Carl Orff: World Première after 97 Years of 'Gisei - The Victim'

On 30 January Carl Orff´s opera Gisei - Das Opfer (Gisei - The Victim) will receive its world première. 97 years after its composition the Staatstheater Darmstadt, Germany, is presenting the first production ever, directed by John Dew and under the baton of Constantin Trinks.

From his early youth, Carl Orff had always been fascinated by Japan and its culture, in particular literature and Bunraku, Japanese puppet theatre. His lifelong enthusiasm for Kabuki and Noh theatre has also left its traces in many of his works. He was particularly captivated by the play ”Terakoya No Dan“: this act from the eight-hour long historical drama provided Orff with the material for his first stage work Gisei – The Victim, composed when the composer was only seventeen.

The foreign plot inspired the composer to develop a musical language which was a synthesis of musical exoticism and the traditions of European music. In a prelude, two figures, a man and a woman, are mourning the sacrificial death of their child. The story of the killing of the boy Kotaro which was precipitated by inevitable fate is depicted in the ensuing main plot as if in a cinematic flashback.

Orff did not permit a performance of this work during his lifetime as he feared that the music and its subject would soon no longer be perceived as being contemporary, a trait of the progressive aesthetic concept of Expressionism. It will be fascinating to experience this work at its World Première undertaken by the Staats - theater Darmstadt almost a century after its composition. This early opera Gisei connects with Orff’s late works in which the composer also utilises Japanese instruments which he had discovered during the development of his Orff Schulwerk in Japan.

Accompanying the World Première of Gisei, the Staatstheater Darmstadt will be presenting the exhibition “Carl Orff – humanist against the tide of time” from 30 January to 15 March. This exhibition material and an additional transportable exhibition devoted to the Japanese influences on Orff’s works can be hired from the Orff Centre in Munich.

• Carl Orff - Profile
• www.staatstheater-darmstadt.de
• www.orff-zentrum.de

_{Photo on the right: Carl Orff around 1913; Schott Archive}