Jacob's Room


chamber opera by Morton Subotnik
2010 // Bregenzer Festspiele (wp)

Conductor: Ari Benjamin Meyers // Vocal Coach: Joan La Barbara // Director: Mirella Weingarten // Video: Lillevan


[image: Jacob1]
[image: Jacob2]
[image: jacob3]




World Premiere: August 2010, Bregenzer Festspiele
German Premiere: Fall 2010, Radialsystem Berlin
Guest Production: Spring 2011, OUT OF CONTROL, Vienna

A co-production with Kunst aus der Zeit, Bregenzer Festspiele in cooperation with the American Academy Berlin.

Composition: Morton Subotnick
Text: Morton Subotnick
after Phaedrus by Platon, Eleni by Nicholas Gage, The Pit and the Trap by Moshe Kohn, The Little School House by Alicia Partnoy, The Holocaust Kingdom by Alexander Donat, and Jacob’s Room by Virginia Woolf.

Conductor: Ari Benjamin Meyers
Vocal Coach: Joan La Barbara
Director/Stage: Mirella Weingarten
Video: Lillevan

The Guide (Soprano): Ruth Rosenfeld
Mother (Mezzo Soprano): Katherina von Bülow
Grandfather (Bass Baritone): Tom Sol
Jacob (High Bariton): Florian Just
American composer and electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick is developing his opera, Jacob’s Room, into a fully staged production, thanks to the support of soniq performing arts and the Bregenz Festival. Subotnick, who was an early innovator in electronic music and whose popularity was bolstered by the electronica movement in the 1990s, is most known for his multimedia works, including Jacob’s Room, which saw its non-staged concert premiere in 1989. This piece tells the story of a survivor of genocide, expressing his traumatic experiences through musical theater. Subotnick draws on several texts for this opera. At birth, Jacob loses his mother, who sacrifices herself for him; years later, in the British Museum in London, Jacob finally liberates himself from the guilt associated with his mother’s death in an inner mental discovery. The title refers to this “thought room” that Jacob develops. There he meets The Guide, who directs him through his past to meet his mother and his grandfather. One after another, poetic and theatrical pictures emerge from this trip, associating with Jacob’s past. At the end of the journey, Jacob glances through the window of the museum at the rainy city of London and, for the first time, can see life’s beauty, and also its banality, with astonishing clarity.