A novelist works in a new space

Jonathan Safran Foer, the young novelist whose latest book is the critically acclaimed “Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close,” was in his basement a few years ago when his phone rang and a voice with a heavy German accent came on the line.

The caller was an official of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden -- Berlin’s oldest opera company, headed by Daniel Barenboim and Peter Mussbach -- inquiring whether the New Yorker was interested in writing a libretto for an upcoming opera in a cutting-edge new space.

“I said yes,” says Foer, who at the time had seen about half a dozen operas, “because it was so unlike anything I had done or was thinking about doing.”

The original plan was for a single brief libretto that would be set by seven different composers, which would illuminate the way music can alter the context of words. “But the more we thought about it,” the novelist says, “the more we thought it would be really boring.” So instead, each of the seven composers would get a different part of the libretto.

True to plan, though, Foer’s text -- for a work that wound up being called “Seven Attempted Escapes From Silence” -- was written specifically for the new contemporary space at the Staatsoper.

“It’s this old costume-design warehouse. It’s the most industrial building I’ve ever seen,” he says. “It looks like a Kafka story -- metal everywhere, balconies, sliding everything.”

The opera, which will premiere in September, takes place in an institution -- its identity is never defined -- whose inhabitants can’t use language. Since the residents don’t speak, the piece is narrated by a prison guard. Otherwise, Foer has left things as vague as possible so that each of the composers can interpret the libretto in his or her own way. The seven are Miroslav Srnka, Karim Haddad, Bernhard Lang, Catherine Milliken, Jose Maria Sanchez-Verdu, Annette Schmucki and Larisa Vrhunc.

The writer says he’s been to Berlin twice and looks forward to returning for “Seven Attempted Escapes,” whose premiere happens to coincide with the German release of his novel.

“It has the same quality New York does,” says Foer, who has chosen to spend some of his summer writing in rural Connecticut. “Constant stimulus. Without even paying attention, there’s so much to inspire you. I had so many ideas there.”

Scott Timberg