None But the Lonely Heart: Oper Frankfurt (2021)

"Only those who know longing", probably the most famous song by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, give its name to an intimate theater evening in which Christof Loy combined songs, romances and instrumental music into a kind of chamber opera of impressive beauty and intensity. Tchaikovsky's songs display a remarkable stylistic diversity and often set to music enigmatic texts in which the unsaid and unsayable create expressive tensions and express true human feelings. In a magnificent, historical setting, a drama develops in which repressed love is confronted with longed-for moments of passion and the grief over broken love leads to withdrawal and loneliness.