| Kommilitonen! | |
|---|---|
| Opera by Peter Maxwell Davies | |
 The composer in 2012 | |
| Librettist | David Pountney |
| Premiere | |
Kommilitonen! (Young Blood!, or Student Activists, literally Fellow Students!) is an opera by Sir Peter Maxwell Davies. The libretto is by David Pountney, who was also the director of the premiere performances in March 2011.
According to Professor Jonathan Freeman-Attwood, the principal of the Royal Academy of Music in London, it was at a lunch to celebrate the appointment of Maxwell Davies to the Academy's staff that a suggestion was made that he might be interested in writing an opera for the students to perform. At first, the composer unequivocally declared that his days of composing opera or musical theatre were over, but he soon changed his mind, with the provisos that:
Pountney's agreeing to write the libretto and direct the opera, and the agreement of the Juilliard School's President, Joseph W. Polisi, to the sharing of the commission, set the project in motion. The premiere, designed by Robert Innes Hopkins and conducted by the Academy's Director of Opera, Jane Glover, took place at the college's Sir Jack Lyons Theatre on 18 March 2011. The American premiere took place at the Juilliard School in November 2011. It was performed by the WNO Youth Opera at the Wales Millennium Centre in 2016.
| Role | Voice type | World Premiere cast, Royal Academy of Music 18 March 2011 (Conductor: Jane Glover) | American Premiere cast, Juilliard School 16 November 2011 (Conductor: Anne Manson) |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Oxford Revolution | |||
| James Meredith | baritone | Marcus Farnsworth | Will Liverman |
| Voice of Pokayne | baritone | Jonathan McGovern | Tobias Greenhalgh |
| Die Weisse Rose | |||
| Sophie Scholl | soprano | Aoife Miskelly | Deanna Breiwick |
| Hans Scholl, her brother | baritone | Johnny Herford | Alexander Hajek |
| Willi Graf | bass-baritone | Frederick Long | Leo Radosavljevic |
| Christoph Probst/The Evangelist | tenor | Andrew Dickinson | Noah Baetge |
| Alexander Schmorell/The Grand Inquisitor | bass | John-Owen Miley-Read | Aubrey Allicock |
| First Clerk/Prison Guard | mezzo-soprano | Irina Gheorghiu | Laetitia De Beck Spitzer |
| Second Clerk/Gestapo Officer 1/Janitor | baritone | Jonathan McGovern | Takaoki Onishi, John Brancy |
| Gestapo Officer 2 | baritone | Maximilian Führig | Tobias Greenhalgh |
| Soar to Heaven | |||
| Li Jingji (Mother) | mezzo-soprano | Irina Gheorghiu | Lacey Jo Benter |
| Wu Tianshi (Father) | baritone | Jonathan McGovern | Jeongcheol Cha |
| Wu (Son) | mezzo-soprano | Katie Bray | Wallis Giunta |
| Li (Daughter) | soprano | Belinda Williams | Heather Engebretson |
| Two Younger Children | sopranos | Hannah Bradbury, Annie Rago | |
| Zhou (Red Guard) | soprano | Ruth Jenkins | Karen Vuong |
| Red Army Officer 1 | mezzo-soprano | Belinda Williams | |
| Doctor/Red Army Officer 2 | mezzo-soprano | Laura Kelly | |
| Red Army Officer 3 | mezzo-soprano | Irina Gheorghiu | |
| Puppets | silent | Blind Summit Theatre | |
| Chorus of American, German and Chinese students and other citizens | |||
The opera, which has twenty-eight scenes, tells three true stories. One, The Oxford Revolution, is about James Meredith and his struggle to be admitted to the University of Mississippi. The second, Die Weisse Rose , deals with Hans and Sophie Scholl, students at the University of Munich who exposed Nazi atrocities, and the third, Soar to Heaven, depicts students who were forced to denounce their parents during the Cultural Revolution in China. This story is based on part of John Pomfret's book Chinese Lessons . [2] The three stories come together at the end of the opera.
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The opera requires:
Some excerpts from reviews in British newspapers, March 2011:
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