The three main characters of Das Jagdgewehr are Midori, the betrayed wife; Saiko, her husband’s mistress; and Saiko’s daughter Shoko, who learns of the affair shortly before her mother’s death.

Shoko writes: ‘(…) How could I have imagined a love that stretches deep beneath the earth, a love like a subterranean river of which no one knows where it begins or ends.’

Each letter adds a new facet to the tale of an impossible love. The title’s hunter, Josuke Misugi, is the lover and bearer of the letters, who tells the story of love, death and loneliness in carefully chosen words.

Can you also talk about the development of your vocal works: from small ensembles to ensembles and orchestral works to opera?

Thomas Larcher: There is a continuous expansion of things, but this does not affect the instrumental composition - Ensemble Modern plays in the “hunting rifle” with 17 instrumentalists - but the extension to another aspect: there is a choir, which is the main reinforcement of the soloist and the sound connection between them and the ensemble.

The text also presents a particular problem: although the libretto is very short, however, it is much larger and differs from the text in past plays. So far I have set poems or even fragments to music. On the contrary, the text of the opera is not so charged in every syllable. It was more about adding everyday messages to a message or mood, which is required to shed light on the content and make it flexible. It was not always easy.

Was this emotional level the reason that you, as a composer, chose to stage a novel by Yasushi Inoue? Is this text also different from the others you have set for music so far?

Thomas Larcher: In verses or fragments of earlier works, the text addressed me first of all at the level of words, in “hunting rifles” it was just a story that is very complicated. It is a lot about loneliness, a lot about silence, but also about the power of writing. The text touches on many of the topics that each of us knows: a change of realities, this network of relationships, abandonment and abandonment, as well as Potemkin facades. This is what is considered as an example in this text. Despite the strict form of the novel - it consists of three letters, a prologue and an epilogue - it also carries high explosiveness.

The task of music is to find time to light microscopically, dig it all up and bring it to the surface. Thus, the composition strictly follows the style of the text and its expressive content. It is elongated in only a few places or covered by tools. It often happens that music later comments on what is said in the text. This makes it easier to understand the content. There is also a statement that a person understands sung texts.

The libretto retains the narrative frame, three letters intertwined. An important role is played by the figure of the poet, the protagonist of the narrative frame.

Thomas Larcher: Initially, this figure was supposed to be even more presented, telling parts of the story throughout the process, but it changed in the course of work. Despite the fact that he appears only at the beginning and at the end, the poet, nevertheless, is the core of the whole plot: thanks to his poem, which he and the choir read together at the beginning, the story unfolds, and he experiences as soon as the whole story, it absorbs and returns them in a transformed way to light. It is almost a burning glass, the focus of everything.

There is a place that needs additional description, this is about the bombing in Tokyo. This description is given by the choir. In addition, the choir acts as a musical reinforcement for the soloists.

Have you also selected other singers?

Yes, it was not as simple as it was very brief. But now we have found some great singers. I already worked with Sarah Aristide, who sings Shoko. Other singers are also excellent. Andre Schuen, who plays the role of Yosuke Misugi, I know well and think it's great that he does it. He is a big future star and sings a lot of new things.

Director Karl Markovich for the first time in the opera. Why did you bring this to him?

Because of his film “Breath,” which I really like because of the time and the way of dialogue.

His idea for The Hunting Gun is to show people in a large landscape, to which the room is also very inviting. The workshop stage has a very large width and depth, it has almost the same area as the floating stage. Deep gradation maintains the isolation of people in history, but large space is also problematic and requires amplification. Rehearsals in the coming weeks will show how this is best done.

You said in an interview about your intimacy with nature: “Nature is basically very similar in most parts of the world - just like people are very similar. I consider things more universal, they cannot be tied to the region in which I was born by chance. " Do you also see The Hunting Gun as a universal text, or is it - and therefore your opera - located very much in Japan?

No, the performance is not very Japanese. I also think that the story is not very Japanese. It is universal and concerns issues that affect us all.