Theater Dortmund is presenting La Montagne Noire (The Black Mountain) for the first time in Germany since its premiere in 1895.
A bitter war rages between Montenegro and Turkey. The Montenegrin warriors Mirko and Aslar return victorious from the last battle. According to an old custom, the two swear eternal loyalty to each other until death and thus become brothers. Nothing now seems to stand in the way of the final victory over the Ottoman troops when Mirko meets the beautiful Turkish woman Yamina. He saves her from death and cannot resist her attraction. Although he is actually engaged to Héléna, he leaves her and at the same time commits treason against Montenegro. Aslar pursues the two in order to restore his brother's honor ...
As a woman, Augusta Holmès found it difficult to establish herself as a composer in Paris throughout her life. As a result, her opera La Montagne Noire quickly fell into oblivion after its premiere in 1895. However, the work impressively demonstrates the special qualities of Holmès, who not only used an opulent late-romantic tonal language in her music, but also wrote the libretto for her work herself. The text was not purely fictionalized by her, rather the composer based it on real, traditional Slavic heroic songs, some of which she used verbatim in her libretto. The characters in the opera have real-life role models, such as the title character Mirko, who is based on the historical figure of Marko Kraljević. Marko, a young Serbian warrior who switched to the opposing side as an Ottoman vassal, is still revered and sung about in Slavic folk song culture to this day. In this sense, the opera impressively reflects the deconstruction of history and the creation of false hero myths.
German premiere: January 13, 2024
Further performances: January 19 and 24, February 17, April 11 and May 10, 2024
