands were illuminated using different kinds of […]

Posted inEssay

Strange Dissonance

Goethe’s “Erlkönig” is one of the most horrifying poems in all of world literature. At its center is an unspeakable tragedy, the death of a child. Also shocking is the language of the poem: it omits any description of the boy’s suffering. The very objectivity of Goethe’s language is chilling. In Schubert’s setting of “Erlkönig,” […]