David Philip Hefti

Annas Maske

Her 'Carmen' fascinated the masses. Anna Sutter was the acclaimed star of the Stuttgart Opera, and her murder on 29 June 1910 accordingly made the headlines: Aloys Obrist, a conductor and former lover of Anna, shot her in her apartment and then shot himself. Thus reality tragically replayed the tragic fiction of the title role of George Bizet's Carmen. A newspaper report published the next day wrote that '…as an artist she understood that the eternal goal of relationships between human beings must remain to spread happiness and joy. For this reason, her bloody bier should not be a place for whispered questions and tales of sensation-seeking curiosity; and the laurel wreath that Stuttgart lays on her coffin should be free of the dirt and dust of base gossip'. This drama of jealousy is at the heart of the opera Anna's Mask. The opera Anna's Mask was composed in 2015/16 to a commission from Konzert und Theater St. Gallen . The libretto is by Alain Claude Sulzer, who is the author of the novella of the same name that was published in 2001.