Travel Pick: Opera in Austria
Phaedra

Phaedra
Concert opera
in two acts (2007) by Hans Werner Henze

Libretto by Christian Lehnert

Austrian premiere
 
Phaedra: Maria Riccarda Wesseling
Aphrodite: Marlis Petersen
Hippolytus: Jeremy Ovenden
Artemis: Axel Köhler
Minotaur: Lauri Vasar
Ensemble Modern orchestra
Michael Boder, conductor 
Peter Mussbach, director
Stage design: Olafur Eliasson
Costumes: Bernd Skodzig
Light design: Olaf Freese

Henze wrote Phaedra for five protagonists and 24 musicians, mainly wind players and percussionists. As part of a body of experience accumulated in over forty stage works, his 14th opera once more opts for a mythological plot. The young poet and theologian Christian Lehnert has collaged stories from Greek and Roman antiquity for the libretto: Phaedra desires her stepson Hippolytus, who rejects her. Out of revenge, she accuses him of rape, and Hippolytus is put to death. In the second act, Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, restores Hippolytus to life, and he becomes a forest divinity in her realm by Lake Nemi (near Rome, where Henze, too, owns a country house), where he is ultimately killed by the bull-man Minotaur.