Olga Neuwirth’s 'Monster’s Paradise' premieres in Hamburg

Olga Neuwirth’s new opera, Monster’s Paradise, with a libretto by Elfriede Jelinek, premieres on Sunday at the Hamburg State Opera; the work then travels to the Zurich Opera House on March 8. The baritone Georg Nigl plays a character called the King‑President in the production directed by Tobias Kratzer.

The piece examines the phenomenon of the populist strongman through exaggerated and absurd elements. Kratzer said the opera argues that “inside every populist ruler … there’s a kind of gigantic, fecal baby,” and the production pairs the King‑President and his sycophantic advisers with a choir of zombies, an avenging monster called Gorgonzilla and two vampires standing in for Neuwirth and Jelinek.

Neuwirth’s score mixes references to the classical repertoire and popular traditions with electronic and inventive sounds; the article says she makes distorted references to musicals, film scores, waltzes, Styrian folk music, as well as Bruckner and Schubert. Titus Engel, who is conducting the premiere, described the cumulative effect as “funny, of course, but sometimes disturbing as well.” Neuwirth and Jelinek have collaborated for more than 30 years, and their past work includes the operas Bählamms Fest (1999) and Lost Highway (2003).

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