Opera – the most gargantuan of the musical genres, with the full scale libretto, sets, props, choir, orchestra, soloists, costume, within the simplest of mediums, i.e. the solo melodic instrument. An Opera for Solo Violoncello!
I plunged into a search for a libretto that would really enable me to tell the story, by sole means of music and its suggestive powers. I needed as few characters as possible, clearly outlined and a very simple, basically archetypal plot. And, again there was no dilemma. The only text that perfectly matched all the requirements was the “Faust”. From the myths of Sumer, through the tales of the Old Testament, down to Pacino’s “Devil’s Advocate”, we have been listening to different versions of the ancient story of man’s inner struggles between good and evil, divine and profane, the genuinely wise and deeply irrational. Besides Marlow, Mann and Bulgakov, it was primarily Goethe who left us with the most immediate and communicative version of a story of human “imperfection”. This is why I stayed very close to Goethe, namely to the first part of his tragedy when I finally commenced the work on a libretto of my own:
Similar to Goethe, there is a Prologue in Heaven and four Acts, with four Scenes each.
arr: solo violoncello
dur: cir. 28 min.