nachtwache

Place and time: time and country of the performance
Duration: full evening

Characters: Heinz (tenor) – Peter (baritone) – Rosalie, The Smiths Daughter (alto) – Anila (soprano) – The Smith (bass) – A Porter, also Knave of Spades (bass) – A Nurse, also an altoe (soprano) – A Doctor, also a Chimney-sweep (baritone) – Fisherman’s Wife (soprano) – Jack of Hearts, also a Blind Man (tenor) – A Boy (boys voice) – Teachers Wife (mezzo-soprano) – A Hangman (bass) – 6 Students (soprano, mezzo-soprano, alto, tenor, baritone, bass) – An Oppressor (speaking part) – Chorus of the Prisoners, Public (chorus)

Heinz and Peter, both wounded and on the run, find themselves one winters night lying in a forest strewn with dead and injured people. Peter, near exhaustion, fears that his beloved Anila is among the dead. He asks his friend to help him, but Peter abandons him without further ado. Heinz then finds refuge in a barn, where he is tended to by a young woman named Rosalie. He is so tormented by nightmares and a guilty conscience that he cannot even find comfort and peace in Rosalies loving care. Meanwhile, the smith is forging a gate designed to impale the escapees …
Another scene depicts a kind of marionette theater in which an oppressor – Heinzs doppelganger – holds sway over a crowd. When everyone accuses Heinz of being guilty, he confesses and admits that he did not help someone who needed him. He ultimately climbs the now completed gate, impales himself on the spikes and bleeds to death.
The music also takes part in the action in its own manner, i. e. in a chiefly structural way. There are clear divisions and contrasts, but also parallel passages formed by groups of instruments. Solo and tutti passages are thus brought into relationship with each other in such a way that they mirror the relationship between the individual, the world, and the universe. This also applies to the character of the performance instructions: solo playing with clearly contoured phrasing and tutti passages with noise-like gestures. (Sigrid Neef, in: “Deutsche Oper im 20. Jahrhundert: DDR 1949-1989”)

The world premiere of “Nachtwache” was originally scheduled to take place in a production by Ruth Berghaus at Dresdens Semper Opera in 1990, but was surprisingly cancelled in spring 1990.