Commission to Olga Neuwirth

The opera Monster’s Paradise is the first music theatre collaboration between Olga Neuwirth and Elfriede Jelinek in more than 20 years. For the first time ever, the two artists have worked together to create a libretto. The result is a series of scenes about the futility of art, especially for female artists, in times of rampant populism.

As avatars of themselves, the two authors send two female vampires around the world after a parody of Goethe’s Prologue in Heaven (Part 1). In a tour de force through the present, enriched with grotesque myths of popular culture, the two arrive at the court of a populist king/president (part 2), miss the utopian island of the sea monster Gorgonzilla, where hope can only be expected from invulnerable superheroes (part 3), and wander through wars and natural disasters, which culminate in a fight between the king and Gorgonzilla (part 4). Finally, the two find themselves in a utopia that both parodies and surpasses the end of Wagner’s Götterdämmerung: in the waves of the ocean, towards new shores (part 5).

Olga Neuwirth has consistently expanded the dramaturgical and musical repertoire of forms in music theatre from her first scenic works, the chamber operas Körperliche Veränderungen and Der Wald, to her most recent large-scale opera Orlando. With Monster’s Paradise, the composer once again breaks new ground in music theatre: with her own virtuosity in mixing the sounds of classical orchestral instruments and live electronics, she opens up new forms of expression for the human voice and renews the genre of Grand Guignol (which has hardly been explored in music theatre to date) as a medium for social analysis in a highly reflective way. Music for a dystopian, post-human world in which humanity and utopia appear in black, musical humour and the ferment and refraction of musical tradition.

The Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation has made the commission to Olga Neuwirth for the musical theatre piece Monster’s Paradise possible.

Further information:
staatsoper-hamburg.de

Dates

February 1, 4, 7, 11 & 13, 2026
Hamburg State Opera