In november 2008 werd het nieuwe theater in Enschede door de Nationale Reisopera geopend met de wereldpremière van Willem Jeths’ Hôtel de Pékin. In de opera staat de overgang van het oude naar het nieuwe China centraal, gepersonifieerd in de laatste keizerin Cixi. Een opera zonder lineair verteld verhaal, maar vol hallucinaties, nachtmerries en koortsdromen van de stervende keizerin. De muziek van Willem Jeths zit vol met verwijzingen, van Stravinsky tot Messiaen, van Wagner tot Gilbert & Sullivan, van musical tot jazz. Vorig jaar werd de opera – met enkele kleine aanpassingen – uitgevoerd in de ZaterdagMatinee. Een mooie uitgave van Etcetera, dat gelukkig met grote regelmaat werk van Nederlandse componisten onder de aandacht brengt.
Willem Jeths: Hôtel de Pékin
Netherlands Radio Chamber Philharmonic, Netherlands Radio Choir / Michael Schønwandt
Tracklisting
CD 1
1
Heaven reversed
2
Dressed in Eternity
3
Frozen Echoes
4
Court of Remembrance
5
No Dogs (and not too many Chinese)
6
Kneeling in a Cloud
7
Made in China
8
See the Moon
9
Cold Cocked
CD 2
1
8099
2
White sales
3
Great Dream Boxing
4
Ravelled in Black
5
Née Wang
6
Dead Feathers
7
Burning the Sun
8
Robes of Longevity
9
Heaven Redressed
Information
The Muziekkwartier in Enschede in the Netherlands opened with the premiere of Hôtel de Pékin – Dreams for a dragon queen, Willem Jeths’ first opera, on 22 November 2008. The opera was written in close collaboration with librettist Friso Haverkamp and describes the final hours and death of Cixi, the so-called monster and last Empress of the Chinese empire. Cixi (1835-1908) began her life as a woman of the people; she nevertheless rose swiftly from Imperial concubine to regent, as which she ruled the empire without mercy from 1861 until her death in 1908.
Willem Jeths (1959), one of the Netherlands’ most important composers following his studies with Hans Kox and Tristan Keuris, had been contemplating an opera since the 1990s. After Jeths’ meeting with Friso Haverkamp - himself known for his collaboration with Guus Janssen (Hierº, Noach) and Martijn Padding (Tattooed Tongues) - they soon agreed upon a subject. Jeths, already in partial collaboration with Haverkamp, composed several works as preparatory studies for the opera. In Yellow Darkness for clarinet and orchestra (2004) as well as in the orchestral works Seanchai (2004) and Ombre Cinesi (2005) he researched the tension and elasticity of the basic components of an operatic musical language. Death also reaches everywhere: in Jeths’ Throb (1995-2003) composed in memory of his mother, the death chord from Mahler’s Symphony nr. 10 makes its appearance; this famous, stomach-turning dissonant scream appears in a number of Jeths’ works as an embodiment of the abyss - and in Hôtel de Pékin it becomes a symbol of Qin’s dehumanised rigidity.
