Screening Event: Hans Werner Henze. Music, Friendship, Game.

A documentary by Nina di Majo
produced by Nina di Majo, Red Velvet Media by Giuseppe Tomei
in collaboration with Istituto Luce Cinecittà.
April 15th, 2024
Screening at 6:30pm (75min.)

This documentary is a journey through the life of Hans Werner Henze, one of the most influential composers of the late 20th century. Born in 1926 in Guetersloh, Germany, the son of a school teacher, Henze was acclaimed for his many operas, symphonies, ballets, and for a commitment to political art.

As a youth in Germany, World War II left him with a lifelong hatred of Nazism and with indelible marks on his psyche. Henze’s father was killed on the Eastern Front, and Hans was conscripted into the army in 1944, and ended the war in a British prisoner-of-war camp. His anguish was worsened by his sense of shame for the Holocaust. Furthermore, he felt he was ostracized and abhorred as a homosexual in an intolerant society.

After the mass emigration of German artists and intellectuals who started new lives elsewhere, Hans Werner Henze left Germany in 1953 and moved to the Italian island of Ischia in the Bay of Naples. He remained in Italy for the rest of his life.

The documentary reconstructs his artistic journey and recounts his longing for freedom and joy through his liberating creative process that was entwined with his personal suffering.

Director Nina di Majo met Henze in her youth at her family’s home in Naples. She poetically highlights Henze’s long friendship and fruitful collaboration with Ingeborg Bachmann through their letters.

Working with her as librettist, Henze composed the Operas Der Prinz von Homburg (1958), based on a text by Heinrich von Kleist, and Der Junge Lord (1964). The film also includes interviews with Gioacchino Lanza Tomasi, (musicologist), Sir Simon Rattle (conductor), Alessio Vlad (composer), and Francesco Antonioni (composer), et al.
“Music is a means of communication and understanding,” he said, “a means of reconciliation.”