Organization

Sebastian Weigle

Conductor

Stage director

Tobias Kratzer

Set designer

Rainer Sellmaier

Costume designer

Lighting designer

Joachim Klein

Dramaturge

Bettina Bartz

Konrad Kuhn

Singer

Bass

Andreas Bauer Kanabas

Adahm

Soprano

Ambur Braid

Chawa

Baritone

Iain MacNeil

Kajin

Tenor

Ian Koziara

Chabel

Oper Frankfurt

Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra

German

Die ersten Menschen -  (The first humans, opera in two acts)

Frankfurt am Main

Germany

Opernhaus

Die ersten Menschen Stephan

Public

The first humans, opera in two acts

English

Approved

The first humans were expelled from paradise. They are looking for their way in a new world in which they have to live from now on.

Chawa longingly remembers how Adamm once desired her in the spring of her love. But Adamm has grown tired and is fully occupied with the struggle for bare existence. His son Kajin refuses this struggle "with the sweat of his brow"; instead, he gives in to his inner urges and roams the wilderness in search of a wife. Chabel, on the other hand, seeks "salvation" in the worship of a benevolent God the Father, to whom he makes a sacrifice. Both desire their mother in different ways. When Kajin surprises Chawa and Chabel in ecstatic union at night, he kills his brother. In a vision he foresees the future: its mark is "coming blood of coming mankind".

Rudi Stephan completed his opera in 1914. However, the premiere did not take place until 1920 in Frankfurt; by then the composer had been dead for five years – he had died as a soldier at the front. An idiosyncratic voice fell silent before the promise of a few works could fully unfold. The music critic Paul Bekker wrote: "Here a unique, new tonal language of surprising tonal profusion has developed, whose oddities, even where they are initially disconcerting, bear the stamp of what was made to be, not what was invented." Similar to Franz Schreker, whose operas on the Some of which were also premiered in Frankfurt before World War II, Rudi Stephan remains committed to tonality and explores the timbre of a large-scale orchestra in a way that had never been heard before. In ever new upswings, his symphonic music gains enormous expressivity and raises the text, charged with erotic overpressure - it is based on a drama by Otto Borngräber, which was banned shortly after the premiere in 1912 - to a new level, which reveals the genuine opera composer. It's about discovering an almost forgotten, exciting work.

Credits (Cast & Crew)

Oper Frankfurt

Sebastian Weigle

Tobias Kratzer

Cast

Andreas Bauer Kanabas

Ambur Braid

Iain MacNeil

Ian Koziara

Crew

Rainer Sellmaier

Rainer Sellmaier

Joachim Klein

Bettina Bartz

Konrad Kuhn

Ensemble

Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra