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Organization

Singer

Baritone

Evgueniy Alexiev

Lenz

Bass

Moon Soo Park

Oberlin

Tenor

Lorin Wey

Kaufmann

Conductor

Gregor Rot

Stage director

Nadja Loschky

Set designer

Ulrich Leitner

Costume designer

Irina Spreckelmeyer

Dramaturge

Anne Christine Oppermann

Theater Bielefeld

Jakob Lenz

Bielefeld

Germany

Stadttheater

Jakob Lenz Rihm

Approved

Im Frühjahr 1778 hatte der 27-jährige Lenz versucht, im Elsass bei dem Sozialreformer Pfarrer Oberlin Ruhe und Heilung zu finden. Erfolglos. Oberlins Notizen...

Jakob Lenz wanders through the mountains. Driven by inner voices, he throws himself into the icy water. To kill yourself? Or just to bathe, as he later claimed to Pastor Oberlin?

In 1778, the socially committed pastor Oberlin took in the poet Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, author of dramas such as The Hofmeister or The Soldiers . Together with the philosopher Christoph Kaufmann, Oberlin hoped to be able to counteract Lenz's attacks of paranoid schizophrenia. The increasing intellectual decline of the Sturm-und-Drang poet, as described by Oberlin in his notes, inspired the young Georg Büchner to write his novella Lenz , which in turn inspired the only 25-year-old Wolfgang Rihm to write a chamber opera. 

The unstoppable pull of the mental and spiritual disturbance and the musical expressive force pulls the listener directly into the poet's shattered psyche. The real characters, Lenz, Oberlin and Kaufmann, are joined by six voices – projections of Lenz's inner state, his fears and dreams, but also voices from the world around him. Reality and hallucination overlap indistinguishably; Lenz's psychological experience merges with the sound that surrounds him. For Lenz there is no way out of his disturbing stream of perception, the only thing left for him is the straitjacket. Since its premiere in 1979, Rihm's youthful masterpiece has developed into one of the most successful German-language operas of the 20th century

English

Jakob Lenz by Rihm, From (2018/2018), Directed by Nadja Loschky,, Conductor Gregor Rot, Stadttheater, Bielefeld, Germany

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