Gerhard E. Winkler is a composer, but also a philosopher, psychologist, and musicologist. This multi-perspective approach is clearly audible in his work. Not to forget his early cultivated engagement with the possibilities of electronics in the creation of new music.
“For me, composing is not an abstract, purely inner-artistic process. I am interested in the anchoring of art in the human being, the musician’s life, the diversity of perception of aesthetic processes, the references to life in which art exists, the world of feelings and fantasies, fears,” says Gerhard E. Winkler in an interview with music journalist Ljubiša Tošic.
One dialogue. Two gentlemen. That is what Pirandello puts under the title of his play “The Man with the Flower in His Mouth”. The two gentlemen, one a singer, the other an actor, meet in the short opera of the same name by Gerhard E. Winkler. Their meeting occurs by chance, late in the evening at a coffee house table near the station. One is there because he has missed his train, the other because he wants to get to the bottom of the meaning of life which for him won’t last much longer because “the flower in his mouth” is a deadly tumour. One gets into conversation, almost in the manner of Becket, about a women, one of the men is too fearful, whilst the other is too overwhelming. Eventually, the conversation slowly approaches its ending, the woman who is the subject of the conversation keeps flirting ghostly through the scene. Is it possible for one of the men to live through the other?
Mundbogenrelikte („Mouth bow relics”)
However, Gerhard E. Winkler is not only involved in the 2017 Salzburg Pocket Opera Festival through the music theatre piece “Der Mann mit der Blume im Mund” (“The Man with a flower in this mouth”). As a continuation of his “Anamorph” cycle, which has been running since 2014, the world premiere of “Mundbogenrelikte” was also created – a choreographic study for harp and performer – which is a highly intense interlude created in close collaboration with the director Thierry Bruehl.
The Man with the Flower in his Mouth
Short opera basend on Pirandello for baritone, narrator and ensemble
Commissioned work for Pocket Opera Festival Salzburg 2017
Music Gerhard E. Winkler
Director Thierry Bruehl
Man Andreas Jankowitsch
Guest Hans-Peter Jahn
Woman Constanze Passin
Mundbogenrelikte (Mouth Bow Relics)
Choreographic Studies for Harp and Performer
Music Gerhard E. Winkler
Director Thierry Bruehl
