We Come to the River

We Come to the River – Wir erreichen den Fluss
Opera by Hans Werner Henze
The composer in 1960
Description	Actions for music
Librettist	Edward Bond
Premiere	12 July 1976 (1976-07-12) Royal Opera House Covent Garden

We Come to the River – Wir erreichen den Fluss is an opera by Hans Werner Henze to an English-language libretto by Edward Bond. Henze and Bond described this work as "Actions for music", rather than an opera. It was Henze's 7th opera, written originally for the The Royal Opera in London, and takes as its focus the horrors of war. The opera was first performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, London on 12 July 1976, with the composer as producer, Jürgen Henze as director, and David Atherton conducting. It was subsequently staged at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, and received its first American performance at Santa Fe Opera in 1984, conducted by Dennis Russell Davies.

The opera is notable for its complex staging, including a large cast of 111 roles covered by over 50 singers, with doubling of roles and three separate instrumental ensembles, including a percussionist who actually performs among the singers on stage. The scholar Robert Hatten has noted the mix of musical styles that Henze has employed, ranging from 'atonal to neoclassically tonal'. Although the subject matter of war would usually indicate a realistic treatment, Henze calls for three separate stages, and urges producers to avoid realism in the costuming. The Emperor's role is written for a mezzo-soprano voice – thus the abstract Emperor becomes the embodiment of evil. The use of typically romantic coloraturas for the role of Rachel is another device to remove a character from realism into abstraction – in this case, the sycophantic nature of Rachel. Despite the vast forces required to perform the work, Henze asks for the utmost simplicity in production values.

Following its premiere at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in 1976, and later that same year in the Deutsche Oper Berlin, the opera was given in 1977 at the Cologne Opera and the Staatsoper Stuttgart. After some years, it was presented by The Santa Fe Opera in 1984, by the Hamburg State Opera in 2001, and by Semperoper in Dresden in 2012.