STORIES SET TO MUSIC AND DANCED TO MUSIC ABOUT THE GREAT QUESTIONS OF BEING HUMAN: MYTH AND MUSIC THEATER
Since the beginning of human history, we have been telling ourselves myths about gods, the creation of the world or the creation of man - stories about great themes that need to be interpreted: Friedrich Nietzsche makes fruitful use of the myth's circular concept of time for his concept of the “eternal return of the same”, while for Sigmund Freud myths serve primarily as a projection surface for human needs and problems.
The interaction between myth and music theater can be traced back to the birth of the genre: In addition to Claudio Monteverdi, numerous composers set the Orpheus myth to music about the crossing of boundaries between this world and the hereafter through the power of music and love. Ancient figures are also at the heart of Richard Strauss' opera The Love of Danae, which the composer described as “cheerful mythology”, and Henry Purcell's Dido and Aeneas - here, Homer's Iliad, one of the oldest written accounts of the Trojan War, the greatest battle in Greek and Roman mythology, was the inspiration. Richard Wagner, on the other hand, draws on Germanic and Norse mythology for his 14-hour tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen, claiming a universal interpretation of the world, while his Lohengrin is based on the medieval (Christian) Grail myth.
A myth is often accompanied by supernatural phenomena, and so the title heroines in the ballet La Sylphide as air spirits and in Antonín Dvořák's opera Rusalka as water creatures fit into the mythical universe just as much as their fearsome counterparts, the witches Madge and Ježibaba.
In a supporting program of lectures and readings during the Munich Opera Festival at the Nationaltheater, we want to dedicate ourselves to those works in our repertoire that perpetuate mythical tales.