Opera in one act
Libretto by Stephen Pruslin
First performed June 8 1968, Jubilee Hall, Aldeburgh
Sung in English with German surtitles
there is occasional use of strobe lighting on stage!!
Introductory talks (in German) 30 mins before "curtain up" in the Bockenheimer Depot, available here shortly after opening night and everywhere where podcasts are to be found.
Choregos, a puppeteer, welcomes the audience in a prologue, and the game begins: Punch sings his baby a lullaby before killing it and serving it up for his wife Judy. She’s horrified and gets into a play on words with him. Choregos predicts her death. She has to die, and is mourned by the doctor and lawyer. Punch goes off to find his beloved Polly. Judy, a lawyer and doctor comment on Punch’s atrocities, who then serenades Polly and gives her a flower, which she refuses. Choregos consoles Punch.
Lawyer and doctor accuse Punch of his crimes. He hoodwinks them by posing an unsolvable riddle, and kills them, just as Choregos had predicted. Judy, the lawyer and doctor denounce Punch’s vicious shenanigans. Punch goes off looking for Pretty Polly again. He sings another serenade, proffering a ring, which she turns down because it’s stained with blood. This wrecks the game and Punch falls out of his world. He finds Choregos, his creator, and attacks him when he realises he’s his puppet, despite Judy’s vehement protests. Punch is haunted by nightmarish visions after murdering Choregos: It’s midnight and a fortune teller, Judy in disguise, lays tarot cards for Punch. He dreams of a black satanic wedding with Pretty Polly. Confronted once more with his crimes, he collapses. Pretty Polly’s vanished. Another serenade from Punch dies away unnoticed. Choregos comforts him a third time.
Punch, charged with his crimes, is led to the gallows by the hangman, Jack Ketch. Punch tricks the dreaded harbinger of doom into putting the noose round his own neck. Pretty Polly reappears, luring Punch back into the world of puppets with a song of spring. They sing a love duet. Everyone praises the happily reunited couple. Choregos ends the comedy, which began as a tragedy, in an epilogue, and draws the curtain.
A tragi-comedy, amusing tragedy? Both!
Harrison Birtwistle’s opera ain’t for the fainthearted. A man kills his baby, stabs his wife Judy, searching for lovely Polly, who he wants to marry, carrying out further murders before he finally finds her. Benjamin Britten proposed the young composer Birtwistle for an opera commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival, because »he’s got more to say than his contemporaries«.
Punch and Judy is a traditional British puppet show. Their stylised movements and a precisely defined dramaturgy create a theatrical world that seems more real than reality. The work breaks with conventions, has no narrative plot and exaggerates events: with strictly organised vocal lines, clearly assigned wind instruments and blocks of sound, which combine to form repetitive structures. Despite its unusual brutality, Punch and Judy is a successful, if seldom performed work today.
