Georg Friedrich Haas / Jon Fosse
Melancholia

It was the love of his life. When it shatters, everything shatters with it. Lars Hertervig, a promising young painter lapses into melancholy and then madness. With this love he also loses his confidence in himself as an artist; in the asylum his thoughts revolve only around himself – and, with him, Jon Fosse’s acclaimed novel, again and again.

In his much-praised novel “Melancholia” set in the nineteenth century, Fosse not only created a monument to Hertevig; in the artist’s obsessive depression (i.e., according to Freud, complete lack of interest in the outside world) he also found a pathological equivalent to the literary device of constantly revolving repetition that is characteristic of all of his writings.

Graz-based composer Georg Friedrich Haas, whose musical style is characterised by filigree acoustic structures, experiments with overtone constellations and microtonal shifts, has condensed the novel which Fosse himself turned into a libretto, into an opera. As such, “Melancholia” ranks among a number of compositions such as the ensemble piece “Nacht-Schatten” (1991) or the Hölderlin chamber opera “Nacht” (1995/96), in which Haas focuses on central themes of the Romantic period from a contemporary standpoint. He transposes the metaphorical fear and transcendental hope that pervades Fosse’s text into a hypnotic musical form, that Haas’s favoured director, Frenchman Stanislas Nordey, translates into disconcerting images.

Komponistin / Komponist: Georg Friedrich Haas
Libretto: Jon Fosse
Orchester: Klangforum Wien
Chor: Vokalensemble NOVA
Musikalische Leitung: Emilio Pomárico
Regie: Stanislas Nordey
Bühnenbild, Ausstattung, Raumgestaltung: Emmanuel Clolus
Kostüme: Raoul Fernandez
Lichtregie: Philippe Berthomé
Sängerin / Sänger: Otto Katzameier
Sängerin / Sänger: Melanie Walz
Sängerin / Sänger: Johannes Schmidt
Sängerin / Sänger: Ruth Weber
Sängerin / Sänger: Daniel Gloger
Sängerin / Sänger: Annette Elster
Sängerin / Sänger: Martyn Hill