21 Mar 2005

Kafka's Trial Premieres in Copenhagen

The Danish composer Poul Ruders is one of contemporary music’s free agents—a lover of sweet melodies with a yen for dark chords, a comedian with a flair for apocalypse. His previous opera, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” made sonic thunder out of Margaret Atwood’s novel of a dystopian America ruled by Christian fundamentalists. His major orchestral pieces—“Thus Saw Saint John,” the “Solar Trilogy,” a First Symphony subtitled “Rejoicing from the Heavens, Grieving Unto Death”—unfold hypnotically wayward narratives that reel from antic joy to frozen despair. (There are excellent recordings on the Bridge and Da Capo labels.) Ruders has a special knack for reinventing familiar tonal harmonies and styles; he uses them sometimes to mourn lost worlds, sometimes to suggest otherworldly innocence, sometimes to convey the banality of evil. All these devices are hurled at the audience in his latest work, “Kafka’s Trial,” which had its première on March 12th at the Royal Danish Theatre.


Franz Kafka

Kafka's Trial, Operaen, Copenhagen

By Richard Fairman [Financial Times, 15 Mar 05]

Five years ago the Danish composer Poul Ruders scored quite a hit with his first opera, The Handmaid's Tale. The acclaim in Denmark was enough to send the opera flying off on the international circuit, touching down with a flop in London, but buoying itself up for further success elsewhere.

Quick to seize the initiative, the Royal Danish Opera commissioned Ruders to write a second opera for the opening season of its new opera house and the result is Kafka's Trial -more of the same, you might say, as both the original novels deal with societies in the grip of totalitarian regimes, but there is a twist to come.

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Kafka on Trial, Opera Fans in Heaven

By ANTHONY TOMMASINI [NY Times, 14 Mar 05]

COPENHAGEN, March 13 - The inaugural production at the new $441 million home of the Royal Danish Opera was a traditional staging of Verdi's "Aida," which opened in late January. This conventional choice was mandated by the 91-year-old Maersk McKinney Moller, Denmark's wealthiest man, who footed the bill for the complex and, more controversially, inserted himself into its design.

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Kafka's Trial

Andrew Clements [The Guardian, 15 Mar 05]

Copenhagen has a new opera house: a handsome, imposing building on a reclaimed docklands site a short walk and a five-minute boat ride away from the theatre the Danish Royal Opera used to call home. The house opened last month with Verdi's Aïaut;da, but the company has wasted no time in getting a specially commissioned opera into the building, with the premiere of Poul Ruders' Proces Kafka, or Kafka's Trial.

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KAFKA SINGS

by ALEX ROSS [The New Yorker, 28 Mar 05]

Two new operas: Ruders's "Kafka's Trial," Adamo's "Lysistrata."

The Danish composer Poul Ruders is one of contemporary music's free agents--a lover of sweet melodies with a yen for dark chords, a comedian with a flair for apocalypse. His previous opera, "The Handmaid's Tale," made sonic thunder out of Margaret Atwood's novel of a dystopian America ruled by Christian fundamentalists. His major orchestral pieces--"Thus Saw Saint John," the "Solar Trilogy," a First Symphony subtitled "Rejoicing from the Heavens, Grieving Unto Death"--unfold hypnotically wayward narratives that reel from antic joy to frozen despair. (There are excellent recordings on the Bridge and Da Capo labels.) Ruders has a special knack for reinventing familiar tonal harmonies and styles; he uses them sometimes to mourn lost worlds, sometimes to suggest otherworldly innocence, sometimes to convey the banality of evil. All these devices are hurled at the audience in his latest work, "Kafka's Trial," which had its première on March 12th at the Royal Danish Theatre.

Click here for remainder of article.