The state of being half asleep, a never-ending drowsiness, runs through THE DROWSE (OR THE AGE OF CONSTANT FATIGUE). Artist Kristin Reiman’s opera revolves around scenarios of fatigue and exhaustion, the desire for sleep and rest accompanied by insomnia. In a dark and largely empty room, the composition begins with rhythmically spoken, rapidly successive shreds of thought – as on the threshold to sleep. In soliloquy, mental processes are repetitively played through and questioned again; worries and doubts are stirred up only to become more agitated than before in a constant state of exhaustion. Conscious of their repetition, the voices begin to recite passages over and over again – like a mantra, evoking the never-ending state of fatigue. Trapped in the thought-spiral of insomnia, they try to expose various influences and factors as culprits of this inevitable state. Briefly, a moment of sleep seems to occur in the course of the sound piece, but it’s immediately accompanied by a fear of waking, and leads back to the state of semi-somnolence. The voices steadily increase from the spoken word to sung arias, accompanied by simple musical leitmotifs and unconventionally orchestrated samples, re-tuned and distorted voices, and with a slight addition of an electric guitar. Hypnotic singing begs for sleep, which however, as is already revealed in the request, will not bring salvation, since tiredness at the moment of awakening seems to be a symptom of our time. It is a never-ending aestivation; getting up and being active constitute the first obstacle, accompanied by expectations of productivity. Thus, sleep and doing-nothing become both refusal and protest; withdrawal of one’s own achievement is the only way to escape from this general depression – from the time of never-ending fatigue in the world. In the course of the opera, the request for sleep alternates with the beginning of a state of rest. The music that accompanies the text grows into a lullaby, turning the sound piece into an endless flow into which the listeners are drawn.