Cologne Section
The Cologne section comprised the first scene of Act I, the final scene of Act III, and all of Act IV. Wilson collaborated on the libretto with German playwright Heiner Müller, and also incorporated text from Racine and Shakespeare. The primary composer was Hans Peter Kuhn, with additional material by Michael Galasso, Philip Glass, David Byrne, Franz Schubert, and traditional Japanese gagaku music. The piece was premiered on January 19, 1984 at the Schauspielhaus Köln or Cologne Opera House, Germany.
This section is more musical theatre than opera, with spoken dialogue predominating. Frederick the Great of Prussia is the central character, and his struggle to cling to political power is paralleled in the private power struggles of a modern family under a domineering "Old Man."
In 1985 the Cologne sections were performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Pulitzer Prize jury awarded this production the prize for drama for 1986 by a unanimous vote. However, the Pulitzer supervisory board overruled the jury, with the result that no drama prize was given that year.
In the New York Times, critic John Rockwell described this production:
- "One scene can stand for all: Frederick, dressed in his 18th-century uniform, arises from beneath the stage on a statue stallion. He writhes and twists atop his steed, shielding his face with a Japanese mask to echo Schubert's Erlkönig song, about a child swept away by death, which is first recited by an actress floating in space behind a scrim and then mouthed to a German recording by a grotesque old woman clutching a live little dog."
The production divided the critics of MIT's newspaper, The Tech. Michiel Bos wrote, "Tension is build up, maintained and relaxed with supreme skill. Timing is crucial and perfect: every move, every pause, every sound, every silence has its just measure." But Eric Ristad saw the piece as being hermetic to the point of opacity, of being "private theater with a vengeance; it is without content, and immune from criticism. The piece just exists, and we react to it individually, in much the same way we might react to a drop of water."
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