projects

New performances
National Theater Mannheim
Mozart Sommer 2014

Neumond
Chamber opera for a young audience after The Magic Flute by W.A. Mozart for soloists, vocal ensemble and chamber ensemble
Text by Kristo Sagor
Ideation and dramaturgy by Anselm Dalferth
Commission: Nationaltheater Mannheim
First performance: 1st July 2012, Nationaltheater Mannheim
Other performances: 1., 2., 3. and 4.-7-2012
Publisher: Rai Trade
Duration: 60’ ca
www.mannheimer-mozartsommer.de/stueck_details.php?SID=1259

Joseph Trafton (conductor)
Christian Pade (direction)
Alexander Lintl (set and costumes design)
Anselm Dalferth (dramaturgy)
Antje Bitterlich (sopran)
Sophie Sauter (sopran)
Benedikt Nawrath (tenor)
Georg Gädker, Magnus Piontek, Timo Schabe (vocal trio)
Soloists of the National Theater Mannheim

Neumond explores the liminal zone of adolescence, the
developmental phases when attachment is still primarily parental, but there is nevertheless increasing openness to peers,
when defence mechanisms are not yet organised, and apparently
achieved positions can easily slip back to the previous status quo.
This is presented through the compositional analysis of one of
the main scenes of The Magic Flute, in which the Queen of the
Night orders Pamina to kill Sarastro.
The drama involves a double bind: Pamina must either obey her
mother and commit a heinous crime, or else follow her own
conscience, and hence defy her mother's command and sever her primary affective connection. Indeed "Zertrümmert sei'n auf
ewig alle Bande der Natur" ('May all the bonds of nature be
shattered!') is the Queen of the Night's threatened curse for
disobedience. During the scene, we can hear the voices of
contemporary adolescents, as if the main dialogue were an
archetype of the dawning of doubt, in the developing mind, about
going along with one's parents and about that relational bond
altogether.
A congeries of declarations, aspirations, expectations and
requests, now audible, apparently belong to the collection of a
Magic Flautist, who surveys the action from on high, a deus ex
machina cum Sorter of Messages cum Master of Time. He can
freeze the course of events, bringing even the Pamina - Queen of the Night dialogue to a halt.
Meanwhile, as if from a subterranean region, a subterranean
composite male voice emerges, a sort of intensified quintessence
of Mozart’s Sarastro. A source of continuity and fluidity, it is
like an aural humus that fosters the complex development of
Pamina and the others, who are now challenged by real-life
duties, even as they attempt to come to terms with dreams and hopes.
Mozart’s original scene between the Queen of the Night and
Pamina is quoted in an adaptation for chamber ensemble,
though it is fragmented and punctuated by various interventions
and reflections of the adolescents who observe and
empathetically react to the dramatic mother-daughter dialogue.
Pamina presents herself in accordance with the Mozart-
Schikaneder dramaturgy, and thus switches from her few
spoken lines to singing, while a prey to panic, confusion, sadness
and even despair. Extensive interpolations connect the
Mozartian operatic world with the 'remake' and explain
Pamina's shifting back and forth.
Other characters, such as the Magic Flautist, and the
disembodied voice of Sarastro produced by a male vocal
ensemble, are emanations of Mozart's score that pass through
the history of music theatre to reach new present-day incarnations.
Fragments from Mozart will inform the new score, a liminal but
perpetual presence, generating light and shadows, and
sustaining tensions and suspense.