Furrer: Narcissus

Narcissus is a full-scale opera – but with very few words. Beat Fuller chose a couple of lines from Ovid’s story in the Metamorphoses of Narcissus and Echo,
organising them in six consecutive scenes into a tentative play on the question
of “What is real?” – or better, “Who is who?” The prophecy of blind soothsayer
Tiresias resounds like a tacit mantra: Narcissus
will only be granted a long life if he remains a stranger to himself – and
the story of his life has a cruel end.

Two
groups of musicians are gathered in the orchestra pit: instrumentalists and a
small vocal ensemble. The score calls for one female singer and two actors
onstage, while audiotape feeds reflect, question and anticipate the live
musical events.

Narcissus is also the result of a
novel kind of cooperation. Furrer dispenses entirely with intimations and
parameters for what occurs onstage. His score initiates or discloses dramatic
situations without specifying how they are to resolve.
Gerald Thomas wrote his piece to the finished, independent libretto – a
promptbook with large and small, comical and tragical stories.

Thus can
theatre be made, so to speak from back to front – beginning with an idea, an
image of an appropriate form, a composer writes his music. The actual libretto
came after the score, responding to its sounds. Like a scenario written in
advance, the text serves as a basis for the promptbook, which then united
onstage with the composer’s primal idea.

Holm Keller