Opera senza Parole, für Violoncello solo, Mime, Cembalo und Streichorchester

Andreas Pflüger

Opera senza Parole

for solo cello, 1 mime, harpsichord and string orchestra

‘Opera senza Parole" is a musical fantasy based on the story “The Futurological Congress” by Stanislaw Lem.

Duration: approx. 45 minutes.

I composed the concerto for the cellist Mateusz Kaminski, who would be an ideal soloist for any follow-up performances.

1 - Thoughts on the music

I experience the story ‘The Futurological Congress’ by Stanislaw Lem as a kind of grand, very colourful-sounding music that begins to resonate within me, inspiring my musical imagination.

The aim of this project is to create a musical work based on this brilliant, comedic and at the same time deeply human narrative by Stanislaw Lem, a broad-based cello concerto in the form of a kind of scenery, an ‘opera senza parole’.

Fear of emptiness and abandonment, of loneliness that is suppressed by chemically

and which gradually becomes more and more addictive, are the core themes of the work.

All this can be conveyed – without words – by music in its irrational, only emotionally accessible language. It is therefore also the music that creates the necessary associative space in our psyche, allowing us to become co-experiencers, co-actors and ultimately co-creators of the events.

The mime's portrayal adds a visually mediating and concretely tangible dimension to the action.

To the music of ‘Opera senza Parole’:

Its basic structure is built on free atonality, which is expanded by microtonal, cluster-like but melodious ‘islands’ that create an operatic, emotionally comprehensible mood.

This is an absolute necessity in opera music because our consciousness always reacts associatively, interpretatively, selectively and, above all, emotionally with regard to its reception and evaluation.

The ‘Opera senza Parole’ consist of 10 movements:

1 -Overture - Opening of the Congress

2 - Spaceman Ijon Tichy, the novel's protagonist, is taking part in the ‘Eighth Futurological World Congress’ in Nounas, the capital of Costrica. The congress is taking place in the 106-storey Hilton Hotel and the topic of discussion is the growing overpopulation. At the same time, a nudist congress is taking place (on a different floor of the hotel). Also at the same time, a revolutionary movement is rising up against the dictator of the banana state of Costricana.

3 - When Tichy suffers an attack of kindness, immense goodwill and all-embracing affection, he realises that the dictator has added ‘benignators’ to the drinking water – chemical ‘pacification agents’ designed to quash the uprising of the discontented population.

4 - When the rebellion breaks out anyway, the police and military use conventional weapons as well as Benignators, and the Hilton is increasingly affected. Tichy, Professor Trottelreiner and other hotel guests equip themselves with oxygen masks and flee to the sewers beneath the Hilton.

5 - Tichy takes off his oxygen mask and has a series of grotesque hallucinations. His body is almost completely destroyed and he is thrown into a container of liquid nitrogen.

6 - Frozen in liquid nitrogen.

He wakes up in the distant future and finds a world at peace and in general prosperity, despite the growing population. The dead can be resurrected if desired. All this was made possible by psychemistry, which uses psychotropic drugs to control the irrational part of the human psyche. Taking the appropriate psychotropic drug is a natural part of daily life.

7 - Tichy supposedly lives in an environment of great luxury, wonderful furniture and magnificent cars. He meets Professor Trottelreiner, who, like Tichy, has also ended up in the future. Trottelreiner reveals to him that in the meantime the Maskone have been developed, chemical substances that can simulate any object.

8 - When Tichy gets an antidote from him, the luxury surrounding him suddenly disappears, and he sees poverty and disease instead.

But it is only the top layer of illusions that has fallen away before his eyes, the truth is much worse, more bleak... absolute emptiness, poverty, disease.

9 - Tichy suddenly wakes up in the sewer system under the Hilton Hotel, where he fled to at the beginning when the rebellion broke out.

And with that, the futurological congress is over.

10 - Epilogue