MEDIATHEK

The nightingale, a bird famous for its singing, sings about love. Each night. “Night after night I sing of love and now?" While she sings she asks herself for what is love. The love, of which all songs are telling, she does not discover in her feelings. It is not enough for her to sing about it, she wants to experience it.

Same as in the romance of Oskar Wilde in the opera the nightingale hears the complaints of a man who is immortally in love with a girl. For a dance with her the girl demands from her lover a red rose. But there are no red roses in the gardens of the romance.

"There was once a student. There was once a girl. The student loves a girl. The girl loves roses. Night for night I sing about love and now I hear a lover. He cries. He suffers. He loves.“

The desperation of the man appears for the nightingale to be the real love. The love she would like to experience herself. She decides to help the man in his search for a red rose to become herself part of this love.

"...She wants a beautiful rose. He needs a red rose. I look for him for a red rose. A red rose!"

In the romance exists only one way to get a red rose. The nightingale has to squeeze herself into thorns the whole night over, singing at the same time and die. This is the only way that white roses of the thorn bush can turn red. She sings, she dies, the student goes with the red rose to his sweetheart, she does not want the rose anymore. The student throws the rose away. That is the end of the romance.

The great aria of love and dying, mostly the high lights in an opera, where feelings become most important and the unnatural lasting stretches here throughout the whole piece. A tenor who in almost all operas every evening sings about love takes in this mono opera the part of the nightingale. Dialogues only take place between him and single instruments. The four further voices (one male voice and three female voices) are only part of the instrumental company. They enlarge and color the voice of the solo tenor but do not take any scenic parts.

A contrabass, a saxophone and a trumpet are distributed in the whole room (resp. screen). Integrated in the screen performance are additionally two dancers.