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Stadttheater Klagenfurt Presents Wolfgang Rihm's Jakob Lenz

Feb. 15, 2022

Performances of Wolfgang Rihm's chamber opera, Jakob Lenz, take place at the Stadttheater Klagenfurt through March 8. Mitsugu Hoshino conducts and Sophie Springer directs this engaging new production.

Of Jakob Lenz, Wolfgang Rihm notes:

"For me, [the musical stage] is where very magical and very human things take place. In Jakob Lenz, the human aspects often switch to magical ones, since the realism of a self-suasive, unhinged soul takes on surreal traits – or we simply cannot understand transformation except as not being real. A character like Jakob Lenz harbours many stages within itself, and music must represent those constantly changing stages.

I have tried to do this in the most direct way – by not cleanly separating the musical layers, but keeping them constantly in evidence until they must break forth, each in accordance with its own dramaturgy. The large form takes on aspects of a rondo, performed in overlapping layers – a type of rondo relief, since perspectives of psychological proximity and distance are indeed formulated musically as atmospheric relations.

Above all: the thread on which Jakob Lenz hangs is the current onto the listeners’ hearts."


(The making of Jakob Lenz by Wolfgang Rihm at Stadttheater Klagenfurt)

To learn more about Wolfgang Rihm, visit: universaledition.com.

Wolfgang Rihm
Jakob Lenz (1977-1978)
chamber opera
libretto (Ger) by Michael Fröhling based on the text by Georg Büchner
Lenz - baritone; Oberlin - bass; Kaufmann - tenor
6 voices: 2 sopranos, 2 altos, 2 basses, 2 or 4 children
0.2.1.1-0.1.1.0-perc-hpd-3vc
75'

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