Pressekonferenz Fouché 12. Dezember 2008 __________________________________________________________ PRESS KIT Fouché / Dramatic Opera by Franz Hummel January 9, 2009, World Premiere, Posthof Linz, 8 PM January 10, 14 & 15, 2009, 8 PM Introductory remarks prior to each performance at 7 PM PRESS CONFERENCE Speakers Wolfgang Winkler – Artistic director of LIVA Martin Heller – Artistic director of Linz09 Peter Androsch – Musical director of Linz09 Franz Hummel – Composer Susan Oswell – Director & Choreographer Joseph Fouché was not only Napoleon’s minister of police. He was a monk and seminary instructor, a Jacobin deeply involved in political intrigues, an intellectual mass-murderer and the inventor of state surveillance on a massive scale. In 1820, he died in exile, after having been banished to Linz, where he was half-heartedly tolerated by Metternich. He is the chief protagonist of the dramatic opera “Fouché.” A LIVA production commissioned by Linz09 A digital press kit and pictures are available online at www.brucknerhaus.at. Mag. Pia Leydolt / Presse Mag. Gernot Kremser / Presse & Öffentlichkeitsarbeit Linz 2009 Brucknerhaus Linz, Untere Donaulände 7, 4020 Linz Tel +43732/2009–37, Fax +43732/2009–43 Tel +43/732/7612-2120, Fax: +43/732/7612-2130 [email protected], www.linz09.at [email protected], www.brucknerhaus.at Pressekonferenz Fouché 12. Dezember 2008 __________________________________________________________ Fouché – Inventor of the Surveillance State Napoleon’s minister of police, monk and seminary instructor, Jacobin deeply involved in political intrigues, intellectual mass-murderer and the inventor of state surveillance on a massive scale—near the end of his life during which he amassed a fortune, he flees into exile in Linz where, with Metternich’s half-hearted consent, he is permitted to remain. He goes about his business, day in and day out, repeatedly casting angst-ridden glances to a figure standing atop a distant hill. Is it Bonaparte? Is he being followed? Is he under surveillance?? Fouché’s language increasingly degenerates into egomaniacal, distorted abbreviations. He constantly dredges up recollections of his past in the garishly distorted abyss of his cryptic poetic dregs traversed by but few veins of intellectual clarity. Fearful visions alternate with hybrid phases and illustrate the increasing loneliness and isolation of this power-obsessed man, the perennial second fiddle, whose craftily woven web of surveillance, intrigue and betrayal made him a danger to Napoleon, the man of action whose coarse deceitfulness ultimately prevailed. When the sensitive and subtle, highly educated and utterly amoral Fouché arrives in Linz, the signs of wear and tear on this high-powered potentate are quite obvious. He personifies the uselessness of striving for meaning and the failure of the “will to power.” His conception of self increasingly runs up against the furies that he himself summoned forth. When, over the course of this work’s plot, his past emerges from the chorus in the form of former acquaintances and colleagues and drags, piece by piece, the tormenting reality of his career into the focal point of his mind’s eye, he commences to nervously reflect on—though still utterly incapable of objective articulation on the subjects of—politics. humanity, love, crime, guilt and punishment. And thereby betrays his self. He must inevitably be destroyed by the Unio mystica of perpetrator-victim. Nevertheless, as he approaches the end of stay in Linz, he comes under the thrall of a fatal automatism and refuses to give up hope of eventually finding final absolution in Trieste. Fouché, synonymous with abuse of power and corruption, remains, even in the role of the faithful and caring paterfamilias, the prototype of the depraved, loveless, unloved individual. He has been on his guard for decades, driven by a constantly pulsating urge to know everything about everyone in order to use it to his own advantage at the right time. The aftermath: a human wreck. The psychological causes and effects of this wreckage are the subject of this opera. The past that weighs heavily of Fouché forces him now into the hopelessness of the decrees that he had previously issued to target others. As an old man, severely ill with lung disease, he is literally left breathless. No friends remain; all have become enemies. There’s no one he could have trusted, no one with whom he could ever have shared an honest thought. Napoleon, Robespierre, Joséphine Bonaparte etc. reappear in his daydreams and torment his memory. Nothing had ever attained greater importance than himself for this gifted criminal, scheming perpetrator of regicide, Slaughterer of Lyon, priest, murderous apostate and secrecy-shrouded guest of the City of Linz. This opera is a psychogram of the obsession with power using the example of a public personality ideally suited to this inquest; a Hieronymus Bosch-style parable of a phenomenon that still—though less boldly and with far less esprit—haunts the corridors of democracy and does its St. Vitus Dance with a chimera of Political Correctness. Franz Hummel Mag. Pia Leydolt / Presse Mag. Gernot Kremser / Presse & Öffentlichkeitsarbeit Linz 2009 Brucknerhaus Linz, Untere Donaulände 7, 4020 Linz Tel +43732/2009–37, Fax +43732/2009–43 Tel +43/732/7612-2120, Fax: +43/732/7612-2130 [email protected], www.linz09.at [email protected], www.brucknerhaus.at Pressekonferenz Fouché 12. Dezember 2008 __________________________________________________________ The Language of the Potentates We have long since been able to see through the operetta-like melodramatic body language and listened with rapt attention to the injured utterances of the likes of Hitler, Göbbels, Stalin, Pinochet and Mussolini. The guttural staccato of their wasted souls should actually have betrayed them long before they had acquired even an iota of power. Joseph Fouché may perhaps have sounded less conspicuous, quieter, more refined that the 20 th century’s criminals whose voices have been documented with the technologies of their times. He was undoubtedly better educated than those who came after him; he had polish and finesse. Nevertheless, even in his case, tonal traces and nuances of articulation must have testified to murderous fundamental convictions and an ice-cold emotional make-up. This is the starting point of my libretto, in that it intentionally ignores the Fouché character’s narrative level. A domineering Alpha-male must structure, must maintain power. This never takes place via differentiation, but rather strictly by means of standardization and a tell-tale process of thinning out the language. A barely veiled melodiousness transforms even the most softly uttered incidental remark into a command. And no sooner does the merest shimmer of self-pity manifest itself than all present throw themselves to the ground to kiss the poor man’s feet. Indeed, most subordinates are not musical enough for such subtle tones; nevertheless, perhaps due to a certain affinity, they have a remarkably fine-tuned sense of their master’s current mood. The aesthetic of my Fouché libretto is essentially based on such observations. In spite of his attitude of dominion that repeatedly flares up and that certainly can be assumed to have mimicked Napoleon, the aged mass murderer sent into exile in Linz increasingly over the course of the opera loses his syntax, linguistic fluency and a sense for the rational context of his remarks. Gradually, everything gets tangled up into a jumbled mass of decayed remnants of words and phrases. The consummate repression of his psychic reprehensibility “pardons” him in the end by means of an Alzheimer-like loss of meaning-endowing articulation. The verdict: Justice is a chimera invented by maltreated souls that reality spits in our face every day. Fouché’s descendants are said to still be filthy rich. Sandra Hummel Mag. Pia Leydolt / Presse Mag. Gernot Kremser / Presse & Öffentlichkeitsarbeit Linz 2009 Brucknerhaus Linz, Untere Donaulände 7, 4020 Linz Tel +43732/2009–37, Fax +43732/2009–43 Tel +43/732/7612-2120, Fax: +43/732/7612-2130 [email protected], www.linz09.at [email protected], www.brucknerhaus.at Pressekonferenz Fouché 12. Dezember 2008 __________________________________________________________ Historical Information about the Opera’s Most Important Characters Joseph Fouché, duc d’Otrante (Duke of Otranto) Born: May 21, 1759 in Le Pellerin near Nantes; Died: December 26, 1820 in Trieste French politician during the French Revolution and minister of police during the Empire and the Restoration. Robespierre called him the “head conspirator.” Fouché organized an extensive espionage system that pervaded all strata of society. He financed these activities with revenues from gambling concessions from which he personally profited as well. He repeatedly succeeded in forming opposition coalitions against his enemies such as Robespierre—he thus brought about the fall and subsequent execution of his bitterest foe on the 9th of Thermidor (July 27, 1794). He was never officially connected with these events; he always manipulated the reins of power from behind the scenes. Directly affected by the January 6, 1816 Decree of Banishment of all those accused of regicide, Fouché emigrated to Austria, where, with the consent of Metternich, he was permitted to establish residence first in Prague and then in Linz. Maximilien Robespierre (Maximilien Marie Isidore de Robespierre) Born: May 6, 1758 in Arras; Died: July 28, 1794 in Paris Called The Incorruptible by the people, he was a French politician and one of the most important figures during the French Revolution. He received a scholarship that enabled him to attend high school and then study law at the Collège Louis le Grand in Paris. Twelve years later, he passed the bar. Shortly thereafter, he published pamphlets critical of the privileges of the aristocracy and the clergy. He called for freedom of the press, general suffrage for men, abolition of slavery in the colonies and repeal of the death penalty. Reason was to by the universal foundation; virtue the mission of the state.