Heiner Goebbels

Tonight we saw an interesting music theater work by the German composer/theatrical artist Heiner Goebbels.  It featured texts by T.S. Eliot (Prufrock..), Maurice Blanchot, Kafka, and Beckett (Worstward Ho).  Sung and acted by the Hilliard Ensemble (4 male vocalists), with some taped electronic accompaniment. It was a fully staged theatrical presentation, with elaborate sets.  It could have been called some kind of opera, though Goebbels refers to it as "concert tableaux".

In the set above, each of the singers was in a different window in the house, singing at the same time.
The piece at times was very still. The first 10 minutes are done it almost silence, as the singers enact some very ritualistic packing up of all the materials on the set.
While I can't say that I loved the piece, I was consistently intrigued by the music theater implications of what he was doing.  The chief problem was that the text was not often clearly understandable, which does make a difference, especially in the Beckett  (""Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.")