Odyssey Festival Orchestra: Superman

London’s bold new youth ensemble explores how the idea of the superman inspired two musical geniuses.

When Friedrich Nietzsche declared that God was dead in his philosophical novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra, he invited humanity to be superhuman and create its own morality.

Richard Wagner had inspired this idea with works like his 1845 music drama Tannhäuser, whose minstrel hero rejects religious conformity for the delights of earthly pleasure. But by 1882, things had changed. In Wagner’s final opera, Parsifal, a holy fool is sent to redeem the suffering of a religious order, tortured by previous sensual abandon.

The idea of the superman also inspired Richard Strauss, and his mighty tone poem based on Nietzsche’s novel – made famous by Stanley Kubrick’s movie 2001: A Space Odyssey – expressed his own distinctive hopes and dreams for humanity.

Odyssey’s latest concert explores the fascinating relationship between the philosophy of Nietzsche, the idea of the superman, and two of the greatest German orchestral composers.