Opera in two parts

music Hans Werner Henze

libretto Hans-Ulrich Treichel
based on the novel Gogo no eiko - The Taste of Glory by Yukio Mishima

Japanese language version

conductor Johannes Debus

director Giorgio Ferrara

set design Gianni Quaranta
costumes Maurizio Galante
lighting design AJ Weissbard

Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi

Fusako Ji Hye Son
Ryuji Carlo Kang
Noboru Ugo Kim - Toshiaki Murakami
Bandleader/Number One Kwang Il Kim
Number Two Brian Asawa
Number Four Young Hoon Kim
Number Five Taihwan Park

assistant conductor Gabriele Bonolis
assistant director Gianni Santucci
assistant artistic director Olimpia Onorato
assistant set designer Luciano Ceglia
assistant costume designer Barbara Pala
assistant lighting designer Solomon Weisbard
assistant musical production assistants Gabriele Bonolis, Noriko Morimoto
master collaborator Maurizio Agostini

EditionsPublisher Schott, Mainz-representative for Italy Universal Music Publishing Ricordi s.r.l Milan

new production Spoleto53 Festival dei 2Mondi

L'opera Gogono Eiko is the result of a special artistic history. Composed from Hans Werner Henze in 1988 for the Deutsche Oper Berlin on a German libretto(Das Verretene Meer - The Betrayed Sea) based on Yukio Mishima's novel Gogo no eiko, it was first performed in 1990.
Then, twelve years later, Henze decided to takeopera back to its origins by having the libretto translated from German into Japanese and composing twenty minutes of new music.
A kind of miracle, given the expressive diversity of the two languages.

Thus,opera was given its concert premiere at Tokyo's Suntory Hall in 2003 and was a great success. But still, Henze and Albrecht work to compose another thirty minutes of music. In 2006 it is thus performed in concert form by the Rai National Symphony Orchestra conducted from Gerd Albrecht to Salzburg, Berlin and Turin.

to Spoleto is being performed for the first time the 'opera in stage form
in its Japanese language version.

A'opera with dark implications in which hovers the feeling of an inescapable individual and social destiny, which overpowers the action and crushes its characters in inexorable mechanisms. The universe of youth is in generational juxtaposition with that of adults and expresses all its destructive potential derived from the lack of prospects, up to the extreme solution of murder. But youth is also understood as a category of the spirit and Henze leads us to to reflect and to leniently interpret the cynicism typical of this human dimension, defeated in its necessary confrontation with reality at the moment of the difficult transition from adolescence to maturity.

Fusako is a beautiful young widow who owns a Western fashion boutique to Yokohama.

The woman lives with her son, Noboru, who spies, through the crack in a wall of the room in which he is locked every night, on his mother's intimacy. Decisive is a meeting with Ryuji, the second officer of a ship moored in the harbor. Mother and son become fascinated by the man who soon offers
to become their husband and stepfather. However, Ryuji's physical love for Fusako and his decision to leave the sea to lead a normal life alongside the woman he has fallen in love with and her son, toward whom he behaves lovingly, casts a nefarious light on him. The sailor is no longer in the eyes of Noboru and his crewmates the hero he seemed. He has not only abandoned his dreams of glory and no longer "belongs to the sea," but has also become a forgiving father for forgiving him after discovering that he spied on him and his mother in their nightly embraces. He is but a wretch like all adults: for this the boys condemn him to death. While Fusako, happy again, imagines her future commitments as wife and mother, convinced that Noboru will learn in time to love his stepfather, the officer is lured by the boy and his friends to a secluded place, where by their hand he will be put to sleep and killed. A death already foreshadowed at the end of the first act through the brutal killing of a cat.

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Hans Werner Henze, 83, is considered the last champion of the great German musical tradition to starting from Bach.A precocious talent, Henze is a leading player, from immediately and successfully, on the German and international music scene. He began to composing to 12 years old, studied music at the Staatsmusikschule in Brunswick and, after the war, at the Institute of Sacred Music in Heidelberg with Wolfgang Fortner. He also participates
in summer courses in Darmstadt with René Leibowitz. His first composition, Kammerkonzert
for piano, flute and strings in 1946, was immediately performed with success. After writing works that varied widely in genre and style, most notablyopera Boulevard Solitude, and after
collaborating with the Deutsches Theater in Constance and the Ballet du Staatstheater Wiesbaden, for which he composed music for ballets(Jack Pudding, 1951 and Labyrinth, 1951), he moved permanently to Italy. From these early Italian years are the two operas König Hirsch (1956) and Der Prinz von Homburg from Kleist, the three acts of the ballet Undine and the' opera Elegy for Young Lovers with a libretto by Auden, the cantatas
Kammermusik and Cantata della fiaba estrema. In 1966 also with a libretto by Auden, Henze composedopera Die Bassariden conceived as a symphony in four movements. Also from this period is the 'opera comic on a libretto by Ingeborg Bachmann, Der Junge Lord, to which is followed by another masterpiece, the Second Piano Concerto (1967).
The revolutionary turmoil of the late 1960s, a visit to Cuba, where he conducted the premiere of his Sixth Symphony in which he included motifs from revolutionary songs, left a political-social imprint on the works of those years. As in musical theater: El Cimarrón (1970) and We Come to the River (1976), in which
dramatizes class conflict. These are also the years in which he founds the Montepulciano Art Workshop, which he will consider "one of my few political successes," for which he writes Tom Thumb, a'opera for children. At the same time he developed the search for a richness of expression even in orchestral language with Heliogabalus imperator (1972), Tristan (1974), Aria de la folía española (1977), often reinterpreting ancient musical models in a personal synthesis of past and present, lyricism and rigor. From the
1980s and early 1990s we recall: theopera The English Cat (1983), to a libretto by the playwright Edward Bond, and the four symphonies, from the seventh to the tenth, inspired by the German symphonic tradition of the 17th and 19th centuries, destined to have international resonance.
His very dense catalog - including pieces for piano, from chamber music, cantatas, an oratorio, concertos - has made its mark on the world of European music. A mark consolidated by his teaching activities: Henze was for many years at the Royal Academy of Music in London, the Salzburg Mozarteum, the Musikhochschule in Cologne and the Tanglewood Festival. On several occasions he has worked with young musicians, founding, in addition to the Montepulciano Art Workshop, the Detschlandsberg Jugendmusikfest (Styria) and the Munich Biennale for New Music Theatre. In 2000 he was awarded the Premium Imperiale to Tokyo. His most recent opera , Upupa oder Der Triumph der Sohnesliebe was presented at the
Salzburg Festival in 2003, adding to his international successes.

The Orchestra Sinfonica di Milano Giuseppe Verdi, founded in 1993 from Vladimir Delman, has established itself from several years as one of the most relevant national symphonic ensembles, capable of tackling a repertoire ranging from from Bach to the cornerstones of 19th-century symphonism to 20th-century music. The Orchestra's
playbill includes more than thirty symphonic programs each year, with a layout in which the classics are flanked from less usual pages, as well as some adjoining seasons, such as the "Crescendo in Musica" cycle, an important review for children and young people.
From 1999 to 2005, Riccardo Chailly, now Honorary Conductor, served as Music Director.
Wayne Marshall and Helmuth Rilling have held the position of Principal Guest Conductors since the 2008/2009 season; Maestro Rudolf Barshai, from many years connected with the Orchestra, has been Conductor Emeritus since the 2006/2007 season, a position held by Carlo Maria Giulini until his passing. Cornist Radovan Vlatkovic and pianist Simone Pedroni, on the other hand, have been present since the 2007/2008 season as Resident Artists.
For the 2009/2010 season, Xian Zhang from China is Music Director, while Ruben Jais holds the position of Resident Conductor.
On October 6, 1999, the Orchestra's new permanent home, the Milan Auditorium, was inaugurated with Mahler's Symphony No. 2 Resurrection conducted from Riccardo Chailly. Another distinctive element of the Orchestra is the establishment, in October 1998, of the Giuseppe Verdi Symphonic Chorus of Milan, led until his passing by Maestro Romano Gandolfi, a prestigious figure of
choral conducting who worked with the greatest conductors and in the most important opera houses in the world. The Chorus currently has 100 members capable of tackling the great operatic-symphonic repertoire from the Baroque to the 20th century.
Some recurring appointments mark the Verdi's musical journey: the performance of the complete cycle of Mahler's Symphonies, the annual appointment with one of Bach's great Passions near the Easter holidays, and the New Year's Eve concert with Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. The Orchestra has been conducted by, among others from Riccardo Chailly, Georges Prêtre, Riccardo Muti, Valery Gergiev, Rudolf Barshai, Claus Peter Flor, Christopher Hogwood, Helmuth Rilling, Peter Maag, Marko Letonja, Daniele Gatti, Roberto Abbado, Ivor Bolton, Kazushi Ono, Vladimir Jurowski, Yakov Kreizberg, Ulf Schirmer and Eiji Oue. In the 2005/2006 season, Herbert Blomstedt and Krzysztof Penderecki made their Verdi debuts, and in 2006/2007 Leonard Slatkin, Vladimir Fedoseyev, and Wayne Marshall.
The orchestra has also collaborated with soloists such as Martha Argerich, Mstislav Rostropovich, Vadim Repin, Lynn Harrell, Viktoria Mullova, Han-Na Chang, Sarah Chang, Midori, Alexander Kobrin, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Nelson Freire, Salvatore Accardo, Mario Brunello, Alexander Toradze, Hilary Hahn, and Radovan Vlatkovic.