The Hunting Gun

Thomas Larcher’s highly-acclaimed first opera is based on a best-selling post-war Japanese novella, a universal story of deception of others and of ourselves. A poet passes a hunter while climbing a mountain and publishes a poem about the hunter’s lonely, haunted expression. The Hunter happens to read the poem and recognises himself in it. He sends the author three letters: from his wife, his lover and her daughter. Three letters by three women to one man become a gripping fable retold in language of stark poetic simplicity as the central figure helplessly observes the unfolding tragedy, all the while clasping his gun that ‘presses the whole burden deep into the lonely man’s body and soul.’

Sung in German with English surtitles. No interval.