Wagner Dream

Wagner Dream takes place when Wagner suffers a heart attack in Venise. The last moments of his life are projected in the dream of an opera inspired by a Buddhist legend that the German composer imagined, but that he never wrote.

Jonathan Harvey and Jean-Claude Carrière met through their common passion for the India of Buddha. Wagner Dream illustrates the passage between theater and music, between words and song, between a historic era relinquished to actors (Wagner, his wife Cosima, his doctor) and the dreamed space of song, of music, of electronics produced at IRCAM.

At the heart of this opera, the tension between the will of force and renunciation. This cohabitation of contradictory forces that haunts the Wagnerian project (Siegfried or Parsifal, Nietzsche or Schopenhauer) belongs entirely to Western history.

Program

Jonathan Harvey

• Wagner Dream, French Premiere, staged concert (1h45). Commissioned/coproduction De Nederlandse Opera, Grand Théâtre de Luxembourg, Holland Festival and IRCAM-Centre Pompidou

Distribution

Libretto Jean-Claude Carrière | Lighting Jean Kalman | Conductor Martyn Brabbins | IRCAM Computer Music Production Gilbert Nouno | Computer Music Production for Interludes Carl Faia, Gilbert Nouno

Ictus | Soloists and vocal ensemble | Claire Booth, Prakriti | Gordon Gietz, Ananda | Matthew Best, Vairochana | Dale Duesing, Bouddha | Rebecca De Pont Davies, the mother | Richard Angas, Old Brahman | Johan Leysen, Wagner | Catherine ten Bruggencate, Cosima | Nn (actrice), Carrie Pringle | Nn (actrice), Betty, servant | Nn (actor), Docteur Keppler

Co-organized by IRCAM-Centre Pompidou and the Théâtre Nanterre-Amandiers. With the support of  SACD  as a part of its musical cultural outreach activities.