missing in cantu (your palaces are empty)

The search for the legendary Eldorado and the allure of gold are the starting point for the sweltering, surreal opera epic that Innsbruck composer Johannes Maria Staud (born 1974) and successful Upper Austrian playwright Thomas Köck (born 1986) have undertaken for their first collaboration. The basis for the material, which contrasts the subjugation of the American continent by European colonization with the current disintegration of American society, is Köck's play eure paläste sind leer (all we ever wanted). Three storylines are interwoven: the Amazon expedition of a group of Spanish conquistadors in search of the city of gold, sequences from a present-day suburban settlement of the crumbling middle class, and the retrospective of a seer wandering through the dystopian remains of a former center of power.

The dynamics that Staud, who received the Austrian Art Prize for Music in 2022, translates into sound are intoxicating: gold, blood, and drugs symbolize transgressions and driving forces that make it impossible to grasp reality. The result, in the composer's words , is "a dazzling, complex whole that pushes traditional categories such as aria, recitative, ensemble scene, or choral passage into the background in favor of a multi-layered, hybrid scene structure." The Austrian premiere of missing in cantu marks the first time an opera by Staud has been included in the TLT's program, staged by co-director Bettina Bruinier, who has extensive experience in opera.