This is my first opera by a living German composer. Whoo? Whoo. Sure. Why not? It's my third opera, however, to be based on a work by Georg Büchner, the poet who died of Typhus at the age of twenty-three, after Wozzeck and Dantons tod. The latter feels like the odd man out, but the similarities between this and Wozzeck are apparent.
The historical Jakob Lenz was a writer of prose and poetry who was friends for a while with Goethe, and who fell in unrequited love with a woman named Friederike Brion, his, Goethe's, former lover. He had a lot of mental problems and couldn't find a stable living situation until, to quote the booklet, "he was found dead on the street on 23 May 1792." Büchner's story, and then this opera, try to dramatize his mental states.
So yes. That's pretty much what one can say about the plot of this. Lenz is in a mental hospital, seemingly, at least here. The whole thing, naturally, is very internal; the booklet's synopsis makes it sound like more happens than actually does. There are just three character, Lenz himself and his friends Oberlin and Kaufmann, along with a small chorus. They talk about art and his mental state and what is to be done with him. He ideates obsessively about Friederike. In the end he's left alone and apparently dies, though that doesn't seem specified by the libretto. And that is it.
The music...well, it's a modern opera. Don't expect Puccini. The music is very jagged and dissonant, and of course none of what you'd call arias. It's dramatically effective, though. Or so I thought. Georg Nigl is very good in the title role, effectively portraying Lenz' desperation and raw psyche. This is definitely a work that benefits from being short: at three hours, it might be a bit much for me, but at seventy-five minutes, I have no problems whatsoever. Worth a look.
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