Senza sangue

SYNOPSIS

Peter Eötvös has composed his opera Senza sangue after the eponymous novel by Alessandro Baricco. Mari Mezei’s libretto is based on the concluding portion of the novel, and tells the story of a single dramatic encounter. During a civil war, a man and his companions killed the entire family of a certain young girl. The plot of the one-act opera spans many decades, from the moment where the girl looks in the eyes of the twenty-year-old boy who has shot her father but spared her own life, until their new encounter many decades later. After the tragedy, the woman spent her whole life in some kind of schizophrenic state, looking at herself as an outside observer. She reputedly killed, or arranged the killing of, her father’s murderers, except for the man who had saved her. They both knew all along they had to meet again, but didn’t know what this encounter would bring after so many years. In the course of their conversation, the story takes a new turn. The woman has not come to avenge herself but to be saved by the man once again. She longs to relive that glance from long ago: ‚He who has saved us once, can do so again and again.‘

COMMENTARY

Peter Eötvös composed Senza sangue as a work to be coupled with Béla Bartók’s Bluebeard’s Castle. As Eötvös remarked, he shares a musical ‚native language‘ with his compatriot. His composition relates to the famous single-act opera not only in its atmosphere but also right down to the cast and orchestration. Eötvös employs a pair of singers with the same voice ranges as Bartók – mezzo soprano and baritone – and the instrumentation is also identical apart from the organ which is not employed in Eötvös’s opera. He has also searched for parallels regarding the plot. In both works, a couple features who are confronted with the demons of the past. In contrast to Bartók, the woman does not discover the secret of her husband, but shares it with him. Both man and woman are elements of a recondite story. Whereas Bartók’s couple becomes the victim of the deeds of the man, Eötvös’s figures show how a traumatic past can be transformed in a totally unexpected way, together on an equal footing. At the same time, many questions remain unanswered. Peter Eötvös writes: ‘Can murder be excused by the belief in a better world? Can revenge save a broken life? Was the fight for a better world in vain if it did not succeed? There are no answers, but the man and woman are aware that their lives have become inextricably intertwined since that fateful day; only through each other can they ever hope to make life meaningful again. This is beautifully symbolised by the old woman’s hope to have her good reputation and identity restored and obliterate the past through her encounter with the man.’ Peter Eötvös