I’m a devotee of theatre with a plot
A conversation with Manfred Trojahn about his opera “La Grande Magia” after Eduardo De Filippo
(t)akte: About your “Vier Orchesterstücke” [Four Orchestral Pieces] you wrote in 2003 that in your forthcoming opera you would also pick up on experiences from these pieces. It is striking that in that cycle, the handling of tonality, for example, is a phenomenon, which also seems to apply to your opera “La Grande Magia”, shortly to be premiered at the Semper Opera Dresden. Can this actually be traced back to the Four Orchestral Pieces?
Manfred Trojahn: I frequently remember pieces better which I composed some time ago than the texts which I had to write for these pieces. (Four Orchestral Pieces) are very closely related in my music to recitative texts for the opera Titus, which I had written earlier. In this, tonality was naturally an important aspect because I had to link my music with Mozart’s, and this is tonal. Certainly there are no direct links between La Grande Magia and the orchestral pieces, even if I might have wished there to be at the time. The structure of the music of La Grande Magia seems to have turned out completely differently. Tonality, however, plays its role, as it often does in my music. I can’t think any other way at present. Finally, that shouldn’t be confused with an aesthetic manifesto: it’s that way at one moment, and can be completely different the next...
The scoring of your new opera is based directly on Richard Strauss: a homage? What other interconnections are there in “La Grande Magia” to Strauss?
The orchestral scoring in La Grande Magia does indeed correspond largely to that of Richard Strauss’s Ariadne auf Naxos. Probably connections between the two pieces can be detected here – but they are not sought after. It is also not my wish to imitate Strauss, when I draw upon his experiences with his narrative style in my work, or, to put it another way, it is indeed my experiences with his narrative style. I’m a devotee of theatre with a plot – that is already sufficient connection.
The orchestral scoring also has a great deal in common with that of my opera Enrico. However, the few extra strings and the harmonium are an indication that I intended to achieve a mellower sound than in Enrico and yet I didn’t want to leave the intimate chamber context.
What points towards the musicalisation of this material, and how did you hit upon this?
Filippo has maintained a working relationship with Pirandello and La Grande Magia has certain links with Enrico quarto, a piece of Pirandello’s out of which I created the opera Enrico, together with Claus H. Henneberg. Eduardo’s closeness to Pirandello has been taken amiss: there are even very clear, also formal connections. But what interested me was less the closeness to material which I had once worked on, and rather more the circumstance that I saw the possibility of closely examining it, as demanded by someone in an extreme psychic situation and how he then builds this up in order to escape from reality. Calogero develops, so to speak, the prerequisites to end as “Enrico” one day. Nevertheless it would be stupid to believe that the sequel interested me. There are figures here who communicate something on the operatic stage – that is to say, characters whose reactions are founded less intellectually than emotionally. It is an important prerequisite that a subject matter is suitable for narrative music theatre – let’s call it opera.
What fascinates you about the genre of opera and to what extent does your preoccupation with it influence the shaping of your other works, which are not for the operatic stage?
Actually every detail of this genre fascinates me. Even the disagreeable aspects of the theatre are so exciting for someone tied to his desk, as a composer has to be, that one – or rather, I – can’t free myself from my fascination with the theatre. There are such charming characters to observe there – and I’m meaning the “right” people, not the “roles”. I, however, love all this duplicitous company and indeed enthusiastically belong to it.
Opera composers are, in contrast to those who only make guest appearances in this realm, like almost all composers nowadays, closely bound to the theatre. This then becomes a guiding principle and therefore has its effect on works which are not conceived for the theatre.
Eduardo De Filippo writes about his work “La Grande Magia”: “Each fate hangs on the threads of other fates in an eternal game: a game from which we are only given to perceive irrelevant details.” Does the composer grasps these threads when he tells the public a story with his music, with the sung text, or does he lay them before the public in the musical sketch of his performers?
The game which Eduardo describes is life. Art is certainly not capable of portraying life. Art devotes itself to an aspect chosen by the author and attempts to find a form for this examination. Art therefore makes the irrelevant details into something relevant, relevant to the context concerned. Certainly the composer does not interpret anything. For that, he has his friend, the director. The composer creates problems, the director is the man for a possible solution to these problems. He therefore “construes”, and the composer follows the endeavours with great, loving interest.
In conversation with Michael Töpel
(translation: Elizabeth Robinson), from: (t)akte 1/2008