Mechthild
New Focus, 2023
8/10
The German native and current New York resident Reiko Füting creates a contemporary opera set to Libretto by the theologian Christian Lehnert, and it surrounds Beguine Mystic Mechthild von Magdeburg across these 3 very expressive acts.
“Act I: Verwunden, vereint/Wound, United” opens the listen with much attention to mood, where spoken, sung and gestured voices are met with flashes of bright instrumentation that allows for a mysterious landscape.
The middle portion, “Act II: Die Gottesfremde/The Alienated”, brings dreamy bouts of prettiness, firm conversational tones and much unpredictable sound manipulation that’s highly creative.
The final pieces, “Act II: Nach Gott/After God”, exits with a radiant intimacy that twinkles amid much beauty, but can also find itself in atypical versions of operatic ideas.
A body of work inspired by the Medieval ‘mystery play’, the players on hand include the sopranos Olivia Stahn and Hannah Herfurtner, actress Susi Wirth, AuditivVokal Dresden, Ensemble Adapter and the New York rooted New Chamber Ballet, which includes Olaf Katzer as conductor. Together, they illustrate a inimitable approach to both the space of language and the space of sounds, where vocals and instruments serve as an expansion of the space language in a very theatrical presence.
Travels well with: Max Johnson- When The Streets Were Quiet; Lei Liang- Hearing Landscapes/Hearing Icescapes