On home turf ... Jonathan Safran Foer in Brooklyn. Photograph: Bebeto Matthews/AP
When Jonathan Safran Foer came to Berlin to work on the libretto for Seven Attempted Escapes from Silence he got a bit of a shock.
"He thought that during his two-week stay in Berlin, he would probably see us once and spend his time pretty much by himself," says Jörn Weisbrot from the Staatsoper unter den Linden in Berlin. "Often composers want to write their own libretto, which is often problematic. We were looking for an American writer who would come to Berlin, be inspired by the city and what he saw here, and reflect on the situation here from an outsider's perspective."
So instead of a quiet study break to get working on the commission, Safran Foer found himself in the middle of a grand tour. "We went with him to museums, strange places in Berlin (of which there are many), bars, theatre performances, gallery openings etc," says Weisbrot. "He did not really have much time to work on the libretto while he was here."
What he eventually came up with was a Kafkaesque ritual divided into seven parts. Each part is set in a jail, where the inmates have lost the power of speech. They can only make noises, expressing themselves by howling, screaming and crying. In each part there is an attempt made to escape both the prison, and silence itself. What the Berlin tourist board will make of it is anyone's guess.
"The idea of speechlessness was quite surprising at first," says Weisbrot, "but somehow seemed to be quite right for an operatic subject."
The libretto was divided up between seven composers. "We wanted to have composers from many different countries who were trained in many different ways," explains Weisbrot, "so each one would have a totally different approach to the subject which is somewhat similar for each of them. The text is very concrete and very abstract at the same time which gives each composer a great deal of freedom."
