George Enescu, born in 1881 in Romania, studied in Paris and before that in Vienna, where he admired Johannes Brahms and stumbled upon and fell in love with the works of Richard Wagner. Later, when he had become an internationally renowned violin virtuoso, conductor and teacher - Yehudi Menuhin was one of his students - he was so popular that he only found little time to compose. Still, he wrote orchestral pieces and chamber music and decided that he also wanted to create an opera. In 1910, he saw Sophocles' Oedipus the King at the Comédie- Française in Paris and was immediately fascinated by it. He had found his theme!

Oedipus, guilty by accident, for killing his father and marrying his mother, is not just the epitome of a tragic hero. He was also immortalized in history with the development of the psychoanalytic term of the Oedipus complex. Sigmund Freud found that, at a certain stage in their development, little boys feel strongly attracted to their mothers and hostile towards their fathers. He called this phenomenon the Oedipus complex. According to Freud, failing to overcome this conflict may lead to neuroses and personality disorders.

Oedipus is a figure in Greek mythology. At a time when writing did not exist, those old stories helped people explain life, find meaning and orientation and define social norms. They put the rights and responsibilities of mankind into perspective with the divine and natural world.

Even the great playwrights, artists and philosophers of antiquity looked into the inevitable fate of Oedipus. Sophocles, who lived and worked as a statesman and priest in the 5th century BC, was, along Aeschylus and Euripides, one of the three most prominent tragic playwrights of classical Greece. Only a few of his many works were passed on. In Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus he picked up on the myth of Oedipus and highlighted the tragic end of the protagonist. The audience has an advantage in knowledge and witnesses the disastrous and insane twists as they unfold, like in a thriller, revealing past events and exposing fateful affairs. 

It is common knowledge that the story is about a deadly fight with the father and an incestuous relationship with the mother. But what led to this?

According to the myth, King Laios of Thebes was cursed because of his abusive behavior. The Oracle of Delphi warns him that his son will kill him and marry his wife Jocasta. To avoid the curse, Laios commands that his newborn son be abandoned in the woods, but the child survives and grows up at the court of Corinth under the name of Oedipus. When he finds out about his descent and seeks advice from the oracle, he learns that he is fated to murder his father and marry his mother. To protect his alleged parents, he leaves Corinth. At a crossroads he unknowingly kills his biological father and, thus, sets off the fatal chain of events that, following the victory over the Sphinx, make him king of Thebes and husband of his own mother. 

When the plague strikes Thebes, the oracle at Delphi pronounces the reason: Laios' murderer lives freely within the city. With the help of the blind prophet Tiresias, Oedipus relentlessly explains everything. As his fateful sin is uncovered, his mother commits suicide and Oedipus blinds himself. In Oedipus at Colonus Sophocles describes the hero's exile and death pointing towards a new and tragic affair surrounding his daughter Antigone. But that is another story …

The drama about Oedipus, the clueless son, who carries his parents' guilt, calls for a contemporary interpretation and artistic use. There are plenty of examples in musical theater over the centuries: from Antonio Sacchini to Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy and Ruggero Leoncavallo, Igor Stravinsky, Carl Orff, Wolfgang Rihm or the contemporary Austrian composer Wolfram Wagner.

With the help of his librettist, Edmond Fleg, George Enescu was eventually able to portray the hero's life from birth to death in the great choir opera Œdipe. The first act is a prelude, similar to Richard Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, the fourth act, however, ends in a transfiguration of sorts. 

The rarely played yet monumental opera is extremely difficult for actors to sing and the orchestra to play. Musically, the opera impresses with smooth sounds, opulent colors and rhythmic force. You will never forget the Sphinx's cry of death, recorded from a singing saw. The crossroads scene is also memorable: A shepherd plays a moving solo on the flute in a thundery atmosphere, while Œdipe curses the gods. Eventually, he kills his father in the midst of an orchestral storm accompanied by a wind machine.

With the premiere of Œdipe in Paris in 1936, Enescu achieved remarkable success. In Bregenz, the audience can look forward to an intense opera experience with an archaic, sensual imagery. It is directed by Andreas Kriegenburg, who was already celebrated by the audience at the Bregenzer Festspiele for the play Michael Kohlhaas, a guest performance by the Deutsches Theater Berlin.