Johannes Maria Staud’s opera missing in cantu (eure paläste sind leer), based on a libretto by Thomas Köck, will have its Austrian premiere on 23 May at the Tiroler Landestheater Innsbruck in a new production by Bettina Bruinier, and will run until 7 July.
Thomas Köck’s stage play eure paläste sind leer (Your Palaces Are Empty), a “journey downstream through language into the heart of the darkness of European colonialism as the origin of global capitalism” (Christine Dössel, Süddeutsche Zeitung), caused a sensation at the Munich Kammerspiele in 2021. The “poetic, beguiling, highly musical language” had already been accompanied by plenty of live music in that production.
With missing in cantu, Johannes Maria Staud has adapted this multi-layered material into an opera, which premiered in 2023 as part of the Kunstfest Weimar, directed by Andrea Moses. “Johannes Maria Staud has drawn on a wealth of resources – in every respect. What begins as a delicate, unsettling tapestry of sound later unfolds, scene by scene, into musical-like bombast, flashes with jazz and swing, at times resembles film music and surprises elsewhere with a chorale,” wrote the Salzburger Nachrichten following the world premiere.
In the Brazilian jungle of the 16th century – much like in Werner Herzog’s Aguirre – conquistadors roam, ruthlessly subjugating both people and nature in their search for the supposed Eldorado. In today’s America, the opioid crisis is a man-made epidemic running rampant, claiming the middle class in their suburban communities as its victims. A blind seer looks back from the future upon what was once the ‘New World’. From the missa in cantu, which reveals itself here as a scenic requiem, an oratorical swan song to our way of life, comes missing in cantu, the sense of being lost in song.
The Tyrolean State Theatre Innsbruck is staging missing in cantu, the first opera by Johannes Maria Staud. Timothy Redmond is the musical director for the production, directed by Bettina Bruinier. The opera will be performed five times until 3 July.
