The hoopoe had an outstanding significance in Henze's animal world, going so far as to dedicate an entire opera to it.
The hoopoe (Italian: "L'Upupa") had a prominent place in Henze's animal world. It likes to stay in olive orchards, where it also nests, be it in woodpecker holes or in wall cavities. So the composer was able to observe these birds year after year in Marino, from their arrival from Africa in mid-March to the rearing of their young to their departure in mid-September, was able to study their plumage, their flight behaviour and their way of searching for food. But he was particularly taken with the call of the male hoopoe, which usually consists of three-syllable (rarely 2 to 5-syllable) stanzas (up-up-up) repeated at intervals of about 5 seconds. In the 1990s, Hans Werner Henze spent the winter months on the island of Lamu, which belongs to Kenya and is characterised by Islamic culture. This led the composer to a re-encounter with the poems of Rumi and Hafis, and to a more general preoccupation with Arab culture, the viewing of Persian visual art and a study of music in the Arab cultural area. The 27th sura of the Qur'an (verses 20-28) is about the hoopoe as a messenger between Sulaiman (Solomon) and the Queen of Sheba. All these reflections and experiences culminated in his 2003 opera, L'Upupa and the Triumph of Filial Love, for which he wrote a libretto himself for the first time. The names of the various fantasy places in his text correspond to real places around Lamu Island, such as Manda Island, Pate Island, Matandoni or Kipungani.
Henze's estate contains numerous hoopoe portraits as well as the pictured carafe with a hoopoe engraving, mostly gifts from Henze's friends from the time the opera was written between 1999 and 2003.
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