"Out of Control" is the motto of the 2014 Munich Biennale, the last under the artistic direction of Peter Ruzicka. But for the premiere series of Dieter Schnebel's "Utopias" and Detlev Glanert's music theater "Die Befristeten," the theme "Utopia" could make a pretty good subtitle. This includes not only all those dreams of happy islands and social ideals that have run through cultural history since Thomas More's initial work, but also the horror stories of an inhuman future by Samjatin, Bradbury, Orwell and Hume. Elias Canetti's drama "Die Befristeten" is also such a "dystopia". Glanert's music theater, which he developed together with the off-theater director Nicola Hümpel and her theater troupe Nico and the Navigators, ignites on it. In 1988, Glanert had opened the first ever Biennale with his first opera, "Leyla and Medjnun," and now returns to the site of that double beginning. And this project, which the Biennale commissioned together with the Munich Residenztheater, and which was also produced at the "Resi", differs fundamentally from the previously known works of this composer, who has been successful and much performed at many houses, and who can write so wonderfully for the human voice - and here does completely without singing. Like many dystopias, "Die Befristeten" also comes in the guise of a perfect world: people are allotted their lifetime from birth, everyone wears their date of birth and death on their neck in a capsule and the number of their years of life in their name. However, here only everyone is allowed to know his own birthday, so that in the case of a person with the sober name "Fifty," the others know how many years he will live, but not what his current age is and when his time of death will be, his "moment," as it is called in the play. He himself, however, can arrange his life according to his reliably determined life expectancy; there is no surprising death, no aborted life plans, no tragically lonely partnerships. Life can be planned perfectly. But as in many dystopias, there is one person who rebels against the brave new world because he senses the lies and sterility in it. By discovering that the capsules are empty and thus exposing the grand administrator of the punctual dying operation, called "Capsulean," as a manipulator, he brings down the system - partly to the delight and partly to the horror of the caringly manipulated. The strength of Canetti's text is its calculating rigor. He sets only as many axioms as necessary to carry out the dramatic thought experiment, which means that beyond this experiment he cares little for the characterization of the characters and the viability of his axioms. Unfortunately, however, Nicola Hümpel sees this as a weakness and loads Canetti's calculation with well-subtle politically correct textual sottises against the fitness cult, wellness hysteria and the hubris of (genetic) medicine. Even the refugee suffering off Lampedusa is not left out. That is the one shortcoming of the evening. The other lies in Glanert's music and is even honorable, at least in its experimental claim. Glanert has reversed the process of composing music theater: instead of writing his music and leaving it to the director to figure out how to handle it, he has developed much of his musical material only during the rehearsal process together with the Navigators as well as the Munich instrumental ensemble piano possibile, which fits excellently into this working process. More precisely: The music follows in the arrangement of its set pieces and partly also in the composition of the text and piece development, which also took place only during the rehearsal process - which has the consequence that it can hardly develop its own formal context. It underpins, sometimes it also counterpoints. And if one follows the action in composing, then one quickly ends up with allusions that are all too obvious: romantic elegies for sensitive scenes, soft blue jazz when it comes to melancholy, dissonances for despair and aggression, and jazzy repetitive figurations for the hectic. Glanert's approach may be unusual for an opera composer. But in advanced drama music, the primacy of the scene is normal. And since all the texts here - and there are indeed quite a few! - are spoken and one experiences more a melodrama than an opera, the music remains stuck exactly there: in the secondary. Nevertheless, this evening, to which the rococo splendid and yet intimate Cuvilliéstheater provides a picturesquely contrasting setting, has strong moments as an overall theatrical event. This is mainly due to the theatrical choreography that Hümpel unfolds on Oliver Proskes' eternally rotating end-time stage littered with plastic sheets, which is empty except for an architectural set piece with two portals: an art hub for the presentation of an artificial world. The way in which social attitudes - arrogance, prudence, loyalty to the system, insecurity, rebellion, envy, flattery - are stylized into physical postures is powerful: a virtuoso theater of movement that Hümpel puts on stage with a great feeling for pictorial tableaus. In all its contortions - wonderful the acrobatic floating dance daredevils of the delicate Yui Kawaguchi - and slapsticky caricatures it is not so far away from Matthias Rebstock's Schnebel retreat the day before. In their nuanced and pointed treatment of language, however, the Stuttgart vocal soloists were light years ahead of the Navigators. Glanert's music embraces and caresses these end-time scenarios with sometimes downright humble subtlety, decidedly atmospheric and theatrically appropriate. The fact that many of these desperately funny, screamingly bleak, quietly dreary scenes have such a strong effect is also thanks to this music, which the piano-possibile musicians on saxophone, clarinets, viola, cello, double bass, keyboards, guitar and drums, under the direction of Heinz Fried, subtly and atmospherically realize. Considering what this composer is capable of, one must consider this a very conscious withdrawal - and will by no means regret that he has another fully composed opera on the agenda as his next project.

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