Münchener Biennale

Samy Moussa consciously places his music theater in the field of tension between politics and science fiction, and pointedly illustrates it not just as a painting of a catastrophe. It moves hard along the lines of reality, but not as a documentary; fantastic, but not in a no-man's land of escapist nonsense. "Vastation" begins in the final phase of an election campaign. The incumbent president needs a crisis to be reelected, so she can play the role of a rescuer. Her advisors create the necessary conflicts and carry them out with every means under huge losses, also personal, human, and emotional losses. The military strike, which they stage under a pretense, succeeds, the president could retain her political power, her re-election would be assured – but the destruction is not only in "enemy territory". What will happen? “The opera tries to do that thing I’ve always admired in Shakespeare’s plays and The Godfather films as well as in many, many operas – of moving from hugely public scenes to very private scenes”, says Toby Litt, the lyricist of Vastation.

In Toby Litt, a British author of short stories and song lyrics, Samy Moussa discovered a lyricist who was attracted to the appeal of the project and the special demands of music theater: the tight, accurate language that it demands, the nimble surfing between reality and probability that makes it interesting – and the willingness to become involved with the composer in a "work in progress." Samy Moussa and Toby Litt share the opinion that for the most part the dramatic course of events and the theatrical intensity decide the choice of the artistic means, and not some (music) linguistic regulations or rules.

Samy Moussa's previous compositions have been marked by a structural clarity and a powerful access to the sound material. The clarity of his style also remains an essential concern in the large format of opera. In Vastation he frequently keeps, however, the power of his tonal language in the background; it acts like an electrical field that accumulates energy without discharging it right away. Samy Moussa, composer and conductor, sees his score not as a prescription other persons have to fulfill, but rather as an invitation to the musicians to lend the written notes in the score a tension and gripping vitality through their commitment.