Reise der Hoffnung - Voyage vers l'espoir

My opera Reise der Hoffnung – Voyage vers l’espoir is a modern drama concerning refugees and should be understood as one act of a complex human catastrophe. A family from Anatolia flees across Italy into Switzerland, in the process losing far more than just their life savings. They have actually lost everything: reciprocal trust, love and their child. I have musically juxtaposed the libretto, one of the most realistic of all my ten operas to date, with a formal three-act structure. Each act is characterised by an instrumental focus (Act I with concertante violin, Act II with a percussion set and Act III with two trumpets). This lends a compositional severity to the plot, which was conceived as a ‘road movie’: the real action onstage is contrasted by a virtually independent orchestral score. The subsequent tension creates the real drama of the work and its propulsive heartbeat. Christian Jost