Operas by Poul Ruders

This article focuses on the operatic work of contemporary Danish composer Poul Ruders. His oeuvre includes five operas: Tycho (1986), The Handmaid’s Tale (1998), Proces Kafka (2005), Selma Jezková (2007), and The Thirteenth Child (2016). The article examines their key themes, compositional features, dramaturgy, and musical language. It is noted that the Danish composer favors dramatic stories reflecting contemporary social issues (gender inequality, misogyny, power, religion, guilt) and offering insight into the psychological world of complex human relationships. The plots of his operas are often ambivalent, lending themselves to conflict-driven dramaturgy. Virtually all his works are based on the principle of artistic duality, expressed through temporal contrasts (old world vs. new world, past vs. present) and artistic contrasts (life vs. creation, reality vs. dream). This conceptual duality results in stylistic pluralism. Ruders’ operas blend high and low genres, classical and popular art, tonality and atonality, speech and singing, sound and noise. The composer employs stylistic allusions and quotations, often deliberately creating a tension between the meaning of the quotation and its context. The article concludes that Ruders continues the traditions of Alban Berg’s expressionist drama in his operatic work and serves as an heir to the ideas of pluralistic musical theatre pioneered by Bernd Alois Zimmermann. Keywords: Poul Ruders, Paul Bentley, Margaret Atwood, Franz Kafka, Lars von Trier, Tycho, The Handmaid’s Tale, Proces Kafka, Selma Jezková, The Thirteenth Child For citation: Okuneva, E. G. (2025). Operas by Poul Ruders: Artistic Ideas, Dramaturgy, Style. Contemporary Musicology, 9(4), 249‒269. https://doi.org/10.56620/2587-9731-2025-4-249-269

Drama · Musical · Tonality · Artistic and Creative Research · Diverse Musicological Studies · Musicology and Musical Analysis