Name: Liberty City Arts Presents – Erwartung by Arnold Schoenberg
Start: 2024-09-22T15:00:00
Location: Crane Old School

Philadelphia Fringe Festival

This rarely staged one-act monodrama for soprano follows The Woman, agitated and disoriented, searching for her lover in an eerily dense wood. Schoenberg’s chilling psychological drama aims “to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement.” Erwartung is a pinnacle of modernism and an early example of Schoenberg’s use of expressionism in music. Like many of his own expressionist paintings, he layers notes to create a lush orchestration. Marie Pappenheim’s libretto is void of typical plot devices and instead the drama is expressed through The Woman’s inner turmoil. This stream of consciousness style is reflected in the athematic score. As The Woman’s mental state quickly dissolves, the audience begins to question her reliability as a narrator and are left in suspense with ultimately more questions than answers.