The Raft of the “Medusa” (Das Floß der Medusa)

First transmission 9. december 1968

NDR Hamburg

Choir and Sinfonieorchester des NDR
Soprano Edda Moser
Baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau
Narrator Charles Regnier

Conductor Hans Werner Henze

World premiere 29. january 1971

Wien

Choir and Sinfonieorchester des ORF
Soprano Edda Moser
Baritone William Pearson
Narrator Helmut Janatsch

Conductor Miltiades Caridis

Scenic world premiere: 15. april 1972

Nürnberg

Städtische Bühnen

Production Wolfgang Weber
Stage design Peter Heyduck
Costume design Margret Kaulbach
Choir master Adam Rauh
Conductor Hans Gierster

The score of this oratorio dates from the years 1967 - 68 in Marino where I wrote it after years of planning and following the completion of the libretto by the poet Ernst Schnabel, to whom I owe the original idea. The piece is a sung reading of the logbook of a ship accidentally wrecked on the open sea and laden with dying people. The dying are the people of the Third World, the victims of the heartless and selfish world of the rich and powerful. Ernst Schnabel also had the dramatic idea of dividing the platform into two halves, one for the living, the other for the dead. Charon the Ferryman, a speaking part, mediates between these two worlds, which also differ from one another in their complement of instruments. Breathing (wind) instruments are assigned to the living whilst the dead, who briefly intone classical Italian from Dante’s Inferno as they enter their new realm, are accompanied solely by strings.

The outside world – that is to say a quite different reality from that of my music – influenced the work during the course of its composition. Forced, as I was, to encounter this burning subject as a composer, to depict betrayal, misery, and desperation caused by suffering and madness and to identify with the victims who speak in this piece, I felt my self growing closer to them, and the love and solidarity I felt for the persecuted, for those who suffer and fear for their lives, for the minorities who represent the majority, for the humiliated and wounded, grew with it. Schnabel and I envisaged the work as an allegory, as a description of struggle: of a struggle for clear life, out of which the spirit to fight and the determination to end an unbearable state of affairs will one day emerge.

Hans Werner Henze