Belshazar

Belshazzar‘s son Daniel pleads with his father to destroy the newly constructed “Tower of hubris and pride”. He recognises himself as a prophet of approaching doom, but refuses to side against his own father. A feast is planned to celebrate the consecration of the as yet unfinished building. The builders of the tower are aware of the defects of its construction and fear that it will collapse. When the queen throws a glass against the wall of the tower, initial cracks develop. Belshazzar endures the embarrassing hymns of praise and festive rituals; when the signs of collapse increase, he orders all gates to be closed and the guests prevented from leaving the tower. He realises the truth of the warnings by his son who ignores his own safety to prop up a newly appearing crack in the wall. Belshazzar ultimately remains alone in the collapsing tower; apocalyptic ghostly figures break in and kill each other. Belshazzar then pleads with God to destroy mankind after the tower has been destroyed. Invisible beings sing: ‘By the waters of Babylon, we sat and wept for thee Zion’.
Harald Weirich and Volker David Kirchner combine motifs from the Old Testament Book of Daniel with forms of theatre of the absurd in their single-act opera which also contains elements of modern criticism of civilisation, creating a compressed drama which adheres to the rules of classical dramatic structure. Kirchner’s music corresponds to the collage structure of the libretto, combining symphonic blocks, melodrama, recitative and arioso with numerous forms of sound production such as electro-acoustically amplified noises, intimations of Chassidic dance rhythms and stylistic quotations – from his own works and particularly from Gustav Mahler’s Tenth Symphony – producing a tonal and motivic texture of great density and nightmarish expressivity.