MEDIATHEK

Synopsis:

The opera’s central character is the second violinist, Martin. He starts to experience a mental breakdown as a performance approaches. Martin has a lonely existence of practice, bus journeys, and unanswered phone calls. A married couple, Matthew and Amy, and their houseguest, Hannah, sing. Martin circles around this opera playing out, avoiding calls from his agent, and others. His playing for the ensemble is increasingly terrible. In moments of desperation a voice reaches out from his screen and we read the typed correspondence. A forest increasingly enters his dreams. It becomes apparent that Matthew and Amy’s marriage is in a bad state, and that Amy is in love with Hannah. Matthew discovers this, and murders them in revenge. We become aware that Matthew is a younger version of Martin and that this is his past. He arranges to meet the voice that was reaching out to him — in the forest: a 14-year old girl who comes to meet a 14-year old boy. We sense he’s going to kill her. Here he will end things.
 
Composer note:

Subtext is as important as text to me. The music, as it were, powers the subtext; and an important ingredient in the music for The Second Violinist is a thread made of deconstructed, re-fashioned strains of Gesualdo. The main protagonist’s interest in the music of Gesualdo is sporadically made explicit in the actual text of this opera (especially in the projected messages between him and Scarlett38) but it carries even greater portent in the score.