| two-part opera
music Hans Werner Henze
libretto Hans-Ulrich Treichel
based on the novel Gogo no eiko - The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea by Yukio Mishima
Japanese version
conductor Johannes Debus
director Giorgio Ferrara scenography Gianni Quaranta
costumes Maurizio Galante
lighting design AJ Weissbard
Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi
Fusako JiHye Son
Ryuji Carlo Kang
Noboru Ugo Kim - Toshiaki Murakami
Band leader/ Number One Kwang Il Kim
Number Two Brian Asawa
Number Four Young Hoon Kim
Number Five Taihwan Park
assistant to conductor Gabriele Bonolis
assistant to director Gianni Santucci
assistant to artistic director Olimpia Onorato
assistant to scenographer Luciano Ceglia
assistant to costumes Barbara Pala
assistant to lighting designer Solomon Weisbard
assistant to musical production Gabriele Bonolis
assistant to musical production Noriko Morimoto
musical assistant Maurizio Agostini Schotts Editions, Mainz-representative for Italy Universal Music Publishing Ricordi s.r.l Milano
new production Spoleto53 Festival dei 2Mondi
The opera Gogo no Eiko is the result of a particular artistic history. Composed by Hans Werner Henze in 1988 for the Deutsche Oper Berlin from a German libretto (Das Verretene Meer -The Betrayed Sea), taken from the novel by Yukio Mishima, Gogo no Eiko was performed for the first time in 1990. Then, twelve years later, Henze decided to return to its origin, having the German libretto translated into Japanese and composing twenty minutes of new music. A kind of miracle, given the diversity of expression of the two languages. Therefore, the piece premièred as a concert at Suntory Hall in Tokyo in 2003, and was a great success. But then, again, Henze and Albrecht composed another thirty minutes of music. In 2006 it was thus performed as a concert by the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI conducted by Gerd Albrecht in Salzburg, Berlin and Turin. In Spoleto it is performed on stage in its Japanese version, for the first time ever.
A dark opera with a hovering sensation of inescapable, individual and social destiny which dominates the action and crushes its characters into inexorable mechanisms. The universe of the young generation is in contrast with that of adults and expresses its full destructive potential due to the lack of prospects, bringing to the extreme solution of murder. But youth too, is seen as a category of the spirit, and Henze makes us reflect and have mercy on the typical cynicism of this human dimension, defeated in its need to identify with reality during the difficult transition from adolescence to maturity.
Fusako is a beautiful young widow, owner of a Western style fashion boutique in Yokohama. She lives with her son, Noboru, who spies his mother’s intimacy through the crack of a wall in the room where he is locked every night. Meeting Ryuji, the second mate of a ship moored in the harbour, is crucial. Mother and son are fascinated by the man who soon proposes to become their husband and stepfather. However, Ryuji’s physical love for Fusako and his decision to leave the sea to conduct a normal life beside the woman he has fallen in love with and her son, which he treats lovingly, casts an evil light upon him. In the adolescent and his bandmates’ eyes, the sailor is no longer the hero that he seemed to be. He not only has abandoned his dreams of glory and no longer "belongs to the sea”, but he has also become a lenient father, forgiving him for spying he and his mother at night. He is nothing but a miserable wretch like all adults: that’s why the boys condemn him to death. While Fusako, happy again, imagines her future commitments as a wife and mother, convinced that Noboru will learn to love his stepfather with time, the officer is lured into an isolated place by the boy and his friends, where he will be put to sleep and killed. A death already foreshadowed at the end of the first act, across the brutal killing of a cat.
| Hans Werner Henze, 83-year-old, is considered the last champion of the great German musical tradition starting from Bach. Being an early talent, Henze is immediately a successful protagonist on the German and international music scene. He begins composing at 12, studies music at Staatsmusikschule of Brunswick and, after the war, at the Institute of Sacred Music in Heidelberg with Wolfgang Fortner. He also participates in the summer courses in Darmstadt with René Leibowitz. His first composition, Kammerkonzert for piano, flute and strings in 1946, was immediately successful. After writing works very different in genre and style, including the piece Boulevard Solitude, and having worked with the Deutsches Theater of Costanza and with the Ballet du Staatstheater Wiesbaden, for which he composes music for ballets (Jack Pudding, 1951 and Labyrinth, 1951), he moves permanently to Italy. His early Italian years produce the two operas König Hirsch (1956) and Der Prinz von Homburg from Kleist, the three acts of the ballet Undine, the opera Elegy for Young Lovers on a libretto by Auden, the cantatas Kammermusik and Cantata della Fiaba Estrema. In 1966, again from a libretto by Auden, Henze composes the opera Die Bassariden conceived as a symphony in four movements. In this same period he also produces the comic opera Der Junge Lord with a libretto by Ingeborg Bachmann, followed by another masterpiece, the Secondo Concerto for piano (1967). The revolutionary ferment of the late ´60s, a visit to Cuba, where he directs the first of his Sesta Sinfonia into which he inserts revolutionary songs, leave a political and social mark on the work of those years. Like in musical theater: El Cimarrón (1970) and We Come to the River (1976), which dramatizes the class conflict. In those years he also founds the Cantiere d’Arte (Art Yard) of Montepulciano, which he will consider "one of my few political successes", when he writes Tom Thumb, an opera for children. At the same time he expands his search for a richness of expression even in orchestral language with Heliogabalus imperator (1972), Tristan(1974), Aria de la folia española (1977), often reinterpreting ancient musical patterns with a personal synthesis of past and present, lyricism and rigor. From the 80s and the early 90s we have: the opera The English Cat (1983), with a libretto by the playwright Edward Bond, and the four symphonies, from the seventh to the tenth, inspired by the German symphonic tradition of the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries, destined to have international resonance.
His dense catalogue - including piano pieces, chamber music, cantatas, an oratorio, concerts - has engraved a mark in the world of European music. A mark consolidated by his teaching: for many years Henze was at the Royal Academy of Music in London, at the Salzburg Mozarteum, at the Musikhochschule in Cologne and at the Tanglewood Festival. On several occasions he has worked with young musicians, founding, in addition to the Art Yard of Montepulciano, the Detschlandsberg Jugendmusikfest (Styria) and the Munich Biennial for New Music Theatre. In 2000 he was awarded the Premium Imperiale in Tokyo. His most recent work, Upupa oder Der Triumph der Sohnesliebe, was presented at the Salzburg Festival in 2003, adding even more to his international success. Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi In the last few years, the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Orchestra of Milan, established in 1993 by Vladimir Delman, has become one of the most important symphony orchestras in Italy, with a repertoire that ranges from Bach to the main composers of nineteenth and twentieth century symphonic music. Every year, the Orchestra’s calendar includes over thirty symphonic concerts with a repertoire that finds classics alongside less common composers, as well as other seasonal programs such as the major educational project “Crescendo in Musica” (Growing up in Music) for children.
Riccardo Chailly, today’s Honorary Conductor, was the musical director from 1999 to 2005. Since 2008/2009, Wayne Marshall and Helmuth Rilling have been the Principal Guest Conductors; Maestro Rudolf Barshai, with a long-standing relationship, since the 2006/2007 season has been Emeritus Conductor, a role previously filled by Carlo Maria Giulini until his death. The horn player Radovan Vlatkovic and pianist Simone Pedroni have been resident artists since 2007/2008. For
he 2009/2010 season the Musical Director is the Chinese Xian Zhang, while Ruben Jais will fill the role of Resident Conductor.
The Orchestra’s new home, the Auditorium in Milan, was inaugurated on October 6th 1999, with Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 Resurrection conducted by Riccardo Chailly.
Another distinguishing feature of the Orchestra is the constitution in October 1998, of the Giuseppe Verdi Symphony Choir of Milan, led until his death, by Maestro Romano Gandolfi, a prestigious figure of choral conducting who had worked with the greatest conductors and in the most important Opera Houses all over the world. The Choir currently has 100 elements capable of performing the grand operatic-symphonic repertoires from Baroque to twentieth century.
Several recurring appointments mark the Verdi’s musical journey: the complete cycle of Mahler’s symphonies, the annual appointment with one of Bach’s great Passions at Eastertime, and the New Year’s concert, featuring Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
Among others, the Orchestra has been conducted by Riccardo Chailly, Georges Prêtre, Riccardo Muti, Valery Gergiev, Rudolf Barshai, Claus Peter Flor, Christopher Hogwood, Helmuth Rilling, Peter Maag, Marko Letonja, Daniele Gatti, Roberto Abbado, Ivor Bolton, Kazushi Ono, Vladimir Jurowski, Yakov Kreizberg, Ulf Schirme and Eiji Oue. During the season 2005/2006, various artists made their début with the Verdi, Herbert Blomstedt and Krzysztof Penderecki, while in 2006/2007 Leonard Slatkin, Vladimir Fedoseyev and Wayne Marshall. The Orchestra has collaborated with soloists such as Martha Argerich, Mstislav Rostropovich, Vadim Repin, Lynn Harrell, Viktoria Mullova, Han-Na Chang, Sarah Chang, Midori, Alexander Kobrin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Nelson Freire, Salvatore Accardo, Mario Brunello, Alexander Toradze, Hilary Hahn and Radovan Viatkovic. |
