Braunfels - Ulenspiegel (Capriccio)

Mehr lesen

Charles de Coster's novel Thyl Ulenspiegel provided the source for Braunfels’ opera of the same name. It narrates one of the darkest chapters in human history – the Spanish Inquisition in 16th-century Flanders – through the improbable voice of a world-famous buffoon. He depicts an apocalyptic panorama, in which the Seven Deadly Sins of the Bible, like the Riders of the Apocalypse, come to haunt the last remnants of mankind. Amid this doom and gloom, the composer Walter Braunfels sets his focus on the origins and general development of resistance. Ulenspiegel becomes an incisive case study of an apolitical daredevil who undergoes a radical personal transformation as a consequence of the terror which befalls his family. Promoted to become the political leader of the resistance, his mind knows only one thing: all-encompassing revenge.