PERFORMANCE DETAIL

Libretto: Alois Hába (1893–1973), edited by Ferdinand Pujman

 

Aois Hába’s third opera, Thy Kingdom Come, is composed in sixth-tone system and its libretto was co-created by Ferdinand Pujman. Unlike Mother, which specifically requires quarter-tone instruments, Thy Kingdom Come only calls for a sixth-tone harmonium, which can replaced with a keyboard today. Although Hába considered this opera to be the pinnacle of his artistic career, it has never been produced and the composer himself gave up trying. In 1942, when the work was completed, staging it was out of the question, and after the war, the ideology of socialist realism found the opera’s subject matter, influenced by Rudolf Steiner’s antroposophy, dangerously esoteric. The opera grows out of anti-war sentiment and the ideas of social justice and freedom of thought. More