Adam and Eva

(2024) 110' / music theater for 6 singers, an actor, choir, and orchestra

libretto by Anne-May Krüger based on Peter Hacks‘ Adam und Eva, Komödie in einem Vorspiel und drei Akten

"The bite into the apple understood as opportunity and call for creativity"

Roles
Gott actress or actor
Gabriel coloratura soprano  
Satanael mezzo-soprano
Eva lyrical soprano
Adam baritone
Unicorn 1 alto
Unicorn 2 bass

Choir (3S 3A 3T 3B)

Orchestra: 0.0.2(II=bcl).0.-0.0.3.0.-2perc.acc.-3.0.3.3.1.-fixed media.live-elec

Commissioned by the Southwest German Radio (SWR) in collaboration with the Landestheater Linz. Premiere May 2nd, 2025 at the SWR Schwetzinger Festspiele with the soloist and choir from the Landestheater Linz, the Experimentalstudio des SWR Freiburg, Andrea Moses, stage direction, Mike Svoboda, conductor.

Scenario

What if the Fall from Grace was not a tragic misstep, but a necessary precondition on humanity’s path toward freedom? What if only in this way could providence fulfill itself? Humanity breaks with God, creates itself, and thereby becomes His equal.

By choosing to know good and evil, Eve and Adam assume — from that moment and for all time — responsibility for their own actions. The bite of the apple as an act of emancipation! And they immediately experience the painful states that such knowledge brings. They confront their newfound inner division in their likewise new, perfectly imperfect human way: witty, empathetic, reflective, loving, cheeky — and, when necessary, deceitful.

To be human is not easy, and now time itself is set in motion — they are aware of death! They must continually contend with both dark and bright forces. Yet while Satanael and Gabriel still struggle against each other — and for humankind — God gradually withdraws from the course of events. The Almighty leaves them to their self-chosen fate — and to the dialectical cleverness of two unicorns.

about the music

Anne-May Krüger and I chose Adam und Eva because it is a story everyone knows — full of preconceived notions that invite challenge and re-imagination. For me, the bite in the apple is an appeal for individual action and responsibility — a theme that feels more urgent today than ever. Beneath its mythic surface, the opera is a love story, and anyone who has ridden the roller coaster of love will recognize themselves in it.

The musical language of Adam und Eva stretches across a broad harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral spectrum — as wide as the emotional content of the story itself. There are no leitmotifs in the traditional sense. Instead, the principal figures — Adam, Eva, Gabriel, Satanael, and the two Unicorns — are defined by distinct intervals and rhythmic structures that continually transform as their roles and inner worlds evolve. The orchestra functions simultaneously as landscape, psychological echo chamber, and invisible actor. The electronics enter with the bite in the apple and expand this world beyond the orchestra’s reach, becoming an integral part of the dramaturgy. Unfolding in five parts, the opera moves from stasis through periodicity and simplicity toward a manic repetition of increasing rhythmic intensity. Finally, with an insistent, forward-driving pulse and an unapologetically positive invocation, the music turns outward — addressing the audience with a call to creativity, to the courage of re-invention, and to finding new solutions for old hierarchies and problems.

If I were to describe the score in a single image, I would say it is a recipe for a magic brownie — one that opens the heart and mind, inviting the listener to think outside the box.

A few words about the text from Peter Hacks

Peter Hacks’s engagement with the story of the Fall unfolds as a dialectical reflection on humanity’s entry into the real world. Paradise, in this view, can only be achieved through the pursuit of the unattainable — “the condition of society that does not exist, but which must be conceived as the goal of all rational action” (Hacks, Essay on the Libretto).

The rough and recalcitrant material from which God forms his world possesses a will of its own. Yet it is precisely from this that its potential arises: affirmation gains value because negation has become possible. Thus, as Gabriel laments, this new world is not round — it wobbles. From the impossibility of a perfect state, which by definition would also contain its opposite, emerges the reality of imperfection.

reviews of the premiere

Opern.news | May 4, 2025

“He [Mike Svoboda] gives the words a rhythmic foundation, limiting himself to atmospheric gestures or musical exclamation marks behind the sung sequences. In doing so, Svoboda moves freely within his own universe — one that follows no dogmas of modernism — and he makes use of his penchant for repeatedly and playfully crossing rigid genre boundaries with both delight and humor. What remains most striking is the pull of the thoughts — that is, the sung (and spoken) words — usually accompanied by short sequences of individual instruments.”

Frankfurter Rundschau | May 6, 2025

“The sonic result is not dense but rather slim and fresh, closely aligned with the text, and at its most beautiful when it turns sensual. At that point, one immediately feels the urge to bite into an apple. […] Svoboda keeps things grounded; the music, conducted by the composer himself, is complex but wears its complexity lightly. It carries the listener through the text […] Yet another world premiere that succeeds — and one that should not, for all its success and appeal to the audience, be regarded as the final word on this vivid work.”

junge Welt | May 7, 2025

“One of the strengths of the composition lies in the clarity of the text. Svoboda treats the voices and the orchestra in such a way that almost every word can be understood. Moreover, he writes music that allows for movement on stage. Eighteen musicians suffice for the composer, who also conducted the premiere with members of the hr-Sinfonieorchester, to produce a richly varied palette of timbres. After the sparse accompanying figures at the beginning, the later sections tend toward denser textures, with climaxes distributed with dramaturgical intelligence.”

Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten  | May 6, 2025

“With an apparently light touch, Svoboda — ever shifting among many approaches — weaves together various inspirations and, with the sparing use of electronics, creates something distinctly his own.”

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung | May 5, 2025

“Freedom, this opera insists, should be something grand and tragic — its grandeur and tragedy requiring no reference to anything transcendent beyond what is given. A liberal parable, then, that works only if it diminishes God’s final word — a word that the not particularly devout socialist Hacks, half a century ago, had granted him without envy. The wise original line in the play reads: ‘No, humans, you are right. Go your way.’”

nmz – neue musikzeitung | June 1, 2025

“Opulent, colorful, refined in its effects, and — following the festival motto — ‘seductive’. Svoboda’s music tells stories, entertains, is inventive, drives the action forward, and above all gives the soloists, in every aria and duet, opportunities to shine. […] The audience follows the colorful events on stage, with their familiar unhappy — or, dialectically speaking, happy — ending, while being completely enveloped, from head to toe, in Svoboda’s seductively beautiful music.”

DIE RHEINPFALZ – Ludwigshafener Rundschau | May 5, 2025

“With a small ensemble of strings, a few woodwinds, three trombones, percussion, and a prominently featured accordion, the composer often creates shimmering and multifaceted soundscapes and polyphonic structures of striking charm. […] The music is independent and willful, yet it never overshadows the text. […] The premiere was met with unanimous enthusiasm from the audience.”