Café Europa

chamber opera (2024)

EN

Café Europa is based on the play «Europe — between memories» by Alexandre Honrado which has been rearranged for chamber opera by Christoph Renhart with the inclusion of texts by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti («Manifesto of Futurism») and Theodor Fontane («Die Brücke am Tay»).

CHARACTERS

Europa (mezzo soprano) — keeper of the Café Europa
Pessoa, Kierkegaard, Steiner, Orpheus (baritone) — guests at the café
Zeus (bass) — god of the gods
Ghost I (tenor) — spirit of the brutal rule
Ghost II (soprano) — spirit of the evil thoughts

SYNOPSIS

Europa is the keeper of a small café that is visited by famous and infamous guests respectively. Whereas the good and illustrous characters are all identified by their names as Fernando Pessoa, Søren Kierkegaard and George Steiner, the malicious two ghosts remain anonymous. Moreover two superlunary figures from the ancient Europe appear: Orpheus, who is already tired of always having to perform in another new opera and Zeus, „god of the gods“, whose agenda remains unclear and who only seems to enjoy to have the power to create or to destroy „his“ continent. He is proud of „his“ work and sees Europa/Europe as his own property. At the same time he joins the two evil ghosts in their intermezzo with Fontane’s famous poem: „Wann treffen wir drei wieder zusamm’?“ ready to conspire with them to create a new wreck. Europa struggles to act as the good fairy. While the evil ghosts succeed in having the good figures passed away, she fails to poison one of them. She confronts Zeus („You never told your story well.“). Finally, she tries to get rid of the villains by the means of music — summoning Orpheus and urging him to play on his lyra in order to settle everything for the good — she only partially succeeds: Orpheus takes up the curst march music to Marinetti’s Futurist words („We want to sing the love of danger“) and turns it into something rather Arcadian. However he cannot water down the meanings of the texts on which his music is based on and thus only one of the evil ghosts perishes while the other one starts to silently, yet joyously sing along his music.