Detlev Glanert - Oceane
Deutsche Oper Berlin, 2019
Donald Runnicles, Robert Carsen, Maria Bengtsson, Nikolai Schukoff, Nicole Haslett, Christoph Pohl, Albert Pesendorfer, Stephen Brook, Doris Soffel
Deutsche Oper Berlin - 3rd May 2019
Composed for the bicentenary of the birth of celebrated German poet Theodor Fontane, the intention of composer Detlev Glanert for Oceane would seem to be principally to do justice to the original author's work. That in itself is a challenge however because the opera is based on only a fragment of a novella left by Fontane, Oceane von Parceval written in the 1880s, that was left unfinished. With a sympathetic production by Robert Carsen it has to be said that Glanert largely succeeds in meeting those intentions, but whether the opera seeks to find any wider application or breaks any new ground as far as contemporary opera is concerned, that's not immediately evident.
Whether the fragment is unfinished or only a sketch, the basic underlying plot of Oceane van Parceval is a familiar one and not greatly substantial. It's another telling of the Melusine legend that can be seen in various incarnations in Rusalka, Undine and even the movies Splash and The Little Mermaid. For Fontane the consideration of a child of nature out of step with the ways of the modern world, or indeed the modern world's detachment from its true essential nature, could have been related to political events in the imperfect foundations of the German Empire at the time of its writing (something Wagner might also have had in mind during the writing of the Der Ring des Nibelungen, a feature of the Leipzig Ring Cycle seen around this performance), but the subject is still something that we can surely still relate to today.
With only a fragment to work with, Glanert has little else to go on. As far the story goes, it's set in a seaside town hotel that has seen better days. Madame Louise welcomes her guests for the new summer season with some optimism that a wealthy benefactor might help restore the hotel's fortunes. She's counting on the landowner Martin von Dircksen, but she also has set some hopes on Oceane von Parceval, who is something of an unknown factor.
Oceane's mysterious manner and behaviour also intrigue Martin von Dircksen, the young man so bewitched by this magical creature that he is blind to the scandal she is causing among the guests. It's not just that she dances lasciviously and with no inhibitions, to the horror of the pastor staying at the hotel, but her outbursts and silences are also enigmatic. Most strangely of all, she doesn't seem to react to the discovery of a dead fisherman found on the beach. Martin however is oblivious to her failings to fit in with the expectations of the rest of the world.
It's all very straightforward and there's nothing complicated or surprising about the developments in Oceane when Martin determines that he will marry this strange creature only to find that they are not at all compatible. Glanert makes this incompatibility apparent through conventional musical means, using only high and low notes to express the wild character dynamic of Oceane, while Martin is all middle-register, safe and comfortable, unimaginative and unexciting, with no depth of character. Glanert also looks back at his previous opera Solaris for the otherworldly choruses that open the opera, communicating in a language that is beyond human understanding.
Glanert complicates matters for the listener however by mixing these character details with traditional musical forms, the little band at the hotel playing a series of dances, a polka, a waltz, a galop, which the characters sing over. Mostly however this is confined to Martin's friend, Dr Albert Felgentrau a tutor in science, and Oceane's chaperone Kristina as the two of them also pair up as a couple on the holiday. With a priest, a landowner, a businesswoman and a scientist, all of them contrary to the nature of Oceane, there's a lot of character detail and conflict to take in in the first three scenes.
In the second half of the work however, the opera takes shape and establishes its own character. The flow of the sea and the stirring up of waves in a storm becomes an important musical as well as visual reference for the power of nature and the danger of any attempts to master it, control it, or deny it. Martin's declaration to Oceane on the beach is beautiful, making it all the more tragic that he doesn't understand what he is dealing with and is completely blind to the reality of who Oceane is.
Glanert succeeds very much in fleshing out the characters with this kind of musical detail, and Robert Carsen's simple but elegant black-and-white designs with projections of the sea catch the mood of the piece well, but the period costumes and moral outlook remain confined very much to a specific time and place. If the conclusion builds up forcefully to a dramatic conclusion where society cruelly denounces Oceane, who would seem to have done little to offend anyone by today's standards, it is nonetheless a reflection of a deeper truth, and - even if it's not made explicit - we can recognise how much greater a distance we are from respecting nature today.
The world premiere performances of Oceane at the Deutsche Oper Berlin were conducted by Donald Runnicles, capturing the mood and dynamic arc of the work from conflicting tones of the first half, though the flowing romanticism of the second half to the thundering conclusion. Soprano Maria Bengtsson impressively handled the difficult challenge of expressing the inhuman or uncivilised side of Oceane, but all the roles were exceptionally well taken. Nikolai Schukoff was so good he was surely too sympathetic to be Martin, but there is actually nothing wrong with the landowner other than his shallowness and incompatibility for Oceane.
There were notable performances also from Nicole Haslett as the bubbly Kristina and Christoph Pohl as the serious Albert. Again there was perhaps more character detail than was strictly necessary for the other representatives of society that react against Oceane, but they were well sung by Albert Pesendorfer as the Pastor and Stephen Brook as George, the maitre d'. I'm not sure that Doris Soffel is still up to the demands of Wagner and Strauss, but is still a force to be reckoned with in a role like Madame Louise, and was warmly received by the Berlin audience at the curtain call.
Links: Deutsche Oper Berlin
Detlev Glanert - Solaris
Oper Köln, 2014
Lothar Zagrosek, Patrick Kinmonth, Nikolay Borchev, Aoife Miskelly, Martin Koch, Bjarni Thor Kristinsson, Qiulin Zhang, Dalia Schaechter, Hanna Herfurtner, Peter Bermes
Oper am Dom, Cologne - 14 November 2014
Science fiction is not a common genre for opera, but it's by no means unheard of. As far back as 1777, Haydn's Il Mondo della Luna used a fabricated trip to the moon as a way to explore more earth-bound desires and behaviours. The science-fiction concept simultaneously celebrates human ingenuity and the willingness of man to look beyond themselves in the quest for knowledge and betterment, but even in this early work it finds that mankind's ability to extend the knowledge frontier is somewhat limited by those very same human impulses and desires.
Stanislaw Lem's 1961 science-fiction novel 'Solaris' is a similar example of science-fiction using outer space to explore the human inner space. The strange phenomena experienced by the crew of a space station exploring the plasma ocean of the planet Solaris reveals much about what it means to be human and the limitations of what the human psyche can endure. For Lem however the question is primarily an intellectual one that doesn't use the subject as much to examine what it tells us about human desires, but rather it asks questions about the capacity of humanity to overcome those basic physical and psychological factors that would be necessary to make the leap to comprehend and meaningfully communicate with an alien intelligence.
It's a chaotic and confusing situation that Kris Kelvin discovers when he arrives on the Solaris space-station at the very start of the Detlev Glanert's opera. Expecting to find three remaining crew members, Kelvin gets less and more than he bargained for. One of the crew, Gibarian, has killed himself, leaving only the cyberneticist Snout and the astrobiologist Sartorius, but there are other strange figures on-board the station - a baboon, a dwarf and an old lady. It soon becomes clear that the three interlopers are closely related to the crew members, living beings created by the plasma ocean of the planet Solaris in an unintentionally terrible and tormenting attempt at communication. It isn't long before Kris encounters his own personal demon drawn from his memory by the planet Solaris - his wife Harey who killed herself 14 years ago.
There's a carefully delineated symmetry in the duality of the situation in Solaris, but it's difficult to entirely separate one strand from the other. Significantly, there are eight characters in the opera, four who are human and four who are not human. Gibarian is actually dead (although there's a strange attempt at reanimation made later here), but the apparition created by him - a baboon-like creature - still exists and haunts the station of its own accord. These are figures of self-torment for their human counterparts or perhaps, conjured up by the planet from their memories and associated psychology, they are just tormenting for the difficulty that the crew have in confronting these aspects of their personality. Snaut, for example, has to deal with a domineering mother who still treats him like a baby and changes his nappies. Sartorius' 'dwarf' meanwhile is rather more overly and disturbingly tied to psycho-sexual impulses.
For his part, psychologist Kris Kelvin considers that this replica of Harey as an abomination, and he tries to resist the attractive notion that she could offer him solace and forgiveness for some residual guilt that he may feel about the suicide of his wife. Kelvin's reaction - killing a succession of Hareys only for them to reappear the next day - might seem extreme, but in a way it reflects and expresses the difficulties that humans would face in any attempt to explore and extend knowledge beyond the limitations of their human experience. The pain of killing Harey and seeing her reborn again each day, and the pain experienced by 'Harey' in her confusion over his behaviour, gives some indication of how distressing and beyond normal human endurance this would stretch any individual. I'm not sure that Lem offers any solution to this dilemma in his novel, but in the opera it appears that one of Sartorius' experiments manages to break the connection for the sake of the sanity of the remaining crew, although there's an echo left in the mind of Kris Kelvin in the closing notes of the score.
Glanert's score for Solaris recognises the duality of the metaphysical dilemma and his writing manages to be both dramatic and lyrical, even if the balance (perhaps necessarily and thus proving Lem's point) tends to lean towards the exploration of human emotions. There is a recognition however that the lines are blurred somewhat by the extraordinary experiences that the characters have to endure, and this leads to some sharp contrasts. A striking example of this occurs when Kris Kelvin's dreaming of his dead wife leads to her coming to taking a physical form on the space station, the lyrical nature of the dream overlapping with the dramatic representation of her actual presence. It's the personification of Solaris itself however - the planet, the plasma sea - that is Glanert's most successful musical creation in the opera. A chorus takes up the voice of the planet, chanting and reversing syllables, creating an otherworldly, warm presence, but one that is also dangerously alluring.
The physical evocation of the world and the planet has an important role to play in setting the right tone. In contrast to the high-tech 2012 Bregenz world premiere production, Darko Petrovic's set suggests a greater sense of mental disintegration in the crumbling concrete structure of the space station. The semi-circular curve of the station rests on a body of water, a few inches deep, that also suggests a lack of solidity. It's also of course representative of the fluid nature of the planet itself, and has an effective eeriness when the chorus swish onto the stage. Just as effective are the use of panels of stars and control panels that that sweep through the station, depositing and vanishing figures from the scene. You never quite know what to expect when one of them slides across the stage. Patrick Kinmonth's direction extended to the choreography which also had a significant role to play in the creation of mood and playing out of the drama.
Lothar Zagrosek's conducting of the Oper Köln orchestra was sympathetic to the moods and rhythms of the score, as well as being considerate of the singing voices, which were mostly all on the high side of their voice type register. Nikolay Borchev's soft baritone suited Kelvin's character and nature (a little more emotionally animated than the impassive Donatas Banionis in Andrei Tarkovsky's 1971 film version of Solaris). Harey's high intense and expressive notes were delivered with crystal clarity by Aoife Miskelly, but with warmth and a sense of feeling for her character's pain. Martin Koch's bright tenor brought out the emotional instability of Snaut, while Sartorious's scientific rigour was characterised in the wonderfully projected bass of Bjarni Thor Kristinsson.
Links: Oper Köln
