SHADOWTIME
An opera by Brian Ferneyhough
Libretto:
Charles Bernstein
*
Munich production
Musical director: Jurjen Hempel
Director: Frédéric Fisbach
Set designer: Emmanuel Clolus
Dramaturge: Benoit Resillot
*
Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart
Nieuw Ensemble Amsterdam
Solo Performers: Nicolas Hodges (piano/reciter),
Mats Scheidegger (guitar)
*
The City of Munich commissioned the composition
and libretto in 1999 for the Munich Biennale
*
Bernstein reads the libretto at PennSound
*
YouTube excerpts: "Staleae for Failed Time," "Amphibolies" extr., "Opus Contra Naturum" with music
Judiska
Teatern, Stockhom production
February 20-22, 2006
Magnus Andersson, Solo Guitar
Brian Ferneyhough, Recital
Franck Ollu, Conductor
Fredrik Ullén, Solo Piano
Staging: Pia Forsgren
Set design: Tomas Franck and Kenneth Björk
Costume: Mikael T Zielinski
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photo from Scene V (Walter Benjamin and border guard), Munich
premiere, by Regine Koerner © 2004
Five more
photos of the production by Regine Koerner.
Photo
by Stephanie Berger (New York Times)
Flash
animation/sound courtesy Festival d'Auomne (links directly
to flash/sound)
Shadowtime engages motifs
in the work and life of Walter Benjamin.
Synopsis
of Opera
(and links to background information)
Eric Denut Inteview with Charles
Bernstein — All
About Jewish Theater; rpt from Argonist
Online (2005)
Brian
Ferneyhough on "Words and Music" — Argonist
Online (2005)
Ferneyhough
interview on Shadowtime with John Warnaby, Music Web
(2004)
Ferneyhough and Bernstein interviews with James Garner (2003-2004)
Synopsis en Française
French translation by Juliette Valéry
German translation of libretto by Benedikt Ledebur: available
on request
"Amphibolies" tr. into Portugues by Adriano Scandolara
Scenes:
I. New Angels/Transient Failure
II. Les Froissements d'Ailes de Gabriel (First Barrier) (instrumental)
III. Doctrine of Similarity (13 Canons)
IV. Opus Contra Naturam (Descent of Walter Benjamin into the
Underworld)
V. Pools of Darkness (11 Interrogations)
VI. Seven Tableaux Vivants Representing the Angel of History
as Melancholia (Second Barrier)
VII. Stelae for Failed Time (Solo for Melancholia as the Angel
of History)
World premiere on Tuesday, May 25, 2004, at Prinzregententheater,
Munich, with subsequent peformances May 27 and May 28
Additional Performances
October 26 and 27, 2004, Festival
d'Automne à Paris, Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers
July 9, 2005 at the English National Opera
July 21 and 22, 2005 at the Lincoln
Center Festival, at the Rose Theater, New York
September 30, Oct. 1 & 2, 2005 -- RuhrTrienniel at
the Jahrhunderthalle, Bochum (Germany)
BBC 3 broadcast on Opera
on 3, November 12, 2005.
& with thanks to Joséphine Markovits
Press/Commentary
Andrew Porter writes
in TLS: "Ferneyhough creat[es] music from thoughts
of Benjamin (and much else) with exuberance, generosity, mastery.
Wonderful sounds, musical moves that tell, technical exigence
turned to eloquence: I listened spellbound." David
Patrick Stearns calls the opera "a monument to the constructive
poweres of the mind" in the Philadelpia Inquirer.
Fred Kirchit, in the NY Sun calls Shadowtime "one
of the brightest presentations of contemporary music this
season."
Wolfgang Schreiber,
in Süddeutsche Zeitung, calls Shadowtime "darkly
hypnotic." Brian Ferneyhough is " ... an outstanding
musician of his generation ... a modern stylist on the tracks
of Schoenberg-Webern-Boulez, who, despite beginnings in postmodernism,
is a composer and musical thinker who pursues great density of
expression and a blazing constructivism. ... There is pure
artistic fervor here, and it is gripping. ... a musical adventure
of the most artful complexity, freed from all expectation. ...
Brian Ferneyhough's opera is an apex of modern operatic artistry,
and the greatest co-production of the Biennial to date.
Tess Crebbin, in Music
and Vision, says "Bernstein's libretto, plain and simple,
is the finest contemporary libretto that I know of."
Andrew Clements,
in The Guardian, writes that Shadowtime has "music
of wonderful detail, with sometimes an extraordinarily
powerful charge. Beneath his tangled modernist rigour Ferneyhough
hides a passionate commitment to expression."
John Warnaby, in Sight & Sound, declares
that "Shadowtime is
Ferneyhoughs unique contribution to music-theatre: essentially his
magnum opus, incorporating most of the fundamental elements
of his creative imagination."Keith
Potter in The Indpendent (London), prasises onductor Jurjen
Hempel; "the singing and the playing of an 18-piece ensemble
appeared of a uncommonly high standard."
Von Claus Spahn,
in Die Zeit, says, "Ferneyhough takes on the absolute
challenge (and extraordinary demand) of music as an intellectual
force. He take up the inheritance of Anton Webern and the
serialists. He insists on material progress for the medium."
Shadowtime is
a "thought opera" based on the work and life of Walter
Benjamin (1892-1940). Benjamin is one of the greatest philosophers
and cultural critics of the twentieth century. Born in Berlin,
he died on the Spanish border while trying to escape the fate
that awaited most of his fellow Central European Jews. In its
seven scenes, Shadowtime explores
some of the major themes of Benjamin's work, including the intertwined
natures of history, time, transience, timelessness, language,
and melancholy; the possibilities for a transformational leftist
politics; the interconnectivity of language, things, and cosmos;
and the role of dialectical materiality, aura, interpretation,
and translation in art. Beginning on the last evening of Benjamin's
life, Shadowtime projects
an alternative course for what happened on that fateful night.
Opening onto a world of shades, of ghosts, of the dead, Shadowtime
inhabits a period in human history in which the light flickered
and then failed.
Reviews & Essays
- Lois Fitch, Brian Ferneyhough (Britol, UK and Chicago: Intllect, 2013)
- Michael Reid Busk, "Rag-and-Bone Angel: The Angelus Novus in Charles Bernstein‘s Shadowtime," Journal of Modern Literature, 34:4 (2014)
- David Kaufmann, "Two or Three Things I Know About Charles Bernstein" in Shofar 32:2 (2014)
- Robert Zamsky, “Ezra Pound and Charles Bernstein: Opera, Poetics, and the Fate of Humanism,” in Texas Studies in Language and Literature(55:1; 2013); revised as chaper in Orophic Bend (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2021)
- Marjorie Perloff, "Writing through Walter Benjamin: Charles Bernstein 'Poem Including History'": chapter in Unoriginal Genius (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011); see related essay, "Constraint, Concrete, Citation: Refiguring History in Charles Bernstein's Shadowtime" in Poetics Today 30:4 (2009)
- Nikil Saval, "Benjamin in Extremis N+1 (April 2010)
- Joel Bettridge, , Textual Practice 21(4):
737–760 (2007)
- Gareth Farmer, “ 'Archives
of nonsensuous similarities': poetic exploration and extension of philosophical thought in
Charles Bernstein’s Shadowtime," presented
at Warwick University "Poetry and Philosophy" conference,
Oct. 2007 (local
copy)
- Charlie
Bertsche, "Bitter Greens: Walter
Benjamin Goes to the Opera" — Tikkun ( July/August
2006)
- Joe
Francis Doerr, "Poet as Librettist: Words for Music by Lang-Po
and New Formalist Poets" — Notre Dame Review #22 (Summer
2006)
- Klaus
Lippe, "Who’s to Say, What’s to Say?: Notes on the
Reception of Brian Ferneyhough’s Opera "Shadowtime" (in the Context of Niklas Luhmann’s Theory of Art —Musik & Ästhetik January
2006 [Heft 37]
- Colin
Browne, "Benjamin’s Angels, or Why We Sing the
Lamentations" —Jacket (Oct.
2005)
- Richard
Deming, on the libretto —
Rain
Taxi, (Spring 2006)
- Richard Whitehorse, Grammaphone, July 2006
- Linda Reinfeld,"Languae Poetry and Beyond: The Music of the Fears" in On
the Sound(s) and Images of Contemporary Poetry - An American
Connection, ed.
Jelle Dierickx (Koninklijke
Vlaamse Academie van Belgie voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten, 2005)
- Estelle Gilson, Congress Monthly, American Jewish Congress,
Nov./Dec. 2005
*
Marjorie
Perloff, Book
of the Year, TLS, Dec.
2, 2005
Mark
Swed, Los Angeles Times—Best of Opera, Dec.
18, 2005
NMC Recording —April 2006
Fabrice
Fitch's introduction to the NMC recording
Music
Web (Anne Ozorio)
The
Sunday Times (London) (Paul Driver)
Classical
Source.Com (Andrew Toovey)
Music
Web (Hubert Culot)
The
Guardian's Observer (Anthonly Holden)
Opera (George Hall)
NEW YORK—July 2005
Opera News, Oct. 2005 (Arlo
McKinnon)
Paris Transatlantic, Sept. 2005 (Nicholas
Rice)
New York Newsday, July 26
(Daniel Schlosberg)
New York Sun, July 25 (Fred Kirshnit)
Mappemunde,
July 24 (Tim Peterson)
Sequenza 21, July 23 (David
Salavage)
Fait Accompli, July
22 and July
23 (Nick Piombino)
Seen & Heard (Bruce
Hodges)
The Philadelphia Inquirer, July
23 (David Patrick Stearns); also in Andante
The New York Times, July
23 (Anthony Tommasini)
Poetics
List, July 23 (Donald Wellman)
The Philadelphia Inquirer, July
21 (David Patrick Stearns)
The New York Times,
July 17 (Jeremy Eichler)
New
York Press, July (Allan Lockwood)
Newark Star-Ledger, July
10 (Willa Conrad)
PennCurrent,
July 7 (Judy West)
Stanford
Magazine July/August
RUHR TRIENNIEL, Bochum (Germany) October, 2005
Westfälische
Rundschau (Sonja Müller-Eisold), Oct. 4, 2005
Waz, Oct. 4, 2005
NRZ, Oct. 4, 2005 (Johannes Glauber)
Westdeutsche Zeitung (Sophia
Willems)
LONDON—July 2005
Stride
Magazine, July (Ira Lightman)
TLS, July 22 (Andrew Porter)
Seen
and Heard, July, 2005 (Anne Ozorio)
Classical
Source (July 2005) ( Richard Whitehouse)
musicircus,
July (Rob Witts)
The
Observer Review (Guardian/UK), July 17 (George Hall)
The Evening Standard,
July 11 (Fiona Maddocks)
The
Guardian, July 8, 2005; preview/interview (Andrew Clements);
also in All
About Jewish Theater
MUNICH BIENNALE PREMIER — May 2004
German:
Süddeutsche Zeitung, May 27, 2004: text
only; jpeg
image of page, pdf
of page (Wolfgang Schrieber
Frankfurter
Allgemeine, May 27, 2004 (Juliana Spinola)
Die Welt, May 28,
2004 (Egbert Tholl); virtually
same review in Stuttgarter
Zeitung, May 27, 2004
Niederlandeweb, May
24,. 2004
Münchener Merkur, May 27, 2004 (Markus Theil)
Berliner Zeitung,
May 27, 2004 (Klaus Georg Koch)
Augsburger
Allgemeine, May 27, 2004 Rüdiger Heinze)(jpg file)
Südwest Press,
May 27, 2004 (Jürgen Kanold) (gif file)
Abendzeitug, May
27, 2004 (Marianne Reßinger(jpg file)
Die Zeit, June 3, 2004 (text
only); or: link to
newspaper site (Claus Spahn)
English:
Music & Vision, June
3, 2004 (or: text only version) (Tess
Crebbin)
Seen and Heard,
June 2004 (John
Warnaby)
Süddeutsche
Zeitung, May 27, 2004 (English translation)
The Guardian, May
28, 2004 (Andrew Clements)
Financial
Times, May 27, 2004 (Shirley Apthorp)
Sunday Times, June 6,
2004 (Paul Driver)
The Independent,
June 24, 2004 (Keith Potter)
Gema
News (English version) (Reinhard
Schulz)
Radical Philosophy 127 (Sep/Oct 2004) (Esther Leslie)
French:
Festival d'Automne press dossier
Süddeutsche
Zeitung, May
27, 2004 (traduction française)
Omar Berrada Entreitien --
Les Lettres française, 26 Octobre 2004
Le Figaro,
28 Octobre 2004 (Jacques Doucelin)
Le Monde, 31 Octobre
2004 (Pierre Gervasoni)
Earlier Reviews and Commentaries:
Excerpt from "Doctrine
of Similarity" with a commentary by Roger Kamenetz,
published in the Forward (NYC), March 2004
See Richard Toop's program
notes on Scene II, "Les Froissements d'Ailes de Gabriel"
Preview in The Prospect,
4/29/04
Review in The Times,
London, March 17, 2004
Review in The Guardian,
March 16, 2004
Review of "Opus Contra
Naturam," www.classicalsource.com, February 2004
Preview of NY production by Paul Griffiths, New York Times (June 4, 2004)
Bernard Holland, Doctrine of Similarity, New York TImes (March 30, 2000), 92nd Street Y, part of "Perspectives: Maurizio Pollini".
Charles Bernstein & Brian
Ferneyhough, May 27,
2004, at the Munich premiere. Photo by
Susan Bee.
Click on image for
300 dpi.
>>at Lincoln Center Rose Theater,
July 22, 2005: 72dpi, 300dpi
The City of Munich commissioned the composition and libretto
in 1999 for the Munich Biennale. In addition, the following organizations
provided commissions for specific compositions: Carnegie Hall
Corporation (scene 3), the Flanders Festivals and Ian Pace (scene
4), the Musée d'Orsay and the Ensemble InterContemporain
(scene 6), and Jean-Philippe and Françoise Billarant for
the IRCAM (scene 7). A production of the Munich
Biennale; Sadler's
Wells London with the support of the English National Opera
London; Festival d'Automne,
Paris; and the Lincoln
Center Festival, New York
Munich Biennale web pages
Brian Ferneyhough
photo by Regine Koerner © 2004
Interview
with Joshua Cody
New
Music Box interview (July 2005)
Essay on Music and Words
Peters
Editions home page
Living
Composers page
Jurjen Hempel (music director)
Frédéric Fisbach (director)
Nicolas Hodges (piano/speaker)
Neue
Vocalsolisten Stuttgart
Nieuw Ensemble
Amsterdam
Charles Bernstein
Reading from the libretto:
at Kelly Writers House, University of Pennsylvania, October
13, 2000:
1. Introduction
2. Rimes
for Stefan (from Scene One)
3. Dialog
between Holderlin and Benjamin (from Scene One)
4. Doctrine
of Similartity (Scene Three): excerpts
published by the Forward, with commentary by Roger
Kamenetz
5. Dew-&-Die (from "The
Doctrine of Similarity," Scene Three)
6. Anagramatica (from "The
Doctrine of Similarity," Scene Three)
7. Pools
of Darkness: 11 Interrogations (Scene Five)
8. Seven
Tableaux Vivant (Scene Six)
9. Stelae
for Lost Time (Scene Seven)
* "Death
Is the Cool Night" from "Seven Tableaux Vivant"
Entire
KWH reading as one MP3 file
Entire
KWH reading in RealAudio (link to index page; file in real
audio)
Also available:
Scene VII ("Steale for Failed Time") at Harvard
University's Houghton Library (link to mp3 file)
2005 radio interview & reading (Cross-Cultural Poetics): part
one (28:02), part
two (30:07)================================
Walter Benjamin images by Susan
Bee
================================
Gisele
Freund, WB, Paris, around 1938
Paul Klee, Angelus Novus
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Dürer, Melencolia
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Cranach (elder), Mélancolie (photo by Julliete
Valéry)
at Lincoln Center,
Rose Theater, July 22, 2005:
click image for 300dpi
at 92nd Street Y, NY, 3-28-2000
This page created by CB (updated April 2014)
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