The new EDE TERENYI MONOOPERA – the eighth in this specific species configured in our space by the composer – processes Goethe’s celebrated play Faust, using texts and excerpts from the first part of the play. By taking this title option the composer is referring to a new ideas understanding under the light which both shadow and light appear in a continuous connection. That thought was decisive in choosing the text and within the one hour extent of the play the starting point is Mephistophele’s personality, the umbra manifestation, as Jung depicts it. In effect the conceptual background and basis is wholly the interaction between conscious and subconscious and noticing if they are at war or complete each other harmoniously.
The opera has five parts – settings – and the first four are made up of several scenes.
The first part (act as we might call it) chooses as main theme the prologue of the play the dialogue between the Lord and Mephistopheles, dialogue which presents itself as decisive for the following development of the action.
The second part is the Mephistopheles - Faust dialogue and the musical projection of that thought in which the two concepts or parts (umbra and persona, the shade and the light, Mephistopheles and Faust, the subconscious and the conscious) are opponents in a perpetual interior battle.
In the third part Mephistopheles takes Faust in Auerbach’s pub. He takes him down into the cellar…of the subconscious. Here, the latter can meet all of the elements that make up the subconscious, all of the raging first impulses, all of the human dreams in a pink boarded light realm and under the effect of the most light drug, the heavy violence of the uprise and of many other visuals on the negative and positive aspects of the instinctual world.
In the fourth part Mephistopheles presents his kingdom to Faust. This is the revealing of the Mammon mountain, the rush for gold, and for power regardless the costs.
The fifth part, very brief, is a prayer: Margaret prays to the Lord in her last moments of life. The title is Redemption.
This thread of ideas requires a music apart. The composer must descend in the world of the oldest musical gestures, trying to release those energies the fear itself inflicts through the most simple musical solutions.
The whole work is an homage brought to the anthroposophist Rudolf Steiner (the play has been created in his honour on the occasion of his 150th anniversary celebration that will occur next year and für Goetheanum formula of the subtitle refers to that building of special cosmic modernity, Rudolf Steiner dreamed about. Although ruined, it is, by its spirituality and effect still the bearer of the present symbol.
