Matthias Pintscher - Nuit sans aube (Das kalte Herz): French premiere, at the Opéra Comique in Paris

Opéra Comique (Salle Favart), Paris, Tuesday March 17, 2026

Conductor: Matthias Pintscher. Production: James Darrah Black. Sets: Adam Rigg. Costumes: Molly Irelan. Lighting: Yi Zhao. Vidéo: Hana Kim. Peter: Evan Hughes. Anubis: Marie-Adeline Henry. Mère: Katarina Bradić. Clara: Catherine Trottmann. Vieille femme: Julie Robard-Gendre. Azaël: Hélène Alexandridis. Enfant: Elias Passard. Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France.

Photos © Stéphane Brion

‘Un bon opéra c'est d'abord un bon livret,’ i.e. a good opera starts with a good libretto. Discuss.

So as not to die an idiot, as the French saying goes, I try to have a couple of new operas lined up every season. The policy has served me quite well: more often than not, the experience turns out to be rewarding. My first discovery this season, Matthias Pintscher’s Nuit sans aube at the Opéra Comique, was, for once, less so, and I think the main reason was that the text (you could hardly call it a ‘plot’) failed to engage my interest, to say the least.

Pintscher was, for ten years, music director of France’s Ensemble Intercontemporain (founded in 1976 by Boulez and specialising in contemporary music), teaches composition at Juilliard and is music director of the Kansas Symphony. Nuit sans Aube, in twelve scenes with four interludes of Waldmusic, was commissioned by Daniel Barenboim and Louis Langrée (now in charge of the Opéra Comique), and premiered in its German version, Das kalte Herz, at the Staatsoper Berlin in January. Both texts were supplied by poet Daniel Gerzenberg, inspired by an 1827 fairy tale by Wilhelm Hauff, in which, to win wealth and success, a young man swaps his heart for a stone and comes to regret it. The libretto, however, strays so far from the original that the source is almost irrelevant.

In the opera, the house website tells us (in French):

‘Peter is plagued by an intense malaise that his fiancée Clara cannot alleviate. He becomes convinced he must rid himself of his heart. Born on a Sunday and bearing a mysterious mark, he is unaware that his mother has, since his birth, destined him for sacrifice. She is at the mercy of two occult powers: the demon Azaël and the goddess Anubis. She will come to understand—only too late—that having become a pawn in a bloody tradition, she has sealed her son’s fate. This enigmatic fable, whose poetry is interwoven with elements of the Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Old Testament, aims to be hypnotic and evocative, like “a sonic nightmare” (Pintscher).’ 

The mark of Cain, Azaël, Anubis… These are weighty add-ons for a 100-minute tale that, in the event, may indeed be somewhat hypnotic (after 20 minutes or so, you do settle into the work’s slow pace), but they are no help in marking out a clear narrative, provoke little action, and go doggedly unexplained. The text is full of suffering, calls for atonement, purity, and submission to meaningless rules: red flags to me, as anyone who’s read how I feel about Parsifal will know. But as a mysterious law of silence is also repeatedly evoked (as well as being in archaic French, the text is repetitive, fairy tale oblige), you never know why. Nor, it seems, do the characters. Their gloomy pronouncements remain frustratingly gnomic. I found myself wondering how anyone, including the librettist and composer themselves, could seriously take an interest in them.

Amusingly, the Opéra Comique’s own dramaturge, who wrote the introduction, was also evidently flummoxed:

‘What do this forest, these deities from different traditions, and the central pair of Peter and his mother represent? What is the work a parable of? Perhaps the overwhelming role of vulnerability and beliefs in human life. Perhaps our relationship with nature, between alienation and mysticism. Deliberately open to interpretation, Nuit sans aube appeals to the senses and sensibilities.’ 

There is a substantial audience of ‘hardcore’ contemporary music fans in France, quite capable, for example, as I saw recently when I attended the premiere of a friend’s newest work, of filling Radio France’s handsome auditorium for a week-long festival of premieres. Pintscher’s music, I thought as I discovered it, is perhaps really for those serious connoisseurs, not dilettantes like myself. The score of Nuit sans aube, mostly deep, dark and slow-moving, is atmospheric and evocative (i.e. not of the ‘bubble-and-squeak’ school, if I may stoop to crude shorthand), but without the seductive surface shimmer of Saariaho. Low chords shift and surge, reinforced by sound effects from left and right, and die away, the forest rustles, tiny creatures creep, a bird flutters up, and while there are occasional, agitated brass outbursts, more often the delicate details (such as fleeting, near-whispered brass squiggles) are barely audible… From the outset, we hear hints of Wagner (e.g. Siegfried’s funeral music), and Peter gets, near the end, a very fine a cappella monologue that recalls another Peter: Grimes in his ravings. It’s no doubt a score that needs savouring, but one question is whether I’d actually want to sit through it again, and another is whether it’s actually, in all its allusive subtlety, suitable for the pit of an opera house. 

Nevertheless, Berlin and Paris have done the work proud with a strong cast and a visually striking production. Julie Robard-Gendre (the Old Woman) is a rich and powerful mezzo, a little wild and woozy at the top, matching her slightly manic characterisation. Katarina Bradić, an almost equally powerful but more controlled mezzo, is a solid, committed Mother. Soprano Catherine Trottmann navigates the high, coloratura-like demands of Clara’s part with apparent ease. Marie-Adeline Henry sings Anubis with impressive volume, range and metal. Hélène Alexandridis is a worryingly charismatic (spoken) Azaël.

As the central character, Peter, bass-baritone Evan Hughes is equally charismatic, in a different way, looking (tall and gaunt and bearded) like an El Greco saint. Vocally, he’s especially successful in his soft, lyrical passages and that last, Grimes-like soliloquy.

Radio France’s Orchestre Philharmonique, conducted by the composer, has been much praised in the press, but at times I wasn’t so sure, myself, about either their rhythmic accuracy or tuning.

James Darrah Black’s production illustrates without elucidating - rather the opposite. It leans heavily on strong visuals, starting with an enveloping forest backdrop, with shifting forms and changing light that seem to follow the shifts of the score. This is joined later by a second forest, of dead wolves suspended on ropes by their hind legs, striking to see but hard to understand - something to do with Anubis? The director complicates the already enigmatic tale by more-than-doubling the mother and son: he brings in a whole monstrous army of bourgeoises in big hair and furs, each holding a heart, and of young men in white - like Peter - with bleeding wounds in their chests. Apparently he takes a dim view of domineering, middle-class mums, no doubt rightly so. At the end he also hints, as their identical dresses are revealed, that Anubis and the Mother are one and the same. Another enigma to ponder.

Some of the costumes are spectacular, Anubis in particular, part Elizabeth I in full regalia, part screaming pharaoh-pope, all cardinal red against a red sky. But once more, why Clara switches from a prettily embroidered crinoline to a man’s grey suit, or why Peter dresses and undresses as the ritualistic tale progresses, remains a mystery. And the trouble is, we don’t much care one way or the other. We suspect the emperor is scantily-clad, that what we’re seeing is just, as one German critic put it, ‘… an elaborately designed nothingness.’

Unless Pintscher's international reputation is enough to ensure it’s staged, I don’t see this work entering the repertory. The press and online consensus seems to be that the fault lies, first, with the poet’s hollow text. Which is why I chose, at the top of this post, to quote a remark I saw in a discussion of Nuit sans aube on a French forum: ‘Un bon opéra c'est d'abord un bon livret,’ i.e. a good opera starts with a good libretto. Is that a universal truth? Discuss.