Revision of the texts
La Seine Musicale, Paris 2025
Das Paradies und die Peri is a secular oratorio by Robert Schumann, composed in 1843 and premiered in Leipzig in the same year. Schumann was inspired by the oriental epic Lalla Rookh by Thomas Moore and wrote the libretto together with Emil Flechsig, a Lutheran pastor.
My task as the librettist was to closely examine the language and reduce its pathos. In addition, the musical director Laurence Equilbey wished to soften the religious component.
While studying the vocal parts, I came across numerous archaic sentence structures, which often produced wrong stresses and did not match the melodic lines. I tried to replace them with matching syntactic structures and coherent metaphors, consistently using clean rhymes.
Example: Third Part, Tenor Solo
Original version:
“Und was fühlt er, der sünd´ge Mann,/
Der dort lehnt und sich nun entsann
so manchen Jahrs voll Schuld und Blut,
der auf des Lebens dunkler Flut//
umsonst späht nach dem Rettungspfade,/
wo nichts den Ölzweig bringt der Gnade!“
New version:
“Und da durchfährt´s den matten Mann,/
wie er da lehnt und sich besann.
So manche Schuld und blut´ge Tat
hat er gesät als dunkle Saat,/
Umsonst ersehnt das Licht der Gnade,/
Doch nirgendwo ein Rettungspfade!“
This 2025 production also went on to the Theater an der Wien for guest performances in the same year, following several successful performances in Paris.
