The original is commissioned by New York Philharmonic, KölnMusik GmbH
Description
World premiere:
29 April 2021, Munich
Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks
Conductor: Peter Eötvös
Viktória Vizin, Russell Braun
Libretto: Mari Mezei (based on the novel of Alessandro Baricco)
Language: Italian
“Bartók’ Bluebeard’s Castle is one of the most frequently staged operas. As this one-act work lasts only for about 60 minutes, another one-act piece is to be performed before it, as Bartók’s opera can only be followed by complete silence, a retreat into ourselves.
All nights at the opera must constitute a single unit, which is a given with multi-act pieces. For this reason, juxtaposing Bluebeard’s Castle against a musically or theatrically contrasting work would be a big mistake. As there was no existing composition available, for about 10-15 years I was searching for a literary work that could make a single dramaturgical unit with Béla Balázs and Bartók’s piece.
Both operas concentrate on the relationship between Man and Woman. It is only them present on the stage. Similarly to Bluebeard’s Castle, I divided my piece into seven scenes and maintained the symphony orchestra used previously by Bartók, which ensures a uniform timbre and allows the two operas to be performed without an intermission, if required.
The musical style of Senza sangue is autonomous, the timbres connect to Bartók’s music with a dramatic force, similar to that of black and white movies, and its last bars prepare for the beginning of Bluebeard’s Castle also in their tonality.
Bartók’s composition has a symbolic setting: the castle of the soul, while Senza sangue has a specific and tangible setting. Both pieces start with the encounter of Man and Woman, but their endings differ: while Bluebeard’s Castle ends with separation, Senza sangue is concluded with unity.
My piece is based on Alessandro Baricco’s novel of the same title published in 2002. Mari Mezei’s script places the emphasis on the second part of the book, the moment of the actual encounter. The background story comes to light only through the dialogues. Revealing and clarifying the past is essential for the Woman in both operas, but while in Bluebeard’s Castle, it is the Man’s secret past that is to be unveiled, in Senza sangue, it is the Woman’s mysterious life that needs to be understood and redeemed. In Baricco’s novel, a commando of three men assassinates the Woman’s family after a civil war. The youngest member of the commando, however, spares the life of the 12-year old daughter of the family, who will find her saviour of 72 years after a 50-year long search. The Woman is also connected to the death of the other two members of the commando in an obscure way. While evoking their dramatic past, it becomes obvious that the Woman did not come to take revenge after her long quest but to be saved by the Man one more time, to tie a knot, which will eventually turn out to be a redemption for both of them.
Even though Senza sangue does not use any musical element from Bluebeard’s Castle, blood certainly represents a point they both share. While in Bartók’s piece, the musical symbol standing for blood is a poignant minor 2nd interval, which is present in every scene, the turning point in the plot of Senza sangue is the moment when the tension of the minor 2nd interval is resolved, and the relationship between Man and Woman is at last “without blood”.”
/Peter Eötvös/
Synopsis
The protagonist of the story Nina escapes the murderers of her bother and father as a young girl by seeking shelter in a hole in the ground. One of the attackers notices her, but does not betray her. Decades later the girl meets the man in a lottery shop. The recognition terrifies him. His fellow murderers are long dead and the circumstances of their deaths were not clear: will Pedro be the next? The original text of the novel was shaped by Eötvös’ constant creative partner and wife, Maria Mezei. She created a libretto that has the cross-examination and mutual understanding of the female and male protagonist’s trauma in its main focus. The opera begins with the meeting of the two main characters and with flashbacks of the murders. The viewer does not know whether the woman is actually behind the deaths of the man’s accomplices, nor what her next step is going to be.
Scene I. A 72-year-old vendor of lottery tickets is approached by a woman in her sixties who says she wants to buy a ticket. Very soon, however, it turns out that this is only a pretext. These two obviously have a long history together. They haven’t seen each other in decades, yet they instantly recognize each other. The Woman persuades the Man to close his kiosque and have a cup of coffee with her.
Scene II. The details of the horrible story begin to emerge: the Man and two companions (now both dead) murdered the Woman’s father when she was still a child. The Man could have killed the girl as well but decided to spare her life.
Scene III. In a monologue, the Woman meditates on the fate that has compelled her to seek out the Man after so many years, and to relive the trauma of long ago—but ‟without blood” this time. She believes that ‟he who has saved us once, can do so again and again.”
Scene IV. The Man has also been obsessed with these events all his life, and has followed the Woman’s life from a distance, based on stories that had been circulating. The Woman fills in the gaps. It turns out that she was rescued by a man named Uribe who later forfeited her to Count Torrelavid in a card game. The count took the girl with him and, when she turned fourteen, he married her. In the meantime, one of the Man’s companions, named Salinas, died under mysterious circumstances.
Scene V. The Man and the Woman continue to relate the Woman’s story: how she refused to speak and was believed to be mute, how she vanished from view for years, and how the Man’s second companion—El Gurre—lost his life. There is reason to believe that the Woman had a hand in the deaths of the two murderers, and the Man knew that the Woman would find him some day as well, to settle the score.
Scene VI. The Man and the Woman relive the moment when the Woman’s father was killed. Passing from narration to reflection, they debate whether this was an act of war, committed for the sake of ‟building a better world”? Must revenge always call for more revenge?
Scene VII. Having experienced the same trauma—albeit on different sides—creates a deep bond between the Man and the Woman. The logical if somewhat absurd outcome of this bond is the Woman’s proposal that they go to a hotel together. We know that their lives are inextricably intertwined when the two characters call themselves by their real names (Nina and Pedro) that they had always concealed from the world.
Performances
29 Apr, 2021
Munich, Germany
Eötvös: Senza Sangue Redux
Bartók: Bluebeard's Castle Redux
Viktória Vizin, Russel Braun, Krisztián Cser
Cond: Peter Eötvös
BR Symph. Orchestra
Herkules Hall
2 flutes ((2nd also altflute, both also piccolos)
2 oboes (2nd also English horn)
3 clarinets in A (3rd also bassclar.)
2 bassoons (2nd also contrabassoon)
2 horns in F
2 trumpets in B (2nd also Flugelhorn)
2 trombones
1 tuba
1 harp
1 celesta
3 timpani (one player)
2 percussion
Strings: 8-6-5-4-3
Further information
Senza sangue (‟Without Blood”) is Peter Eötvös’s twelfth work for the musical stage. Jointly commissioned by the organization KölnMusik and the New York Philharmonic, the opera was performed in concert on both sides of the Atlantic before its staged premiere at the Avignon Festival in May 2016.
In his previous theatrical projects, Eötvös has used texts in Russian, English, French, German, and Japanese; with the present work, he has returned to Italian for the first time since Radames (1975, rev. 1997), in which he had incorporated some elements of Verdi’s Aida.
Senza sangue is based on the eponymous novel by the award-winning Italian writer Alessandro Baricco (b. 1958), who has also been active, among other things, as a music critic. Mari Mezei’s libretto focuses on the second half of the novel, in which the two characters meet again after many years. Baricco’s novel is set in some unnamed country; the author has stressed that all events and characters are fictitious. The characters have Spanish names ‟only for the sake of their sound” and, according to Baricco, they need not imply any particular geographical location.
The opera has some striking parallels with Duke Bluebeard’s Castle by Béla Bartók. Both one-acters have only two characters in them—a man and a woman. In both cases, the female character’s family has vanished (Judith has abandoned her parents and brother; Nina’s father was killed). As a consequence, both women end up in situations where the only person they have left in the world is a murderer. The connection between the two works is clinched by the pointed exchange ‟Are you afraid?”—‟No, I’m not afraid” which, appearing shortly before the end of Eötvös’s opera, is a literal quote from Bluebeard. Only this time, it is the Woman who asks the question and the Man who replies.
What draws the Man and the Woman to one another is their shared obsession with the events of half a century ago: neither the perpetrator nor the victim can ever forget those events, and both spend their entire lives under the terrible weight of the past. But while the Woman has had a turbulent life, filled with additional traumas, we find out nothing about what has happened to the Man since the war. He has been eking out a modest life as a vendor of lottery tickets, waiting for the moment when she would show up at his kiosque.
Senza sangue is divided into seven scenes, with an orchestral introduction and epilogue. The introduction bears the title ‟Invocation to Henri Dutilleux,” in honor of the great French composer who passed away at the age of 97 shortly before Eötvös’s opera was written. The music begins, pointedly, with the interval B-D (or, to use the German note names, H-D, Dutilleux’s initials). Out of this interval grows a suspenseful prelude presaging the dramatic tensions that will soon erupt as we meet the two protagonists.
The vocal lines are mostly kept simple and follow the speech patterns of the Italian language, with the exception of the Woman’s monologue (Scene III), where she sings a long arioso melody to the most philosophical passage in the book. Much of the drama is expressed by the instruments. Eötvös uses a large orchestra, with special emphasis on the brass (including a flugelhorn) and an extensive percussion battery. It is significant that the orchestra has the last word in the opera: as the Man and the Woman disappear in their hotel room, we hear a powerful orchestral epilogue, filled with sharp accents and violent instrumental screams. All the suffering of these two people has been caused by an insane war, fuelled by an utterly unrealistic and misguided belief in building ‟a better world.” The epilogue leaves us wondering whether the wounds inflicted by that senseless struggle will ever heal.
Peter Eötvös has composed his opera Senza sangue after the eponymous novel by Alessandro Baricco. Mari Mezei’s libretto is based on the concluding portion of the novel, and tells the story of a single dramatic encounter.
During a civil war, a man and his companions killed the entire family of a certain young girl. The plot of the one-act opera spans many decades, from the moment where the girl looks in the eyes of the twenty-year-old boy who has shot her father but spared her own life, until their new encounter many decades later.
After the tragedy, the woman spent her whole life in some kind of schizophrenic state, looking at herself as an outside observer. She reputedly killed, or arranged the killing of, her father’s murderers, except for the man who had saved her. They both knew all along they had to meet again, but didn’t know what this encounter would bring after so many years.
In the course of their conversation, the story takes a new turn. The woman has not come to avenge herself but to be saved by the man once again. She longs to relive that glance from long ago: ‟he who has saved us once, can do so again and again.”
Questions, singularly timely today, remain unanswered. Can murder be excused by faith in a better world? Can revenge save a broken life? Was the fight for a better world in vain if it did not succeed?
There are no answers, but the characters know that their lives became inextricably intertwined on that fateful day; only through each other can they ever hope to make life meaningful again. This is beautifully symbolized by the old woman’s hope to have her name restored and to erase the past through her encounter with the man.
/Peter Eötvös, 2015 – translated by Peter Laki/
Eötvös Péter Senza sangue című operáját Alessandro Baricco azonos című regénye alapján komponálta. Mezei Mari librettója a regénynek a befejező részéből készült, egyetlen drámai találkozás története.
Egy polgárháború után a férfi társaival együtt megölte a nő családját, de megmentette az akkor még kislány életét. Az egyfelvonásos opera egyetlen ív története, a megpillantástól – amikor kislányként a szemébe néz annak a 20 éves fiúnak aki lelőtte az apját, de őt életben hagyta, – az évtizedekkel későbbi találkozásig.
A tragédiát követően a nő saját életét csak külső szemlélőként figyelte, egyfajta skizofrén állapotban. Azt beszélték róla, hogy megölte vagy megölette apja gyilkosait, kivéve az őt megmentő férfit. Mindketten tudják, hogy újra találkozniuk kell, de nem tudják, hogy ennyi év után mit fog hozni ez a találkozás.
A beszélgetésük során fordul meg a történet: a nő nem bosszút állni jött, hanem azért, hogy a férfi újra megmentse őt. Az a vágy vezeti, hogy újból megélje azt a pillantást. “Aki egyszer megmentett bennünket, az képes rá újra és újra.”
Sajátosan aktuális kérdések maradnak megválaszolatlanul: a gyilkosságra adhat-e felmentést a hit egy jobb világban? Megoldást jelenthet-e a bosszú egy kettétört élet megmentésére? Hiábavaló volt-e a harc egy jobb világért, ha az végül nem következett el?
Válaszokat nem kapunk, a szereplőkben is csak annyi tudatosul, hogy életük azon a vérrel borított napon valahogy összefonódott, és csak egymástól remélhetik, hogy újra értelmet nyerhet. Ennek szép, szimbolikus megjelenítése, ahogy az idős nő ettől a találkozástól reméli visszakapni a nevét és meg nem történtté teheti a múltat.
/Peter Eötvös – 2015/
The relationship between man and woman occupies a prominent place among the evergreen topics of opera, especially since Romanticism. This relationship has always been presented and interpreted according to the characteristicsnof the given era. From today’s core opera repertoire Bartók’s Bluebeard was probably the first to present this relationship as simplified as possible, focusing only on one single encounter between a man and a woman. Though the main characters’ fate is intertwined regardless of space and time, their story is saturated with symbols and clues of Bartók’s times to be deciphered: a past that needs to be disclosed, a present that needs to be understood, and a future that needs to be imagined as the follow up of the first two. Love is not a goal but a means by which the real goal can be achieved: redemption, the understanding and acceptance of one’s fate and overcoming it. That is why Bartók’s opera is an important reference point in relation to every single opera on this topic, especially if the composer is also a Hungarian. Péter Eötvös’ opera is based on Alessandro Baricco’s 2012 novel, Senza sangue. It is also a story of a single dramatic encounter between a man and a woman. (The libretto written by Mari Mezei focuses on the ending of the novel, we learn about the previous events from the dialogues between characters.) The opera’s most relevant cross-reference to Bluebeard is having a female main character for whom the exploration of the past and the clarification of events of the past is essential. However, while in Bartók’s opera the man himself and his past is the secret to be discovered, in Senza sangue it is the female character who is mysterious, who needs redemption and whose fate needs to be understood. Both operas take place in unidentified locations with symbolic meanings, and while Bluebeard’s castle is not realistic as it is a symbol in itself, specifying the unnamed South-American country in Eötvös’ work – as painful as it is – can be easily done. Placing the story in a current political conflict is a contemporary feature: during a civil war the father and brother of our heroine are murdered by a commando of three. One of these three men is the male protagonist, who saves the little girl’s life. Now, at the time of our story he is the only one alive from the commando. He is an old and disillusioned man. The details aren’t disclosed, but the girl has something to do with the deaths of his fellow assasins. She steps into the man’s lottery shop unexpectedly. The turning point in their story is triggered by their discussion: she din’t come to take revenge, she seeks redemption from him by connecting their lives once again. Their mutual salvation depends on both of them. Unanswered questions keep echoing in the air, questions that are timely today: Does belief in a better world bring salvation? Can revenge save a broken life? Was the fight for a better world in vain if it did not succeed? We may not get answers and neither do our protagonists. They become aware though that their lives got intertwined somehow on that blood-covered day and only through each other can they ever hope to make life meaningful again. The beautiful symbolic representation of this recognition is when the old lady first pronounces and eventually takes up her real name, a name she kept secret since her family’s destruction. Senza Sangue has one more important feature that makes it similar to Bartók’s opera: it is also an opera of secrets and ambiguities, just like Bluebeard’s Castle. This puts the composer in quite the same position: his music has to say what cannot be said, and his music shall stress the unthinkable – even if it is unbearable. However, the two stories have a different ending: Bluebeard’s Castle is covered in eternal darkness while the charaters of Senza sangue are facing an open road leading them towards the light at the end of their lives.
/László Tihanyi: The connection between Senza sangue and Bluebeard’s Castle – 2015/
Az „örökzöld” operai témák között – legkésőbb a romantika kezdete óta – kiemelt helyet foglal el a férfi – nő kapcsolat, amelyet a művészek minden korszakban az arra jellemző módon értelmeztek és jelenítettek meg műveikben. A mai opera repertoár gerincét alkotó művek közül talán Bartók Kékszakállú-ja az első, amelyikben ez a kapcsolat a végsőkig leegyszerűsítve – és egyben a legkoncentráltabban – egyetlen férfi és egyetlen nő egyetlen találkozásában kerül bemutatásra. Bár sorsuk földrajzi tértől és történelmi időtől függetlenül kapcsolódik egybe, történetük Bartók korának megfelelően telítve van szimbólumokkal és megfejtendő titkokkal: múlttal, amit fel kell tárni, jelennel, amit meg kell érteni, és jövővel, amit – az előzőek alapján – el kell tudni képzelni. A szerelem nem cél, hanem eszköz, amellyel a cél elérhető: ez a megváltás, a sors megértése, elfogadása és meghaladása. Bartók műve ebben a vonatkozásában (is) etalon, ami szükségképpen felmerül minden olyan operával kapcsolatban, amelyik szintén erre a témára épül, különösen, ha szerzője magyar. Eötvös Péter Alessandro Baricco: Senza sangue című, 2002-ben megjelent regényéből írta azonos című operáját, amely szintén egyetlen, drámai férfi-nő találkozás története. (A Mezei Mari által készített szövegkönyv a regénynek csak ebből a – befejező – részéből készült, az előzményeket a párbeszédek során ismerhetjük meg.) A történet legfontosabb rokonsága a Kékszakállútörténetével, hogy itt is a nő az, aki számára elengedhetetlen a múlt feltárása és tisztázása. Míg azonban Bartók operájában a férfi múltja a megfejtendő titok, a Senza sangue szereplői közül a nő a rejtélyes, az ő élete és sorsa az, ami megértésre és megváltásra vár. Bár mindkét mű szimbolikus értelmű és konkrétan nem beazonosítható helyszínen játszódik, a Kékszakállú vára reálisan elképzelhetetlen, hiszen maga is szimbólum, míg az Eötvös operájában meg nem nevezett Dél-Amerikai ország – fájdalom, jól tudjuk – könnyen elképzelhető és szinte tetszés szerint beazonosítható. Egyértelműen mai a konfliktus beágyazása aktuálpolitikai alaphelyzetbe: egy polgárháború során a főhősnő apját és testvérét is legyilkolja egy három fős kommandó, akik közül a férfi főszereplő az, aki megmenti az akkor még kislány főhősnő életét. A történet idején az egykori kommandóból már csak a főhős van életben, öreg és korábbi ideáiból kiábrándult emberként. Társai halálához valamiképp köze van a főhősnőnek – a konkrétumok homályban maradnak –, aki váratlanul betoppan az idős férfi lottóüzletében. A beszélgetésük során fordul meg a történet: a nő nem bosszút állni jött, hanem azért, hogy a férfi újra megmentse őt azáltal, hogy összekötik az életüket, s ezzel mindkettőjük számára eljöhet a megváltás, amihez csak egymás által juthatnak. Sajátosan mai kérdések maradnak – megválaszolatlanul – a levegőben: mire adhat felmentést a hit egy jobb világban? Megoldást jelenthet-e a bosszú egy kettétört élet megmentésére? Hiábavaló volt-e a harc egy jobb világért, ha az végül nem következett el? Válaszokat nem kapunk, a szereplőkben is csak annyi tudatosul, hogy életük azon a vérrel borított napon valahogy összefonódott, és csak egymástól remélhetik, hogy újra értelmet nyerhet. Ennek szép, szimbolikus megjelenítése, ahogy az idős nő újra kimondja és felveszi eredeti nevét, amit családja pusztulása óta elrejtett, nem használt. A Senza sangue még egy fontos ponton hasonlít Bartók operájára: ugyanúgy az elhallgatások és kétértelműségek operája, mint a Kékszakállú herceg vára. Ez egyben azt is jelenti, hogy a zeneszerzőre is hasonló feladat hárul: ha kell, a zenének kell közölnie az elmondhatatlant, vagy még hangsúlyosabbá tenni – akár az elviselhetetlenségig fokozva – a kimondhatatlant. De a két történet befejezése eltérő: a Kékszakállú herceg várára örökös sötétség borul, míg a Senza sangue szereplői előtt megnyílik az út, hogy életük végén együtt újra a fénybe érjenek.
/Tihanyi László: A Senza sangue és a Kékszakállú herceg vára kapcsolata – 2015/
