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Opernhaus, ''Der Kreidekreis''

Zurich

The libretto of the opera is taken from a drama of Chinese literature from the 13th century, which a few years later would also inspire a short story and a play by Bertolt Brecht.The scenography by Johan Engels stylizes a bamboo forest at the edge of a body of water ...
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... using strips of various widths of green Crushed Velvet which are reflected in a triangle covered with the mirroring floor TST - Silviastar.The stripes allow to glimpse the back of the scene, giving it some depth.
The costumes transpose the action into the contemporary, revitalizing a musically heterogeneous opera, which draws inspiration from Ernst Křenek (1900-1991), a Viennese composer that spaced from a late-romantic style to the atonal, and from the neoclassicism to the jazz, influenced with his eclecticism the older Alexander Zemlinsky (1871-1942) ...

... who inserted in the score of his Der Kreidekreis an abundance of heterogeneous elements, among which some long jazz style sections.Zemlinsky composed Der Kreidekreis in 1933, before abandoning Europe ...
... because of the anti-Semites persecutions (he belonged to a family of the Viennese Jewish community) and to move to New York, where he died by pneumonia few years later.Johan Engels' scenography didn't contradict Zemlinsky musical setting ...
... creating some unpredictable syncretisms among traditional materials (velvet, for instance) and others modern or unusual stuffs (the construction site fencing and the mirror floor).
Der Kreidekreis
Opera in three acts
Music
Alexander Zemlinsky (1872-1942)
Libretto
Klabund
First night
Zurich, Opernhaus Zürich, 14/10/1933
Scenography
Johan Engels (1952-2014)
Light design
Jürgen Hoffmann
Stage direction
David Pountney
Staging
Opernhaus Zürich of Zurich
Season
2003 / 2004

Materials used in this production

FOS - Crumpled velvet

Velvets for decoration

TST - Silviastar

Dance floors

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