Rote Laterne
VISION OF THE WORK
Red Lantern
Opera based on the novel “Wives and Concubines” by Su Tong
The opera Red Lantern forms a trilogy together with my operas The Arabian Night and Rumour. Each focuses on modern young women caught up in the abysmal erotic surrealism of life. In The Arabian Night, Franziska is swept away by daily dreams of such intensity that all her flatmates and neighbours are drawn into an erotic vortex. Adela, the undead in Rumour and angelic innocence in the eyes of the village, enjoys life to the fullest at every dawn until it leads to her apparent death.
And now Song-Lian in Red Lantern! As the fourth, most beautiful and youngest concubine, she arrives at Master Chen’s estate. Song-Lian wants more than to lustfully surrender to the finely spun web of intrigue and passion. The year she spends with Master Chen follows the logic of a nightmare in which the seasons change arbitrarily and lust and envy determine the hours. The entire plot of my opera is driven by Song-Lian’s view of things. As if in a dream, she surrenders to the events through which she realises that the secret that keeps her in this world lies in the depths of a well.
THE WORK IN THE MEDIA