Composition Commission issued to Brigitta Muntendorf

Oper Halle, Halle an der Saale, Germany

Love, eroticism and sex for sale are the central themes of Clemens Meyer’s successful novel Bricks and Mortar (2016, original German title Im Stein published in 2013). In it the author writes relentlessly and tenderly about people and creatures of the night, recounting their rise and fall, the dirt on the streets and the flow of money. The novel has a strong local feel brilliantly tracing a path from an analysis of the author’s own biography and his (east) German roots through to the fundamental issues of the globalized present day. Critics hailed Bricks and Mortar an epochal portrait of urban society after the collapse of the great utopias. This widely acclaimed novel serves as the basis for composer Brigitta Muntendorf’s new work of musical theater composed for solo singers, actors, mixed choir, medium-sized orchestra and electronics. Supported by the EvS Music Foundation the work will be premiered in the 2018/19 season on the large stage of Halle Opera House.

Brigitta Muntendorf is known for her intermedia approach to composition that breaks down genre boundaries. For her realization, she strives for a form according to the structures and design principles of contemporary music, using experimental pop aesthetics through to noise and industrial as her aesthetic template. This creates continuous, reciprocal disassociations between poles like the aria and song, choir and vocals, orchestra and machine, recitation and chanting. The flowing writing style found in Bricks and Mortar is conveyed in a technoid approximation of the sound of orchestra and vocals as a multi-layered ecstatic stream.

Since the change in management at Halle’s opera house Oper Halle in the 2016/17 season a composition commission has been written every season for the opera’s large stage focusing on the pressing social, political and aesthetic issues of our day. With the third project in collaboration with Brigitta Muntendorf and Clemens Meyer a developmental line is traced that is committed to updating and re-initiating the different genres of opera and musical theater.

April 26, 2019
Großer Saal/Large Hall, Oper Halle, Halle an der Saale, Deutschland

Further information:
buehnen-halle.de