''Morgen und Abend'' (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

: ''Morning and Evening'') is an opera by Georg Friedrich Haas to a

libretto A libretto (From the Italian word , ) is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to th ...

by the Norwegian writer

Jon Fosse Jon Olav Fosse (; born 29 September 1959) is a Norwegian author, translator, and playwright. In 2023, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature "for his innovative plays and prose which give voice to the unsayable." Fosse's work spans over se ...

.''Morgen und Abend''
Royal Opera House website, accessed 24 October 2015 It is based on Fosse's 2000 novel '' Morgon og kveld''. The opera was jointly commissioned by the

Royal Opera House The Royal Opera House (ROH) is a theatre in Covent Garden, central London. The building is often referred to as simply Covent Garden, after a previous use of the site. The ROH is the main home of The Royal Opera, The Royal Ballet, and the Orch ...

, London, and the

Deutsche Oper Berlin The Deutsche Oper Berlin is a German opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin. The resident building is the country's second largest opera house (after Munich's) and also home to the Berlin State Ballet. Since 2004, the ...

. It was premiered on the main stage of the Royal Opera House on 13 November 2015. The director of the production is

Graham Vick Sir Graham Vick (30 December 1953 – 17 July 2021) was an English opera director known for his experimental and revisionist stagings of traditional and modern operas. He worked in many of the world's leading opera houses and was artistic di ...

. The composer has said "'Don't expect melodies, don't expect harmonies, just expect soundscapes". The vocal lines include microtones, including quarter-tones and sixth-tones.

Roles

Synopsis

The opera, which lasts about 90 minutes, outlines the birth and death of a fisherman, Johannes. In the first section, Johannes's father Ollai waits for his birth, imagining what his wife and the child are experiencing, until the Nurse announces the birth has been successful and invites him to see the child. In the next section Johannes meditates on his child Signe and speaks with his friend Peter and his wife Erna, but eventually realizes that as the latter two have long since died, he himself must also be dead.

Critical reaction

Richard Morrison, writing in ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British Newspaper#Daily, daily Newspaper#National, national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its si ...

'', opined that although the piece was slow to develop "By the end...I felt I was watching a very weird masterpiece". Rupert Christiansen, writing in ''

The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a British daily broadsheet conservative newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed in the United Kingdom and internationally. It was found ...

'' found the work "hypnotically beautiful yet turgidly tedious...Yet Haas’s music casts a spell...it moves like Scandinavian weather – clouds scudding, mists thickening, wind keening, thunderclaps crashing – through a glacial landscape of shimmering microtonal sound that is both precisely calibrated and eerily atmospheric". Tim Ashley, in ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

'', felt that "beautiful though it sounds, it is weak as drama".Tim Ashley
"Morgen und Abend review – birth, death and the longueurs in between"
''The Guardian'' website, accessed 16 November 2016.

References

;Notes ;Sources *Morrison, Richard (2015). ''Thrilling ride from womb to tomb'', in ''

'' arts section, p. 11, November 16, 2015. *Shipman, Chris (2015)
''Georg Friedrich Haas on Morgen und Abend — 'Don't expect harmonies...''
in Royal Opera house website, accessed 24 October 2015. {{Authority control Operas Operas based on novels German-language operas Operas set in mythological places 2015 operas Opera world premieres at the Royal Opera House