The millennia-old story of the god-fearing Job, who despite devastating blows of fate does not lose his faith and is ultimately rewarded for his steadfastness, touches on the fundamental questions of our existence. How changeable is our happiness in life? How many arrows and slings of raging fate can man endure? What does he need to get up again? And how much power does religion give?
In Joseph Roth's 1930 novel, which translates the biblical material into the 20th century, Job Mendel is called Singer and is a devoutly religious Jew who lives with his wife and four children in the fictional Zuchnow shtetl in Russia. When his first-born Shemariah emigrated to America and started making money, his parents and sister Miriam caught up with him, but the outbreak of the First World War prevented the family from fulfilling the »American Dream«. Schemariah dies as an American soldier, Jonas, who is fighting for the Russian army, is missing, Mendel's wife Deborah dies of despair, Mirjam falls ill with a psychosis. Mendel's love and hope rest on his youngest son Menuchim, whom he left behind in his old homeland due to his mental disability.
In their opera, composed for the Stadttheater Klagenfurt, Bernhard Lang and Michael Sturminger transfer the »musicality of language« of Joseph Roth, as stated by Stefan Zweig, into impressive music-theatrical images and sound worlds. The high-contrast atmosphere is characterized by Mendel's meditative-religious music as well as by snappy klezmer and the hopeful, rich swing sound of the New World.
