Short Summary
Four figures vegetate in a hostile, almost uninhabitable landscape: Clov and Hamm, Nagg and Nell.
Hamm, in a wheelchair, is served by Clov, who can still walk a little. Hamm's parents Nell and Nagg have been living in (garbage) garbage cans since they lost their legs in a cycling accident. These four move between the continuous return of the unchangeable and the memory of "the past" by bullying and cajoling each other, conjuring and cursing, narrating and interrupting.
György Kurtág's "Scènes et monologues" is a stunning variation on Samuel Beckett's absurdist play. His orchestra, with the largest (and most unusual) instrumentation, is encouraged to play the quietest, often chamber music-like moments, in dialog with just four soloists, for whom the composer has achieved something that was perhaps only possible through decades of study of Beckett's play: A tremendous precision in the expression of the incomprehensible as a musical penetration and reflection of language. As if in passing, Kurtág helps that aspect of Beckett's text that often had a difficult time in the existentialist performance tradition: the deep, dark, abysmal humor.
György Kurtág had seen Beckett's Fin de Partie in Paris in 1957, the year of its premiere, and had been working on the work ever since; he once said that, together with Waiting for Godot, it was his "bible". Kurtág wrote the opera between 2010 and 2017, and the work was premiered at La Scala in Milan in 2018. Kurtág, who made his debut as an opera composer with Fin de Partie at the age of 92, described the premiere version as a "versione non definitiva". The dramaturgically convincing composition was based on around two thirds of Beckett's play; the composer wanted to reserve the right to set further parts of the text, which was so important to him, to music. The Austrian premiere at the Vienna State Opera in September 2024, the third new production of the work, is also based on the "versione non definitiva": it is not impossible that Kurtág, who continues to compose regularly, will set further "scenes and monologues" from Beckett's play to music.
