Šimon Voseček’s Messages from Honorary Patrons Messages from Independent Opera It is a pleasure to welcome Independent Opera (IO) Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells’ raison d’être is the back to Sadler’s Wells for their performances of encouragement of operatic talent through mentoring and Biedermann and Biedermann and the Arsonists. fi nancial support. Goodwill from the music profession has been vital in underpinning our progress: we benefi t not only For several years, Independent Opera has successfully from collaborations with leading British music colleges but the Arsonists presented innovative and high-quality productions of both also from partnerships with Sadler’s Wells and Wigmore Hall. acclaimed and less well-known operas for audiences to enjoy. At the same time, the company has maintained its It is signifi cant that the 100th award in our 10-year history Music and libretto by ŠIMON VOSECEKˇ commitment to support emerging directors and singers by is a new annual Director Fellowship. Unique in the UK, with a providing them with a platform to show their work. rigorous selection process, it allows an emerging director to After the play by MAX FRISCH stage a chamber opera chosen by IO and to receive English translation by DAVID POUNTNEY With the choice of a new opera by the young Austrian- exceptional mentoring from renowned directors. Czech composer Šimon Voseˇcek, IO continues this tradition. I congratulate Max Hoehn for realising his vision In staging Šimon Voseˇcek’s Biedermann and the Arsonists, Conductor ..................... TIMOTHY REDMOND for Biedermann and the Arsonists and I look forward to we once again reach beyond conventional repertoire as seeing what future recipients of Independent Opera’s demonstrated in previous years with works by Elizabeth Director ........................ MAX HOEHN Director Fellowship will create. Maconchy and a chamber reduction of Pelléas et Mélisande. The work’s inventive score, strong dramatic foundation and Set & Costume Designer . JEMIMA ROBINSON Alistair Spalding CBE undertow of social commentary provide an ideal opportunity Chief Executive and Artistic Director, Sadler’s Wells for director and creative team to showcase their skills. Lighting Designer . GIUSEPPE DI IORIO Having witnessed much of last autumn’s process for With this UK première we are pleased to present our 2015 Video Designer ................. DANIEL DENTON Director Fellow, Max Hoehn. awarding the Director Fellowship, I can attest both to its Assistant Conductor .. HARRY SEVER thoroughness and to the talent, hard work and dedication Anna Gustafson Chief Executive, Independent Opera of the candidates. Several of the concepts were so Orchestra ...................... BRITTEN SINFONIA imaginative and their realisation so professional that there Directing opera inspires and challenges my imagination to might have been a handful of winners. Max Hoehn is a sensitise an audience to the power of a work. This Fellowship worthy benefi ciary of yet another bold initiative to provide Biedermann .................... MARK LE BROCQ has given me the thrilling opportunity to realise this, thanks to enduring support for young artists by Independent Opera Šimon’s characterful music, the humour of Frisch’s text and and its enlightened patrons, Bill and Judy Bollinger. Babette ........................ ALINKA KOZÁRI the excellent production conditions offered by Independent Nicholas Payne Director, Opera Europa Opera. A world is created on stage that draws on the Schmitz ........................ LEIGH MELROSE absurdist elements of the piece while also presenting a Eisenring ....................... MATTHEW HARGREAVES After a decade of dedicated support for emerging talent, contemporary domestic environment that a modern European Independent Opera’s new annual Director Fellowship is audience will recognise. Over 50 years after the première, I Anna .......................... RAPHAELA PAPADAKIS another opportunity to applaud this pioneering company. hope the arsonists cast their sinister spell once again. It adds to the signifi cant contribution they have made in Fireman tenor .................. ADAM SULLIVAN Max Hoehn Independent Opera Director Fellow 2015 creating opportunities for artists at the start of their opera Fireman baritone ............... JOHNNY HERFORD careers. Their commitment to sharing this work with Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells helped launch my audiences is proving to be a winning combination that career, and I hope it will do the same for future winners of Fireman bass ................... BRADLEY TRAVIS makes them one of the heroes of the opera world. this award. I am in Venice directing Idomeneo and not able Policeman ...................... LAURENCE NORTH Michael Grandage CBE to be at Biedermann, but I look forward to following Max’s Artistic Director, Michael Grandage Company progress. After Independent Opera, anything is possible! Presented by Independent Opera at Sadler’s Wells Alessandro Talevi Co-Founder, Independent Opera Independent Opera plays a key role in enabling emerging Chief Executive ANNA GUSTAFSON artists to make the diffi cult transition from student to Honorary Patrons Co-Founders Trustees General Manager CHRISSY JAY professional, which is why I give the organisation my full Dame Anne Evans Judith Bollinger Annita Bennett support, by both spreading the word about IO and actively 14, 17, 19 November 2015 • Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadler's Wells helping its singers with vocal coaching and advising them Michael Grandage CBE William Bollinger Elisabeth Buchanan on how best they might achieve their ambitions. Nicholas Payne Alessandro Talevi Wilson Kerr UK première. The world première was given by Neue Oper Wien at Atelierhaus der Alistair Spalding CBE Akademie der bildenden Künste Wien (Semperdepot), Vienna, 17 September 2013 Dame Anne Evans THE SECRET Synopsis OF SETTING Biedermann Defi ned BIEDERMANN BY FRED BRIDGHAM TO MUSIC Gottlieb Biedermann is the owner of a successful hair tonic business and a respected member of the local he protagonist of Max Frisch’s play Biedermann und die Brandstifter How do you write community. He lives with his wife, Babette, in a quiet, shows little trace of his name’s medieval roots, which suggest music for a comedy? T There are relatively middle-class district that has recently experienced someone honest and straightforward, upright and even valiant – few operas that are a spate of arson attacks. truly funny: operas in a Wilhelm Tell, for instance. Indeed the word, and especially its derivative The opera takes place in the Biedermann home. adjective bieder, had long acquired an ironically humorous or downright which the plot, the music and the text A trio of fi remen performs the role of a Greek Chorus pejorative sense, of someone naive and thus easily deceived, but also combine to make on the side of the stage, warning of the disaster to come conventionally conservative with narrow-mindedly provincial, middle- an audience laugh should a citizen ignore any signs of danger. out loud. class, philistine tastes (the more usual term nowadays is Spiessbürger or ACT I In his new opera, Spiesser, a stigma Biedermann and his wife strive to avoid at all costs). One day a former wrestler by the name of Schmitz Biedermann and the Arsonists, Šimon arrives at the Biedermanns’ doorstep, claiming to Biedermeier is the name given to the era exploitative businessman with ill-founded Voseˇcek presents us be homeless. Biedermann permits him to stay the 1815-1848 in Central Europe. It was a pretensions to refi ned sensibility at with a darkly comic night in the attic. score that cleverly retrospective designation that comes home, naively celebrating his ‘humanity’ In the morning, Biedermann departs for work, leaving combines numerous from verses published in the 1850s under while blind to his absurd gullibility. his wife with the task of sending Schmitz on his way musical traditions to the ironic pseudonym Gottlieb following a hearty breakfast. But when Schmitz recounts It was certainly not Frisch’s intention create a soundworld Biedermaier (cf. Frisch’s ‘Gottlieb’ his tragic, impoverished youth, Babette insists that she to illustrate a clash of incommensurable at once familiar Biedermann) and thus dubbed and unsettling. has no intention of turfi ng him out. values such as altruistic hospitality and The harmonies are biedermännisch. That era’s solidly middle- Schmitz is soon joined at the Biedermann home by his sensible caution, values equally positive, nearly (but not quite) class, early Victorian values, its emphasis friend, Eisenring, a former waiter. The two spend the yet incompatible. His Biedermann is a in tune and the on self-suffi cient Gemütlichkeit in a safe night transporting barrels of petrol into the attic. mere caricature possessing no single rhythms are regular family setting, its domestic comfort, enough to lure you in, virtue, let alone the courage to stand up The following morning, Biedermann demands the men before their off-beat its dining rituals and rediscovered both leave or else he’ll call the police. At that very and be counted in defence of his professed syncopations leave indulgences found favour again in the moment, a policeman drops by to inform Biedermann convictions, the Zivilcourage on which you reeling. Adenauer era on the threshold of the of the suicide of his business partner, Herr Knechtling, Frisch’s democratic compatriots in economic Wirtschaftswunder. Voseˇcek writes music whom he had recently sacked. When the policeman particular traditionally prided