Abstract
The artistic impulses of three young talents come together in brilliant fashion in the chamber opera Jakob Lenz: At the center is the eponymous Jakob Lenz himself, a highly sensitive outsider of the Sturm und Drang period. In January 1778, he wandered through Alsace in a battered state and finds refuge with Pastor Oberlin. Based on Oberlin’s historical notes, Georg Büchner – an author who died young – wrote his novella Lenz. In 1978, this text inspired the composer Wolfgang Rihm, then 25 years old, to write what would become not only one of his early successes, but one of the most successful chamber operas of the 20th century. Rihm traced Lenz’s inner state, above all setting the voices that «only Lenz hears» to music. With its highly expressive, sharp-edged but also lyrically sensitive tone, Rihm’s score leads directly into the soul of his protagonist. Swiss stage director Mélanie Huber took on this chamber opera in celebration of Rihm’s 70th birthday. Her visually powerful, strident and nuanced production returns to the stage at Winterthur. Bowing once again in the title role is baritone Yannick Debus, whose first appearance in the role took Switzerland by storm.