Opera I Hate Mozart was composed and staged in 2006 in Vienna, Austria, at the Theater an der Wien on the occasion of the 250th birth anniversary of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791). A video screening of the opera was organised at the 4th contemporary opera festival NOA.
The show is over when the curtain falls. That is the tradition. But what if the audience were to cross this boundary and take a look, as if through a looking-glass, into the backstage lives of the performers, their life before and after shows when they discard their costumes and parts, discard the masks of their characters? Then the audience would see one of those bizarre but true to life plays that are only started off by the fall of the stage curtain, as in the opera I Hate Mozart.
The intriguing glance behind the scenes of the opera business taken by composer Bernhard Lang and librettist and director Michael Sturminger in their dramma giocoso, reveals a tragicomical tale, involving the petty power games of the conductor hovering on the verge of nervous breakdown, his opera diva wife, the egoism of agents and managers, identity crises suffered by tenors, and young talents desperately struggling for a career. This opera presents a panorama of profound artistic and social insecurity.
Main characters of the story are haunted by the ghost of the good old Amadé whose music demands more than any of them can ever fulfil, where any attempt to do it justice must fail for as long as they live.
Based on a text by Stefan Grissemann