Utopie der Oper – Programm Nr. 1

The world's great opera houses are regarded as ‘temples of solemnity’. There are around 80,000 scores in the history of opera. What they all have in common is that these operas appeal to the ‘ability to mourn’. This is the form of lamentation. This lament has a core meaning. In most operas, a woman, the soprano, dies in the last act. The operas are about ‘sacrificing the dearest thing we have’. ‘Even before bourgeois society and the social contract (contrat social) existed,’ says French anthropologist René Girard, "there was the family contract. It is about the abolition of matricide, patricide and infanticide. This contract has remained fragile on a subconscious level." This is what myths and, since 1600, operas are about. (C.S.)