Characters: Echo, Hexe (S) – Reporterin (Mez) – Don Gairre, Kameramann (T) – Don Stepano (Bbar) – Drogenabhängiger Hausbesitzer (Schauspieler)

Thomas Köck's theater work eure paläste sind leer (all we ever wanted) - a missa in cantu is the basis for my new opera in an abridged and adapted form.

Thomas Köck is an exciting playwright whose work I have been observing for some time and whose musical language seems almost ideal as a basis for a music theater work.

The three thematic strands of the libretto: in the palace – a dystopian image, as it were, from the future; in the Amazon – an image from the past: the conquistadors' search for El Dorado; in Suburbia – an image from the present, focusing on the opiate epidemic in the Western world; each requires its own, incredibly characteristic music. My motto was diversity Yes, arbitrariness No. After all, there is a wealth of musical cross-relationships between the thematic materials, which are also so artfully interwoven in the libretto. Thematically, at any rate, they timeless yet still burning topics today – eminently political, but linguistically always poetically and idiosyncratically realized. That inspired me a lot as I composed the music.

"This powerful, loud, melancholy song, in which more and more voices and memories invade" (Dieser mächtige, laute, melancholische Gesang, in den immer mehr Stimmen und Erinnerungen einfallen – Thomas Köck), offers me, in its thoroughly experimental construct, almost the ideal template for composing a multi-perspective work about capitalism, power and its misuse. I envisioned a dazzling, complex whole that allows traditional forms such as Aria, Recitative, ensemble scenes or choral passages to recede into the background in favor of a more multi-layered, hybrid-scenic architecture.

I had in mind a new kind of narration, neither static nor linear, in which music and text retain their autonomy, but at times blend into an idiosyncratic, maelstrom-like amalgam.

(Johannes Maria Staud, July 2023)