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

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 Ferneyhough’s 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, Charles Bernstein's Shadowtime and Faithful Interpretation" , 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

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

================================

Walter Benjamin images by Susan Bee

================================

Gisele Freund, WB, Paris, around 1938

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)