All of Bernhard Lang’s works refer to the sociopolitical, be it an instrumental work or music theatre, and regardless of whether the underlying text is based on a literary model, or has been originally written. This view expands from the concrete into the universal, and from the past to the present. Two world premieres from January and February prove this in their own way. The opera Hiob – after Joseph Roth’s novel of the same name – commissioned by the Stadttheater Klagenfurt, and The Travel Agency is on Fire, which takes after a piece by William S. Burroughs, for voice, ensemble, electronics, and video, commissioned by soyuz21 – contemporary music ensemble zürich.

 

Hiob

Having been postponed a number of times, including various corona lockdowns, it was finally time. Commissioned by the Stadttheater Klagenfurt and supported by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, Bernhard Lang’s new opera Hiob saw its world premiere on 09.02.2023.

View score of Hiob

About Hiob

Hiob will be my thirteenth music theatre piece, a commission for the Stadttheater Klagenfurt. It is my third collaboration with the director and librettist Michael Sturminger, with whom I previously staged I Hate Mozart and Der Reigen. It takes up the story of Job, and is based on a novel by Joseph Roth, with whose work I have become connected through many years of reading. After searching for source material for a number of years, it was on one hand the end-times, the terminal, and the abysmal in Roth’s work, and on the other the transcendence of the inevitable in Job, that inspired us to realize this work. The piece quotes repeatedly from the classic opera literature and Russian folksongs. Transcriptions of ethnic music play a major role in the piece, in this case Romanian and Bulgarian klezmer music from the 1920s.

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Synopsis

In Joseph Roth's 1930 novel, which translates the biblical material into the 20th century, Job Mendel is called Singer and is a devoutly religious Jew who lives with his wife and four children in the fictional Zuchnow shtetl in Russia. When his first-born Shemariah emigrated to America and started making money, his parents and sister Miriam caught up with him, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented the family from fulfilling the »American Dream«. Schemariah dies as an American soldier, Jonas, who was fighting for the Russian army, is missing, Mendel's wife Deborah dies of despair, Mirjam falls ill with a psychosis. Mendel's love and hope rest on his youngest son Menuchim, whom he left behind in his old homeland due to his mental disability.

The millennia-old story of the god-fearing Job, who despite devastating blows of fate does not lose his faith and is ultimately rewarded for his steadfastness, touches on the fundamental questions of our existence. How changeable is our happiness in life? How many arrows and slings of raging fate can man endure? What does he need to get up again? And how much power does religion give?

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Press quotes

"First off, this piece could be a new hit! One where New Music, which despite some complex ideas (so as not to mention pitfalls), easily reaches a broader audience, with an insanely strong story and a cast manageable by even small and medium-sizes theatres with a little effort. At the Stadttheater Klagenfurt at least, “Hiob” was a great success with standing ovations for a gripping ninety-minute piece that timelessly brings the Old Testament story of Job’s trial by God into the present. Tim Anderson works with power and verve at the pult of the Kärntner Sinfonieorchester, making Bernhard Lang’s expanded orchestral sounds – with synthesisers (Adam Rogala) and quarter tone experiments – shine. Lang’s stylistic use of loops are used only in core passages this time; always fitting, and always on-point for the phrase. Wonderful jazz bubbles from the pit in the America episode, followed by melancholy chorals or manic apprehension and reflection – and lots of klezmer!"
"Austrian composer Bernhard Lang has for a long time been fascinated by the incomparably poetic language of this novel by Joseph Roth. Especially as in Job Roth provides a paradigmatic description of many people who seek refuge – including those today. Movements of refugees, already in full effect when the opera was composed (2017/2018), have intensified in light of the war in Ukraine, and give the material a burning topicality. Together with librettist and director Michael Sturminger, Lang conceived an opera that sounds quite distinct from his previous works for stage, and yet subtly integrates those earlier achievements. The Klagenfurter Stadttheater achieved a remarkable performance, just as Bernard Lang succeeded in proving that New Music can also allow itself a little melody without becoming banal."

"Michael Sturminger has distilled an opera libretto from the spoken theater text, which the renowned, multi-award-winning Austrian composer Bernhard Lang has set to music - with quotations from folk music and opera literature, with klezmer interludes in the European first act and with the addition of a jazz trio in the USA-influenced second act of the work. The highly erudite composer cannot and will not do without his cherished repetitions, so not only family father Mendel Singer (Alexander Kaimbacher), but also his wife Deborah (Katerina Hebelkova) and their children insist at times on text passages that it would have been a pleasure for the high baroque. But the sonic journey one embarks on, from the quiet drum stirring of the opening, through the deafening tutti clusters that give expression to the eerie succession of blows of fate, to the final a cappella lament of the beleaguered hero, digs into the heart. It is precisely in the combination of his entirely contemporary tonal language with traditional, melodic elements that Lang strikes a chord with today's audiences, as the enthusiasm at the end of the Klagenfurt premiere proved. The bitter topicality inherent in the migrant drama contributes its share to the success."

The Travel Agency is on Fire

About The Travel Agency is on Fire

The Travel Agency is on Fire is based on a collection of “cut up” experiments by William S. Burroughs on texts from a series of canonical authors – from William Shakespeare and Arthur Rimbaud to William Wordsworth and James Joyce. Burroughs chose his sources, cut them into pieces, and placed them amongst one another at random to pick out new word combinations and new word compositions. The Travel Agency is on Fire, available in the archive since 2010, fascinates both scholars and Burroughs fans alike as it shines a light on the experimental processes underlying Burroughs’ work.

 

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View score of The Travel Agency is on Fire

World premiere of The Travel Agency is on Fire

 

Photos: Karlheinz Fessl (Hiob), Hans-Peter Hauser, Hochschule für Musik Basel/FHNW (The Travel Agency is on Fire)