Medeamaterial

P. Dusapin Opera 18+

Opera based on the play by Heiner Müller (1929–1995)

Performed in German with Russian surtitles

Heiner Müller wrote the triptych with the complex title of Lost Coast. Medeamaterial. Landscape with Argonauts in parts between the 1950s and the 1980s. Medeamaterial, its central fragment, dates from the end of the 1960s. According to Müller, the Archaic Period ends specifically with the story of Medea murdering her children, thus radically changing the nature of catastrophe; it is this issue, according to the author, that «humanity has been diligently working over» to this day.

Pascal Dusapin wrote the opera Medeamaterial in 1991, based on the text of the middle part of Müller’s triptych. This work successfully synthesizes the traditions of American minimalism (Glass, Nyman, Cage) and the most modern European composition techniques (e.g., spectralism), which Dusapin uses to deconstruct the operatic tradition of all possible ‘Medeas’: from the Baroque compositions of Cavalli and Charpentier to the romantic works of Mayer and Cherubini. The composition of the orchestra and choir and the voice type of the soloist are essentially Baroque. It is no coincidence that the first recording of this opera was performed by the esteemed guru of Baroque music Philippe Herreweghe.

The performance at the 2012 Diaghilev Festival was the Russian première of this score, as well as being the first experience of staging Dusapin’s operas in Russia.