The Black Spider is an opera in three acts by Judith Weir with a libretto by the composer. The work is loosely based on the 1842 novella Die schwarze Spinne by Jeremias Gotthelf. Norman Platt, director of Kent Opera, described how his finance director Robin Jessel lent him a recording of King Harald's Saga by Weir; Platt was much impressed by its originality and having listened to more of her music, met with her, and commissioned a young people's opera with funds from the Arts Council. The work was first performed in the crypt of Canterbury Cathedral on 6 March 1985, with tenor Armistead Wilkinson and children of the Frank Hooker School; it lasts around one hour and a quarter. Weir describes the opera's tone as “somewhere between a video nasty and an Ealing comedy”.
Synopsis
The opera exploits the collision of two plots and switches back and forth between a Polish legend of the Middle Ages and a contemporary newspaper cutting about a curse on the opening of a tomb in Cracow Cathedral. Villagers oppressed by a wicked landlord are given the task of carrying an entire beech forest to the mountain-top where he lives. A strange green man appears and says he will undertake the task provided the village girl, Christina, weds him. Christina is planning to marry Carl, but believes that she can the fix the matter later. The little green man fulfills his pledge as agreed, but Christina naturally breaks her word, wedding Carl. At the ceremony a spider crawls out from her hand, and this then proceeds to cause a plague in the village. Finally the disaster is stopped when Christina catches the spider and buries it in a grave outside the church. In the modern story excavations are taking place at the tomb of Casimir IV, in Wawel Cathedral, Cracow. More and more archaeologists are affected by a deadly virus with no clue to why it is happening.
German Version
Conductor and composer Benjamin Gordon was asked by the Staatsoper Hamburg to revise and expand the opera for the 2008/2009 season. In order to differentiate from the English version, the German version is also known as "Das Geheimnis der schwarzen Spinne". The orchestra was expanded to include full strings, augmenting the original clarinets, trumpets. The percussion parts were significantly changed, replacing many of the home-made instruments with traditional percussion instruments. The original guitar part was replaced with a new, prominent harp part. The vocal parts were transposed to allow the singers to use more of their range, and arias and ensembles were extended, using new material based on existing motives. The addition of several new orchestral interludes incorporating bits of the existing music make the work slightly longer. In comparison to the original orchestration, Gordon's orchestration is still tailored for young players, however for more advanced players than in the original as it is rhythmically more complex. In some places the music became more Transylvanian, in others more sinister, while the “spider” music enables the orchestra share the limelight with the singers. Judith Weir attended the premiere on February 8, 2009. The "Hamburg" Version has been subsequently performed in Bonn, Regensburg and Dortmund.
