In "massacre" Wolfgang Mitterer presents us with a passionate analysis of a timeless threesome: power, religion and violence. An opera for five singers, nine musical instruments and electronics.
Based on Christopher Marlowe’s drama »The massacre at Paris«, Wolfgang Mitterer paints an acoustic picture of destruction, conspiracy and the thrill of power. His protagonists virtually rid themselves of their identities, turning into typological representations of different points of view. The concrete electronic sounds used by the composer throughout the score as realistic sprinklings push aside the historical dimension and fragment the chronology of the narrative. The ensemble follows the score, which uses a graphical notation so as to leave the musicians room to find their own expression. A highly intense experience!
 
»Mitterer belongs to the long line of composers for whom music is not transcendental, whose music neither knows, nor searches for, the prophetic hereafter of eternal joy. His music plays on this side of heaven, in the run of the mill, resounding in the deaf stone of the earth, there where – putting an end to divine judgement – “there is a stink of being” in the words of Antonin Artaud.« (quote from the booklet by Stéphan Roth)