Créeation : 23 September 2006, Strasbourg, festival Musica, by the Rhine National Opera Orchestra
Comisionner: The French state and the Rhine National Opera Orchestra
Direction : Bernhard Kontarsky
Stage direction : Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota
Musicians: 6 percussionists, with choir and orchestra
Duration: 2h15′
Publishing : Lemoine, nº 28270, 2006
Bruno Mantovani approaches his first opera at almost thirty-two years of age with the ambition of restoring to the fantasy of Alfred Kubin’s novel (1877-1959) its original force and narrative strangeness. The Other Side, a fable without morals, stages the Empire of the Dream, an absurd refuge from all progress, which plunges into chaos after having been removed from the dictatorship of its leader Patera. An admirable and visionary tale, accompanied by the author’s frightening illustrations, it left its mark on the literary and artistic Central Europe of the early 20th century. Bruno Mantovani, associated with the playwright François Regnault and the director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota, seeks to make the perpetual movement of this collapse. The orchestra is vast and brilliant, including six percussion instruments whose role is to widen the sound space. The choir – this swarming mass close to Kubin’s apocalyptic images – mobilizes and animates the stage. Finally, the solo roles are distributed around the narrator, Alfred Kubin himself, the central character swept away in this never-ending drama. This world premiere is the unifying element of the portrait devoted to the young French composer by Musica, in collaboration with the Opéra national du Rhin.
Musica, Antoine Gindt