Composer Michael Hersch adapts the tragedy of Medea from Ovid's Metamorphoses in his new opera for soprano Sarah Maria Sun, the vocal ensemble Schola Heidelberg, and Ensemble Musikfabrik. with librettist Stephanie Fleischmann. Hersch's setting underscores the profound psychological trauma at the heart of the tale with a characteristically powerful, bracing score.
Michael Hersch’s newest release sets the tragedy of Medea from Ovid’s Metamorphoses in a one act opera for soprano (Sarah Maria Sun), chamber voices (Schola Heidelberg), and ensemble (Ensemble Musikfabrik). In the myth, Medea was the granddaughter of Helios, the sun god, and a princess and sorceress. She leaves her home to follow her husband Jason to Corinth, using her extraordinary abilities to assist his rise to power and fame. When he leaves her for another woman, she lashes out in horrific revenge, killing their two children. Hersch and librettist Stephanie Fleischmann mine the Medea story to explore profound questions of fate, vengeance, and remorse. Does revenge exist that is not also at its core self-sabotage? How can one move beyond terrible actions in one’s past? Hersch’s powerful, wrenching music and Fleischmann’s austere libretto are fitting vehicles to capture the brutal violence of the classic story, a violence that lingers in the inner realm as much as it manifests in the outer world.
By including a vocal ensemble in addition to the solo soprano, Hersch and Fleischmann establish the multi-dimensionality in the story, assigning figures in Medea’s life as well as sides of her own persona to the additional voices. Hersch notes that the work is flexible in its presentation, supporting staged, semi-staged, or unstated performances, as the power of the text and music themselves are evocative on their own, making it a perfect opera for the recording medium.
Medea opens with four and half minutes of instrumental music, We first hear a suspended, closely spaced cluster in the winds whose uneasy stasis is quickly shattered by sharp keyboard chords and foreboding swells in the winds. Startling, angular piano attacks rip at the music’s fabric, unleashing a torrent of fiery outbursts in the brass and feverish passagework in the high winds and strings. There is a wildness in this introductory section, not of the carefree variety, but expressive of events and impulses that have spiraled out of control. When we finally hear a low brass arrival, dramatic cymbal crash, and return to the unsettling string sonority of the opening, Hersch has more than adequately set the stage for the entrance of our deeply complex protagonist.
Medea’s first words, “Look at me,” turn our attention immediately to the reckoning she is undergoing, one in which we vicariously participate that is at the core of the opera. The vocal line is initially disembodied and alienated from the horror of the character’s actions, but later grows into defiance: “You think you know what I’ve done.” When the vocal ensemble enters, it is not with the neutrality of a Greek chorus, but instead with judgement and derision: “She’s still here… We cannot erase her.” Maria Sun ignites the flames of the ensemble with cutting high register exclamations, inviting a matching intensity from the winds, brass, and piano.
Towards the beginning of Part II, Hersch sets the text with a insistent figure that metastasizes from one section of the ensemble to the voice to another section, like a visceral sensation in the body. A relative halo of light appears in the texture as Maria Sun luminously sings “Tender morning light” with support from the chorus, only to become more agitated as she implores for a life “free of terror.” Hersch carves out room for brief moments of respite as well, such as the hints of an early Baroque viol consort at the 2:40 mark, a meditation on the mystery of Medea’s mindset that reappears momentarily at other junctures in the work. By the time Maria Sun sings, “I had no choice,” the music is in full force again, driving to a climactic high arrival in soprano, vocal ensemble, and instruments on “my home.” This motif of a high vocal note on “home” recurs at 8:18, reinforcing the searing pain that Medea felt in leaving her birthplace. Indeed, Hersch and Fleischmann particularly emphasize moments in the text when Medea reflects on her fate, establishing the inner context for her actions. This is characteristic of their work with other complex female characters from mythology and history like that of the life of Poppaea; instead of dismissively demonizing these notorious characters, they seek to humanize them, opening the audience up to their painful internal motivations in a kind of process of exposure and catharsis.
The opening of Part III encapsulates the complex and disturbing duality in Medea’s character. The gentle viol strings accompany the sentiment, “If I could exhume my murdered children, I would. I would carry their tender, broken bodies across the sea.” But Medea’s defiance reasserts itself with a jagged melodic line on “they say I killed them,” over clamorous harmonies in the ensemble and chorus, imploring Medea to come to terms with the horror of her actions. Grinding sul ponticello swells in the strings and haunting sustains in the winds support Medea’s dissociated admission, “I left them behind when I fled, I flew toward the sun.” As the piece progresses, a picture emerges of a protagonist that feels either in extremes or, at certain times of particular trauma, not at all.
In the opening section of Part IV, Medea sings a macabre maternal monologue over unsettling sustained clusters that evolve timbrally and explode unexpectedly. Hersch lets the tension build steadily during this extended passage, as the relative stasis only barely masks the intensity brewing underneath.The vocal ensemble is present in the score in continuous passages bubbling up as if from an underworld cauldron, swirling around the protagonist like a verdict from a jury made of her peers and her self-loathing internal personas. A dense, bracing tutti climax marked by virtuosic passagework in the brass breaks and leaves the voices alone, desperately proclaiming, “if she could exhume her children, she would.” The solo soprano singing, “but I left them behind," is then accompanied by nervous, oscillating figures in the pianos, joined by a disembodied high line in the first violin. Medea closes in a stunned, ephemeral haze, clusters and stark harmonies in the ensemble colored by pointed utterances in the vocal ensemble, and a final chord that destabilizes at its very end, shaking loose any certainty that the piece had come to any firm conclusion.
Hersch and colleagues expertly give Medea’s story layers of dimension that go far beyond the stock reading of this tale of trauma. The musical language balances the demands of holding the dark expression of the music throughout while building in sufficient relief to provide contrast and prepare for subsequent structural climaxes. Fleischmann’s unconditional libretto is economical, only including the text needed for maximum impact, and Sarah Maria Sun, Schola Heidelberg, and Ensemble Musikfabrik deliver a performance that meets the intensity of the work at its formidable peaks and seething valleys. Medea succeeds in offering a portrayal of the classical myth that does not turn away from its gruesome details. In this age of layered denial in the face of unspeakable cruelty, this is a powerful role for art, to show the way towards an honest reckoning with the human impact of violence and suffering.
- Dan Lippel
Commissioned by Ensemble Musikfabrik and Kunststiftung NRW
A Westdeutsche Rundfunk Cologne Production, 2023
Recorded on 3 June 2023 at Klaus-von-Bismarck-Saal,
Westdeutscher Rundfunk, Cologne, Germany
Executive producer: Patrick Hahn
Recording producer: Leonard Loock
Recording engineer: Jens Digel
Recording assistant & editing: Harald Oberhäuser
Mastering: Dirk Franken
Photos: Janet Sinica
Cover design: Tim Holt
Drawing p. 4: Kevin Tuttle, Medea, 2023, graphite on paper
P. 7: Michael Hersch, sketch from MEDEA manuscript, 2022
Design & layout: Marc Wolf, marcjwolf.com
Special thanks to Yelena Baraz and Jhumpa Lahiri for permission to include
an excerpt from their forthcoming translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
Licensed by WDR mediagroup GmbH
℗ & © 2025 WDR
A composer of “uncompromising brilliance” (The Washington Post) whose work has been described by The New York Times as “viscerally gripping and emotionally transformative music ... claustrophobic and exhilarating at once, with moments of sublime beauty nestled inside thickets of dark virtuosity,” Michael Hersch is widely considered among the most gifted composers of his generation. Recent events and premieres include his Violin Concerto at the Lucerne Festival in Switzerland and the Avanti Festival in Helsinki; new productions of his monodrama, On the Threshold of Winter, in Chicago, Salt Lake City, and Washington D.C., and his I hope we get a chance to visit soon at the Ojai and Aldeburgh Festivals, where Mr. Hersch was a 2018 featured composer. Recent premieres include his 11-hour chamber cycle, sew me into a shroud of leaves, a work which occupied the composer for fifteen years, at the 2019 Wien Modern Festival. 2020/21 will see the premiere of his new opera, Poppaea, in Vienna and Basel as part of the Wien Modern Festival in a co-production with ZeitRäume Basel and Gare du Nord Basel / Netzwerk zur Entwicklung formatübergreifende Musiktheaterformen. During the 2019/20 season, Mr. Hersch has been named Composer-in-Residence with the Camerata Bern. In February 2020, his recent work Agatha saw performances in both Bern and Geneva.
Over the past several years, Hersch has written new works for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Klang, Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, Alban Berg Ensemble Wien, and the Library of Congress. Other notable recent events include European performances by the Kreutzer Quartet of Images from a Closed Ward in the U.K. and Sweden, a recording of the work by the acclaimed FLUX Quartet, a work for solo violin commissioned by the New York Philharmonic, premiered at the orchestra’s Biennial in 2014.
Recently Hersch has worked closely with violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, the violinist commissioning both his Violin Concerto, which premiered in 2015, and his chamber work ... das Rückgrat berstend, which premiered at New York City’s Park Avenue Armory during the autumn of 2017. She recently recorded the concerto with the International Contemporary Ensemble (I.C.E.), and the duo with cellist Jay Campbell. Most recently, Kopatchinskaja performed one of the solo roles in the world premiere of Agatha in Bern.
Notable past performances include Night Pieces, commissioned and premiered by the Cleveland Orchestra, and a song cycle for baritone and piano, Domicilium, commissioned and premiered by Thomas Hampson and Wolfgang Rieger on San Francisco Performances. Hersch’s second piano concerto, along the ravines, was given performances with the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie and the Seattle Symphony Orchestra, and as part of the George Enescu International Festival in Romania. Mr. Hersch’s end stages was commissioned and premiered by the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra, his Zwischen Leben und Tod recently received it’s European premiere, and A Forest of Attics, commissioned for the Network for New Music’s 25th anniversary season, was selected as one of the year’s most important classical music events by The Philadelphia Inquirer. The paper said of the work, “A Forest of Attics threw a Molotov cocktail into the concert: Everything before it paled in comparison ... Hersch has written some towering works in recent years; this is yet another.”
Also a pianist, noted for his “astounding facility at the keyboard” (International Piano), Mr. Hersch has appeared around the world including appearances at the Ojai Festival, Aldeburgh Festival, the Festival Dag in de Branding in the Netherlands, the Warhol Museum, the Romaeuropa Festival, the Phillips Collection in Washington D.C., Cleveland’s Reinberger Chamber Hall, the Festival of Contemporary Music Nuova Consonanza, the Network for New Music Concert Series, the Left Bank Concert Society, Festa Europea della Musica, St. Louis’ Sheldon Concert Hall, and in New York City at Merkin Concert Hall, the 92nd St. Y - Tisch Center for the Performing Arts, and Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall, among others.
Born in Washington D.C. in 1971, Michael Hersch came to international attention at age twenty-five, when he was awarded First Prize in the Concordia American Composers Awards. The award resulted in a performance of his Elegy, conducted by Marin Alsop in New York’s Alice Tully Hall. Later that year he became one of the youngest recipients ever of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Composition. Mr. Hersch has also been the recipient of the Rome Prize, the Berlin Prize, the Goddard Lieberson Fellowship and Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts & Letters, and the President’s Frontier Award from the Johns Hopkins University, among other honors.
https://www.michaelhersch.com/The recipient of Opera America’s 2022 Campbell Librettist Prize, Stephanie Fleischmann is a librettist and playwright whose texts serve as blueprints for intricate three-dimensional sonic and visual worlds. She has been called a “neo Emily Dickinson” (Backstage) and “a writer who can conjure something between a dreamy road movie and a theatrical coming-of-age tale, and who can piece these elements together in the style of a jagged ballad for guitar” (Chicago Sun Times). Her “lyrical monologues” (The New York Times), “finely tuned” opera libretti (Opera News), plays and music-theater works have been performed internationally and across the U.S. Opera libretti include: In a Grove (music by Christopher Cerrone), Dido (music by Melinda Wagner), After the Storm (music by David Hanlon), The Long Walk (music by Jeremy Howard Beck), The Property (commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago, 2015). Upcoming: Another City (music by Jeremy Howard Beck, for Houston Grand Opera, 2023), The Pigeon Keeper (music by David Hanlon, for Santa Fe Opera’s Opera for All Voices, Santa Fe, 2023), Arkhipov (music by Peter Knell, developed c/o Seattle Opera; Jacaranda, 2022, directed by Elkhanah Pulitzer, conducted by Daniela Candillari). Current opera collaborations include 3 projects with Opera America Female Discovery grant composers—The Visitation, with Christina Campanella; Seven Sisters, with Justine F. Chen (workshop: Manhattan School of Music); Barrel of Laughs, Vale of Tears, with Julia Adolphe (National Sawdust/ Brooklyn Youth Chorus)—and L’Autre Moi, with Matthew Recio (West Edge’s Aperture; Chicago Opera Theater). Fleischmann recently completed a Medea, which premiered in 2023, with music by Michael Hersch, performed by Sarah Maria Sun, Schola Heidelberg and Ensemble MusikFabrik in Cologne. Her texts and songs have been set by composers Anna Clyne (The Years, for Scottish National Chamber Orchestra and Choir), Olga Neuwirth (Aldeburgh, Basel, Berlin, Vienna), Christopher Cerrone (Last Message Received, for Northwestern, and Wind Phone, Goleta, CA, April 22, for Conspirare), Gity Razaz (She Sings, for Brooklyn Youth Chorus, Bang on a Can Longplay), Sxip Shirey, Jorge Sosa, Elspeth Brooke, and others. Fleischmann’s rendition of Carnival of the Animals has been seen at the Ojai Festival and the Hollywood Bowl.
Widely recognized as one of the foremost performers of contemporary music, Sarah Maria Sun’s repertoire currently spans music from the 16th through 21st centuries, including some 400 world premieres. She performs regularly around the world as soloist in concert halls and festivals such as the KKL Luzern, Suntory Hall Tokyo, the Muziekgebow Amsterdam, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Tonhalle Zurich, the Auditorio National Madrid, the Berlin and Cologne Philharmonics, the Biennale Paris, Venice and Munich, the Arnold Schönberg Center Vienna; and major festivals in Witten, Donaueschingen, Herrenhausen, and Cervantino and Vertice in Mexico. She has appeared at the opera houses of Zurich, Basel, Berlin, Dresden, Frankfurt, Munich, Dusseldorf, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Leipzig, Strasbourg, Luxembourg, Zagreb, the Opéra Bastille, and the Opéra Comique in Paris.
Her theatrical and musical skills have led her to frequently inhabit complex female figures. For her performances as Elsa/Lohengrin (Lohengrin by Salvatore Sciarrino, Salzburg Easter Festival 2017) and as Gwen (Psychoses 4.48 by Philip Venables, Semper Zwei Dresden 2019) she was nominated as Vocalist of the Year.
Sarah Maria Sun has performed with noted conductors such as François Xavier Roth, Sir Simon Rattle, Ingo Metzmacher, Kent Nagano, Alan Gilbert, Thomas Hengelbrock, Susanna Mälkki, Peter Rundel, Heinz Holliger, together with the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, the Berlin Philharmonic, the North, Bavarian, South-West and West German Radio Orchestras, the Dresden Philharmonic, the Antwerp and Tokyo Symphony Orchestras and ensembles such as Ensemble Musikfabrik, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Mosaik, and Ensemble Intercontemporain, as well as the string quartets Diotima, Arditti, Minguet and Signum.
From 2007-2014, she was the first soprano of the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, a chamber ensemble of seven singers that has been one of the world’s leading pioneers of contemporary music for decades.
Sarah Maria Sun’s discography includes more than 40 CDs, many of which have been awarded with and nominated for prizes. She is also an illustrator and author of children’s books and releases songs with the band Titillating Tofu.
As an educator, she regularly gives masterclasses for vocal music from the 20th and 21st centuries; she has taught at universities and conservatoires in Oslo, Harvard, Chicago, Stockholm, Zurich, Bale, Rostock, Moscow, Dresden, Hannover, Graz or Berlin. In 2018 she was guest professor at the Musikhochschule Hannover. In 2019-2022 she worked as a guest professor, tutor and lecturer at the music universities of Hannover, Graz and Lucerne. In 2022 she was appointed Professor for Contemporary Music at the Musikhochschule Basel, Switzerland.
Virtuosity coupled with versatility. Both individually and collectively, the vocal soloists of the Schola Heidelberg are equally at home with widely differing styles and vocal techniques, from the works of the distant past to music of the present day which employs microtonal intonation and vocal and respiratory noise. Under the artistic directorship of their founder Walter Nußbaum, works from the 16th/17th and the 20th/21st centuries meet head-on, often with extraordinary results. A new interpretive culture materializes from an intensive concern with historically informed performance and contemporary music. The ensemble’s extensive repertoire bears the fruit of close collaboration with leading present-day composers. Much noted are the commissions for new works deriving from projects like Heimathen and Prinzhorn.
Schola Heidelberg performs in its home city, all over Germany and at international festivals like the Salzburg Festival, Milano Musica, the Lucerne Festival, the Venice Biennale, Salzburg Biennale, and the Festival d’automne in Paris.The Schola has successful cooperative partnerships with leading groups such as Ensemble Modern, the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne, the SWR Symphony Orchestra, the Bamberg Symphony Orchestra, the Deutsche Radio Philharmonie, and the Gürzenich Orchestra.
Schola Heidelberg‘s recordings of vocal compositions from the 20th/21st centuries have received acclaim resulting in multiple international awards.
Since its foundation in 1990, Ensemble Musikfabrik (Landesensemble NRW) has had the reputation of being one of the leading ensembles for contemporary music. In keeping with the literal meaning of its name, Ensemble Musikfabrik is particularly concerned with commissioning and producing new works, often in close collaboration with composers. The results of their extensive endeavors, are performed by the international Cologne-based soloist ensemble in numerous concerts in Germany and abroad, at festivals, in the self-organized concert series “Musikfabrik im WDR” and “Montagskonzerte” (often with live broadcasts), and in audio and video productions. WERGO released the CD series “Edition Musikfabrik” with cover art by Gerhard Richter, who chose the paintings for the CDs himself. In 2014, the in-house Label Musikfabrik was founded.
Exploring forms of modern communication and new possibilities for expression in music and theatre are a focal point. Interdisciplinary projects that include live electronics, dance, theatre, live video, and visual art expand the conventional form of the conducted ensemble concert. Thanks to its extraordinary profile and its superb artistic quality, the Ensemble Musikfabrik is sought after world wide and is a trusted partner of renowned composers and conductors.
Since 2013, the ensemble owns a completely reconstructed set of Harry Partch’s instruments. Under the title PITCH 43_TUNING THE COSMOS, many compositions have been written especially for or with these instruments. In addition, the brass players’ instruments, equipped with double bells, are another outstanding feature of the ensemble’s eagerness to experiment.
Ensemble Musikfabrik has set itself the task of promoting the younger generation of performers and composers. Central initiatives are “Studio Musikfabrik” (Youth Ensemble for New Music of the Landesmusikrat NRW) and “Adventure”, which since 2019 has been developing projects by composition students of the Cologne University of Music and Dance and presenting them in four annual concert phases. The ensemble bundles these and other educational activities under the title “Akademie Musikfabrik”.
Ensemble Musikfabrik is supported by the state of North Rhine-Westphalia and the City of Cologne. Ensemble Musikfabrik is registered as a not-for-profit organization under German law (“eingetragener Verein”), all major artistic and business decisions are made by the members.
Bas Wiegers is one of the most exciting conductors working today. A regular guest of orchestras, soloist ensembles and opera houses across Europe, he commands a vast repertoire from the Baroque to the present.
Recently appointed the Associated Conductor of the Munich Chamber Orchestra, he has led performances of music ranging from Haydn, Weill, and Dutilleux, to the premieres of new concertos by Márton Illés and Chaya Czernowin. The ensemble is not only performing regularly in Munich, but can also be heard at the Now! Festival Essen and the Mozartfest Würzburg.
During the 2024/25 season, he was reengaged with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra on the occasion of the 750th anniversary of the city of Amsterdam, along with invitations from the SWR Symphonieorchester, the Rundfunk-Sinfonieorchester Berlin, and the Slovenian Philharmonic Orchestra. On the rostrum of the Klangforum Wien, of which he was principal guest conductor until 2022, he gave his Salzburg Festival debut in 2024 for a concert performance of Georg Friedrich Haas’ KOMA. With Ensemble Modern he appears at the Venice Biennale for the first time. On the occasion of Pierre Boulez’ anniversary in 2025, Bas Wiegers conducted Répons on a tour with the Asko Schönberg Ensemble.
In his homeland of the Netherlands, he has worked with all major orchestras. In addition, he has been a guest with the Belgian National Orchestra, Trondheim Symphony Orchestra, Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra, Estonian National Symphony Orchestra, and Konzerthausorchester Berlin, Ensemble Resonanz, Britten Sinfonia and SWR Vokalensemble. He has conducted at the Cologne Opera, Opéra national de Lorraine (Britten, Mozart), Theatre Bern, the Klagenfurt Theater (Haas, Sciarrino), Festspielhaus Erl, and appeared at festivals including Musikfest Berlin, Wiener Festwochen, Tongyeong International Music Festival, Aldeburgh Music Festival, Avanti! Summer Sounds, Prague Spring and Ruhrtriennale.
Bas Wiegers has established meaningful relationships and collaborated with many of today’s leading composers, including Georges Aperghis, Georg Friedrich Haas, Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, and Rebecca Saunders.
With his podcast The Treasure Hunt, Bas Wiegers regularly dives deep into the realm of scores and gives his listeners a very personal insight into his working process as a conductor. He is also involved in promoting young talent as a board member of the Kersjes Foundation and guest professor of conducting at the Amsterdam Conservatory.
New Focus Recordings is an artist-led collective label featuring releases in contemporary creative music of many stripes, as well as new approaches to older repertoire. The label was founded by guitarist Dan Lippel, composer Peter Gilbert in 2004, and composer/engineer Ryan Streber in 2004, formed …Read More …
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