A Wintery Spring / Die bronzene Schlange

Saed Haddad’s (*1972) dramatic lament ›A Wintery Spring‹ deals with current political and social structures and attitudes in the Middle East – without attempting to portray a concrete story about the Arab Spring, but rather searching for paths which might unite people and traditions. The lament is based on aphorisms by the Lebanese writer Khalil Gibran (1883–1931), who emigrated with his mother and siblings to the USA in 1895. Gibran’s central motifs are life and death, and love as their uniting element. ›A Wintery Spring‹, a co-production of Ensemble Modern and the Frankfurt Opera, will have its world premiere at the Bockenheimer Depot on February 22, 2018. The dramatic lamento is combined with the first staged performance of the baroque cantata ›Il Serpente di bronzo‹ (The Bronze Serpent) by Jan Dismas Zelenka (1679–1745), in which God punishes the doubts of the people of Israel with a plague of snakes, making the people realize the errors of their ways. The double bill features Ensemble Modern under the baton of Franck Ollu. Christian Fausch, Artistic Manager and Managing Director of Ensemble Modern, spoke to the composer Saed Haddad and the director Corinna Tetzel.