Lincoln Center Festival in association with the Park Avenue Armory 2008
“A knuckle-whitening ride through a thrilling tale,” proclaimed the Financial Times (London) about Die Soldaten, the landmark opera production coming this July to Lincoln Center Festival 2008 in association with the Park Avenue armory. The Armory is a fitting setting for this not-to-be-missed site-specific work that raises important and timely questions about the casualties of war.
Lincoln Center Festival To Present Daring New Production Of Die Soldaten (“Soldiers”) At Park Avenue Armory This July
Visionary production of the iconic 20th century opera to have North American premiere
December 3, 2007
Contact:
Eileen McMahon
212-875-5391, emcmahon@lincolnceneter.org
Marian Skokan
212-875-5386, mskokan@lincolncenter.org
Die Soldaten, the iconic 20th-century opera by German composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann, will be presented in a dramatic new production by Lincoln Center Festival in association with the Park Avenue Armory, it was announced today by Festival Director, Nigel Redden. The North American premiere of this critically-acclaimed production, the first to be mounted outside of an opera house, in a non-proscenium space, as the composer originally envisioned it, will take place in the Park Avenue Armory in July. This staging of Die Soldaten originated at the Ruhr Triennale in Germany in 2006 under Artistic Director Jürgen Flimm.
In Germany, Die Soldaten was performed in a former gas power plant of a steelworks factory. The audience was seated on platforms placed on a system of railroad tracks, allowing them to move into and out of the stage action. Directed by David Pountney and conducted by Steven Sloane, leading the Bochumer Symphoniker (a 110-piece orchestra with a mammoth percussion complement), and a cast of 40 singers, actors and dancers, it will be re-created for the Lincoln Center Festival in the enormous, vaulted, former Drill Hall of the Park Avenue Armory—a space uniquely suited for the monumental production. Die Soldaten will have five performances: July 5, 7, 9, 11 and 12. Casting will be announced at a later date.
A pioneering work at its creation—with a huge orchestra, challenging score and vocal writing, overlapping and simultaneous scenes, and incorporating film, taped music and amplification—Die Soldaten has continued to present enormous challenges to presenters. It has only been staged twice in the U.S. since its 1965 premiere by the Cologne Opera— its U.S. premiere by the Opera Company of Boston in 1982, and by New York City Opera in 1991, in both cases, departing from the composer’s vision.
The Park Avenue Armory setting will provide an immersive experience by allowing the full orchestra complement to be in placed with the audience and stage action. The movable seating on railway tracks, impossible in a traditional theater setting, will enable the audience to experience the extremes of intimacy and overwhelming all-enveloping sound, and the meshing of scenic action, that the composer envisioned.
German expressionist composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann based his powerful, wrenching music drama on the 18th–century play of the same name by J.M.R Lenz. Die Soldaten follows the fortunes of Marie, a naïve young woman from a small town, whose desire for a life beyond her provincial sphere leads to a relationship with an unscrupulous military officer, precipitating a downward spiral to prostitution and degradation. In Zimmermann’s conception, the four act, 15 scene Die Soldaten moves beyond a melodramatic tale of class consciousness to an outcry at the brutality that man visits on his fellow man. It is also considered as one of the signal musical expressions of the horror of World War II.
Commenting on Die Soldaten, Nigel Redden said, “We’re delighted to be able to bring this extraordinary production to the Festival. The Lincoln Center Festival has become known for productions that stretch performance boundaries—whether with the length of performance, the size of the cast, the technical demands, or non-traditional settings on and off the Lincoln Center campus. With this production of Die Soldaten, New York audiences will, for the first time, be able to experience this important 20th-century opera as its composer intended—with the constraints of a traditional proscenium setting eliminated—enveloped in sound, and surrounding the action.”
“In our first year as a new arts organization dedicated to the presentation of non-traditional contemporary work, we are thrilled to be collaborating with Lincoln Center Festival on Die Soldaten,” said Rebecca Robertson, President and CEO of Park Avenue Armory. “This is a production that could not be realized in any other venue in New York and it will demonstrate the potential of the Drill Hall to catalyze new work.”
Commented Jürgen Flimm, Artistic Director of the Ruhr Triennale, “We are very proud to come to New York and we thank Nigel Redden and Rebecca Robertson, who will make it possible for us to bring this production to the world capital of theater.”
“A work of atonal twentieth-century angst…to many, Die Soldaten is the great work of alienation and despair, increasingly occupying a place in past-World War II opera similar to that commanded by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in contemporary theater or Bergman’s The Virgin Spring in modern film.” – Jay Reise, Opera News, September 1991
Bernd Alois Zimmermann was twenty-one when World War II began in 1939 and he was drafted and served in the military until 1942, when he was hospitalized with a severe skin condition. Prior to and after the war, he studied musicology, German, philosophy and psychology at the universities of Bonn and Cologne, as well as music and composition at music universities in Cologne and Berlin. Although adopting the twelve-tone, serialist idiom from the early 1950s onward, Zimmermann’s compositional voice was highly individualistic. He drew on a wide range of musical and non-musical sources including medieval Catholic philosophy, Aeschylus, Dante, Dostoyevsky and Mayakovski, Pound and Joyce and music from the Renaissance to the 20th-century, in particular that of Bach, Mozart and Debussy. It was while in the Army in occupied Paris that he first encountered the music of Stravinsky and Milhaud, both strong influences on his work. Afflicted from youth with a debilitating and degenerative eye condition, Zimmermann also suffered from depression and severe insomnia. These ailments and the wrenching experiences of the war were expressed in the dark despair of many of Zimmermann’s works, including his only opera, Die Soldaten. He committed suicide in 1970.
With Die Soldaten, Zimmermann envisioned a new kind of modern opera, “Opera as total theater! In other words: architecture, sculpture, painting, musical theater, spoken theater, ballet, film, microphone, television, tape and sound techniques, electronic music, concrete music, circus, the musical and all forms of motion theater combined to form the phenomenon of pluralistic opera. In my Soldaten, I have attempted to take decisive steps in this direction.”
Zimmermann broke with traditional notions of form and continuity in action with his idea of “spherical time,” that the past, present and future are all happening simultaneously. His Die Soldaten, he writes, takes place in “the past, present and future” in Lille and Armentieres. In the opera, overlapping scenes and simultaneous action and a rich layering of musical textures, incorporating styles from various periods and quotations ranging from Bach to jazz, Gregorian chant to folksongs, are used to render that simultaneity. Zimmermann’s method of using musical quotations or “collages” in his compositions has been compared to writers Eliot, Pound and Joyce’s use of literary quotations.
Critical acclaim for Ruhr Triennale performances of Die Soldaten (2006 and 2007)
“The magnificent performance…really does justice to Die Soldaten for perhaps the first time in forty years.
It shows how visionary Zimmermann’s thinking and composition was and demonstrates how suited it is to being staged outside an opera house for the first time, using the technology and electro-acoustic methods of today.” –Die Welt
“The highest praise is due to the members of the Bochumer Symphoniker (with jazz combo) conducted by Steven Sloane. They presented the colossal score’s cosmos of sound, extending as it does from the tenderness of chamber music to brutal force, with superb confidence.” – NRZ
“A voyage of epic proportions and a triumph…this is a knuckle-whitening ride through a thrilling tale, so physically engaging that the two and a half hours pass in an instant.” – Financial Times (London)
David Pountney (Director) first came to international attention with the 1972 Wexford Festival (U.K.) production of Katya Kabanova. From 1975-1980, he served as Director of Production for the Scottish Opera where he created an acclaimed cycle of Janáček operas in collaboration with the Welsh National Opera. In 1977, Pountney oversaw the world premiere of David Blake’s Toussaint at the English National Opera and took up the reins as Director of Productions at ENO in 1980, holding the position until 1992. During his tenure he directed more than 20 operas ranging from Rusalka and Doctor Faust to Hansel and Gretel and The Fairy Queen. He has directed more than ten world premieres including two by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, and Philip Glass’s Satyagraha and The Voyage. He has also translated dozens of operas into English. Since 1992, he has worked regularly as a director at the Zurich Opera, the Vienna State Opera, the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, and the Metropolitan Opera as well as continuing collaborations with the ENO and WNO. Mr. Pountney has been Artistic Director of the Bregenz Festival since 2003.
Steven Sloane has been General Music Director of the Bochumer Symphoniker (City of Bochum Symphony Orchestra) since 1994 where he has created innovative, thematically-oriented programs to wide critical acclaim. Born in Los Angeles, he studied viola, musicology and conducting at UCLA and continued his conducting studies with Eugene Ormandy, Franco Ferrara and Gary Bertini. Moving to Israel in 1981, he conducted leading Israeli orchestras including the Israeli Philharmonia, Jerusalem Symphony, and Haifa Symphony. He was also Orchestral and Choral Director of the Israel Conservatory of Music. From 1985-1992, he was Principal Resident Conductor of the Frankfurt Opera. He has been regular guest conductor with both New York City Opera (since 1990) and Tel Aviv’s New Israeli Opera. He has served as Music Director of the Spoleto Festival U.S.A., Opera North (Leeds, U.K.), and the American Composers Orchestra. Sloane conducted the world premiere of Elliot Goldenthal and Julie Taymor’s Grendel and subsequent performances at Lincoln Center Festival 2006. Other opera engagements include Le Nozze di Figaro at Covent Garden and Salome at the Hong Kong Music Festival. He has also conducted works for the Seattle Opera, Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Welsh National Opera, Opera North and Stuttgart Opera. Sloane has appeared as guest conductor with leading orchestras including the Israel Philharmonic, DSO Berlin and the London Philharmonia Orchestra. He was appointed chief conductor of the Stavanger Symphony Orchestra, Norway in 2007.
About the Ruhr Triennale
Established in 2001 by Gerard Mortier, the Ruhr Triennale presented its first three-year cycle of performances from 2002 to 2004. Using regional theaters and former industrial buildings in cities in Germany’s industrial belt (the Ruhr region), the Triennale’s mission is to present contemporary music and art and innovative productions of the classics. The Triennale’s main venue is Bochum’s Jahrhunderthalle (Centennial Hall) which was the venue for this production of Die Soldaten. Built in 1902, the enormous, glass-covered space, measuring 233 ft. by 108 ft., with a triple-nave, served as the central power plant for a steelworks factory until 1964. Jürgen Flimm became the Triennale’s second artistic director in 2005.
Jürgen Flimm (Artistic Director, Ruhr Triennale, 2005 to present) is best-known to American audiences as an opera director. His productions for the Metropolitan Opera: Fidelio in 2000 and Salome in 2004, both featuring Karita Mattila, were highly-acclaimed by audiences and critics. He created a controversial Wagner Ring Cycle at the Bayreuth Festival in 2000. He first came to prominence as a theater director in Germany, holding positions as director of the National Theatre in Mannheim and Senior Director at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, than as an independent director on productions at the Schauspiel Cologne. During his 15-year tenure, from 1985-2000, the Thalia became one of the most prominent centers for theater in Germany. Important productions he created during that time included: Chekhov’s Latonov, Uncle Vanya and Three Sisters; Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and The Wild Duck; Schnitzler’s Liebelei and Das weite Land; and Shakespeare’s Hamlet, King Lear and As You Like It. Flimm’s first opera production was Luigi Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore for the Frankfurt Opera in 1978. In 1981, he created Offenbach’s Les contes d’Hoffmann at the Hamburg State Opera. His 1990 Così fan tutte for the Amsterdam Opera was the first of many collaborations with conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt. He has directed and created productions for La Scala, the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Berlin State Opera, Zurich Opera and the Vienna State Opera. Jürgen Flimm was appointed artistic director of Salzburg Festival 2007.
About Park Avenue Armory
Park Avenue Armory is a newly launched arts organization whose mission is to revitalize one of New York’s most important landmarks as a dynamic center for the arts unlike any other in the city, unique in its non-traditional programming and for the splendor of its restored interiors. Its programming will use the vast space in its Drill Hall and the array of exuberant period rooms to present performing and visual art that resists the confines of formal single purpose halls and galleries. Filling a crucial niche in the cultural landscape of New York, Park Avenue Armory catalyzes works of contemporary art that cannot be realized at existing venues. Recent collaborations include Aaron Young’s Greeting Card, a 9,216-square-foot painting created by the burned-out tire marks of twelve motorcyclists that was performed and exhibited in the vast Drill Hall. In March 2008, The Whitney Museum of American Art in association with the Park Avenue Armory and the Art Production Fund will host large-scale artworks, performances, and installations as part of the Whitney Biennial.
History of the Park Avenue Armory
Built between 1877 and 1881, the landmarked Park Avenue Armory is one of New York City’s most important historic structures, occupying a full city block on the Upper East Side. The Armory’s Drill Hall, reminiscent of a 19th-century European train shed, measures approximately 200 by 300 feet, with an 80-foot-high barrel vaulted roof, and is one of the largest unobstructed spaces in the City. The adjacent Administrative Building includes interiors by Louis Comfort Tiffany, Stanford White, the Herter Brothers, and other prominent designers of the period, constituting what the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission described as “the single most important collection of 19th-century interiors to survive intact in one building.”
About Lincoln Center and the Lincoln Center Festival
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (LCPA) serves three primary roles: presenter of superb artistic programming, national leader in arts and education, and manager of the Lincoln Center campus. As a presenter of more than 400 events annually, LCPA’s programs include American Songbook, Great Performers, Lincoln Center Festival, Lincoln Center Out of Doors, Midsummer Night Swing, the Mostly Mozart Festival, and Live From Lincoln Center. In addition, LCPA is leading a series of major capital projects on behalf of the resident organizations across the campus.
Since its inaugural season in 1996, Lincoln Center Festival has received worldwide attention for presenting some of the broadest and most original performing arts programs in Lincoln Center’s history. In twelve seasons, the Festival has presented more than 1,000 performances by artists from more than 50 countries, commissioning nearly 30 new works and offering more than 110 world, U.S., and New York premieres. It places particular emphasis on showcasing contemporary artistic viewpoints and multidisciplinary works that push the boundaries of traditional performance.
Performance Information
Die Soldaten will have five performances, July 5, 7, 9, 11 and 12 at the Park Avenue Armory, 643 Park Avenue, between 66th and 67th Streets, Manhattan, as part of Lincoln Center Festival 2008.
Additional information will be available, and tickets may be purchased, in mid-March 2008 when the complete schedule of Lincoln Center Festival 2008 presentations will be announced.
Visit Lincoln Center’s website, www.LincolnCenter.org for details.
The Ruhr Triennale production of Die Soldaten is presented by Lincoln Center Festival in association with the Park Avenue Armory.