2024-02-06 08:53:21
Detlev Glanert is one of the most frequently performed opera composers in the world. He received international awards for his works. Now his twelfth opera is coming out in Dresden: “The Jewess of Toledo”.
Dresden.
Composer Detlev Glanert compares opera to complicated architecture and is committed to artistic collaboration on an equal footing. “I’m a team worker, I can’t imagine opera any other way,” the 63-year-old told the German Press Agency in Dresden.
Opera is a composite art of words, images, music and sometimes dance. “This is a wonderful invention that relies on teamwork. I like working with others and incorporating other people’s good ideas.” “Dictators” among directors and conductors have long been out of date. “You get much further when you practice teamwork.”
What opera has to do with statics
The award-winning Glanert is one of the most renowned contemporary opera composers. On February 10th he will release his twelfth opera, “The Jewess of Toledo,” at the Semperoper in Dresden. Musical theater remains a special challenge for him:
“The opera needs precise construction work, precise preliminary planning. It’s like the architecture of a very complicated building. You have to precisely balance the load-bearing capacity, the statics. The scenario is the decisive factor: where are the highlights, who appears when, who meets who. Where are the exciting, where are the lyrical elements.”
As a rule, he composes his pieces through, one work at a time. During an opera, he could also take a break, breathe deeply and perhaps write a short viola sonata in between.
He observes people for his works
Glanert says he often draws inspiration for his work from literature, but also from everyday situations. “A big hobby of mine is observing people. Observing how they react and behave, what gestures they use and what rhetoric they use. All my singing voices come from rhetoric, whether that’s accusation, hatred, cynicism, Sarcasm, jokes or irony. Observing people gives me a lot of tones, even if outsiders can’t detect any connection. I’m interested in what goes on between people.”
He could never imagine opera without thinking of a large audience: “That’s why I’m not the kind of person who would be at home in a night studio.”
Several new projects
According to Glanert, the corona pandemic has led to the postponement of many projects. “Now there are a lot of premieres coming up.” A new cello concerto with soloist Johannes Moser was released in Luxembourg and Cologne in January. A new orchestral piece, commissioned by Sir Donald Runnicles, will follow in the summer. “I wrote a violin concerto for Midori, which she now plays often.”
He finds the pre-planning of opera houses, which often takes years, to be problematic. With a planning lead time of seven years, a new Mozart would no longer be possible: “He would die before he was even received.” (dpa)
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