2008/11/14 by Laura Tunbridge · 1 citation
Social Sciences · Health Professions · Computer Science · Psychology · #Literature, Musicology, and Cultural Analysis #History, Culture, and Society #Cultural Insights and Digital Impacts #Opera #Passion #Art #Art history #Decadence #Subject (documents) #Servant #Mythology #Literature #Psychology
paper · doi:10.1093/oq/kbn052
openalex publication_date 2008/11/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Philippe Boesmans has been composer-in-residence at the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels since 1985. During that time he has completed three operas in collaboration with the Swiss director (and, in these cases, librettist) Luc Bondy, all of which have been based on preexisting literary texts: Reigen (1993), after Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play of the same name; Wintermärchen (1999), after Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale (1611); and Julie (2005), after August Strindberg's Frøken Julie (Miss Julie, 1888). The progression between these three works displays a fine-tuning, by Boesmans, of what he wants opera to be. He has explained that when composing the earlier La Passion de Gilles (1983), he did not really think about characters, considering them to be no more than pretexts for a kind of decadence he associated with opera as an art form. Reigen, though, made him realize that “one has to be moved by one's characters, even if they are bastards, because they are human.” Since then, he has often declared his interest to lie less with great myths and unique heroes than with everyday people, a claim born out by his choice of subject matter: the daisy-chain coupling of Schnitzler's ten dialogues; Leontes in The Winter's Tale, whose jealousy is all-too-humanly irrational; the highly strung Miss Julie, flirting with her servant on Midsummer's Eve.1