Music and concept by Cecilia Arditto Delsoglio
Dramaturgy by Annette Müller
Musical direction by Pierre-Alain Monot
Based on original texts by Albert Camus
First Prize, Nationaltheater Mannheim. Premiered in 2024.
A chamber opera built from the chronological line of the novel. The work places Meursault at the center and treats the surrounding world as a shifting choir of singers, instruments, and objects.
The musical language is based on texture, precise notation, recurring sound figures, and scenic objects used as active musical agents: bars, fans, bells, water, sand, and a typewriter-like vibraphone.
The text is reduced and filtered from Camus’ novel, sung in French, with a clear balance between dramatic text and text as texture.
Texts and concept
1. Introduction
A reading of Camus’ novel through structure, motivic logic, sound descriptions, and psychological atmosphere.
2. Philosophy made music
Meursault set against society. A solo figure framed by singers, instruments, and objects as the outside world.
3. The music
Scenes, atmospheres, leitmotifs, objects as characters, and detailed notation integrated into the score.
4. The text
French text from the novel, reduced and reorganized as both narrative support and vocal texture.
Scene sketches
Stage design by Annette Müller
Performance Pics
Photos by Maximilian Borchardt
