Three years ago the Salzburg Festival staged the world premiere of Henze’s L’Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe, a huge success at the time. It is thus no wonder that today’s performance of Gogo No Eiko drew a lot of media attention. The aging composer himself was present for the concert premiere of the third version of this opera. The first version – in German – was staged at the Deutsche Oper Berlin in 1990. In 2003, Henze and Gerd Albrecht, the conductor who also performed the Berlin premiere and today’s version, decided to translate the work back into Japanese. That version was premiered in Suntory Hall, Tokyo. Finally, the third version, also in Japanese, with 30 minutes of additional music was performed today in Salzburg.

The libretto, which is based on Yukio Mishima’s novel with the same title, tells the story of a woman (Fusako), her lover (Ryuji), and her son (Noboru), who in the end, together with a gang of adolescents, kills his mother’s lover. Why does Noboru kill Ryuji? Why does he hate the sailor so much, who is trying to be a good father-in-law? Why does Noboru kill Ryuji, who truly loves Fusako? Noboru has a passion for the sea and ships. Ryuji, the sailor agrees to show him around on his ship, explaining everything, telling him stories about how life as a sailor is. Noboru seems to like Ryuji at first, but then, under the bad influence of his gang he rejects Ryuji more and more. Gogo No Eiko does not give a clear answer to the question why the gang kills Ryuji. It also does not show what happend after the murder. The opera just ends with the moment of collective murder. It leaves the audience at a loss. Why did they do it?

Henze’s music amplifies this feeling of perplexity; a tightly woven, thick texture that is impossible to penetrate, it creates an atmosphere of doom and strangeness. Sometimes this glutinous compound lights up and glitters like a spider net in the sun. Henze’s art miraculously explains everything without making it obvious; he is the master of the abysmal psychology of music. In this he reminds me very much of Alban Berg who composed the ultimate opera on human atrocity. Gogo No Eiko comes very close to that.