Review: A New Opera Gives Music to the Unsaid and Unsayable

Unsuk Chin’s new opera conveys, with uncanny precision, the restless energies inside a person’s head.

Called “Die Dunkle Seite des Mondes” (“The Dark Side of the Moon”), the work premiered on Sunday at the Hamburg State Opera in Germany. It’s a reinterpretation of the Faust myth, drawing loose inspiration from a famous series of letters between the quantum physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung.

This is Chin’s second opera, following “Alice in Wonderland,” which was first performed at the Bavarian State Opera in 2007. It was as kinetic as her new one, though sillier, more eclectic and ultimately more haunting.

“Die Dunkle Seite des Mondes” centers on a character called Dr. Kieron, sung by the baritone Thomas Lehman. He is an irascible yet brilliant scientist whose harsh perfectionism masks a fragmenting mental state. Searching for human connection and trying to slow the ferocious pace of his thoughts, he falls prey to a cynical, Nietzsche-quoting faith healer, Master Astaroth, performed by the baritone Bo Skovhus.

At the start of the opera, Dr. Kieron’s sung text shows a confident man with bristly charisma. He mocks his assistant, his students and his colleagues with laser wit; In response, they grudgingly praise his intellect. Later, in a seedy bar, he entertains the other patrons with ludicrous tall tales that they believe despite themselves. Dr. Kieron’s behavior recalls Pauli, who dismissed bad science by saying it was “not even wrong,” but also Chin’s teacher, the composer Gyorgy Ligeti. “Ligeti was the harshest critic you could ever imagine,” she has said, “not only toward his students, but to his colleagues and himself.”

Chin’s music takes us into Dr. Kieron’s psyche, and it’s an exhausting place. Melodic fragments flare up and burst; orchestral registers and timbres shift constantly. The score shows a mind that can’t stay still. No wonder Dr. Kieron searches for solace with Master Astaroth, whose therapy-speak pronouncements seem profound when accompanied by blessedly static, ethereal music.