Work of the Week – Chaya Czernowin: Pnima…ins Innere

An opera without words. Impossible? No, almost unavoidable. Chaya Czernowin has achieved this masterpiece with her work Pnima...ins Innere (“Pnima…inwards”). The opening night at Staatstheater Darmstadt takes pace on 27 January 2024, staged by Karsten Wiegand and conducted by Richard Schwennicke. 

The play is based on the story Momik from the book See Under: Love by David Grossman. It is about individual memories of the horror of the Holocaust, the ongoing traumatisation and the liberation that can be found in passing on these memories to future generations.

The nine-year-old Israeli boy Momik tries to find out what trauma weighs on his parents and grandparents. But everyone remains silent, nobody talks to him about the Holocaust. His great-uncle Anschel, who survived the concentration camp, tries to tell Momik something urgent. But Anschel is so distraught that he only mumbles and stammers.

Pnima…ins Innere by Chaya Czernowin: When Music Becomes the Language

Based on this novel, Czernowin composed the opera Pnima...ins Innere. The opera deals with the transmission of trauma and instead of the usual singing with words, the unspeakable is made audible through music, syllables, sounds and noises. The opera was written by Czernowin for the Munich Biennale in 2000 and received the Bavarian Theatre Prize as well as the title 'World Premiere of the Year' from the Opernwelt magazine. The composer has the following to say about the current production in Darmstadt:

In times of increasing anti-Semitism in Germany and the world, Karsten Wiegand, the artistic director of the Staatstheater Darmstadt, has decided to do something unprecedented: He is changing the theatre's repertoire at short notice in order to stage my opera Pnima...ins Innere as a form of protest within only two months. This initiative undermines all the usual operating mechanisms of opera productions. I am deeply grateful to Karsten Wiegand for his courage and his idea that art can speak to the real world, and I have the greatest respect for his position and viewpoint. I am also grateful to the Darmstadt State Theatre and all those involved who agreed at such short notice to devote two months to this production under unpredictable conditions. (Chaya Czernowin)

The production at the Staatstheater Darmstadt is based on Karsten Wiegand's production at the Nationaltheater Weimar in 2008 can be seen in four performances until the end of March. Another highly topical opera by Czernowin follows on 27 April 2024 with a new production of Zaïde / Adama at Theater Aachen, which deals with the impossible love between a Jewish woman and a Palestinian man.

Links:

Chaya Czernowin: Composer Profile  

Pnima…ins Innere: Work Details and Online Score  

Website Staatstheater Darmstadt 

Website Theater Aachen 

photo: Staatstheater Darmstadt / Benjamin Weber