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Brett Dean: Of One Blood premiere staging in Munich
Of One Blood, the new opera by Brett Dean, receives its world premiere staging at the Bavarian State Opera in Munich on 10 May. Telling of the rivalry between Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, the opera is staged by Claus Guth with Vladimir Jurowski conducting.
Following the success of his operas Bliss and Hamlet, Brett Dean has created a third opera, Of One Blood, receiving its premiere at the Bavarian State Opera on 10 May. The new stagework explores the rivalry between two closely related powerful women, Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England and Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots. Librettist Heather Betts draws on their letters and 16th century documents, so that the drama is built upon actual historical sources.
The premiere production of the two-act opera is staged by esteemed director Claus Guth and conducted by leading Dean interpreter Vladmir Jurowski who was also at the helm of the premiere of Dean’s second opera Hamlet at Glyndebourne in 2017. The cast includes Johanni van Oostrum and Vera-Lotte Boecker as Elizabeth and Mary, with supporting courtiers, female and male vocal consorts together with acclaimed harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani, and the Bavarian State Opera Chorus.
Six performances of the new opera run at the Nationaltheater between 10 May to 29 June, with the last two evenings forming part of the Munich Opera Festival, and a further three dates have been announced by the Bavarian State Opera next season in October conducted by Markus Stenz. Of One Blood was commissioned by the Bayerische Staatsoper, The Santa Fe Opera, State Opera South Australia, and Garsington Opera, made possible by the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation and Karin and Roland Berger. Performances at Garsington Opera and State Opera South Australia will be presented in a second stage production.
> Visit the Bavarian State Opera website
As Kerstin Schüssler-Bach notes in her essay about the new opera, “the two rulers were ‘of one blood’, and their relationship has gone down in world literature as the ‘war of the sisters’. The English Queen Elizabeth I and her cousin Mary from the Scottish House of Stuart never met in person. And yet their fates were inextricably intertwined. Their feud was also due to a religious dispute: from a Catholic perspective, the Scottish queen was the legitimate heir to the House of Tudor and thus the rightful Queen of England. Under pressure from her parliament, the Protestant Elizabeth finally eliminated her rival. Numerous legends surround the political and personal rivalry between Mary, the ‘Queen of Hearts’, and Elizabeth, the ‘Virgin Queen’. Intrigue, conspiracy and manipulation dominated the actions of both parties. And in the end, their shared blood was not thicker than their will to power.”
“For Brett Dean, this tragedy reveals a timeless conflict. He and his librettist Heather Betts therefore made a conscious decision to draw exclusively on historical source material: ‘I chose this story because it allows us to recognise aspects of our own lives – shared human emotions that are as vivid today as they were in 1587. The antiquated Elizabethan language brings a wonderful abstraction, creating enough distance from the charmless communication of the 21st century which has become eroded by social media.’”
> Further information including synopsis
Coming highlights for Brett Dean include further performances in his residency with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie in Saarbrücken including the Viola Concerto (19 April), with the composer as soloist, and Pastoral Symphony (17 June). His fourth and most recent string quartet “A Little Book of Prayers” receives further national premieres in Europe by the Belcea Quartet, including performances at the Konzerthaus in Vienna (29 April), the Philharmonie in Cologne (8 June) and the Aldeburgh Festival (28 June). Future premieres of recent commissions include two new works for soprano and orchestra.
Photo: Bettina Stoess