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In The Penal Colony (Glass) San Francisco 2021 Robert Orth, Javier Abreu, Michael Mohammed
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: In The Penal Colony
- Composer: Glass Philip
- Libretto: Rudy Wurlitzer Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: San Francisco, California, Opera Parallèle
- Recorded: 2021
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Robert Orth, Javier Abreu, Michael Mohammed, David Poznanter
- Conductor: Nicole Paiement
- Orchestra: String Quintet
- Stage Director: Brian Staufenbiel
- Stage Designer: Brian Staufenbiel
- Costume Designer: Daniel Harvey
- Lighting Designer: Kevin Landesman
Information about the Recording
- Published by: Vimeo
- TV Director: Arturo Bejar
- Date Published: 2021
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: yessubs, ensubs
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
In the Penal Colony is a chamber opera in one act and 16 scenes composed by Philip Glass to an English-language libretto by Rudy Wurlitzer. The opera is based on Franz Kafka’s German-language short story In the Penal Colony. It was commissioned by ACT Theatre in Seattle, Washington, where it premiered on August 31, 2000. It has a running time of approximately 80 minutes and is scored for two singers (tenor and bass-baritone) and a string quintet.
Background
Kafka’s harrowing story “In the Penal Colony” (“In der Strafkolonie”) was adapted as a play by Steven Berkoff in 1969. Glass chose to use it as the basis for an opera and selected the creative team. He and his long-time collaborator and former wife JoAnne Akalaitis worked on the idea on and off for three years before receiving a commission from ACT Theatre in Seattle. Akalaitis worked closely with the librettist, Rudy Wurlitzer, in adapting the story for the musical stage and directed the premiere production. Glass referred to the work as a “pocket opera” and deliberately chose the small-scale format of a chamber opera to increase the likelihood that it would be frequently performed.
In Kafka’s story, only two of the four characters speak, The Officer and The Visitor, whose roles in the opera are assigned to a bass-baritone and tenor respectively. As in the story, The Prisoner and The Guard remain silent. Akalaitis added a fifth character for the premiere production, Kafka himself, who serves as a narrator and onlooker. The texts for the narration were chosen by Akalaitis from Kafka’s diaries. The opera’s music is played by a string quintet. In the original production, they appear as musicians from the penal colony where the story takes place and are costumed variously as soldiers and civilians.
Synopsis
Setting: The remote island penal colony of a powerful but unnamed country in 1907
A high-ranking visitor arrives in the penal colony. He was invited there to witness the public execution of a prisoner using a strange machine invented by the former commandant of the colony. The machine slowly carves a description of the condemned man’s crimes into his flesh and after hours of excruciating torture kills him. The device is operated by the officer in charge of the prison who is utterly devoted to the machine and to the memory of the deceased commandant who invented it. He is disturbed by the machine’s state of disrepair and the growing criticism of its use, including criticism from the island’s current commandant. He hopes that the visitor will be impressed by the machine and will speak in favor of its “redemptive powers” to the commandant. The visitor is appalled by the machine but sings “It’s always risky interfering in other peoples’ business […] I oppose this procedure, but I will not intervene.” When the officer realizes that the visitor will not actively support him, he frees the condemned prisoner from the machine and climbs onto it himself, seeking the redemption of a slow and painful death. The machine, however, malfunctions and instead of killing him slowly, kills him almost instantly by piercing his skull. It then self-destructs. The visitor boards a boat and leaves the island.