Stilles Meer

My fourth opera, Stilles Meer, was commissioned by Staatsoper Hamburg. The original text was written by Oriza Hirata, and it was rewritten as a libretto by Hannah Dübgen.

What I’ve requested to Oriza Hirata, was to change the setting of the Japanese Nōh play "Sumidagawa", a tragedy about a mother who lost her son, to Fukushima as the main stage of the story. The Nōh play "Sumidagawa" has already been adapted as an opera by Benjamin Britten in his parable "Curlew River". "Curlew River" having an identity close to Christianity, I wanted to have a story more like Buddhism, which is closer to the original setting. Oriza Hirata has incorporated the novel "Maihime" by Ōgai Mori (a great modern Japanese novelist) to "Sumidagawa", and created Stilles Meer, a story which takes places where the Tsunami had struck and where the nuclear plant incident had taken place. Based on this, Hannah Dübgen, who was also the librettist of my opera Matsukaze, wrote the libretto for this opera.

Ever since the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, and the Fukushima nuclear plant incident caused by it, I once again had to think about the power of nature and of human arrogance. My music is born through the deep correspondence with nature. Once again I thought about the human civilization that on one side respects nature but in the same moment is afraid of the fundamental power it possesses. And I thought about how we are trying to control and to dominate nature but instead are destroying it. My orchestral work Circulating Ocean (2005) is a musical expression of the circulating life: water coming from the ocean, becoming gas, transforming into cloud, rain, storm, falling back to earth, and returning to the ocean. Water is a metaphor of human life; life is born from and returns to the ocean. In Stilles Meer, the ocean, the source of life, has been contaminated by radiation, and the place to return is lost forever. (In this opera, villagers who will do the "Tōrō nagashi" will appear. "Tōrō nagashi" is a Japanese ceremony where the participants use a paper lantern to represent the soul of the deceased, and to return the souls of the deceased to the ocean, the source of life.)

The protagonist Claudia represents the role of the mother/mad woman in the Nōh play "Sumidagawa". She cannot accept the loss of her beloved son. By singing this sorrow, and chanting the Buddhism prayer, a new dimension may open up to this sorrow. Sorrow gains a form by singing about it and thus transforming it into music; and so it may be possible to give it depth and transparency. I believe there is Shamanism in the source of music. Claudia is a shaman ("Miko"), and through her singing, she can connect this world and the afterlife, and can find a way for interaction with the souls of the deceased.

I would like to dedicate Stilles Meer to the victims of the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. – Toshio Hosokawa