The motto of the 14th Munich Biennale is "Out of Control". The latest world premiere embodies it perfectly, but also the exact opposite of it. "Die Befristeten" after Elias Canetti is about a totally controlled world; on the other hand, composer Detlev Glanert and Nicola Hümpel (concept, direction, costumes) have a risky production process behind them: Neither did a finished score exercise temporally immovable control over the course of this "music theater," nor did the notes serve as mere background music for a logical libretto. Rather, the anarchic stage play about the programmability of society, which was acclaimed at the Cuvilliés Theater, was created as a work in progress. Nicola Hümpel peeled situations and characters out of Canetti's work, adapted them to the character of the fantastic actors provided by the Residenztheater and condensed this into effective scenes. In constant contact with the composer Detlev Glanert, the textual and musical guidelines gradually converged, and they allowed themselves to be mutually inspired. And Glanert reacted flexibly again and again to new ideas, associations. People no longer have names, only numbers Canetti wrote "Die Befristeten" in 1952, when the NSA and the decoding of the genome were still a long way off, but Orwell, Canetti and Hermann Kasack were already there with their uncomfortable visions. In the world of the "limited", there is no longer any uncertainty about the course and duration of biography, death has lost its horror. In life on the drawing board, people no longer have names, but numbers: 50, 88, 17 or 30 also means the allotted lifetime. Careers, relationships, not to mention insurance and economic priorities can be better planned and optimized with such amounts of data. Lost his terror...? Canetti himself leaves his game with determinism open. Nicola Hümpel, however, who updates original passages with her own texts, radicalizes them, also spices them with black cabaret charms, creates sparks of a sometimes subtle, sometimes cutting horror, and this with a proper joy in the full theatrical use. Their "Brave New World" is coming apart at the seams: because everything is determined, primordial human passions and spontaneity come to nothing; the personnel only twitches in senseless behavioral templates of the old "ignorant" world: vows of love, gestures of friendship, social roles end up on the trashy revolving stage in the cocoon of a dense ground fog. Destination unknown. But it was an opportunity for juicy actor theater, singing à la opera is not. A great musical prank Detlev Glanert (born 1960), with whose opera "Leyla and Medjnun" the first Munich Biennale was opened in 1988, contributes music that sometimes discreetly accompanies the drastic actions, sometimes charges or even counteracts them. The ensemble piano possibile under Heinz Friedl (clarinets, saxophone, piano/keyboard, percussion, viola/cello/bass) realizes this music with brilliant precision: Ravishingly sweet waltz, polka, circus or jazz touches seem to lift the anarchic action to a bizarre level like déjà vu from the old world, shimmering and fragrant motoric, few sharply placed explosions land with pinpoint accuracy - a great musical stroke.

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