“Hinter den Spiegeln warten nur Spiegel”: Myth, Dystopia, and Utopia in Peter Eötvös’s Paradise Reloaded (Lilith)

Abstract

This article argues that operatic attention to myth has evolved in new directions in recent years, in counterpoint to a trend for representing recent historical and celebrity narratives on stage. I analyze Péter Eötvös’s opera Paradise Reloaded (Lilith) as an example of composers engaging ‘distant pasts’ as a vehicle to interrogate political presents.

Using Jewish and secular myths of Lilith, Milton’s Paradise Lost, and Imre Madách’s The Tragedy of Man, Eötvös and librettist Albert Ostermaier construct a feminist-philosophical exploration of knowledge and truth, reflecting themes in modern European society from refugee crises to Putin’s Russia. My approach is three-fold: I suggest that their musical and narrative modes both parody and rely on operatic conventions, centered on the transformation of Lilith from demon-seductress to protagonist. I locate the opera’s utopian/dystopian soundworld in a lineage of 20^thcentury European approaches to satire, irony, and the grotesque in music, exemplified in Shostakovich and Ligeti, drawing on Esti Sheinberg’s theoretical framework.

I situate this study within the 'living archive' of contemporary opera: the contrasting aesthetics of the opera’s three key stagings — Neue Oper Wien (2013), Theater Chemnitz (2015), and Theater Bielefeld (2020) — and my interviews with Eötvös, Ostermaier, and others involved. Finally, I position Eötvös’s own history as a lens to evaluate intersecting musical and political identities, engaging especially Anna Dalos and Rachel Beckles Willson’s work on post-Cold War Central European composers. Ultimately, I propose that Paradise Reloaded offers a revival of Lilith mythology for the 21^stcentury, demanding attention to how opera can navigate a dialectic of dystopian/utopian pasts, presents, and futures.