Verklärte Nacht

 The Festival is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach

Schönberg’s Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night, op.4, 1899) is perhaps his most popular, if not his most representative work. Written in what is widely known as Schönberg’s “post-Romantic” period and before the invention of the twelve-tone system, VerklärteNacht is one of the most important pieces of the 20th century programme music.It is based on Richard Dehmel’s poem without however using the text as part of the composition. Although Schönberg wrote the sextet following the six stanzas of the poem, he allowed for no pauses between them, giving the listener the impression of a continuous composition.

Dehmel’s poem, with familiar proto-expressionistic characteristics, describes a man and a woman crossing a forest in the midst of an unnaturally bright night. The woman reveals to her partner that she is pregnant by another man. Despite her guilts and shame, the man calms her down and accepts the unborn child, leading the poem to an ecstatic climax.

Schönberg’s composition, apart from being an ingenious combination of the compositional tradition of Brahms’motivistic transformations and Wagner’s constant compositional line (Schönberg’s references to Wagner’s opera Tristan und Isolde are numerous), it is also in part an autobiographical account of his relationship with his music teacher’s –the famous composer Alexander von Zemlinsky– sister, whom he finally married.

The director Themelis Glynatsis, in an attempt that oscillates between a performance and animation, converts the expressionist narrative of Dehmel’s poem and Schönberg’s composition into material for a dramaturgy of a nightmare, which gradually gives its place to an extraordinary psychic transfiguration and to a final concomitance, whereby the intimate bodies stop being monstrous and are overwhelmed by tenderness. In other words, a family drama, and a love story, both demanding a brave affirmation of its characters in order to disengage themselves from repetition and guilt. A basic dramaturgical motif is nature, which initially appears vengeful and uncanny, but little by little is transformed into a landscape of atonement.

MINISTRY OF CULTURE AND SPORTS

3rd GREEK NATIONAL OPERA ONLINE FESTIVAL

The Music of Language

Short stories

9 December 2020 – 6January 2021

            nationalopera.gr/en, Facebook, YouTube, digitalculture.gov.gr     

The Greek National Opera presents its 3rd Online Festival, titled The Music of Language. The Festival is curated by Giorgos Koumendakis and features five unique short stories. The Festival’s videos will be streamed online from 9 December 2020 to 6 January 2021 and will remain available to the public for 30 days after their premiere. The videos will be streamed online at nationalopera.gr/en, on GNO’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, as well as on the website of the Ministry of Culture and Sports digitalculture.gov.gr. The Festival is made possible by a grant from the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) [www.SNF.org] to enhance the Greek National Opera’s artistic outreach.

The five short films that will be screened as part of GNO’s 3rd Online Festival combine the art of the image with the power of music and narrative language through new readings of music works. The dream and fantasy of Arnold Schönberg’sVerklärteNacht meet the confessions of people in deserted buildings from Nikos Ioakeim’s mesmerizing composition, and the memories of the Woman in Black in YorgoSicilianos’ monodrama The Lady in the Moonlight. TarquinioMerula’s lullaby sung by different mothers in modern-day Athens intertwines with Musical GNOod Mornings, where operatic singing takes a morning TV show by storm. Through all these works, the Festival reveals imaginative ways of transmuting music and language into another form of art through the image, proposing new operatic, inspired film experiences filled with humor and an honest mood of self-sarcasm. The Festival is curated by GNO’s Artistic Director Giorgos Koumendakis.

Giorgos Koumendakis notes: “After the great success of our 1st and 2nd Online Festivals (May-June 2020, September-October 2020), which attracted tens of thousands of viewers across the world, we actively continue with GNO’s 3rd Online Festival. The new Festival is titled The Music of Language and includes five videos, five short films, where music and narrative language acquire a whole new dimension through the art of the image. We made a selection of five music works of different themes and aesthetic, which evolve the way music passes through its digital form to another reality. The Online Festival allows us to be creatively alive, not only in the midst of the pandemic, but also afterwards, as this approach to music works will have an even bigger presence in the future. From 9 December to 6 January, we invite you to enjoy these five special short stories on the screen of your computer, tablet or mobile phone.”