Boulevard Solitude
Music by Hans Werner Henze · libretto by Hans Werner Henze · premiered 1952 · at Opera House
Boulevard Solitude is a Lyrisches Drama (lyric drama) or opera in one act by Hans Werner Henze to a German libretto by Grete Weil after the play by Walter Jockisch, in its turn a modern retelling of Abbé Prévost's 1731 novel Manon Lescaut. The piece is a reworking of the Manon Lescaut story, already adapted operatically by Auber, Massenet and Puccini, and here relocated to Paris after World War II where, as is noted in Grove, the focus of the story moves away from Manon and towards Armand des Grieux. It became Henze's first fully-fledged opera. The work stands out for its strong jazz influences, from a composer who had hitherto been associated with twelve-tone technique. The premiere was given on 17 February 1952, at the Landestheater Hannover.
Text from the Wikipedia article "Boulevard Solitude", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
About the Composer
Hans Werner Henze (1 July 1926 – 27 October 2012) was a German composer. His large oeuvre is extremely varied in style, having been influenced by serialism, atonality, Neoclassicism, Italian music, Arabic music and jazz, as well as traditional schools of German composition. In particular, his stage works reflect "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life". Henze was also known for his political convictions. He left Germany for Italy in 1953 because of a perceived intolerance towards his leftist politics and homosexuality. Late in life he lived in the village of Marino in the central Italian region of Lazio, and in his final years still travelled extensively, in…
Text from the Wikipedia article "Hans Werner Henze", licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.
Other Operas by Hans Werner Henze
- Der langwierige Weg in die Wohnung der Natascha Ungeheuer
- Elegy for Young Lovers
- Gisela!
- König Hirsch (1762)
- Der junge Lord (1827)
- Ein Landarzt (1917)
- Der Prinz von Homburg (1926)
- Das verratene Meer (1986)