MEDIATHEK

The Zurich Opera commissioned Swiss composer Xavier Dayer for a music play based on Stefan Zweig’s renewed novella «Letter from an Unknown Woman». The concept of stage director Nina Russi focuses on the woman’s perceptions and mental world.
 
 The enigmatic basic situation shows a woman desperately in love and fatefully connected to a man that even doesn’t notice her. It’s a love that only takes place in her imaginary. A kind of anti-Tristan situation: A love rush in the absence. On a first glimpse this doesn’t seem a situation that a modern woman could identify with. But through the letter form (she is the author of her story) and the fact that the role of the main character is split into three female singers, there is the possibility of mixing reality, fantasy, memory, dreaming and of showing simultaneously different mental states and emotions of hers.
 
 These narrative conditions and Dayer’s versatile, atmospheric music are fundamental for the staging concept that focuses on the complexity and contradictoriness of the woman’s actions, thoughts and feelings - approaching the timeless questions of identity, self-invention, role models, need of closeness, fear of solitude, amorous desire and devastating sexual attraction that concern all humankind. The intimate frame of a chamber opera and the set design that visualizes the emotional entanglement and gives the audience several close perspectives on the actions made the performance an impressive experience and a great success.