Opera in Four Acts
Music and Libretto by
BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMANN
Adapted from Michael Reinhold Lenz's 1776 play
Marie Claudia Barainsky
Stolzius Claudio Otelli
Stolzius' mother Kathryn Harries
Charlotte Claudia Mahnke
Wesener Johann Tilli
Wesener's mother Hanna Schwarz
Desportes Peter Hoare
Countess de la Roche Helen Field
Young Count Andreas Conrad
Count von Spannheim Andreas Becker
Pirzel Robert Worle
Field Officer Mary Kay Stiefermann
STEVEN SLOANE, conductor
David Pountney, stage director
Robert Innes Hopkins, set designer
Beate Vollack, choreographer
Performance of Friday, July 5, 2008
at Park Avenue Armory, New York City
Part of the 2008 Lincoln Center Festival
Music and Libretto by
BERND ALOIS ZIMMERMANN
Adapted from Michael Reinhold Lenz's 1776 play
Marie Claudia Barainsky
Stolzius Claudio Otelli
Stolzius' mother Kathryn Harries
Charlotte Claudia Mahnke
Wesener Johann Tilli
Wesener's mother Hanna Schwarz
Desportes Peter Hoare
Countess de la Roche Helen Field
Young Count Andreas Conrad
Count von Spannheim Andreas Becker
Pirzel Robert Worle
Field Officer Mary Kay Stiefermann
STEVEN SLOANE, conductor
David Pountney, stage director
Robert Innes Hopkins, set designer
Beate Vollack, choreographer
Performance of Friday, July 5, 2008
at Park Avenue Armory, New York City
Part of the 2008 Lincoln Center Festival
The Lincoln Center Festival celebrated the Fourth of July not with fireworks, but with a very serious connection to revolutionary times: the extraordinary German production of Bernd Zimmermann’s opera Die Soldaten (The Soldiers) at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Just as the American Colonists broke away from old rules that no longer worked, Zimmerman based his opera on Jakob Lenz’s revolutionary play of the same title, written in 1776, the year of the American Declaration of Independence.
Similarly, just as King George was outraged by the new Americans, so Johann Joachim Eschenburg, one of Lenz’s critics in the middle of the 18th century, called him a boy that needs to be punched in the nose until he learns his place. Eschenburg and many others clearly could not cope with a new playwright who was violating old established rules of drama and used language that polite society frowned upon.
Similarly, just as King George was outraged by the new Americans, so Johann Joachim Eschenburg, one of Lenz’s critics in the middle of the 18th century, called him a boy that needs to be punched in the nose until he learns his place. Eschenburg and many others clearly could not cope with a new playwright who was violating old established rules of drama and used language that polite society frowned upon.
