Paul Hindemith - Sancta Susanna (Lyon)
Opéra de Lyon, 2012
Bernhard Kontarsky, John Fulljames, Agnes Selma Weiland, Magdalena Anna Hofmann, Joanna Curelaru Kata, Zoé Micha, Hervé Dez Martinez
Opera Platform
Less than half an hour long, it seems that Paul Hindemith's early one-act opera Sancta Susanna is designed to pack as much shock impact into its short running time as possible, and it's true that Hindemith intended to shake up the musical establishment in the early 1920s. It certainly had the desired effect when it was refused at Stuttgart for its blasphemous content, receiving its premiere in 1922 in Frankfurt. As short as it is and as long ago now as it was composed, the work still has the potential to court controversy when it is performed.
It was chosen by the Opéra de Lyon in 2012 as one of the companion pieces for their Puccini + season, offering a contrasting or complementary work to be played alongside each of the three one-act dramas of Puccini's Il Trittico. Sancta Susanna was evidently chosen to be performed with Suor Angelica, another story of a nun who faces a great internal conflict between her spiritual duties and her own human needs and female desires. Although they are very nearly contemporary, there is very little that is common in the treatment of these themes or in terms of musical approach, but it's a contrast that works well and in favour of both works.
Based on a German expressionist short story by August Albert Berhard Stramm, Sancta Susanna is however rather more abstract in its approach to the drama. Hindemith's equally expressionist score is suggestive of mood and of powerful barely repressed forces on the verge of spilling over into shocking revelations. The setting of Hindemith's work consequently takes place in an enclosed space of closed-up people, in a convent with nuns in protective clothing that separates them from the people of world outside. What is kept inside however is bursting to escape and it doesn't take much for those passions to overflow.
For Sister Susanna, praying before the status of Christ, the conflict reaches unbearable proportions when on a Spring evening the sound of lovers outside reaches her ears, Hindemith's music pushing the pitch of an organ note to almost unbearable intensity. Susanna's self-possession disappears when she is told by Sister Klementia of another nun forty years ago who abandoned herself to her passions, stripping naked and wrapping herself around a statue of Christ. Walled up in a cell for her actions, Susanna is convinced she can hear sounds the nun's tomb.
The call of the flesh and its conflict with the spirit lead Susanna to also strip off her garments, an action that infects Klementia also, the situation building into a musical frenzy before the other nuns attempt to intervene and attempt to call a halt to this satanic display. Their anger is directed towards Klementia, but Susanna offers herself up to their displeasure. More than just abandoning herself to illicit desires, Susanna blasphemously proposes a union of the soul and the flesh.
Director John Fulljames makes the most of the opportunity or indeed the necessity for this scene to be as outrageous and shocking as possible in the 2012 Lyon production, the soprano Agnes Selma Weiland left completely naked but for satanic writing tattooed across her body. The darkness of the convent and Susanna are illuminated in blinding light as the naked woman offers herself to the descending figure of Christ on the cross. It's highly effective and still startling to see it staged in this way.
From a singing and musical perspective it's also highly effective. Bernhard Kontarsky conducts here, as with the Puccini + production of Schoenberg's Von Heute auf Morgen, to bring out all the power of the work alongside its more suggestive tones and moods. Mezzo-soprano Magdalena Anna Hofmann also shows the range of her abilities here, which even in such a short piece is just if not even more demanding than either of her other Lyon appearances in Von Heuten auf Morgen and Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten. Agnes Selma Weiland surpasses the greatest challenges of the work, physically and musically stripping soul and body bare in a way that a work like this demands if it is to have any impact or meaning at all.
Links: Opéra de Lyon, Opera Platform
Arnold Schoenberg - Von Heute auf Morgen
Opéra de Lyon, 2012
Bernhard Kontarsky, John Fulljames, Magdalena Anna Hofmann, Ivi Karnezi, Rui Dos Santos, Wolfgang Newerla, Marin Bisson, Pierre Lucat
Opera Platform
Schoenberg's one act opera Von Heute auf Morgen might have been chosen by Opera Lyon as one of the works to accompany each of the three parts of Puccini's Il Trittico in their Puccini + production of 2012 but it's by no means a 'filler' work. It was partnered with Il Tabarro (Hindemith's Sancta Susanna was performed alongside Suor Angelica and Zemlinsky's A Florentine Tragedy alongside Gianni Schicchi) presumably for its depiction of marriage problems and questions of infidelity, but there are hints - suggested in this production directed by John Fulljames - that Von Heute auf Morgen is more than a middle-class relationship drama.
It does however initially appear very much like one of Richard Strauss's marital dramas such as Intermezzo. A husband and wife return after an evening dinner party, musing on the events and the people they have met. The husband is open in his admiration for a seductive lady he met there, an old friend of his wife's who appears to be much more modern in her ways. The wife agrees that she has transformed into something beautiful, unrecognisable from the person she was before. The wife has likewise taken a fancy to the Singer, finding something in his voice that speaks to her, makes her feel alive, fresh in a way that she doesn't feel any longer with her husband.
Having a young child, who is woken up by their loud discussions and disagreements, both the husband and the wife are clearly looking for something that has gone missing from their marriage. The husband is attracted to a free spirit who seems to be a woman of the world, while he claims his wife has become a Hausfrau. The wife has lost the edge of excitement that lies in flirtation, becoming mired in habit, feeling detached and alone by her husband's seeming indifference to her now. The short opera develops then into a fantasy imagination of the other people they could have been or could be with other people.
So yes, on the surface certainly Von Heute auf Morgen appears to be a fairly straightforward and commonplace domestic dispute that has been played out countless times. On the other hand, one of the most significant points about the work is the time it was written and the fact that it is written entirely in the 12-tone method developed by Schoenberg. This puts a different spin on matters. In many ways, the opera is about imagining how music - mired in habit and custom - can regain its edge of freshness, newness and excitement. Von Heute auf Morgen can be seen as Schoenberg's attempt to consider how modern music could shake up old stuffy traditions.
But - as you often find with Strauss - Schoenberg's Von Heute auf Morgen acknowledges that it's by no means easy to shake off the attractions of music's past. Traces of Romanticism, of the composer's former thrall to the influence of Wagner, can be heard in the arrangements that seek to express the conflict between the old and the new. It's even explicitly stated in the Singer's use of Romantic identification with Siegfried and quotes from Das Rheingold that seduce the Wife, but how can one resist the attraction? How can one be truly modern? How can one be true to oneself?
Schoenberg seems to take comfort or inspiration from the words of the couple in the libretto as justification for his new approach. "We live with ideas. They live with past hopes". Schoenberg's couple would appear to decide to put their differences aside and settle for the comfort of the familiar when they reject the attractions of the other free and easy couple and settle for family domestic conformity, but there are different ways you can view this. John Fulljames's direction helps emphasise the point that it's not about following fashion as much as following one's own inner calling, but at the same time not he finds a welcome measure of lightness and humour in the one-act opera that serves it well.
The set designs for the production presents a number of apparently attractive alternatives to the 1920s period bourgeois idea of modernity that the couple inhabit (Von Heute auf Morgen was first performed in 1930). The period and the paintings on the wall change from hard-edge modernism to lush soft-lighted decadence, through to the Pop-Art of the 60s and the psychedelic 70s, as the couple flirt with the idea of embracing change and novelty as an alternative to conformity and habit. Eventually they reject each of these possibilities - and the lure of the attractive other couple - and instead recognise the value of what they have. Fashions change, but love remains; living it from day to day is what matters and is what it means to be truly modern.
Schoenberg's 12-tone serialism also points to another way of being modern; of music not merely being just for dramatic accompaniment or illustration, but a means rather to explore interior lives that lie outside the conventional measurements of space and time. Conducted here at Lyon by Bernhard Kontarsky, the intricacies of the arrangements are managed beautifully, giving a sense of all those possibilities that Schoenberg suggested. The production flows with impressive performances from Magdalena Anna Hofmann and Wolfgang Newerla as the Husband and Wife couple, but Ivi Karnezi and Rui Dos Santos are also fine, offering persuasive alternatives as the Friend and the Singer.
Links: Opéra de Lyon, Opera Platform
Franz Schreker - Die Gezeichneten
Opéra de Lyon, 2015
Alejo Perez, David Bösch, Charles Workman, Magdalena Anna Hofmann, Simon Neal, Markus Marquardt, Michael Eder, Aline Kostrewa, Jan Petryka, Jeff Martin, Robert Wörle, Falko Hönisch, James Martin, Piotr Micinski, Stephen Owen
Lyon - 13 March 2015
Selected as one of three thematically connected works in the Opéra de Lyon's 'Les Jardins Mystérieux' March 2015 opera festival, the mysterious garden of Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten is a rather disturbing one, a paradise that holds altogether darker, twisted roots. The Lyon production of this rarely performed yet enchantingly beautiful work was accordingly dark, recognising perhaps the historical origins of Schreker's composition, as well as its continued relevance today.
The libretto for Die Gezeichneten (translated as 'Les Stigmatisés', the Stigmatised) was written by Schreker on the request of fellow composer, Alexander von Zemlinsky. The work is based on the play Hidalia by Frank Wedekind (famous as the author of Lulu), but the inspiration also comes from Oscar Wilde's 'The Birthday of the Infanta' - a work that Schreker had already written as a dance-pantomime 'Der Geburtstag der Infantin'. Zemlinsky's identification with the cruel little tale stemmed from his own insecurities regarding his relationship with Alma Schindler, later Alma Mahler, and it would become the subject of his own opera based on the Wilde story, Der Zwerg (The Dwarf).
It's not difficult to see why Schreker's libretto may not have entirely suited Zemlinsky's intentions. It doesn't have a happy ending or even a noble one, but rather seems to suggest that there is a darker side to everyone. Even the best of intentions, corrupted by a sense of pride, love or even self-empowerment, can have unintended consequences. Schreker's own experience following the success of Die Gezeichneten would seem to follow a similar trajectory, the composer being appointed to a prominent position as a Music Director in Berlin, before falling victim to the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi party and seeing his influence and musical reputation slip into decline.
In Die Gezeichneten, the stigmatised outsider is Alviano Salvago, a scarred, hunchbacked nobleman in 16th century Genoa, who has created a beautiful island paradise called 'Elysium'. Unknown to Alviano, the Genoan nobility have been using the underground grotto of the island to abuse children that they have been abducting from the city. Aware that he cannot be loved for his appearance, Alviano intends to enhance his reputation by donating the island as a gift to the people of Genoa. The nobles appeal to Duke Adorno to preserve their playground, Adorno unaware that his own missing daughter Ginevra Scotti is one of the victims held captive in the grotto.
Alviano finds another powerful enemy in Count Vitelozzo Tamare. Tamare is in love with Carlotta, the daughter of the Podestà. Carlotta, an artist following her own independent spirit, has rejected Tamare and is attracted rather to the hunchback, wanting to paint him, but Alviano's lack of confidence prevents him from exploring whether the attraction goes any deeper than artistic. Indeed, once Carlotta finishes her experimental portrait of Alviano's soul, she seems to lose any further interest in the strange little man, but Alviano, flattered by the attention of Carlotta, is now a changed man.
Lyon's production, directed by David Bösch, spared the audience none of the horror of this dark fairy-tale nor the disturbing implications and undercurrents that run through the subject. There was little sign of any Romantic decadence or period glamour here. The true nature of the Genoan nobles' activities was laid out clearly, posters showing pictures of abducted children in screen projections, lusts openly displayed as the men shared videos and pictures of the abuse carried out, groping and grasping at horrified young women. The scenes of abused children in the grotto, when it is uncovered in the final act, are horrifying, some of victims wearing rags, some dead, others with blood spilling down their legs. And yet, for all the realism of the treatment, there was still an otherworldly hallucinatory aspect to the nature of the work.
Partly that's down to the themes being just as suggestive as the abstract dark fairy-tale nature of the plot, and partly it's down to how that is expressed in the music. The themes that rise to the surface are those of the abuse of power, the corrupting influence of power, the gratification of desires and the inevitable downfall of a corrupt society. But it's also about art, the power of art to explore beneath the surface and show the true nature of the human soul. If you delve into such places however, you can also be sure of finding some unpalatable truths. This fits with the post-war view of the barbarism unleashed by Great War, but its essential truth is borne out in Schreker's own later experiences, when through his Jewish ancestry, his own art would come to be regarded as 'Entartete', degenerate art, by the National Socialists, who would come into power and leave similar devastation in the wake of the Second World War.
The question of whether Schreker's own art with its grand, elegant flow of lush post-Wagnerian orchestration, is capable of delving into those places is debatable, but in Die Gezeichneten at least, it has a place. Tied to these themes moreover, it's not ambitious to say that the work is capable of being expressive of how these themes can be applicable to many different facets of life. If there's any kind of disparity between the dark decadence of the work and the surface beauty of orchestration, Schreker's score is revealed to be much more muscular and expressive than one would think under the direction of Alejo Perez. Art is transformative, but it can also be twisted and corrupted. The meansure of that is in the dissonance that creeps into this beguiling music, and Perez and the Lyon orchestra bring this out clearly, not letting the audience be entirely seduced by its chromatic spell, but reminding us that it has a sinister side to it.
It helps that the musical performance works in conjunction with the imagery on the stage, but the singing is also a vital ingredient in this work. Having previously known this work with a more heldentenor style of performance from Robert Brubaker in the role of Alviano Salvago at Salzburg in 2005, it was quite a change to hear the softer timbre and delicate delivery of Charles Workman in the role here. This worked wonderfully however, Workman's luxurious tones contrasting with Alviano's marked and disfigured appearance. It was a captivating performance, remarkably clear in enunciation and carrying across the huge orchestral forces in a strong expressive delivery. Magdalena Anna Hofmann impressed as Carlotta, a difficult role that has to reach some near-impossible heights, and if the securing of those notes wasn't pitch-perfect every time, she brought a degree of personality to the work's complex artistic female character.
Links: Opéra de Lyon
