Music Theatre since 1990 - Schott Music

Synopsis
The opera re-enacts the extravagant life and ideas of Prince Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, the
nineteenth century visionary designer of landscape gardens and travel writer.
‘After visiting his Branitzer Park, Bernd Matzkowski and I realised that, analogous to Pückler’s
division between a garden of life (Arkadia) and a garden of death (Elysium), our opera had to
have two contrasting parts as well. In the first part you can listen to life being lived to the full:
big ensemble acts and dancing rhythms dominate – waltzes, carrousel music, a Sorbian dance
from the Lausitzer region – of course
everything in an updated and modern
style. In the second part we experience,
after a change of gear via some oriental
magic (Pückler, ever the flamboyant bird
of paradise, spent some time in Africa and
Arabia with his own harem), the gradual
descent into pensiveness and the loneliness
of parting. His friends and wives
die and he broods over the meaning of
human existence. Then silence. Exactly at
this point, the grotesque, absurd, poetical
life-affirming mood of the outset acquires
the flair of “grand opera”: shadow turns
into light and the thought of death
becomes lifeaffirming. Pückler’s curious
instructions for his own funeral bring
about the grotesque spectacle that ends
the opera: his dead body is chemically
dissolved, and carried to the grave in a
strange funeral procession (with military
pomp, negros and dwarves).’
(Enjott Schneider)
Fürst Pückler
Poster of the World Première, Theater Görlitz
Pückler as the first “environmental thinker”, Pückler and society, Pückler and women [...]
Schneider’s music sparkles in as many ways as the life it narrates. Twelve-note music, folk song,
operetta, can-can, polka, grotesque, gothic romantic – the composer finds the right tone for every
situation. Of course what has been created is not an avant-garde ‘sound-room-theatre’, but an
entertaining opera. Enjoy! (Opernwelt, 06/2006)
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