Jakob Lenz

Synopsis

Jakob Lenz, Wolfgang Rihm’s second chamber opera, has been described as ‘the exploration of an obsession in sound’. It tells the story of nineteen days during which writer Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz stayed with a pastor, Johann Oberlin, in a pastoral mountain setting, hoping to overcome his schizophrenia. Through it Rihm explores the abuse society inflicted upon schizophrenics and explores the extremity of the condition.

Our Review:

19 April 2012

Wolfgang Rihm’s one-act opera Jakob Lenz depicts scenes from the tormented life of an 18th Century poet and is based on a historical novella by Georg Büchner, thus sharing a lineage with Alban Berg’s Wozzeck , and not a few of its themes: a rejected Outsider oppressed by the banality and brutality of society and driven to madness. Lenz was a friend and admirer of Goethe, but would fall out of favour with him, as well as developing an unrequited obsession with Goethe’s former lover, Friederike Brion.

Like Goethe’s own Werther, Lenz was paranoid and self-destructive. He clearly felt at odds with the prevailing artistic climate of his time, and this operatic reincarnation curiously produces a similar impression. To quote from Adrian Mourby’s interview with director Sam Brown, “it’s tempting to ask how interested we should be today in an opera dealing with one man’s descent into madness...

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Latest User Review

M Miles - 21 April 2012:

Since many of the 'professional' critics who do their usual carping appear to think (wrongly) that both Büchner and J M R Lenz were Romantics, I do not give that much credence to most of their criticisms, though, to be fair, they also make some very good points and are not generally unkind. I did not know Rihm's music before, but I thought that it was an excellent evooation of an on-going descent into madness, superbly realised by both the director and the main actor/singer. It may have been an advantage to have been sitting stage-right, but I had no difficulty with the words snd saw every detail, much enjoying not only the powerful performance of the central figure, but also the nightmarish behaviour of the chorus and exaggerated portrayals of the two friends as seen from his subjective and deranged viewpoint. As last year at the Young Vic, this ENO-playing-away production was viscerally memorable. Thank you....

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