Blacher - Romeo und Julia (Duisberg, 2021)

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

Widmann - Babylon

Jörg Widmann - Babylon

Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, 2012

Kent Nagano, Carlus Padrissa, La Fura dels Baus, Claron McFadden, Anna Prohaska, Jussi Myllys, Willard White, Gabriele Schnaut, Kai Wessel, August Zirner

Internet Streaming, 3 November 2012

The first opera for the new 2012/13 season of the Bavarian State Opera in Munich was something of a bold statement of intent.  A new modern opera receiving its world premiere, Babylon is an almost three-hour long epic with lavish production values that seem to fly in the face of European austerity measures and defy restraints on budgets in the arts.  With a libretto written moreover by philosopher Peter Sloterdijk and music composed by Jörg Widmann, the 39 year old student of Hans Werner Henze, it seemed something of an omen that Henze should die mere hours before the opening performance, leaving the way for his protégé to make a mark on modern opera with an important new work.  There was consequently a weight of expectation surrounding the opening of Babylon, and with a visually astonishing production from Carlus Padrissa of La Fura dels Baus that was perfectly in accord with the colourful nature of the work, the opera certainly made an impression, even if its impact was inevitably somewhat reduced for those watching it (and experiencing technical difficulties) with its Live Internet Streaming broadcast on the 3rd November.

Babylon relates back to Biblical times and ancient Mesopotamian mythology, to human sacrifice practiced by the Babylonians and the repudiation of it by the Jews, to the destruction of the walls of Jericho and the founding of urban civilisation.  Central to the work then, with its invocations of the mystical number seven, is the formation of order out of chaos, an order associated with numerology that is reflected in the establishment of the seven days of the week.  It's a love story that is both the cause of the chaos that ensues as well as what brings about redemption and order.  Widmann's opera opens then with a prologue showing a scene of apocalyptic devastation, a scorpion man walking through the ruins, before the Soul arrives to open up the first of the opera's seven scenes, mourning the loss of Tammu, a Jewish exile living in Babylon who has fallen in love with Inanna, a Babylonian priestess in the Temple of Free Love.

The visions of chaos and destruction continue unabated as Tammu lies with Inanna, and is awoken through love and some herbal induced visions - the seven planets and even the Euphrates itself bearing testimony - to the truth that their world is founded on chaos that the Gods have unleashed upon the universe.  (Mozart and Schikaneder's The Magic Flute is obviously drawn from the same sources - Tamino and Pamina recognisably relating to Tammu and Inanna).  It's this chaos that the Babylonians hold at bay through human sacrifice, a "truth" that is hidden by Ezekiel in his teachings of the Jewish law and the stories of Noah and the flood.  When Tammu is chosen as the next human sacrifice however and is executed by the High Priest following the New Year celebrations, Inanna joins with the Soul in her lament for his loss.  Inanna pleads with Death to allow her to journey to the Underworld to bring Tammu back.

Undoubtedly the most striking thing about Babylon is the direction of this vast undertaking by Carlus Padrissa of La Fura dels Baus, with its spectacular production designs by Roland Olbeter.  Every element of the ambitious libretto, with all its mystical symbolism, dreams, visions and mythology, is presented in visual terms that aren't merely literal, but connect on an intimate level with the music and the concepts wrapped up within it.  In its seven scenes (with a prologue and an epilogue) a Tower of Babel is erected and destroyed, the seven planets appear during Tammu's visions, the River Euphrates is personified as well as represented by a stream of words and letters that flood and overflow, seven phalluses and vulvas appear with seven apes during the New Year celebrations, flaming curtains give way to sudden downpours during the sacrifice of Tammu, and Innana wades through a seething mass of (projected) bodies, discarding seven garments (a dance of the seven veils), as she journeys into the Underworld.  The stage is never static, there's an incredible amount going on, with extraordinary detail in background projections, processions, with supernumeraries in all manner of costumes and guises.

Babylon is therefore, opera in its purest sense.  The music and singing alone don't stand up on their own, the spectacle alone isn't enough, but the work needs each of the elements of the libretto, the music, the performance and the theatrical presentation to work together and in accord to put across everything that is ambitiously covered in the work.  Widmann perhaps takes on too much across its great expanse of scenes and musical styles - cutting suddenly between twelve-tone dodecaphony, jazz, cabaret and Romanticism - to the extent that it can feel episodic and difficult to take in as an integral and consistent work.  Babylon however has a solid foundation in its subject, in Kent Nagano's marshalling and conducting of the orchestra of the Bayerische Staatsoper, in Padrissa's impressive command of the visual elements, and in Anna Prohaska's extraordinary performance as Innana that goes beyond singing.  Babylon is opera in the purest sense also in that it undoubtedly needs to be experienced in a live theatrical context in order for its full power to be conveyed.  On a small screen, viewed via internet streaming, the rich scope, scale and ambition of the work were nonetheless clearly evident.