The Argentinian composer Fabián Panisello premieres his third opera “Die Judith von Shimoda” tomorrow at the Bregenz Festival.
This coming Thursday, 17 August, the opera festival of the Austrian city of Bregenz will offer the world premiere of Die Judith von Shimoda, the third opera by the Argentinian composer and conductor Fabián Panisello (Buenos Aires 1963). A commission and co-production of the Bregenz Festival itself and the Neue Oper Wien, the opera is based on Bertolt Brecht’s Die Judith von Shimoda, a play written in 1940 (but not published until 1997) and based on Nyonin Aishi. Akichi Monogatari [Tragedy of a Woman. The Story of Okichi the Foreigner] a 1929 play written by the Japanese Yamamoto Yūzō, in which he tells the story of the first American consul to arrive in the Japanese town of Shimoda in 1856, and his threat to bomb the town if the country refuses to accept a trade treaty with the United States. The authorities urge the geisha Okichi to become his servant and thus save her hometown; however, her patriotic sacrifice does not prevent her from being socially ostracised for her relationship with the foreigner and she falls into alcoholism. Brecht saw in this text the story of “a Japanese Judith”, referring to the biblical figure of Judith and thus underlining society’s responsibility for Okichi’s collapse.
The libretto of the opera has been written by the Spanish writer and filmmaker Juan Lucas (Valencia, 1962), who collaborates again with Panisello after having done so on the libretto of his 2016 opera Le Malentendu. Die Judith von Shimoda will have its world premiere with Philipp M. Krenn as director and Walter Kobéra as conductor. The opera will be performed again on Bregenz on Saturday 19 August, followed by four performances at the Akzent Theatre in Vienna from 2 to 9 November.