FROM AROUND THE WORLD: VIENNA.(Review)

The Theater an der Wien was the scene, on May 27, of the world premiere of SzenePenthesileaEin Traum(1999-2000), with music by Christian Ofenbauer, a work commissioned by the Vienna Festival and the Volksoper, where it is scheduled for the coming season. Although his direction departed considerably from the libretto's requirements, Lutz Graf assisted the composer in fashioning a libretto from Penthesilea (1808), by German dramatist Heinrich yon Kleist. The play deals with Achilleus, who challenges Penthesilea, the Amazon queen, to a duel. He plans to let her win, and so, under Amazon law, he will gain her sexual favors. The Queen, however, misunderstands his motives and kills him. In Ofenbauer's version, they never meet, and the battle is merely described in a long monologue.

Ofenbauer's music is static and monotonous, a series of apparently unmotivated and disjointed notes from different instruments, with rare rhythmic passages or aggressive outbursts. Various ostinatos, including from a typewriter, travel around the auditorium via loudspeakers. Though it is seldom loud, the music manages to mask most of the text, even purely spoken passages, which further robbed the unattractive vocal lines of interest. Indeed, little singing is required, the greater part of the evening being taken up with orchestral interludes for scene-changing and clothing-related ...