Buddenbrooks

I requested help from my friend Feridun Zaimoglu in the compilation of the libretto for my opera Buddenbrooks. As a German novelist, Feridun has perfect command of a very fine and almost old German literary style while simultaneously possessing a highly riveting artistry as a playwright - as borne out for example by his legendary work Schwarze Jungfrauen [Black Virgins].

I am well aware that due to his Turkish origins, Feridun Zaimoglu also possesses a highly differentiated overview of Germany and German history which I require to help me create a contemporary work, and in this process avoid drowning Thomas Mann’s epically sprawling novel in the romanticised and voluble meanderings of German conventionality. Feridun and his co-author Günter Senkel provided me with an exhilarating text based on a simultaneously simple and yet brilliant dramatic concept, thereby setting me free to utilise this text as ‘modelling material’ (Feridun) to form the ultimate version of the libretto.

The opera Buddenbrooks was not conceived as a museum for nineteenth-century German bourgeoisie; on the contrary, it was my objective to reveal what Thomas Mann has to say in his magnum opus to audiences of our time. However, I was utterly astounded at the similarities between the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries with regard to each era’s overarching themes, visions and struggles.” Ludger Vollmer