Composition Commission issued to Xavier Dayer

Zürich Opera House, Zürich, Switzerland

With Neues Musiktheater – Szene Schweiz Zürich Opera House wishes to offer a platform to the new Swiss music scene. Over the course of a project spanning three years starting in the 2017/18 season, Zürich Opera House will be issuing one chamber opera composition commission to a Swiss composer per season, each of which shall be premiered on the Opera House’s studio stage.

The first composition commission supported by the EvS Music Foundation was issued to Geneva composer Xavier Dayer. The chamber opera transposing Stefan Zweig’s novella Brief einer Unbekannten (Letter from an Unknown Woman) in musical terms is entitled Der Traum von Dir (The Dream of You). It recounts the story of the obsessive, unrequited love of a young woman for a writer. Xavier Dayer splits the female figure, the “unknown woman”, into a triple ego and in nine scenes traces the exceptional conditions of ecstatic love that probably only took place in the protagonist’s head. In an intimate line-up for three sopranos, one baritone and six instruments a piece of musical theater arises here that reflects on identity and identity constructions and sounds out the emotional tension of a (non) relationship in an anti-tristanesque way.

The project manager of Neues Musiktheater – Szene Schweiz is chief dramatist at Zürich Opera House, Claus Spahn.

December 2 – 9, 2017
Opernhaus Zürich

Further Information
www.opernhaus.ch