Venus und Adonis is a one-act opera

Opera

Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

 by Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze

Hans Werner Henze is a German composer of prodigious output best known for "his consistent cultivation of music for the theatre throughout his life"...

 with a German

German language

German is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....

 libretto by Hans-Ulrich Treichel

Hans-Ulrich Treichel

Hans-Ulrich Treichel is a Germanist, novelist and poet. His earliest published books were collections of poetry, but prose writing has become a larger part of his output since the critical and commercial success of his first novel Der Verlorene...

, after the poem by William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

. The work uses both singers and dancers.

It was first performed by the Bavarian State Opera

Bavarian State Opera

The Bavarian State Opera is an opera company based in Munich, Germany.Its orchestra is the Bavarian State Orchestra.- History:The opera company which was founded under Princess Henriette Adelaide of Savoy has been in existence since 1653...

 in Munich

Munich

Munich The city's motto is "" . Before 2006, it was "Weltstadt mit Herz" . Its native name, , is derived from the Old High German Munichen, meaning "by the monks' place". The city's name derives from the monks of the Benedictine order who founded the city; hence the monk depicted on the city's coat...

 on 11 January 1997 (Chōki 1997, 18). The American première was at the Santa Fe Opera

Santa Fe Opera

The Santa Fe Opera is an American opera company, located north of Santa Fe in the U.S. state of New Mexico, headquartered on a former guest ranch of .-General history:...

 in August 2000, and the same production was used for the Canadian première, which took place in Toronto in 2001 (Brockmeier 2003). The Japanese premiere was given in concert form in Tokyo on 11 January 2001.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 11 January 1997 (Conductor: Markus Stenz )
Clemente	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Chris Merritt
Heldendarsteller	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Ekkehard Wlaschiha Ekkehard Wlaschiha Ekkehard Wlaschiha is a German operatic baritone who specializes in Wagnerian villains of the "howling-and-spitting" type, such as Alberich, Klingsor, Friedrich von Telramund, Don Pizarro, and Kaspar...
Primadonna	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Nadine Secunde
Madrigalist	baritone

Sources

• Amadeus Almanac, accessed 6 November 2008
• Brockmeier, Jens. 2003. "Mythische Imagination in der Musik Hans Werner Henzes" [Mythical imagination in the music of Hans Werner Henze]. In Hans Werner Henze: Die Vorträge des internationalen Henze-Symposions am Musikwissenschaftlichen Institut der Universität Hamburg 28. bis 30. Juni 2001, Hamburger Jahrbuch für Musikwissenschaft 20, edited by Peter Petersen. Frankfurt am Main, Berlin, Bern, Brussels, New York, Oxford, Vienna: Peter Lang. ISBN 978-3-631-51114-5
• Chōki, Seiji [長木誠司]. 1997. "Hentse no shinsaku opera Vinasu to Adonisu shoen" [The première of Henze's new opera Venus und Adonis]. Ongaku geijutsu (March): 18–56.
• Konold, Wulf. 1996. "Venus und Adonis: Hans Werner Henzes Komposition eines Mythos". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 157, no. 4 (July-August): 16–21.
• Petersen, Peter. 1999. "Die Oper als Mythos: Venus und Adonis von Hans Werner Henze". In Musik und Mythos, Neue Aspekte der musikalischen Ästhetik 5, edited by Hans Werner Henze and Michael Kerstan, 137–53. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag. ISBN 3-596-13852-3
• Treichel, Hans-Ulrich. 1996. "Die Schule des Librettisten". Neue Zeitschrift für Musik 157, no. 4 (July-August): 22–25.