MEDIATHEK

The Devil's Night is a short opera, which takes part during the First World War. A young couple gets separated: Franz (tenor) has to leave to get part of the army. His young wife Anna (soprano) stays at home and must earn money as a waitress in a pub. One day an unknown man appears. He is very interested in the beatiful and lonesome woman. She is waiting for her husband. Since weeks she hasn't had any contact with Franz. On the one hand she's afraid, that something bad has happened to her husband on the other hand she is young and full of desire and lust. The unknown man (=devil) offers a simple deal to her: if she stays one night in bed with him, he will bring back the husband in less than half a year. So she accepts the deal and gets pregnant. Six months later Franz is coming home. In the first moment he doesn't recognize that Anna is pregnant, but she reacts so strange that he becomes aware of what had happened. He fells into unstopable rage and strangles Anna. He kills that what he loved before.

Besides the three singers (Soprano, Tenor and Bass-Baritone) there are three musicians on stage (Piano, Cello, Saxophone) and a choir (50 singers). With the dark colour of the cello the composer creates the fatal atmosphere and the sharp and nasal sound of the saxophone (alto) underlines the fear, horror and hopelessness of each person. The choir is like in the greek tragedy the voice of the community and is just commenting. We decided to do the staging without stage design to concentrate on the denseness of the story.