Erwartung 1980

Synopsis
Artists

The nightmare journey…

…of a woman’s crazing mind.

(presented as a triple-bill with Die Jakobsleiter and Von Heute auf Morgan)

Music By

Arnold Schoenberg

Libretto By

Marie Pappenheim

English Version By

Bliss Hebert

Erwartung (Expectation)

The scene is set in a forest.

On a moonlit night, a solitary woman comes to the edge of a park. The trees remind the woman of “our garden” and therefore of “him.” The night, the woods and the moon threaten her, but she is drawn deeper into them searching for “him.”

She hears things. She suffers apparitions. She imagines she is being attacked. She finds strength to go on only by remembering the “garden.” She reveals that “he” may have abandoned her. She waits and listens, but hears only the night. Frightened by a bird, she runs and stumbles against a tree. She mistakes the tree for a body.

She is completely terrified by her surroundings and imagines she hears the lover she seeks calling her. A shadow reminds her of his shadow on her wall. She complains that he must leave her so quickly and that the night is such a long time away. She is drawn still deeper, crying for her lover’s protection against the wild beasts.

She has hurt herself. She finds nothing. She feels no wind. She hears no sound. The night means death. She sees a bench in the deathly moonlight and heads for it, although she fears a “strange female will chase me away.” Her foot strikes something; a man’s corpse, still warm. She collapses, then recovers to identify the corpse. It is “him.” She calls for help. She tries to revive him. And then she begins to reproach him, for becoming interested in another woman, for abandoning her: Kisses and embraces change to kicks and jealous tantrums. Dawn begins. The woman rises, leaves the corpse and goes off into the shadows.

Synopsis

Erwartung (Expectation)

Artists

Nancy Shade

Nancy Shade

David Agler

David Agler

Bliss Hebert

Bliss Hebert

Maxine Willi Klein

Maxine Willi Klein

Craig Miller

Craig Miller

Erwartung 1980