Ophelia's Dream

Your split from Kalinkaland shortly after the release of the new album is just a promotional trick, isn't it?

No. This is a really unusual incident. Both, the label and Ophelia's Dream, decided that this collaboration had to stop. That was already early - in January 2004. Since then, however, the right point of time has been missed for many times... until now.

Will I still be able to buy a copy of "Not A Second Time"?

No. After the first edition is sold - it's terminated.

Can I expect some live performances or a concert tour of Ophelia's Dream?

Please listen to our new album "Not A Second Time" carefully. What do you hear? An ensemble of musicians playing together? Fine, this is what it's intended to be. But it's far from the real thing. The music of Ophelia's Dream is merely the result of one person, spending lots of time working on a computer, programming and editing midi-files and making his compositions audible by the use of sample sounds. That way of creating music is not easily transformed into a live concept. However, I decided to do so for two unique live concerts at the Wave Gotik Treffen with a chamber-orchestral line-up of just a real piano, cello and vocals. For a change, no additional samples or playbacks should mar the musical picture of pure authenticity. This concerts were quite successful, but a repetition will be much more difficult, as the production of "Not A Second Time" - where mere classical influences recede, giving way to a variety of ethnical and medieval instrumentations that can hardly be reproduced on stage - has led further away from the possibility of a live realization. Ophelia's Dream is not an ensemble or regular musicians. The instrumentalists that you hear on "Not A Second Time" have the status of professional guest musicians and will not be available for rehearsals or live performances.

What's the meaning of the album-title "Not A Second Time"?

I like the fact that - quite similar to the former title "All Beauty Is Sad" - it is possible to draw the picture of an ambiguous and complex state of mind, a feeling of ambivalence between hope and anxiety, that has very much to do with Ophelia's Dream, with just the use of four simple words. Innumerable things, some referring to Ophelia's Dream directly, some from the field of privacy, don't ever happen a second time. That does not only affect negative things but also applies to things that are especially fine as well, so excellent and out of reach that the attempt of a repetition would inevitably lead to disappointment.

Why did you call your project Ophelia's Dream?

Ophelia's Dream appeared to me as the finest and most suitable name imaginable, because in junction with the title of the debut album "All Beauty Is Sad" it reflects all decisive aspects of my music - melancholy, dream, beauty, delicacy, the fair sex. Ophelia is a literary figure of a woman, that drowned herself in a river out of endless sorrow. Originally from Shakespeare, she found her way into the work of a diversity of writers, painters and poets - from Redon to Rimbaud - during the course of history of arts.

I can see many different spellings of the name "Ophelia's Dream" - which one is correct?

As a visitor of this site, I'm sure you know how to spell "Ophelia's Dream". But it would have been much better if anyone who has ever written down this name would have known the correct spelling: It consists of the girl's name "Ophelia", the English word "dream" and the letter "s" added with apostrophe to indicate the possessive case. Never had I figured out, that this could turn out to into such a problem: