Reise der Hoffnung
VISION OF THE WORK
Journey of Hope
Opera in three acts
My opera Journey of Hope – Voyage vers l’espoir deals with a contemporary refugee drama and can be understood as an act of complex human catastrophe. A family from Anatolia flees via Italy to Switzerland and loses not only their entire savings. They lose everything: mutual trust, love and their child. I have juxtaposed the libretto, one of the most realistic of my ten operas to date, with a formal three-act structure. Each act is characterised by an instrumental focus (Act I concertante violin, Act II percussion set, Act III two trumpets). This gives the story, which is conceived as a “road movie”, a compositional rigour: the real events on stage are contrasted with an almost independent orchestral event. This results in an overall tension that gives the work its actual drama and its driving heartbeat.