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| Die Soldaten | |
|---|---|
| Name | Die Soldaten |
| Composer | Bernd Alois Zimmermann |
| Librettist | Bernd Alois Zimmermann |
| Language | German |
| Based on | Les Soldats |
| Premiered | 1965 |
| Location | Cologne |
| Conductor | Michael Gielen |
| Theatre | Cologne Opera |
Die Soldaten is a 20th-century opera by Bernd Alois Zimmermann with a libretto by the composer adapted from the 18th-century play Les Soldats by Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. The work confronts themes drawn from Enlightenment tragedy, French literature, and postwar West Germany cultural debates, juxtaposing serial techniques with theatrical traditions associated with Georg Büchner, Gustave Flaubert, and Samuel Beckett. Its complex orchestration and staging requirements positioned it at the intersection of avant-garde serialism, electronic music, and grand opera practices linked to houses such as La Scala, Paris Opera, and the Metropolitan Opera.
Zimmermann composed the opera between 1957 and 1963 during a period when composers like Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Olivier Messiaen, Arnold Schoenberg, and Alban Berg dominated debates about postwar contemporary music. He drew on Lenz's 1776 play Les Soldats and was influenced by the dramatic practices of Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Meyerbeer, and the music-theatre experiments of Kurt Weill and Hanns Eisler. Zimmermann's score reflects techniques associated with twelve-tone technique, serialism, and aleatory music while also integrating elements reminiscent of Gustav Mahler, Igor Stravinsky, Dmitri Shostakovich, Anton Webern, and Claude Debussy. The composer framed the work within a cosmological concept shared with contemporaries such as John Cage and Luciano Berio, incorporating quotations and musical collage that reference Johann Sebastian Bach, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven, Hector Berlioz, Franz Schubert, and Richard Strauss. Zimmermann prepared extensive orchestral forces, requiring instrumentalists linked to ensembles like the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the Berlin Philharmonic.
The plot follows the fate of Marie (a character adapted from Lenz) and her entanglement with soldiers and social elites in an 18th-century urban milieu refracted through 20th-century perspectives. Conflicting desires and social constraints propel scenes of seduction, violence, and downfall that evoke themes present in works by Eugène Ionesco, Jean-Paul Sartre, Arthur Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, and Friedrich Schiller. Dramatic episodes reference institutions and locales such as Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Naples, and Prague and engage figures resonant with Napoleonic and Habsburg histories like Napoleon Bonaparte and Francis II. The narrative structure uses montage, flashback, and temporal simultaneity akin to the dramaturgy of Bertolt Brecht, Max Reinhardt, Erwin Piscator, and Peter Brook. Characters encounter symbolic presences and offstage events comparable to scenes in Eugene Onegin, La Traviata, Wozzeck, and Pelléas et Mélisande.
The premiere, conducted by Michael Gielen at the Cologne Opera in 1965, involved stage direction and production practices relating to institutions such as the Bayreuth Festival, Salzburg Festival, Royal Opera House, Glyndebourne Festival Opera, and the Vienna State Opera. Early champions included figures like Hans Werner Henze, Claudio Abbado, Herbert von Karajan, Georg Solti, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, and Pierre Boulez, who discussed its innovations in venues from Concertgebouw to Carnegie Hall. Subsequent productions appeared at houses including Opéra National de Paris, Teatro alla Scala, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Komische Oper Berlin, Hamburg State Opera, Wiener Staatsoper, San Francisco Opera, and the Royal Swedish Opera. Festivals and presenters such as Aix-en-Provence Festival, Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Avignon Festival, Lucerne Festival, and Munich Biennale staged concert or semi-staged versions. Directors like Luc Bondy, Heinz Brockmann, Peter Mussbach, Christof Loy, and Harry Kupfer have mounted varied realizations. The work’s demanding cast lists prompted appearances by singers associated with Wiener Volksoper, Bayerische Staatsoper, Metropolitan Opera, and Teatro Colón.
Zimmermann's score orchestrates dense textures invoking ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and chamber groups like Ensemble InterContemporain and Musique Vivante. The composer employs layered temporalities, polytonal planes, and serial constructions that dialogue with compositional methods of Elliott Carter, György Ligeti, Henri Dutilleux, Morton Feldman, and Iannis Xenakis. Dramaturgically, the opera uses montage and collage akin to cinematic techniques associated with Sergei Eisenstein, Federico Fellini, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrei Tarkovsky, and Alfred Hitchcock. The vocal writing ranges from Sprechstimme to virtuosic lyricism recalling Maria Callas, Birgit Nilsson, Jon Vickers, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, and Placido Domingo while demanding choral forces analogous to Mahlerian and Brucknerian sonorities. Analytical commentary connects the opera to theoretical discourse from Theodor W. Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Jürgen Habermas, and Theodor Adorno’s contemporaries on modernist aesthetics.
Productions confront logistical and financial challenges similar to those faced mounting works like Siegfried or Der Ring des Nibelungen at houses such as Bayreuth and Covent Garden. The score’s orchestral demands, offstage ensembles, and simultaneous scenes require infrastructure comparable to that of La Scala and Metropolitan Opera and technical collaboration with stage designers influenced by Gae Aulenti, Adolphe Appia, Theo van Doesburg, Josef Svoboda, and Richard Peduzzi. Critical reception has ranged from enthusiastic endorsement by critics writing in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Die Zeit, The New York Times, Le Monde, and The Guardian to opposition from commentators aligned with conservative and traditionalist aesthetics championed by cultural institutions in Bonn and Frankfurt. Its reputation evolved through advocacy by conductors, directors, and institutions including WDR, Radio Bremen, Deutsche Grammophon, Sony Classical, and Decca Records.
Commercial recordings include studio and live releases featuring ensembles such as the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the Orchestre National de France, the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, and soloists who performed at Vienna State Opera, La Scala, and the Metropolitan Opera. Notable conductors on disc include Michael Gielen, Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado, Hans Zender, and Sylvain Cambreling. Adaptations and concert performances have appeared in versions realized by directors connected to institutions like BBC Proms, Festival d'Aix-en-Provence, Salzburg Festival, and the Edinburgh International Festival. Video recordings and documentary treatments were produced for broadcasters such as ARD, ZDF, BBC Television, Arte, and PBS and preserved in archives like the Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv and the Library of Congress. The opera continues to inspire scholarship in journals published by institutions like Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press, Routledge, University of California Press, and universities including Freie Universität Berlin, University of Oxford, Harvard University, Yale University, and Columbia University.
Category:Operas