“Die Befristeten” (The Limited) by Detlev Glanert and Nicola Hümpel after Elias Canetti

A modern opera without sung sound: "Die Befristeten" by Nicola Hümpel and Detlev Glanert at the Cuvilliés Theater. When the earth was still desolate and full of plastic bags, God created woman out of clay as a plump Stone Age Venus. 90 minutes later, man is free: God throws away the clay, lets his creatures do their dirt alone and begins a career as a bum. This is how light-footedly director Nicola Hümpel can bring final questions to the stage. She has staged Elias Canetti's "Die Befristeten" for the Munich Music Theater Biennale at the Cuvilliés Theater: a mind game about a world in which dying has been replaced by a clean, punctual ritual, which a society of urban neurotics sees as humane progress until one character radically and liberatingly questions it. Music Theater A few basic rules of this festival are also turned upside down: Detlev Glanert's music plays only second fiddle. It was not calculated in the highest room of an ivory tower, but developed from improvisations during rehearsals. No one sings a note - and so the evening is more drama than opera, and forms of musical theater between Wittenbrink or Marthaler closer than the usual output of the Biennale. Hümpel characterizes her characters through lovingly ironic speaking masks - most extreme and also funniest in an unsentimental, chuckling ugly duckling of a woman. This is framed by gently choreographed, living images. Glanert's music for the eight instrumentalists of the Piano Possibile ensemble, unless it dares to dance, stays discreetly and quietly in the background. But it is more than background music and completes the cheerful stylization that Hümpel gives to Canetti's somber thoughts. The performance, which will remain in the Resi repertoire until early June, has only one catch: it is a quarter of an hour too long. Certainly, one encounters God, who in between acted as the priest-king of the "Temporaries", once again. But this rounding off is superfluous: The doubt about freedom of the bespectacled lady in the costume would have been the perfect question mark at the end.

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