Gunfighter Nation

Progressive! Expressive! Music and movement in the “Gunfighter Nation”, a Western Opera with Opera Lab Berlin

12 November 2016

Saori Kanemaki
by
bachtrack.com
published on
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Gunfighter Nation, the expressive Western Opera from Opera Lab Berlin (directed by Michael Höppner) is not about Buffalo Bill, or the support of aborigines and their civil rights, but rather the dark sides of the western-cultural vandalism according to the motto "Civilization of the Wilderness".

[...] The usual division of singers on the stage and instrumentalists in the pit does not apply here. In Gunfighter Nation, Evan Gardner employs a radical musical equality in a pleasing way. [...] Although contemporary music has often been combined with movement, the gap between music and movement has nevertheless always been clearly felt. In Gunfighter Nation, a more progressive, indeed uncluttered combination of music and action has been very successful through the accentuation of the acting component for all the musicians involved.

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