Posts Tagged ‘David Robert Coleman’

The Red Heifer at the Konzerthaus; Macbeth haunts the Staatsoper

Thursday, July 3rd, 2014

By Rebecca Schmid

A saying goes that where words stop, music begins. Trite as this may sound, The Red Heifer, a one-act opera by Iván Fischer which made its German premiere at the Konzerthaus last week, serves as a powerful example. As a reaction to right-wing politics in modern-day Hungary, Fischer’s home country, the work speaks through a mixture of forewarning, humor and spirituality without ever banging its audience over the head.

A range of musical pastiche serves to illustrate a true story about accusations in the late 19th century that a Jewish community in North Hungary had murdered a young girl and used her blood for ritual in synagogue. As seen June 29, the narrator (Jozsef Gyabronka) recites his text to accompaniment directly evoking J.S. Bach’s Passions, while the loud-mouthed hostess of a hotel-restaurant called The Red Heifer (Orsolya Sáfár) breaks out into a bel canto idiom above the chanting of her male admirers.

Both the montage-like structure and the didactic nature of The Red Heifer place it straight in line with a tradition of Weill-Brechtian theater which Fischer, as he explained in a moderated discussion, was inspired. In what could easily lend the work to performance in schools, the conductor casts children in the roles of the victim, Eszter (Kyra Varg), and the young Jewish boy, Moric (Jonatán Kovács), who betrays his community to give a false testimony.

Fischer here has the protagonist spit his words above a rollicking orchestra while a group of children cheer him on with soccer-inspired patriotic regalia and blast plastic horns that, appropriately, evoke cows (a red heifer is a young cow that appears in the Book of Moses). Faced with a lack of other witnesses, the judge (Jozsef Csapo) ultimately pardons the synagogue, and Moric—sitting on the train with his father, presumably in order to flee—has a vision of a red heifer through which he is purified from sin.

Above a snare drum which recreates the rhythm of the locomotive, a reprise of the pseudo-devout melody sung by the men of the Jewish community after the courtroom verdict explodes into a desperate plea, only to find resolution in a winding violin melody with hints of Mozart’s Requiem.

The wide musical palette, even if it doesn’t blend into a consciously personal style, only serves to underscore the tensions in the story, from folk dance to string trio and cimbalom to a jazzy number for Moric’s father (Tamas Altorjay). And Fischer reveals himself a fertile mind of melodic invention as he spins off the various sounds of Hungarian tradition, both high and low.

The production emerged with a mix of unaffected directness and professional polish, thanks to strong characterizations and musical delivery of the both the child actors and opera singers on stage. Fischer drew sensitive but vigorous playing from an ensemble mixing players from the Budapest Festival Orchestra and the Konzerthausorchester Berlin.

Macbeth

Around the corner, on the construction site of what will be the multi-million Euro renovated Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Intendant Jürgen Flimm brought the season to a stirring close with his own new production of Sciarrino’s Macbeth. As seen June 28, a war zone covered the concrete floor of what was and will be the intendant’s headquarters, period costumes merging with 18th-century architectural details such as a fireplace which is lit by a victorious Macduff at the end of the opera.

The staging–which consists of little more than a small pool of water for Macbeth to wash his hands; a pile of rugs; and period furniture–takes on a surreal quality that only heightened the ghostly whispering and wilting tremoli of the score. With the death of Banquo and the appearance of his ghost in the Second Act, the chorus of Voci (voices)—now furies, now monks scattering ashes after Macbeth’s decapitation—change into costume as towering demons, haunting the unfinished bowels of the opera house.

The atmosphere was more than rife for the orchestra’s quotation of the Commendatore’s return in Mozart’s Don Giovanni—here accompanied by red light and smoke—followed by an aria exalting “la patria” (the homeland) from Verdi’s Un Ballo in Maschera. The moment is so climatic, however, as to make Sciarrino’s palette in the final act grow static (unlike in his shorter works Infinito Nero, Vanitas or Lohengrin).

The libretto, meanwhile, bypasses the prophecy of the three witches to plunge into the violence and insanity around Macbeth, a nightmare from which he can’t escape. By placing the audience on either side of the action, Flimm brings the spectator uncomfortably close to the raw human brutality (one woman had to be escorted out as Lady Macbeth washed her husband’s hand with a rag soaked in fake blood after Duncan’s murder).

The disembodied tones of the score nevertheless created a powerful sense of suspended reality which was heightened by having part of the ensemble, Opera Lab Berlin, placed outside the room to create a phantom-like ricochet. David Robert Coleman led with precision but also elegant musicality. Alongside Otto Katzameier in a potent portrayal of the title role and Carola Höhn as the hysteric Lady Macbeth, baritone Timothy Sharp, tenor Stephen Chambers and the small chorus maintained sharp dramatic focus, even if Italian diction could have stood improvement.

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New works at the Jewish Museum; Rameau’s “Castor et Pollux”

Friday, May 16th, 2014

blick_glashof_wBy Rebecca Schmid

Classical music historiography of the 20th century tends to create neatly delineated periods, with World War Two creating a kind of indelible caesura in all things aesthetic and philosophical. This is particularly true in Germany, where the Nachkriegszeit (post-war period) is defined as a veritable epoch: a time in which the country rebuilt itself as a reaction to the horrors of National Socialism, both in politics and art.

A concert at the Jerusalem International Chamber Music Festival, which explored both the centenary of World War One and Richard Strauss’ 150th anniversary this year, managed to throw this construction into question. The program on May 10 at Berlin’s Jewish Museum opened with a new work by David Robert Coleman, a German-British composer who blends serialist rigor with free-formed contemporary timbres and structures.

His Three pieces for Clarinet and Piano creates a whimsical dialogue between the two instruments which builds from emotional disjoint into an intense exchange culminating in banging piano chords. The clarinet, meanwhile, reveals how the soft-spoken can hold the upper ground, ending the piece with quiet trills, like a wife trying to placate her angry husband.

Berlin Philharmonic Principal Clarinettist Andreas Ottensamer showed off his slick virtuosity in the more playful, fast inner piece, with a Klezmer-inspired cadenza that yielded to a complex interlocking with the piano, performed by Coleman himself. The third piece had a more post-Romantic feel demanding tremendous breath support from Ottensamer in the serenade-like melodies that yielded to desperate pleas.

Aribert Reimann’s Ollea (2006), an a capella setting of poems by Heinrich Heine, was another testament to the continuity between pre-war serialism and atonal melodic writing in Germany today. Soprano Mojca Erdmann, for whom the piece was written, demonstrated frightening technical assurance, from the wide leaps that open “Sehnsuchtelei” to the melisma that climbs to stratospheric heights at the outset of “Helena.”

Her dramatic poise and sharp musicianship were also on display for two Anton Webern song cycles, even if she was at times a bit too precious. The craggy melodies of “Nachts” from op.14 seemed to descend from a quicksilver tap while Coleman led the five-piece chamber ensemble in a precise reading. Such fine musicianship could have benefitted more intimate acoustics than the museum’s covered courtyard.

The two Romantic works on the program emerged as a kind of lament for European civilization in its civilized, tonal splendour. Violinist Guy Braunstein’s emotional intensity was not always a clear match for the more understated playing of cello doyen Frans Helmerson in Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy’s D-minor Piano Trio, although they often created a moving blend, such as in the inner Andante. Jonathan Gilad, stepping in for Andras Schiff, understandably had to warm up to the piano part’s undulating fingerwork but gave an impressive performance under the circumstances.

Richard Strauss’ neo-baroque incidental music to the Molière play Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, in a new arrangement for chamber ensemble by Braunstein, was an interesting choice to close the program. The Lully-inspired melody of “Cleonte’s Entry” was weighed down in nostalgia as it gravitated to horn (Cenk Sahin) and bassoon (Mor Biron). Braunstein led the numbers with the authority of a musician who had assimilated every melody while also integrating his rich tone. Flutist Gili Schwarzman stood out for her elegant grasp of the dance tunes.

Castor et Pollux

The weekend continued in a French baroque vein at the Komische Oper with Rameau’s drama Castor et Pollux. Intendant Barrie Kosky’s production, which premiered at the English National Opera three years ago, opts for the composer’s 1754 revised version which, eliminating the characters of Venus and Mars, depicts Castor’s murder by Lyncée’s troups before launching into Pollux’s supplication of Jupiter to restore his twin but mortal brother back to life.

Seen at its Berlin premiere on May 11, Kosky foregrounds the human violence of the first act with cinematic-like kicks and groans. The mundane aspect is driven home through an aesthetic of bare wooden walls and bourgeois modern dress (sets and costumes by Katrin Lea Tag), with a pile of dirt to represent Hades. In the absence of any choreography whatsoever, Kosky fills dance numbers with actions such as a view of the chorus’ feet in a jamming free-for-all.

During the chorus “Que tout gémisse,” the abandoned Télaïre slaps the bloody hands of the murdered Castor against her bare thighs. And when she realizes that both he and Pollux have left her behind on earth in the final scene, she runs up against the walls like a schizophrenic in an insane asylum. The scene finally gained an ethereal quality in keeping with the tension between gods and men with streams of glitter that poured onto the empty shoes of the brothers.

Kosky’s direction aside, a Rameau opera demands from its cast fastidious attention to ornamentation, beautiful diction and phrasing that creates an inextricable synthesis between text and internal drama. Allan Clayton possesses a powerful, attractive tenor, and warmed up to give a moving performance of his final aria “Qu’il est doux de porter vos chaines,” but, alas, is no early music singer. As Télaïre, soprano Nicole Chevalier similarly made no doubt of her fine instrument but did limited justice to the score’s finer nuances.

Meanwhile, it was the tenor Aco Aleksander Bišćević, in the small role of Mercury, who demonstrated enormous vocal agility. Scottish conductor Christian Curnyn also proved a redeeming factor as he led an ensemble of the Komische Oper Orchestra in a clean, vigorous performance that, although a bit square, revealed painstaking attention to detail.

For more by Rebecca Schmid, visit rebeccaschmid.info.

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‘Lulu’ as post-racial Manifesto

Friday, October 12th, 2012

By Rebecca Schmid

The socially aware agenda of the Komische Oper’s new Intendant Barrie Kosky has been ruffling the feathers of Berliners months before he officially took over this season, not least with the decision to end the house tradition of performing operas exclusively in the German language. His emphasis on cultural pluralism aside, the program so far should assuage any fears that the native Australian will create a rupture with the opera’s hallowed emphasis on reinventing opera for contemporary audiences. Following a 12-hour Monteverdi trilogy as rescored by Elena Kats-Chernin and staged by Kosky, the intendant has unveiled the world premiere of Olga Neuwirth’s American Lulu, a shortened, updated version of Berg’s incompleted last opera.

It is either ironic or a sign of historic progress that Berlin, where Nazi politics once thwarted a full staging of the work, has mounted the second new Lulu in less than a year. The Staatsoper presented the work with a recomposed third act by David Robert Coleman last spring when a new production by Andrea Breth made it legally impossible to use the standard reconstruction by Friedrich Cerha. Almost foreshadowing Neuwirth, Coleman drew upon the jazz band of the First Act for his orchestration, thinning out textures to a chamber ensemble including marimba, steel drums cowbells, and banjo.

American Lulu (seen Oct.6) takes the thematicization of jazz a step further, setting out to reference Afro-American culture in everything from a steam blown organ ballad to a trumpet which emerges as a symbol for the blues singer, Eleanor (a curly haired, less feudal characterisation of Countess Geschwitz). Neuwirth resets passages of Berg’s original music to the first two acts for brass, woodwinds, a small set of strings, and percussion as well as electronic guitar and piano, in some places adding contours to Berg’s expressionist lines with the deeper timbres and expanding the sonic space with recorded sound. By contrast, her entirely original third act emerges as an unsure blend of quasi-minimalist textures, jazz-band brass, spectralist fades and raw, avant-garde string textures.

The English-language libretto is redevised in a similarly awkward fashion. The story begins and ends in an upscale New York apartment, traveling through New Orleans, where Lulu is living with the painter—here a photographer. Dr. Schön is instead Dr. Bloom, who kills Lulu’s lover by throwing ice at him. She flees with Bloom’s son, Jimmy (a stand-in for Alwa), becoming a high-class whore to a white banker and rebuffing the advances of Eleanor without remorse until she is killed by a stranger. Neuwirth also inserts an unidentifiable, pimp-like character named Clarence, who upbraids Lulu for being so “damn insatiable.” Recitations about black rights and other poetic musings emerge perplexingly through the speakers between acts.

The racially conscious goals of the production mostly came across as clichéd, but it had to its credit Marisol Montalvo in the role of Lulu, able to nail her high notes and move seamlessly into Sprechgesang as she cavorted in everything from lingerie to Brazilian tassels. Despite the high dose of eroticism, her dramatic portrayal did little to convey the danger of a femme fatale, which can also be attributed to the limited scope of her character in Neuwirth’s libretto and stilted direction by Kirill Serebrennikov. In the role of Eleanor, Della Miles performed with saucy poise, coaxing the orchestra of the Komische Oper into her R&B inflected grooves. The male roles were well-cast but not outstanding. Jacques-Greg Belobo gave a smooth-voiced delivery of Clarence, and Austrian baritone Claudio Otelli was an imposing Dr. Bloom. The bass Philipp Meierhöfer was in fine form as the Athlete, and Rolf Romei made for an earnest Jimmy, including when he cracked into the higher range.

German conductor Johannes Kalitzke balanced the score’s wide-ranging demands with a steady hand. Sets and costumes by Serebrennikov provided a stark backdrop for Neuwirth’s modern fantasy but ended tastelessly with a bloodied picture of a murdered Lulu. Conventional black-and-white video projections by Gonduras Jitomirksky similarly did little for a production whose progressive aspirations fail to match up with its artistic standards. Perhaps Lulu was never meant to be a vehicle for racial mobility after all.

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