Eötvös: Paradise Reloaded (Lilith)

Following the 2010 Munich world première of his opera, The Tragedy of the Devil, Péter Eötvös decided to make some revisions to it. Though following the plot of the original piece, written by the young German playwright Albert Ostermaier, there are some key points where the new material completes or even reconsiders the original one. The resultant piece became effectively a new work in its own right, and was given the title Paradise Reloaded. While in the original play the main protagonist is Lucifer, but for Paradise Reloaded the spotlight falls on to a different character, Lilith, the first wife of Adam. In this new piece, Péter Eötvös explores the hypothetical question: what would have happened if our culture which is explicitly based on the Bible had chosen Lilith to be the ancestress of mankind, instead of Eve? The opera was premièred October 2013 in Vienna, followed by its February 2014 Hungarian première in Budapest. The cast of soloist on the present CD, recorded in the studio of the Hungarian Radio after the Budapest performance, is the same as of the première in Vienna.