L'Invisible

SYNOPSIS

Aribert Reimann’s ‘Trilogie lyrique’ is based on three plays by Maurice Maeterlinck:
In L’ Intruse, a family is sitting at the table with their blind grandfather. They are waiting for the doctor to arrive and tend to his daughter who is lying ill in bed after having given birth: her new-born son has not yet made a single sound. The old man senses that something is wrong due to the uneasy atmosphere in the room. ‘Who is sitting in our midst?’ he asks. He is the only one who can see the presence of death.
Intérieur: Once again a family is gathered round the table in the evening, but this time we observe the action from outside, looking through the window with the grandfather and a stranger: no sound can be heard. Outside the house, the stranger reports that the eldest daughter has drowned and that he has pulled her out of the river. Although the corpse is already being carried through the village to the family, the grandfather cannot bring himself to destroy this idyll.
La Mort de Tintagiles: The young Tintagiles is told a story about a mysterious castle and the aged queen who has all potential heirs to the throne murdered. His siblings sense that Tintagiles has been summoned to the castle to be murdered, but nobody openly expresses this fact. It is the sinister messengers of death from the interludes, now visible as the queen’s servants, who fulfil her demand and snatch the sleeping boy from his sisters’ arms.

COMMENTARY

‘In comparison with his Medea for example with its stormy outbreaks of emotion and violence, Reimann’s score is worked in an impressive refinement of sound. It begins with rumbling, hesitating and expressive music in the first section, demanding highly ingenious sound effects from the lower strings including tapping and faltering glissandos in its noisy expression of mortal fear. In the second part, the woodwind formation plays at times almost in chamber music fashion and is then suddenly painfully shrill. The third part luxuriates and rages in its rich, full orchestration. The manner in which Reimann displays his mastery in textural shading, the invention of sounds welling up and fading away, the rhythmic and melodic capacity of suffering and the music’s inner violence are all utterly compelling.’ (Wolfgang Schreiber, Opernwelt, November 2017)