I.
I had come to Munich searching for an archive I wasn’t sure was there. This was several years ago now, back when I was still fumbling toward a book on post-war opera—something about its relation to genre, history, and mourning; the sketches are still tucked in a drawer somewhere—and at the time, Munich was hallowed ground. In 1988, Hans Werner Henze’s biannual festival for contemporary opera christened the city with serious commissioning power, and it has served as a testing ground for major developments in music theater since. (There was a brief bid in the late ‘90s to shift that axis back towards Hamburg—Lachenmann’s “Das Mädchen mit den Schwefelhölzern” is the most memorable result of that venture—but nothing serious took hold.) Today, Berlin has largely superseded them both. Ostensibly, I came to Munich to better understand the socioeconomic infrastructure lying behind so many significant premieres: Poppe, Ferneyhough, Baukholt, Sánchez-Verdú, Steen-Andersen, Schnebel, and Lang all had new operas here.