Composition Commission issued to Olga Neuwirth

Vienna State Opera, Austria


With the support of the EvS Music Foundation the Vienna State Opera has commissioned the composer Olga Neuwirth to write a piece of musical theater. In literary terms, the opera is based on Virginia Woolf's novel Orlando, her first major literary success that became one of the most prominent classics of English modernism. The work focalizes the interweaving of gender identity, love and artistic creativity and poetically breaks with social and personal reality in a skillful way. “In Orlando Virginia Woolf questioned gender roles, the position of women in society and their access to literature. But my piece of music theater will not be about presenting theoretical proof, but rather depicting the different possibilities scene after scene, one after the other, also in musical terms,” says Olga Neuwirth. “For me Orlando and music are very similar. This is because, just like (classical) music, the story of Orlando over the centuries conveys, on the one hand, bitter-sweet pain beyond words and, on the other, precise structures, proportions, abstraction and mathematical-scientific thinking and: solace. Because every life comes about through a process of self-creation. By living we create our own world. Just like in music, and just like with and through Orlando.”


Premiere:
December 8, 2019

Further Performances:
December 11, 14, 18 and 20, 2019
Vienna State Opera, Austria


Further Information::
wiener-staatsoper.at