Bernhard Lang
On Cheap Opera #2 'Playing Trump'
The series of cheap operas comprising now 3 pieces and another three related to the concept, is based on small line-ups which guarantee both efficiency and portability – always based on documentary texts, they implement the usage of voices, natural and artificial.
In the case of Playing Trump, the text is a libretto written by Dieter Sperl (see Songbook I and II), referring to original Trump speeches. Trump himself is actually in the background, the piece referring more to a whole political system than to an individual. Many quotations could have been said by other presidents, too.
The music refers to musical paradigms used at Trumps rallies, deconstructing them, interpolating them with contradictory musical footage.
The whole composition is again based on loops, partly used as political instruments, partly as a tool to deconstruct the phraseology of the selfsame instruments.
Bernhard Lang, Paris, 7 June 2023