"A GRAVE RESPONSIBILITY"
CF at the Grave of Arnold Schoenberg
"You may never get to touch the Master,
but you can tickle his creatures."
Proverbs for Paranoids, I
from Gravity's Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon
Quoted in CF's CELESTIAL SIXTIES I
To Listen to "Views of the Festival" CLICK HERE
I have been working at all possible moments on a three-act opera about the trial of the major war criminals held in the German city of Nuernberg after World War II. This project exists in an extensive prose scenario with hundreds of additional notes, and two scenes of the libretto that are complete. It was probably inevitable that I would find a World War Two theme appropriate, since one of the principal thematic trajectories of THE FESTIVAL is a progress through the Twentieth Century.
Here is how the project began, and a report on the work's progress:
During the mid-1990s I began reading about World War II with an eye to determining a possible operatic subject. There were a variety of topics that interested me, mostly on the German side of things: something about Werner Heisenberg; a piece about St. Maximilain Kolbe; and the Nuernberg Trial were the main ideas. I make no apology for being a Germanophile, and anybody who thinks I can't also be a Francophile or Italophile or Judaphile, and pretty much an admirer of any or all of the cultures that were at each other's throats during the first half of the Twentieth Century, has a problem that I don't have.
That my mind was sorting through TNT as a possible topic is evidenced by a letter I wrote to the emminent lexicographer David Crystal; he replied in a note of January 12, 1996 to certain of my inquiries about the defendants in the first and best-known of the dozen or so trials held at Nuernberg. A copy of this note is now in the "day book" I began keeping on February 14, 1997, in which I keep some of the correspondence this project has involved, and which I have also used as a sign-in book for public presentations of my music. After experiencing the shock of having a lot of my literary reseach stolen by Francis Ford Coppola and used in his incorrectly titled movie "Bram Stoker's Drakula," I decided that from then on I would document any correspondence that could be important in the opera. THE DAY BOOK OF TNT has copies of correspondence of various artist's managements, music professionals, and even an email string with the Dean of a major law school. This time, anybody who wants to steal my ideas will encounter a lot of obstacles.
My TNT project got some encouragement when I met the American tenor William "Bud" Cochran, who lives in Europe. When he and I met I already knew his singing from his truly fantastic performance of Mephistopheles in Busoni's DOKTOR FAUST. Since he is a tenor I told him about my piece SCRITTI DI LEONARDO. He was very interested in my ideas for operas, and invited me to hear him sing Herod with the San Francisco Opera in January 1997 (the performance was in the Civic Auditorium, since the Opera House was closed for earthquake retrofitting). When I went back stage he gave me his summary recommendation: the Nurnberg Trial was the best of the ideas I had mentioned to him. He also introduced me to an old friend of his, James Sullivan, and since Jim lives in the Bay Area he and I were in touch for awhile. Jim gave me a copy of the Ann and John Tusa book The Nuremberg Trial; interestingly, this book given by a musician has given me more musical ideas than any other single work on the subject. Jim thought that TNT should be similar in style to Ligeti, and though that's not what I have in mind, I certainly like most of Ligeti's music enough that the notion was congenial to me.
In 1997 I wrote a longish prose scenario of the opera and began to test this scenario against other research I conducted. Most of this stood the test of time until January of this year, when the intensity of the research increased by several notches to the point that it is an exceptional day that I don't work on TNT. Some parts of the scenario were absorbed into others, just a few deleted, and numerous other ideas were added, such as extensive scenes between the defendants, other Germans - not all of them being accused of anything! - and the American Army psychotherapeutic staff at the trial.
The opera's gist in certainly not "the punishment of the Germans." In fact there are a number of ways this sort of interpretation will be mitigated. For example, despite the fact that the Nazis were guilty of many crimes, in their interrogations and testimonies they made it clear that the West was going to have big problems with the Soviet Union. This was clear to everyone in the trial itself, when, from the beginning, the Soviets wanted to make a sham of justice with a mere show trial, to the end, when, upon leaving the city of Nuernberg, they absconded with everything in the house where they had been staying: everything, faucets, fixtures, even sinks. And then indeed the Soviets became the major American adversary in the Cold War. The Nazis had made it clear that this would happen... just because they were our enemies then does not mean they were completely wrong about all things. Also, some convicted Nazis will nevertheless have things to say, and these will be as true to events as I can make them. For example, when Jodl is interrogated by the Russians, they asked him "If you had been given the Commando Order, would you have signed it?" To which he replied in quite reasonable frustration, "If my grandmother had wheels, would she be a bicycle?" At this the Russians thought for a time that his grandmother had been in the war. The American soldiers will do some mildly crude things - exactly the things they did at Nuernberg - tormenting the prisoners. Mildly crude, but indicative of their crude American culture. The guilt of the "very guilty" is not disputed, but the "rightness" of the victors is not automatic, and will not defy the facts.
At the time of this writing the music for the opera is beginning to take shape in my mind in generalized and archetypal ways. I am most concerned with writing the libretto for the opera, which is in three acts, in about twenty scenes, not all of which are seperated conventionally. Of these, two scenes are completed: Justice Jackson's opening speech, and a trio scene for Rudolf Hoess, the commandant of Auschwitz, and two psychologists. This latter scene was given in a private reading on June 12, 2011 in Alameda, California, a landmark first appearance of any part of the opera.
I will post more about this project as it progresses... and I certainly welcome inquiry from any interested persons!
Christopher Fulkerson, Ph.D.
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