Hans Werner Henze Phaedra - Barbican

Peter Andersen/Schott Promotion
Sunday 17 January 2010 7.30pm
Barbican Hall
Hans Werner Henze
Phaedra
concert performance
Libretto by Christian Lehnert
Ensemble Modern
Michael Boder conductor
Maria Riccarda Wesseling Phaedra
John Mark Ainsley Hippolytus
Marlis Petersen Aphrodite
Axel Köhler Artemis
Lauri Vasar Minotaur
There will be no interval in tonight’s performance

introduction
Hans Werner Henze: a humanitarian life
You can read the history of 20th and 21st century history – not just musical history – through the story of 83-year-old Hans
Werner Henze’s life. Born in Gütersloh in Westphalia in 1926, the young Henze was forced into the Hitler Youth by a
combination of parental and political pressure; he went on to fight for his country, but – after the war – repudiated all that the
Germany of his youth had represented. Politically, Henze’s left-wing sympathies would take him to Cuba in the 1960s, and
produce works of heartfelt humanist empathy, such as El Cimarrón and the gigantic song-compilation of the 1970s, Voices.
He marked himself as an outsider from his homeland by moving to Italy, first to Ischia and then to the hills above Rome, where
he still makes his home.
And Henze’s music made him an outsider, too. His operas – a series of 14 full-scale works so far, beginning with Boulevard
Solitude (1952) up to the latest, Phaedra, premiered 55 years later in 2007 – antagonised the avant-garde, including Henze’s
contemporaries, Pierre Boulez and Luigi Nono. At mid-century, Henze’s music and his whole artistic ethos, his commitment to
the expression of emotional, poetic and human truths as the ideal to which music ought to aspire, was heard as too
conservative by the denizens of Darmstadt, the avant-garde’s crucible in Germany – despite the fact that no composer did
more to contribute to Cuba’s post-revolutionary society, for which Henze wrote his Sixth Symphony in 1969. But Henze was
never narrowly committed to political ideologies for their own sake, and in the decades after the end of the illusion of world
revolution, his operas and his instrumental music have written out his unchanging human concerns with an unflinching
honesty, empathy and emotional generosity. You can hear those qualities in works such as his Requiem for solo trumpet
and ensemble, composed in the early 1990s in memory of the London Sinfonietta’s musical director, Michael Vyner; or the
Ninth Symphony from 1997, which explores Henze’s complex relationship with his homeland in a choral symphony for the
end of the 20th century; or in his Elogium Musicum, written in tribute to his partner of 40 years, Fausto Moroni, who died
suddenly in 2007.
At the start of the new century, Henze’s refusal to bend to any dogma apart from the demands of his own creative impulse,
the communicativeness and fluency of his idiom, and, above all, the necessity he feels to create, through his music, ‘a sense
of security in a state of utter helplessness’, are more valuable than ever.
Introduction © Tom Service

Hans Werner Henze (born 1926)
Phaedra (2003–7)
An opera in two acts
Libretto by Christian Lehnert
Hans Werner Henze didn’t know it when he started work on
his latest opera, Phaedra, a few years ago, but this was to be
a work that inscribed his life in his music in an uncanny,
spookily prescient way. For the past 43 years, Henze has
lived in Marino in the Castelli Romani, nestled in the hills
above Rome. It’s a place that is thick with history and myth.
Every day, Henze – who’s now 83, his features and physique
marked by time, but who still radiates a disarmingly youthful
blue-eyed twinkle – looks out into the gnarled infinity of his
olive grove. These 80 trees provide him with 200 litres of
delicious, peppery oil every year, and they were planted
around 500 years ago. If he ventures just a little further into
the verdant abundance of the hills behind his home, he will
find Lake Nemi, a place of enormous importance in the
ancient world, where there was an important shrine to
Diana, goddess of the hunt, and where Emperor Caligula
built a fleet of gigantic pleasure boats. The lake has become
part of more modern mythology, too: Turner painted a view
of Nemi, and the lake and its shrine inspired James Frazer’s
epoch-making study of ancient myth, The Golden Bough.
Lake Nemi is also the setting for the Second Act of Henze’s
Phaedra. ‘Reading The Golden Bough, I discovered I’m
living in the actual territory he describes’, Henze told me
at his home at the end of last year. The First Act of the
opera tells the story of Phaedra’s love for her stepson,
Hippolytus, and his murder by Theseus. But the Second Act,
in Christian Lehnert’s libretto, stages Hippolytus’s afterlife by
the shores of Lake Nemi, and is the backdrop for his
programme note
transformation into a mystical bird-creature and the King
of the Forest.
But it’s not just the mythical location of the Second Act of
Phaedra that places the piece within Henze’s life-story.
Henze had completed the bulk of the First Act of the opera in
2005 when he was struck by a mysterious illness that brought
him close to death – so close, in fact, that he was visited
during a two-month-long near-coma by friends from all over
the world, who came to say their farewells. ‘I stopped eating,
and I stopped speaking, and just lay flat in my bed’, he told
me. ‘People thought the moment had come. And they came
from everywhere, all over the world, from New York, for a
funeral.’ He laughs, gently but sardonically. Was he
completely unconscious? He nods his head. ‘But the
moments when people came to say goodbye, I sometimes
felt them around me – and saw them, sort of. And then one
morning, I just stood up. Fausto [Moroni, Henze’s partner for
40 years] was amazed. So was I. And then I started writing
again.’
Henze started work on Act 2 of Phaedra – the story of
Hippolytus’s own return from the world of the dead. This new
Hippolytus doesn’t recognise himself, he doesn’t understand
his place in the world, or the relationship between past and
present. After his coma, Henze’s own world had changed.
And he told me that his experiences, his feelings about the
transformed world he awoke to, are written into the Second
Act of Phaedra. Hearing the whole, 75-minute opera for the
3

programme note
first time in Berlin in 2007 (performed by many of tonight’s
musicians – Ensemble Modern, conductor Michael Boder,
and some of the same singers, including John Mark Ainsley
as Hippolytus), Henze was shocked at the power of his
Second Act. ‘I had a very talented fellow called Francesco
Antonioni who helped me when I was writing the first part’,
Henze says (Antonioni also made the opera’s electroacoustic
‘bruitage’, a tape-track that you’ll hear interspersed
throughout the score), ‘and he became very important for
the second. In rehearsals, he said, “Maestro, the first part
went quite well, but God knows how the second part will turn
out.” And in performance it turned out to be much more
telling and strong than the first one. I don’t know myself why
it is so successful – but it is.’
Yet Henze has a clear idea of how his music has changed in
recent years – and offers a clue as to why his score for
Phaedra is so astonishingly effective. ‘I think if it has
changed, it’s changed for the better. Only the most
necessary notes appear on the paper, the not-so-necessary
are left out.’ You can hear the effects of this musical
distillation in every bar. Henze describes the piece as a
‘concert opera’, a formulation that hints at the soloistic roles
played by the instrumentalists as well as the singers.
Composed for the new-music virtuosi of Frankfurt’s
Ensemble Modern, and scored for 23 players, Phaedra’s
music has a diaphanous depth. Henze uses the colouristic
power of his woodwind- and brass-heavy ensemble (14 of
them, who play alongside a harp, celesta, and piano, two
4
percussionists, and just four strings) to create the mythic
earthquakes and storms that perforate the work’s drama.
But more often than not, the ensemble is pared down to a
handful of individual lines, filaments of sound that weave a
resonant magic around Henze’s vocal lines, from Phaedra’s
music, by turns lovelorn and vengeful, to Hippolytus’s
existential questioning in the Second Act, or the voluptuous
part that Henze composes for the goddess Artemis (the
Greek name for Diana), cast as a countertenor.
At the end of the Second Act, the Minotaur leads the cast in a
life-affirming hymn, music that shimmers with ethereal
energy in Henze’s orchestration: ‘We are all born naked. We
press towards mortality and dance’. That’s a motto that
stands for Henze’s continuing creativity after coming so close
to the end of his life, the end of his dance. Shortly after
Henze had finished Phaedra, his longstanding partner,
Fausto Moroni, died suddenly. Henze’s world changed
again. ‘The loss that I’ve suffered is very strong, and it makes
my whole life, the whole world, seem quite different from
what I thought it was.’ Like Hippolytus at the end of his
opera, Henze lives in a world transfigured by death and
near-death experiences. But he has wrested his creativity
from the crucible of these traumas. Phaedra is his latest
opera, but not the last. In Henze’s study, upstairs in his house
in Marino, are the sketches for a new opera that will be
premiered later this year: Henze’s dance goes on.
Programme note © Tom Service

Synopsis
Act 1
Morning
I The Labyrinth
Echoes sound through the ruins of the labyrinth, in the depths of
which Theseus conquered the Minotaur, and become voices in a
new story: Phaedra and Hippolytus.
II At the Edge of the Wood
Hippolytus has set off for the hunt. Phaedra wanders through the
first light of dawn. She is driven by desire and shame, by love for
her stepson Hippolytus and self-loathing. She seeks her death. As
she tries to slit her wrists with a shard of glass, the goddess
Aphrodite holds her back. Aphrodite, herself in love with
Hippolytus, is offended by his exclusive worship of Artemis,
goddess of the hunt, and wants to take revenge.
III Thicket
In her idle wanderings over boulders and through thickets,
Phaedra, accompanied by Aphrodite, happens upon the sleeping
Hippolytus. She kneels down before him and sings of her love.
Hippolytus awakens. Phaedra confesses her feelings frankly to
him. Artemis steps out of the wood to warn Hippolytus. Hippolytus,
outraged by his stepmother, brutally pushes her away. Phaedra’s
feelings change suddenly to hate. Aphrodite and Phaedra unite in
their rage. Hippolytus, however, only hears the call of Artemis and
turns away unmoved. Phaedra grabs hold of Hippolytus’s knife
and makes another attempt to slit her wrists. Aphrodite once again
holds her back.
synopsis
IV The Snare
Phaedra lies upon her bed in the palace and writes Theseus a
letter slandering her stepson. She claims that Hippolytus raped her.
The unsuspecting Hippolytus returns from the hunt.
V The Death of Hippolytus
Artemis enters the palace. She narrates: Theseus believed
Phaedra’s letter. He determined to kill his son and asked Poseidon
for help. As Hippolytus drove along the coast in his chariot,
Poseidon allowed the resurrected Minotaur to rise out of the sea.
The horses shied and dragged Hippolytus over the rocks. While
Artemis sings, the mortally wounded Hippolytus staggers toward
her and collapses. The slam of a trapdoor is heard. Phaedra
hangs from a rope. The Minotaur dances in the background.
5

synopsis
Act 2
Evening
I Do you remember who you were?
Artemis, goddess of the hunt, has brought Hippolytus to her grove
in Nemi in Italy. With an assistant, she works on Hippolytus’s body
to bring him back to life. Once they succeed, she locks him up in a
cage and gives him a new name: Virbius. Phaedra rises from the
Underworld as a bird-being and mocks Hippolytus as the work
and pet of the goddess.
II When do the dead approach you, Hippolytus?
A storm approaches the grove in Nemi. Aphrodite appears in a
ring of light and demands the right of the gods: Hippolytus
belongs in the Underworld. Phaedra and Aphrodite circle
Hippolytus’s cage in order to seize him. They sing of death, and
both lure Hippolytus like an animal. Artemis catches Hippolytus in
a net and hides him in a safe cave.
6
III In the Mirror
Distraught, Hippolytus crouches before a spring in the cave. He
examines his reflection in the water. He does not know who he is.
He dreams of a faraway garden. Phaedra strolls toward him like a
barmaid to lure him into the Underworld. Hippolytus, frightened
and confused, pushes Phaedra away and struggles out of the
cave. An earthquake shakes the cave.
IV King of the Forest
Hippolytus has risen as King of the Forest. He wanders through the
grove in Nemi. What has happened and will happen, becomes
blurred in a dance.
Synopsis © Christian Lehnert

Opern-Agentur Tamara Herzl
About tonight’s performers
Michael Boder conductor
Michael Boder studied at the
Hamburg College of Music before
moving to Florence, where he was an
assistant to Riccardo Muti and Zubin
Mehta. He worked with Michael
Gielen at Frankfurt Opera (1984–8),
where he took on his first production.
He became principal conductor of
Basle Opera before he was 30 and
has worked at the opera houses of
Cologne, Hamburg, Stuttgart, Munich,
Berlin, Dresden and Zurich, the
National Theatre in Tokyo, San
Francisco Opera and at the Royal
Opera House, Covent Garden, among
others.
His repertoire ranges from Mozart to
contemporary music, and he has given
the premieres of Penderecki’s Ubu Roi
at the Munich Opera Festival, Pascal
Dusapin’s Fist, as well as Aribert
Reimann’s Das Schloss at the Deutsche
Opera Berlin, and the premiere of
tonight’s piece in Berlin in 2007.
Michael Boder made his debut at the
Vienna State Opera in 1995 with
Berg’s Wozzeck, followed by a new
production of Lulu. He has also given
the Austrian stage premiere of
Schoenberg’s Die Jakobsleiter,
together with Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi;
the premiere of Der Riese vom
Steinfeld by Friedrich Cerha,
commissioned by the Vienna State
Opera, as well as revivals of Die
Meistersinger von Nürnberg and
Enescu’s Oedipe.
He is also very active in the concert
hall, directing such orchestras as the
Leipzig Gewandhaus, Bamberg
Symphony Orchestra, the Berlin,
Czech, Hamburg and Oslo
Philharmonic orchestras, the
Gulbenkian Orchestra and the NHK
Symphony Orchestra in Tokyo.
Last season Michael Boder became
principal conductor of the Gran Teatre
del Liceu in Barcelona.
about the performers
John Mark Ainsley tenor
John Mark Ainsley was born in
Cheshire, began his musical training in
Oxford and continues to study in
London with Diane Forlano. A highly
versatile concert singer, his
international engagements include
appearances with the London, Boston
and San Francisco Symphony
orchestras, and the Berlin, Vienna and
New York Philharmonic orchestras
under, among others, Bernard Haitink,
Mstislav Rostropovich, Sir Colin Davis
and Sir Simon Rattle, as well as with
early music ensembles such as Le
Concert d’Astrée under Emmanuelle
Haïm and Les Musiciens du Louvre
under Marc Minkowski.
On the operatic stage he has sung Don
Ottavio at Glyndebourne under Rattle,
at Aix-en-Provence under Claudio
Abbado, and for his Royal Opera
7

about the performers
debut under Sir Charles Mackerras. At
the Salzburg Festival he created the
role of The Demon in the world
premiere of Hans Werner Henze’s
L’Upupa und der Triumph der
Sohnesliebe, a role to which he
returned in Dresden last year. Other
operatic appearances include the titleroles
in Handel’s Samson for
Netherlands Opera and in Idomeneo
and Orfeo at the Munich Festival,
Captain Vere in Billy Budd in Frankfurt,
and Skuratov in From the House of the
Dead at the Amsterdam, Vienna and
Aix-en-Provence festivals. Recent and
future engagements include Billy Budd
at Glyndebourne and his debut at La
Scala, Milan, in From the House of the
Dead.
John Mark Ainsley’s extensive
discography ranges from Bach and
Handel to Britten and Brigadoon, as
well as including a series of recital
discs of Schubert, Mozart, Purcell,
Grainger, Warlock and Quilter. His
recording of Vaughan Williams’s On
Wenlock Edge was nominated for a
Gramophone Award, and he was the
winner of the Royal Philharmonic
Society Singer Award in 2007.
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Carsten Nüssler
Axel Köhler countertenor
Countertenor and director Axel Köhler
was born in Schwarzenberg and
trained initially as a baritone, before
switching to countertenor while
studying in Berlin and London. He
made his countertenor debut as
Eustazio (Handel’s Rinaldo) at the
Handel Festival in Halle. Since then he
has established a reputation as a
Handelian, including title-roles in
Sosarme, Giulio Cesare, Orlando,
Tolomeo and Tamerlano, making his
American debut in the latter role in
1990.
Other repertoire ranges from
Monteverdi’s The Coronation of
Poppea and Orfeo and Telemann’s
Orfeo to Die Fledermaus and The
Rake’s Progress. Contemporary music
also forms an important strand in Axel
Köhler’s career, including Alexander
Goehr’s Arianna, the title-role in
Siegfried Matthus’s Farinelli, Detlev
Glanert’s Scherz, Satire, Ironie und
tiefere Bedeutung, Hans Werner
Henze’s L’Upupa und der Triumph der
Sohnesliebe and the title-role in Cantor
by Ingomar Grünauer.
He participated in the premiere of
Henze’s Phaedra at the Berlin State
Opera, creating the role he sings this
evening, and which he subsequently
performed in Brussels, Vienna,
Frankfurt and Berlin in 2008. The same
year saw productions of Ariodante in
Halle and Hasse’s Cleofide in
Dresden.
Since 2000 Axel Köhler has also been
active as a stage director, with
productions of The Coronation of
Poppea, Teseo, Amadigi, Admeto,
Don Giovanni, The Magic Flute,
Boieldieu’s La dame blanche, Lehár’s
Das Land des Lächelns, Britten’s A
Midsummer Night’s Dream and Paul
Abraham’s The Flower of Hawaii.
At the start of this season he became
the artistic manager of Halle Opera.

Marlis Petersen soprano
The soprano Marlis Petersen studied at
the Stuttgart Academy of Music, going
on to win several singing competitions.
As a member of the Nuremberg State
Theatre her roles included Aennchen
(Der Freischütz), Blonde (Die
Entführung aus dem Serail), Adele (Die
Fledermaus), Rosina (The Barber of
Seville), the title-role in Lulu, and
Queen of the Night (The Magic Flute).
She has also appeared as a guest
artist at opera houses including Berlin,
Bremen, Düsseldorf, Hanover,
Karlsruhe, Munich, Frankfurt and
Wiesbaden.
Marlis Petersen made her debut at the
Vienna State Opera as Lulu, singing
the same role at the Hamburg State
Opera and in Athens. Other highlights
have included Zerbinetta (Ariadne auf
Naxos) at the Royal Opera, Covent
Garden, Oscar (Un ballo in maschera)
at the Bregenz Festival, Nightingale
(Walter Braunfels’s Die Vögel) in
Geneva, Adele at the Opéra Bastille,
the Metropolitan Opera, New York,
and the Chicago Lyric Opera, and
Elisa (Il re pastore) at the Salzburg
Festival.
In concert she regularly works with
Helmuth Rilling and René Jacobs,
with whom she has toured Europe and
the USA.
Recent and forthcoming engagements
include concerts with the Leipzig
Gewandhaus Orchestra and the
Boston Symphony Orchestra, a
European tour singing Brahms Lieder,
the world premiere of Manfred
Trojahn’s La grande magia at the
Dresden Semperoper, Lulu for
Chicago Lyric Opera, Susanna (The
Marriage of Figaro) in Los Angeles,
Natalie (Henze’s Der Prinz von
Homburg) at the Theater an der Wien
and guest appearances at the Munich
State Opera, Vienna State Opera and
the Metropolitan Opera, as well as at
the Aix-en-Provence Festival.
about the performers
Lauri Vasar baritone
Estonian-born Lauri Vasar studied at
the Academy of Music in Tallinn and
made his debut with the Estonian
National Opera in 1999, subsequently
continuing his studies at the Salzburg
Mozarteum, making his debut there
singing Ravel’s Don Quichotte à
Dulcinée.
The following year he made his debut
in the USA, with recitals of Mozart,
Richard Strauss and Rachmaninov
and in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony
in Chicago.
Since then his roles have included Peter
(Hansel and Gretel), Dandini (La
Cenerentola) and roles in Richard
Strauss’s Capriccio, Orff’s Carmina
burana, Egon Wellesz’s The
Bacchantes and Verdi’s Don Carlos.
From 2002 to 2006 he was a member
9

about the performers
of Linz Opera, taking on such roles as
Papageno, Guglielmo, Belcore (L’elisir
d’amore), Pantalone (The Love for
Three Oranges), Posa (Don Carlos),
Valentine (Faust), Falke (Die
Fledermaus) and Lescaut (Manon
Lescaut), among others.
He made his debut in the music of
Henze in the role of Al Kasim in
L’Upupa und der Triumph der
Sohnesliebe at the Teatro Real in
Madrid, a role he reprised in Lyon
and Geneva and in a concert version
in Tokyo.
Most recently, he has sung in Peter
Eötvös’s Three Sisters for the Hamburg
State Opera, Poulenc’s Dialogues des
Carmélites for the Teatro Real Madrid
and Tannhäuser in Hanover, and has
also taken the title-roles in
Monteverdi’s Orfeo and
Dallapiccola’s Il prigioniero.
10
Emilio Brizzi
Maria Riccarda Wesseling
mezzo-soprano
The Swiss mezzo-soprano Maria
Riccarda Wesseling sprang to
international prominence when she
replaced Susan Graham in the titlerole
of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride
for Opéra de Paris in 2006. This was
followed by acclaim for her creation of
the title-role in tonight’s work at its
2007 premiere.
Other roles include Gluck’s
Eurydice, Carmen, Octavian (Der
Rosenkavalier), Idamante (Idomeneo),
Sextus (La clemenza di Tito), the titlerole
in La Cenerentola, Rosina (The
Barber of Seville), Fenena (Nabucco),
Marguerite (Berlioz’s La damnation de
Faust), Hedwig (Offenbach’s Die
Rheinnixen), Giulietta (Les contes
d’Hoffmann), Métella (La vie
parisienne), Bianca (Zemlinsky’s Eine
florentinische Tragödie), Purcell’s Dido
and Handel roles such as Rodrigo,
Rinaldo, Amadigi, Giulio Cesare and
Sesto. Her contemporary roles include
Kassandra (Aribert Reimann’s
Troades), Pilgrim (Kaija Saariaho’s
L’amour de loin) and La Malaspina
(Sciarrino’s Luci mie traditrici).
Works performed in concert include
Berlioz’s Les nuits d’été and La mort de
Cléopâtre, Ravel’s Shéhérazade,
Respighi’s Il tramonto, Chausson’s
Poème de l’amour et de la mer,
Wagner’s Wesendonck Lieder and
orchestral songs by Schoenberg,
Zemlinsky, Berg, Mahler and Richard
Strauss, which she has also recorded.
Recently Maria Riccarda Wesseling
has sung at the Théâtre des Champs-
Élysées, Opéra National de Paris,
Opéra National de Lyon, La Monnaie,
Brussels, Geneva’s Grand Théâtre,
Finnish National Opera, Staatsoper
Berlin, Semperoper Dresden, Zurich
Tonhalle, and the Amsterdam
Concertgebouw, as well as festivals in
Montpellier, Beaune, Bremen, Halle,
Schwetzingen and Zurich.
Her recordings have ranged from
Handel (including the title-roles in
Amadigi and Rodrigo) to Lieder and
Wagner, plus DVDs of works by

Handel, Monteverdi and Offenbach.
Forthcoming engagements include
Bach’s St John Passion under
Riccardo Chailly.
Ensemble Modern
Founded in 1980 and situated in
Frankfurt am Main since 1985, the
Ensemble Modern is one of the world’s
leading ensembles specialising in new
music. Currently, Ensemble Modern
consists of 19 soloists from Argentina,
Bulgaria, Germany, India, Israel,
Japan, Poland and Switzerland, all of
whom contribute to the ensemble’s rich
cultural background.
Ensemble Modern is renowned for its
unique working and organisational
form: all the members are responsible
for jointly selecting and dealing with
projects, co-productions and financial
matters. Its highly distinctive
programming includes music theatre,
dance and video projects, chamber
music, ensemble and orchestral
concerts.
In past years, Ensemble Modern has
gone on tour to Russia, South America,
Japan, Australia, Africa, India, Korea,
Taiwan and America. It regularly
performs at leading festivals and
outstanding venues, such as the Lincoln
Center Festival in New York, Festival
d’Automne à Paris, Holland Festival in
Amsterdam, Lucerne Festival,
Klangspuren in Schwaz, Salzburg
Festival, MaerzMusik / Berliner
Festspiele, Alte Oper Frankfurt,
Oper Frankfurt, Kölner Philharmonie,
Konzerthaus Berlin, Philharmonie
Essen and the Festspielhaus Baden-
Baden.
Ensemble Modern gives around 100
concerts each year, in which it strives
to achieve the highest degree of
authenticity by working closely with the
composers themselves. The musicians
about the performers
rehearse an average of 70 new works
every year, 20 of which are world
premieres.
In 2003, the German Federal Cultural
Foundation nominated Ensemble
Modern as one of Germany’s
‘beacons’ of contemporary culture. As
a result of this honour, Ensemble
Modern receives a funding package
from the German Federal Cultural
Foundation that supports three major
strands of the group – the Ensemble
Modern Orchestra, the International
Ensemble Modern Academy and the
ensemble’s special projects.
Ensemble Modern is funded by the German
Federal Cultural Foundation, the City of
Frankfurt, the German Ensemble Academy
Assoc., the state of Hesse, the GEMA
Foundation and the GVL.
hr2-kultur is the cultural affairs partner of
Ensemble Modern.
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about the performers
Ensemble Modern
Flute/piccolo
Dietmar Wiesner
Flute/piccolo/
alto flute
Rüdiger Jacobsen
Oboe
Nick Deutsch
Oboe/cor anglais
Antje Thierbach
Clarinet/bass
clarinet/saxophone
Nina Janssen
Clarinet/bass
clarinet/contrabass
clarinet/saxophone
Udo Grimm
Present
Voices
UK premieres of operas
by three of today’s most
distinctive voices
Opera is constantly diversifying
and the debate surrounding
the definition of the word
opera is fiercer now than it
has even been. Present Voices
seeks to present UK premieres
of contemporary operas by a
variety of different composers
from around the world.
Bassoon
Johannes Schwarz
Bassoon/
contrabassoon
Lucas Rössner
Horn/Wagner tuba
Saar Berger
Zora Slokar
Trumpet
Sava Stoianov
Valentín Garvie
Trombone/alto
trombone
Uwe Dierksen
Trombone/tenor
trombone/bass
trombone
Michael Büttler
Piano
Ueli Wiget
Celesta/sampler
Hermann Kretzschmar
Percussion
Rumi Ogawa
Rainer Römer
do something different
Harp
Gunnhildur Einarsdottir
Sun 17 Jan 2010 7.30pm
Phaedra
HansWernerHenze’slatest
operarecountsthetaleof
this famous Greek myth. With
soloists including John Mark
Ainsley and Maria Riccarda
Wesseling.
Violin
Rafal Zambrzycki-
Payne
Viola
Megumi Kasakawa
Cello
Eva Böcker
Double bass
Axel Bouchaux
The musicians of Ensemble
Modern would like to thank
the Aventis Foundation for
financing a seat in the
Ensemble.
Fri 26 Mar 2010 7.30pm
Angels in America
Peter Eötvös’ operatic take on
Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer prizewinning
play.
Concert performances | Tickets from £9 | www.barbican.org.uk
Sat 15 May 2010 7.30pm
After Life
Which one memory would you
choose to take to eternity? Asks
Michel van der Aa’s After Life.
With soloists including Claron
McFadden and Roderick
Williams.