1984-1988
Opera for 21 musical performers
14 Solo voices, 6 solo instruments, 1 actor
choir, children's choir, modern orchestra (3 synthesizer players, percussionist, tape)
Monday is Eve's day, the day of the Woman, the day of Birth.
Montag's-Gruss / Monday Greeting
1986/88
multiple basset-horns & elec.keyboard instruments (tape)
Act 1: Eva's Erstgeburt / Eve's First Birth-Giving
1987
3 sopranos, 3 tenors, bass, actor, choir, children's choir, modern orchestra
In Hoffnung / Expecting
Heinzelmånnchen
Geburts-Arien / Birth Arias
Knabengeschrei / Boy's Hullabaloo
Luzifer's Zorn / Lucifer's Fury
Das Grosse Geweine / The Grand Weeping
Act 2: Eva's Zweitgeburt / Eve's Second Birth-Giving
1984/87
7 solo boy singers, basset-horn, 3 basset-teases, piano, choir, girls' choir, modern orchestra
Mådchenprozession / Girls' Procession
Befruchtung mit Klavierstück / Conception with Piano Piece
Wiedergeburt / Re-Birth
Eva's Lied / Eve's Song
Act 3: Eva's Zauber / Eve's Magic
1984/86
basset-horn, alto flute with piccolo, choir, children's choir, modern orchestra
Botschaft / Message
Der Kinderfånger / The Pied Piper
Entführung / Abduction
Montag's-Abschied / Monday Farewell
1986/88
piccolo flute, multiple soprano voice and elec.keyboard instruments (tape)
Short Synopsis of the opera
The theatre foyer seems to be underwater, bathed in green rays of light. The inverted Eve formula can be heard from many basset-horns.
In the first act a huge statue of Eve is on the sea shore, and is tended to by many woman with perfume and water. (Later this image was adapted for use in a famous television advertisment for the painkiller Nurofen®). The statue, which has three soprano soloists singing down from the larynx, gives birth to seven boys with animal heads who are followed into the world by seven little men from Cologne folk-lore: the Heinzelmånnchen . 3 sailors arrive from the sea to witness an elaborate pram dance with all the nurses and newborns racing geometrically about the beach. All the while surreal events are portrayed through the use of sound samples (e.g. baby animals, steam trains, the Marseillaise sung by a budgerigar), and the children involve themselves in all manner of clamour, mischief and bodily functions. At the height of the chaos an icecream seller arrives on an upside-down bicycle and moments after that Lucifer arrives joined by a web to his grotesque double. He is buried in the sand by the three sopranos. The women's weeping is soon accompanied by falling rain , and the act ends with Lucifer emerging from the sea and ordering the boys back into the womb of the statue.
"Everyone back in!! The whole thing again from the start !!!"
The second act starts with a procession of candle-bearing maidens, and a very long concert grand piano approaches the statue. A short complicated piano piece is played by the boy budgerigar, and the womb of the statue begins to glow. Seven boys of the week are born, and each is taught his own song for his day. The boys are seduced by three female musicians who emerge from the Eve Statue.
In the final act Eve appears playing basset-horn, and performs for her reflection. Soon a musician arrives as an alto-flute player, and joins Eve in a duet. Children come and listen, and eventually the flute player is distracted by them and leads them away into the clouds.
As the public leaves the theatre they find the foyer bathed in clouds, and can hear the children climbing higher and higher, like birds.