“In the generations of German composers younger than Wolfgang Rihm, Matthias Pintscher is the one with the most impressive track record. He is still in his early 30s, yet has been attracting international attention for a decade. He conducted his first stage work, a ballet called Gesprungene Glocken, at the Berlin Staatsoper at the age of 23, and his first opera, Thomas Chatterton, which was based on the life and mysterious death of the 18th-century English poet, was premiered in Dresden in 1998. Another opera has been commissioned for the Salzburg festival, provisionally titled Heliogabal, though at present that project seems to be on hold, while a third, L’Espace Dernier, will be premiered at the Opéra Bastille in Paris in February.”