Online World Premiere

December 18, 2021

Pandora ist tot (UA)

Michael Herrschel/Horst LohseEdition Gravis

Info

Mezzo soprano | Solgerd Isalv
Piano | Neil Valenta
Production | Benjamin Weber (DOP) , Sebastian Franke (Music Editor)
– Staatstheater Darmstadt

English translation: Pandora is dead*
*This rough translation is not to be sung! It is meant as an aid to understand the original German text.

Do not believe in a fairy that always reads you from your eyes
You don’t know her reckoning arts
She will demand a price you would begrudgingly pay
No matter how high you won’t deduce it from her smile
You still don’t know her name or her role model
Tinkerbell perhaps with a commanding voice of whispering breeze
or Pandora who gives everything so that nothing will remain

Tinkerbell disappeared dissolved into glittering dust
And the other one
Pandora
She is dead they say
Only her box remains somewhere forgotten
It has replenished itself and is soon to overflow
It just needs something to strike the lid
the wing of a bat
and it begins again
and becomes wishes be fulfilled en masse

We just could not keep our eyes
our thoughts under control
could not foresee the consequences
which are insane

Think about how it was
with the time loop
where you catch up on everything
with the clock always chasing you
when at last for once it stands still

Now it’s done
everything on hold
the clock is still running
but nobody looks at it any more
calendars have become useless
We stand at a safe distance from each other
in a gigantic hall of fortune

All doors closed
On the streets prowl nerve-wracked patrols
We open windows
make plans
and ask not who will carry them out
smiling we make bets
curious who may go outside tomorrow
on the streets
on the squares
where you are astonished
and don’t recognize
anything