Endlich Opfer (Hi Victim)

“Hi Victim” (Endlich Opfer!) was performed by the ÖENM at the pocket opera festival in Salzburg and deals with a photo, which was given to the composers in the beginning of the composition process. This photoshows Italian sunbathers at the beach of Naples ignoring two dead gipsy girls lying covered with towels on the beach – it shocked the world in 2006. When Brigitta Muntendorf received this photo she told the stage director Thierry Bruehl that she won’t make a music theatre about this scene. What kind of music doesn’t raise the moralpointing finger and what kind of music doesn’t celebrate pain?

However, the more she thought about these questions she asked herself about the moment, in which people are confronted with a scene like this. What exactly is this awkward silence, this faint feeling of powerlessness? This void is full of blatant and unfulfilled desires, a methodically insanity compressed in a strong corset strangulating humanity and compassion. Showing these mechanisms that cause socio-political paralyses in a society opened the door to create a very precised-working breathing machine on the stage out of a strong construction of music, performers and mixed media.

“Hi Victim” starts in the void–an empty stage, a counting voice as a correlation to the waiting, musicians appear by following strict vector courses along the stage. Some are blowing dust through instruments and disappear; some are playing on their positions, isolated in the stage space. After 12 minutes the stage is full of musicians, a children choir, singers and an actor–they’re representing the corset of insanity, the method that doesn’t allow anybody to slip out of the system.

“Hi Victim” has no libretto–the singers sing through solmization, the voice of the tape is counting and the actor is the only performer, who crosses the existing ways and interacts with musicians and the projected conductor–scene, music and video are interlacing each other and tell a story without any words. With the integration of the quote “Oh Superman, Oh judge” in the end of “Hi Victim” it’s obvious that this pocket opera is not a story about redemption, it’s the story of watching the void-with the aim to create a reflecting moment for the prerequisite of humanity.