Morton Subotnick’s Jacob’s Room Premieres at Bregenz Festival

On August 5, the Bregenz Festival presents the world premiere of Morton Subotnick’s Jacob’s Room, a chamber opera for four singers, four cellos, keyboards and electronics. Jacob’s Room is a co-production of the Bregenz Festival and soniq performing arts, Berlin, with funding from the Hauptstadtkulturfonds in association with the European Arts Centre in Hellerau.

Jacob’s Room draws its story and libretto from a variety of texts, including the eponymous novel by Virginia Woolf, and draws the viewer into its gauzy, internal narrative of loss and terror, touching on themes of personal confrontation of the holocaust.

Jacob is a survivor and yet he cannot live because he represses the memories of an awful experience in his childhood. A woman appears and takes Jacob on a journey through his own mind, a journey into Jacob's Room. Here he must confront the horror of those extreme emotions that accompany his experience of a holocaust. Jacob remembers; he remembers the cries of his mother, who died for her son; he remembers his grandfather's cries of lament and his anger: anger at an unjust god, anger at all of mankind.

The new production of Jacob’s Room marks a close collaboration between Subotnick and the production team, which includes musical director Ari Benjamin Meyers, production, space, and costume designer Mirella Weingarten, and the visual artist Lillevan. Performances take place August 5 and 7, in Bregenz.

On August 6, Subotnick performs his classic masterwork Silver Apples of the Moon on the original Buchla synthesizer built for him by Don Buchla in the 1960s, with live visuals by Lillevan. Silver Apples of the Moon, which was released on Nonesuch records in 1967, was recently inducted into the Library of Congress' National Recording Registry—an honor shared by only a few hundred of the millions of recordings produced in the US since the early years of the 20th century.

More detailed information can be found on the Bregenz Festival at www.bregenzerfestspiele.com.

For more information on the Library of Congress honor, please visit www.billboard.com.

Learn more on Morton Subotnick by visiting his Composer Profile.

Morton Subontick
Jacob's Room (2010)
chamber opera in one act
libretto (En) by Morton Subotnick inspired by Phaedrus by Plato, Eleni by Nicholas Gage, The Pit and the Trap by Moshe Kohn, The Little School House by Alicia Partnoy, The Holocaust Kingdom by Alexander Donat and Jacob's Room by Virginia Woolf
for soprano, mezzo-soprano, bass-baritone and high baritone
keyboard, cello section(min. 4 players) and electronics
ca. 75'

Commissioned by Kunst aus der Zeit, the Bregenz Festival and soniq performing arts, Berlin in cooperation with the American Academy, Berlin and supported by Hauptstadtkulturfonds, Berlin