Boris Blacher - Romeo und Julia
Deutsche Oper am Rhein, Duisberg - 2021
Christoph Stöcker, Manuel Schmitt, Florian Simson, Jussi Myllys, Lavinia Dames, Katarzyna Kuncio, Günes Gürle, Andrés Sulbarán, Beniamin Pop, Renée Morloc
OperaVision - 19 March 2021
Adaptations of Shakespeare to opera inevitably involve some level of cutting and reworking, to various extents and to various levels of success. Compromises would have also been made in centuries past - in Verdi, in Thomas and Berlioz - in libretti where the composers were working from less than ideal translations of Shakespeare's text. Some relatively modern adaptations have been much more successful in retaining as much of the poetry of the text and the spirit of the original as possible, notably Aribert Reimann's Lear and Brett Dean's Hamlet, surely two of the most difficult Shakespeare works to imagine being adapted to music.
The narrator at the prologue of Boris Blacher's 1943 chamber opera Romeo und Julia - a German cabaret chansonnier dressed in drag as Queen Elizabeth - suggests that this is not going to be the most faithful of Shakespeare adaptations, and although he promises a two hour telling, the 70 minute running time doesn't really appear to be capable of providing anything more than just a surface retelling of a doomed romance. That's still a lot of Shakespeare to compress down without losing the poetry and essence of the work, so evidently the music is going to have to do some heavy lifting here.
And to some extent, Blacher's opera does so much more successfully than you might imagine - impressively even - particularly since the reduced orchestration consists solely of string quintet, piano, flute, bassoon and trumpet. Secondary characters, including Friar Laurence, are combined in a tightly harmonised eight person chorale singing in oratorio-like fashion. Musically it's surprisingly varied in tone and arrangement, with a Kurt Weill-style cabaret narrator interludes and chamber orchestration that manages to capture the mood of each scene, from the dramatic fight, to the celebratory party, to the famous romantic encounters and the tragic finale.
The abridged and musically reduced version might have been something of a necessity for an opera composed during the war, but Romeo und Julia nonetheless benefits in benefits from this kind of compression and condensing, bringing a tighter focus to the love story. If it is less attentive to the detail of the wars between the Capulet and Montague, the real world outside would have provided plenty of context for that. Which in turn makes this an opera not only eminently suitable for staging in the current lockdown conditions, but one where we can understand the difficulties of people trying to carry on relationships under adverse conditions where circumstances and vast forces beyond their control strive to keep them apart.
Inevitably the drama of Romeo und Julia seems a little rushed and overheated if you are familiar with the play, but in truth, even the original play is overheated in how quickly passions and bloods are ignited in both love and in violence, and in how deeply these experiences cut. It's about young people, impetuous, quick to react, dismissive or even contemptuous of the consequences of not following the rules of their elders. The concision of Blacher's opera works then to the benefit of the headlong rush to abandon oneself to the passions of the moment, and the music does it's best to keep up with them.
Even if you're not all that familiar with the play, the tighter focus, the choice of scenes, the music, the handling of the characters and the use of a chorus makes it relatively easy to follow in this opera version. It helps that the poetry of the original is retained in as much as it can be in German translation, the English subtitles in this recorded version for OperaVision even choosing to adhere directly or much more closely to Shakespeare's original text. And when it has such famous lines, well, why wouldn't you?
Manuel Schmitt's directing for the Deutsche Oper am Rhein production is fairly simple but effective in the way that it contributes to highlight Blacher's take on the work and matches its austere chamber arrangements. The costumes are contemporary but there's nothing here trying too hard to be radical, just enough to be suitable and give a sense of the roles of each character. There is little need for over-decoration of the set either, the main action taking place on simple bare stage surrounded by neon-pipe lighting. Romeo and Juliet and the youths occupy centre stage, while fathers, mothers and other authority figures taken up by the chorus remain above on a surrounding platform.
There is however another level hinted at here, the stage rising to reveal a backstage underworld of sorts. Without getting too meta, it's partly an allusion to a narrative level, since the work has the chansonnier walk-on interludes, but it also hints at those external factors that extend the story outwards. All the world is indeed a stage, and each has their role to play. The distinctions and boundaries between our roles as actors, observers or facilitators is not always clear and that's also perhaps hinted at in the work or the production - particularly with many roles being subsumed into a chorus - or something at least that occurred to me while watching this.
Likewise, it's telling that there is a role for musicians on stage here and for "music with her silver sound", a minor scene in Romeo and Juliet (not one I even remembered, but I checked and it is there), but one which Blacher feels duty bound to include in his opera. The music Blacher writes for the work is indeed lyrical and dramatic for all its minimalism, conducted here by Christoph Stöcker to full heightened effect. The writing for the voices is lyrical too and beautifully sung here by Jussi Myllys and Lavinia Dames as Romeo and Juliet, the chorus also contributing to the overall success of this worthy and fascinating work that Deutsche Oper am Rhein have revived for us.
Links: OperaVision
