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Wolfgang Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexico in New Production at the Salzburg Festival

Jul. 01, 2015

Wolfgang Rihm’s <em>Die Eroberung von Mexico</em> in New Production at the Salzburg Festival

This year’s Salzburg Festival features a new production of Wolfgang Rihm’s inventive and anarchic opera Die Eroberung von Mexico (The Conquest of Mexico), after text by Antonin Artaud. Ingo Metzmacher conducts the ORF Radio-Symphonieorchter Wien with direction by Peter Konwitschny. The production stars soprano Angela Denoke as Montezuma and baritone Bo Skovhus as Cortez.

For Die Eroberung von Mexico, which premiered in 1992 with Metzmacher leading the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, Rihm takes Antonin Artaud’s La Conquête du Mexique (1932) as his primary source. In the opera, Rihm develops the two main characters—Cortez and Montezuma—as “sonic spheres” of opposing cultural worlds whose encounter is like “an encounter with the Self.” He elaborates:

Artaud’s mantra “male-female” plays an important role. The confrontation of two problematic spheres, two “cultures,” each of which is at odds with itself, determines the sonic reality. A kind of unification of opposites develops in the circumstance of unconscious conflicts – almost like an act of love… Artaud’s theatrical work is not a historical drama; it is a phantasmagoria about ambivalence: hence his mantra “male-female-neuter.” We are already in the midst of a music which has always already begun.

In developing the concept of the “male-female-neuter,” Rihm casts the character of Montezuma as a soprano whose voice is extended by two additional female voices in the orchestra, while the role of Cortez is taken by baritone voice augmented by two male speakers. The production runs July 26 through August 10 at the Felsenreitschule Theatre in Salzburg, Austria.

Details on the production can be found at salzburgerfestspiele.at.

For more information on Wolfgang Rihm, visit universaledition.com.

Wolfgang Rihm
Die Eroberung von Mexico (The Conquest of Mexico) (1987-1991)
music drama after Antonin Artaud
libretto by Wolfgang Rihm
for dramatic soprano, high soprano, alto, baritone, a screaming man, two speakers dancer and chorus
3.4.4.1-3.3.3.1-timp.5perc-wind machine-hp.pno.eorg.2ebass-2vn.2va.2vc.4dc
120’

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