“But tell me, who could have written a better libretto for me than my friend Heinrich von Kleist? When I was searching for a language in combination with which my music could produce something new, a diction targeted by my music, I hit on the “Prince”. The tension between the life of the individual and raison d’état, issues as to thedisregard of law and order, man’s quivering before the might of ruling authorities and the courage to resist it, all of that might happen today or might have occurred one or two thousand years ago. Many of my endeavours in works of recent years appear through this drama to have reached a new point, i.e. a new polyphony and its concomitant, freely chosen rigour.” – Hans-Werner Henze