Schloss Dürande renovated
Othmar Schoeck’s opera in a new interpretation
Mario Venzago, Francesco Micieli
Othmar Schoeck’s opera Das Schloss Dürande (‘Castle Dürande’), suspected of enacting National Socialist ideology, has never been brought to the stage after 1943. In May 2018 it will be again at the Bern Theatre in an restored version approximating the presumed original intentions of the work, and, in September 2016, extracts of it will be presented and debated during a symposium in Brunnen. Can this key work of twentieth-century Swiss music history be ‘decontaminated’ enough so that it can again be subject to discussion and a part of the repertoire again? Two of the ambassadors for this new version, namely writer Francesco Micieli, who recomposed the libretto in the form of an “artistic laboratory”, and conductor Mario Venzago, responsible for the musical adjustment of the new text, express themselves regarding the project and the work of reinterpretation of the historical material.
