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Coetzee novel takes to the stage
07/09/2005 12:00 - (SA)
Germany - Erfurt, a small city in the eastern German state of Thuringia, will put itself on the world opera map this week with the premiere of a new work by American minimalist composer Philip Glass.
Waiting for the Barbarians, a harrowing allegory of oppressor and oppressed based on the novel by 2003 Nobel laureate John Maxwell Coetzee of South Africa, opens on Saturday at the new Erfurt Theatre.
The theatre, under the direction of Guy Montavon, commissioned the work, Glass' 15th opera.
The story's main protagonist, the Magistrate, is a loyal servant of the Empire, running the affairs of a tiny frontier settlement in an unnamed country for years and ignoring the ever-present threat of war with the "barbarians", a nomadic people demonised by his own regime.
Shocked by the Empire's cruel and unjust treatment of prisoners of war, the Magistrate commits a quixotic act of rebellion that brands him an enemy of the state, rendering him an object of public humiliation and torture.
Montavon said that the two-hour opera, with a libretto by Christopher Hampton, contains 20 scenes and follows the novel closely. Six performances are scheduled.
British baritone Richard Salter takes the lead role, while the cruel Colonel Joll will be sung by US baritone Eugene Perry, who has starred in a number of Glass operas.
"Glass's music is very harmonic and very listenable," Montavon said.
The composer sees the work as a criticism of the Iraq war led by US President George W Bush.
Which made it all the more surprising, Glass said, that the opera was invited to Austin Texas for its US premiere in January 2007.
"We were very surprised by the invitation", he said.
"But Austin isn't Texas," he said, adding that Bush's policies were not as hotly disputed now as during the height of the war in Iraq.
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South Africa
