Hans Werner Henze - L’Upupa (2003)

L’Upupa und der Triumph der Sohnesliebe (English: The Hoopoe and the Triumph of Filial Love) is Henze’s 15th, and self-stated final, opera (in fact he wrote two more) and the first where he wrote his own libretto. SYNOPSIS: Al Radshi, an old man, who lives in a tower on Manda, the island of the black baboons, laments the absence of his golden bird, a hoopoe that used to visit him daily. Al Radshi once reached out to touch the hoopoe, which caused it to fly away. Since then, the bird has not been seen. Al Radshi asks his three sons to go off on a quest to find the hoopoe and return it to him. Two of the sons are untrustworthy and lazy, but the third, Al Kasim, is honest and brave. Al Kasim is the only son to go off in search of the hoopoe. Al Kasim does find the hoopoe, with the help of a demon, who is a fallen angel with tattered black wings and who has been barred from heaven for an unidentified crime. Al Kasim then has to find and rescue a captive princess, Badi’eat el-Hosn. He do