Der Goggolori

The ‘Bavarian fairy tale with music’ Der Goggolori was composed in 1982/83 based on a libretto by Michael Ende who took his inspiration from ancient Bavarian folk legend. The action takes place during the time of the Thirty Years’ War in a Bavarian village, a world dominated by superstition and archaic visions of ghosts, demons and witches. A farmer promises his firstborn to the Goggolori, a spirit of nature (who is capable of both good and evil deeds), if he provides him with a rich harvest, cattle and above all good fortune. When Zeipoth, his daughter, has matured and the Goggolori demands his payment, the farmers enlist the help of the witch Ullerin to kill the so-called ‘Eadmandl’ – but to no avail. Ultimately, justice becomes reversed: the charmingly innocent Zeipoth and the cursed forest goblin come together. The final chorus describing how Zeipoth sacrifices her own life to redeem the Goggolori reveals a distant world characterised by infinitely emotional universal harmony, depicting Zeipoth dedicated to weaving the coat of the Mother of God in heaven ‘up to the end of the world’.
All figures in this fairy tale speak and sing in a type of Bavarian dialect which, although it sounds familiar, was in fact an artistic creation of Michael Ende. Although the music by Wilfried Hiller includes elements of Alpine folk music, he juggles with them in great virtuosity, alienating them with sophisticated harmonies and rhythmic twists. The music cruelly unmasks the two-faced character of this village idyll in which uncanniness and raw desires, catastrophe and comedy and horror and humour are always close companions. Since its world premiere at the Gärtnerplatztheater in Munich, Der Goggolori has been performed over a hundred times in this same location alone.