Wolfgang Mitterer
massacre

Massacre by Wolfgang Mitterer: a Portrayal of Politics
By Stéphane Roth

Wolfgang Mitterer’s opera massacre, inspired by The massacre at Paris by Christopher Marlowe, was premiered during the 2003 Wiener Festwochen. Mitterer does not preserve the entire Elizabethan play that depicts the events of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, nor does he make an undeviating interpretation of its text. He does away with the secondary roles for the benefit of the principal protagonists, the prime movers in the struggle for power – the Duke and Duchess of Guise, Queen Catherine de Medici, Henry III and the King of Navarre (the future Henry IV).

Faded Idols
In contrast to Marlowe’s play, the protagonists do not appear in their historical environment; Mitterer is unconcerned with their actual existence.

Deprived of their identity, they become the mediums of the political positions of the narrative. They allow for the personification of what is at stake in a religious war, without being considered as the heroic figures they have been regarded as in history up to our time. In a certain way, they portray generic characters and throughout the libretto – with few exceptions – they are never mentioned by their own names but by their qualities (majesty, king, queen, mother, son, even traitor or enemy).

This impersonal character is one of the keys to understanding the overall atmosphere of the opera. Actually, what Wolfgang Mitterer finds important lies in the underlying structure that conceals the struggle for power and not in the psychology of the characters or in the literary concept of the tragedy. In a certain way, Marlowe’s play is only a pretext for Mitterer. In addition, any form of eloquence is banished and the resulting impersonality functions in conjunction with a sense of timelessness that becomes apparent when one realizes that Mitterer’s aim is to portray precisely the organization of these structures of power. This structure makes itself felt in a network of terms of the utmost cruelty, occasionally simulating human masses: commands, judgements and other battle cries explode throughout the majority of the eighteen sequences that make up the opera: Treason, Revenge, Fatal, Go Ahead, Charge, Let none escape, Throw down into the fire!

The play liberates itself of its historic-temporal fetters and appears to move from an age long past to our own time, like a tracing showing the elementary structures of any struggle for power and the exhortations that precede all forms of violence.

History Is Contemporary
Mitterer has created a completely contemporary opera in the way in which massacre elaborates on how the intrigues of power, in their most fundamental form, determine history. The composer himself stated that the contemporary foundation of the theme of the work could be seen in connection between the premiere of the opera in Vienna in 2003 and the American invasion of Iraq in the same year. [...]

Wolfgang Mitterer
Wolfgang Mitterer was born in the East Tyrolean town of Lienz in Austria. He studied organ, electro-acoustics and composition in Vienna and Stockholm. The unpredictable and unexpected as the source of musical creation are at the heart of Wolfgang Mitterer’s music. His work oscillates between structured compositions and those with open forms. He participates in various types of collective improvisations and develops a language made up of tensions and complexity that he pushes to the limits. In addition to his music for organ and for orchestra, his piano concerto and his operas, he is the composer of works for electronics and sonic installations. Wolfgang Mitterer’s oeuvre comprises more than 100 compositions ranging from L’Amusie (for 6 musicians, loudspeakers and broken church organ), over Crushrooms, Streichquartett 1.3 and his Brachialsinfonie (created for the string quartet of the Klangforum Wien) and Und träumte seltsam (for soprano, small choir and ensemble), Ka und der Pavian (for choir, 13 musicians and sound system), Net-Words 1–5 (for eleven players and an 8-track tape) to Fisis (for symphonic orchestra) and the opera massacre. His works have been performed at the Wiener Festwochen, Wien Modern, the Wiener Konzerthaus, the Maerzmusik Festival in Berlin, the Luxembourg Philharmonic, the Budapest Festival, in Utrecht, at Strasbourg’s Musica Festival and many other places. He has been awarded numerous prizes both for his work as a musician and composer, for example Preis der deutschen Schallplattenkritik (Germany, best recording), Prix Ars Electronica, Max Brand Prize, Prix Futura Berlin and the Emil Berlanda Prize.

Peter Rundel
Peter Rundel was born in Germany in 1958. He started conducting in 1987 following a period as violinist in the Ensemble Modern. From 1998 to 2001, he was co-director of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra of Flanders with Philippe Herreweghe. From 1999 to 2001, he held the positions of musical director of the Oriol Ensemble and the Potsdam Chamber Academy. He has been musical director of the Wiener Taschenoper since 1999 and permanent leader of the Remix Ensemble since 2005. Peter Rundel’s repertoire extends from Monteverdi to Frank Zappa. He has directed a large number of world premieres including Emmanuel Nunes’ operas Das Märchen in 2008 and La Douce in 2009. Among his most notable conducting projects in 2008 was Michaels Reise, an excerpt from Stockhausen’s Donnerstag, staged by La Fura Dels Baus in a co-production between KölnMusik, musikFabrik and the Wiener Festwochen.

He conducted the premiere of massacre during the 2003 Wiener Festwochen and again in the T&M-Paris production in 2008.

Remix Ensemble
The Remix Ensemble is the instrumental ensemble of the Casa da Música de Porto. Since its foundation in 2000, the ensemble has premiered more than sixty works and collaborated with many composers including Brice Pauset, António Pinho Vargas, Frédéric Durieux, Heiner Goebbels, Iris ter Schiphorst, James Dillon, Magnus Lindberg, Mark-Anthony Turnage, Georges Aperghis, Helmut Lachenmann, Bernhard Lang, Matthias Pintscher, Harrison Birtwistle, David Horne, Hans Abrahamsen, Karin Rehnqvist, Jonathan Harvey and Emmanuel Nunes. [...]