Vipern
VISION OF THE WORK
A murderous desire in four acts
Opera requires a completely different compositional approach than orchestral works. Composition can essentially be divided into two categories: composing with and without text. Composing an opera forces the composer to address the three major questions of text treatment at every moment of the composition: am I working with, against or for the text?
A complex work combines all three components, or moves in constant alternation between them – a circumstance that does not exist when composing an instrumental work and thus raises a completely different problem in terms of artistic expression. VIPERN is a very archaic work, in which everything revolves around suppressed, unbridled and explosive love. I wrote the libretto together with Tim Coleman.
I see the material as a wild animal that – locked in a cage – moves menacingly quietly and sometimes hissing, while the observer hopes in constant fear that he will be able to keep the animal in the cage. In a figurative sense, I hope this will be the musical sum of my opera.
For this, I need a special sound that does without percussion, harp, piano or other keyboard instruments entirely: I use only wind and string instruments. The singers emerge from the orchestral sound, which in turn develops from the vocal parts. Everything is interwoven, and since singers, wind and string players have extremely similar intonation and tone creation, any percussive sound would be rather disruptive to my concept.