Matthias Pintscher: The Cold Heart in Berlin and Paris

(November 2025)

Matthias Pintscher’s new opera in 12 scenes, Das kalte Herz (The Cold Heart), draws on motifs from the fairy tale of the same name by Wilhelm Hauff. With Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg's libretto it creates an evocative story about loss and the inability to love. The romantic, longed-for setting of the forest serves as a mysterious backdrop for the eerie events of human existence and the composer embraces this state of limbo, summoning up a distinct aura and filigree soundscapes. In this interview Matthias Pintscher explains the background to the new stagework.

Was there a moment of inspiration for your new opera?
Yes, I can pinpoint it exactly. In 2019, I made a guest appearance with the Ensemble intercontemporain at the Donaueschingen Music Festival. From there, I took a walk through the Black Forest. Suddenly, I was flooded with memories of my childhood in Germany. I grew up in the northern Ruhr area, but I left the country at the age of 16 and went to England. Then I lived in Paris for a long time, and French culture had a strong influence on me. For many years now, I have been living mainly in New York. And suddenly I find myself all alone in the Black Forest – in the most 'German' area imaginable, so to speak. After decades of distance from Germany, which I also wanted to consciously examine, something drew me back.

What specifically connects you to Hauff's Cold Heart?
It was actually an early childhood influence: I had an audio cassette of the story and listened to it over and over again when I was five or six years old, until I practically knew it by heart. As a child, I found this Hauff fairy tale much more appealing than the Grimm fairy tales. There was a dark enchantment to it. And because it was just an audio recording, I created my own images in my head.

How did the opera commission come about?
It developed at the time when Daniel Barenboim gave me my first Wagner operas to conduct at the Berlin State Opera. At some point he asked me, “Matthias, you know the house so well now. When are you going to write an opera for us?” That was about five years ago.

What do you expect from an opera libretto?
My musical language has a certain complexity. That's why the material and the text should offer intellectual breadth. The central question in an opera is: why are these people singing? I can only find the answer to this question in poetic intensification, not in setting everyday language to music. The fine chiselling in the music requires a large brush on the large canvas of a text and material that does not spell everything out. I am less interested in a textually sophisticated psychology of the characters than in their mental state. This libretto has an inner kinship with the texts of Maurice Maeterlinck, which also do not explain everything and always retain a certain mystery.

How did you know the librettist Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg?
I worked with Daniel on two projects for the Ensemble intercontemporain and greatly appreciated his artistic sensibility. He is not only a sensitive poet, but also a fantastic pianist and a great accompanist. After spending two years mulling over the material for The Cold Heart, I put the book on his desk and asked him what he thought about creating an opera libretto from it. He immediately recognised that the associative space that Hauff had already created needed to be rethought. He broke it down into very clear language and form, which corresponds precisely to my musical aesthetic.

How did you respond to this text when you set it to music?
Strangely enough, I quickly realised that I hadn't set anything to music in German for a very long time. The subject matter alone, but also Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg's text, made it feel like a very personal piece to me, with its dark forest and nature sounds.

The lyrics also quote Lohengrin with ‘Nie sollst du mich befragen’ (You must never question me)...
Yes, that opens up many doors. Of course, you always have to be very careful with any Wagner reference, because you can quickly become pigeonholed. But there are recurring and evolving sound structures, for example for the forest clearing that is part of the nightmare.

Can the protagonist Peter find a way out of his nightmare?
A web of abuse, darkness and breathlessness spins around Peter. Even his lover Clara is unable to fill him with warmth. He remains trapped in his inability to feel emotion. His bond with his mother is stronger than his love for Clara.

How would you describe your vocal style?
I have placed an emphasis on melodic, singable phrases. The singer must have a chance to express themselves. They need a certain amount of freedom to portray the musical and dramatic flow. Again, it's about the person singing.

Your last opera, L’Espace dernier, was premiered over 20 years ago. Why did you not write another stagework for so long?
With L’Espace dernier, I had to free myself from the Rimbaud obsession of my early years. It is a very complex, intellectual piece. After that, I was busy with many other things, both as a conductor and as a composer. The enormous apparatus of an opera requires courage and the desire to face the structural constraints of the business. And it probably took this jolt of childhood memories to lead me to this deeply felt but comparatively ‘simple’ piece. By that I don’t mean the interpretative challenges of a minutely intricate musical structure, but a story that is relatively straightforward.

References to the Egyptian Book of the Dead introduce another mythological layer that is not present in Hauff's work.
Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg developed this idea further. It's true that the Egyptian gods have nothing to do with German Romanticism, but they can certainly coexist in the same space as Hauff's characters.

In the libretto, I also noticed the phrase ‘Gesprungenen Glocken’ (broken bells). That’s the name of your very first music theatre work...
Yes, that was also a commission for the Staatsoper, initiated by Daniel Barenboim in 1994. Now I have had the opportunity to write for the State Opera again. The very specific sound of the Staatskapelle – a very colourful, ‘dark German’ sound – is a perfect match for the warm, figuratively fairy-tale tone I found for Das kalte Herz.

The co-commission is from the Opéra Comique in Paris. How did that come about?
Their music director, Louis Langrée, is a long-time friend, and he programmed the piece there together with the outgoing artistic director, Chrysoline Dupont. It's wonderful, of course, to be present with a new piece after the many years I lived and worked in Paris. Things are coming full circle for me here.

Interviewed by Kerstin Schüssler-Bach (2025)

Matthias Pintscher
Das kalte Herz (Nuit sans aube / The Cold Heart) (2023/25)
Opera in 12 scenes
Libretto by Daniel Arkadij Gerzenberg
French translation by Catherine Fourcassié
11 January 2026 (world premiere)
14/16/20/23 January
> Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin
11 March 2026 (French premiere)
13/15/17 March
> Opéra Comique, Paris

Staatskapelle Berlin /
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France /
Matthias Pintscher, conductor /
James Darrah, director

>  Further information on Work: Das kalte Herz

Photo: EIC Franck Ferville

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