Venus und Adonis is a one-act opera composed by Hans Werner Henze between 1993 and 1995, featuring a German libretto by Hans-Ulrich Treichel drawn from William Shakespeare’s narrative poem of the same name and Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
The opera intertwines the ancient myth of the goddess Venus’s passionate pursuit of the young Adonis and tragic consequences for the jealous god Mars with the contemporary conflicts of three performers rehearsing the story: a prima donna soprano, a heroic tenor, and a young tenor named Clemente. These singers’ emotional entanglements blur the boundaries between their roles and personal lives, mirrored and amplified by dancing doubles representing Venus, Adonis, and Mars. The story culminates in a violent climax where myth and reality merge. Henze employs three spatially separated orchestras to evoke distinct sonic worlds for each mythological figure—Venus’s lush, erotic soundscape; Adonis’s pastoral tones; and Mars’s aggressive brass—underscoring themes of love, desire, jealousy, and mortality in a modern context.
