Zemlinsky - Der Zwerg (Wexford, 2025)

Alexander von Zemlinsky - Der Zwerg 

Wexford Festival Opera, 2025

Christopher Knopp, Chris Moran, Charne Rochford, Eleri Gwilym, Charlotte Baker, Ross Cumming, Victoria Harley, Olivia Carrell, Erin Fflur, Cerys Macallister, Heather Sammon, Eleanor O'Driscoll, Camilla Seale

Jerome Hynes Theatre, National Opera House, Wexford - 23rd October 2025

Strangely, Alexander von Zemlinsky seems to have been one of those early 20th century opera composers who have slipped into obscurity and have yet to gain a true foothold or recognition for their work. That of course was the fate of many German and Austrian composers around the first half of the 20th century, partly through the rapidly evolving changes in music, of which Zemlinsky played an not unacknowledged role, but like many of his contemporaries who fell out of favour with the political establishment, it was mostly due to him being Jewish. Of all Zemlinsky's works Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) appears to be the representative work that he is known for, and in some ways it's a suitable work that defines to a larger extent his character and reputation.

While many of the composers and works deemed Entartete (degenerate) by the Nazis have enjoyed some manner of reappraisal in recent decades, Zemlinsky and Der Zwerg remain largely unknown and rarely performed. It's a work however that fits in perfectly with the new ideals and ideas - both musical and philosophical - that were floating around at the time, particularly in Vienna. Richard Strauss issued in that break with tradition with Salome, but many other works by Schreker, Braunfels and Korngold all explore the darker side of human psychology, a loss of innocence and a recognition of the ugliness and brutality that lies within humanity. Such works are often seen as a sign of the times and somewhat premonitory of the direction of the political climate, albeit dressed up in lush orchestration and extravagantly decadent plots.

The most celebrated and emblematic opera of this period is indeed Richard Strauss's Salome. Based on the play by Oscar Wilde, the Irish-British playwright would prove to be an outspoken figure in giving voice to dark hypocrisy and the depths of depravity in respectable society that were waiting to be given licence to be brought to the surface. Zemlinsky was also drawn to Wilde’s dark fairy tales, composing the short one-act opera Der Zwerg based on The Birthday of the Infanta, to be presented alongside another Wilde work Eine florentinische Tragödie (A Florentine Tragedy). As well as being an expression of those ideas about the ugly side of human nature, Der Zwerg is in some respects also filled with a sense of self-loathing felt by Zemlinsky as someone who didn't fit in with the Germanic ideal, either racially or physically.

The story is about a dwarf who is introduced into the court of the Infanta (an image inspired by Goya’s famous painting) as one of her courtiers. The dwarf however is unaware of how others see him, as he has never seen his reflection in a mirror (other than glimpses of a monster tormenting him in the flash of a blade). Having never seen himself as he is and how he looks, he considers himself a grand heroic figure. He is laughed at and ridiculed by the court, but the Infanta sees him as a plaything, indulging his delusions until he falls in love with her, only for the princess to then cruelly reveal the truth to him. The dwarf dies of a broken heart, clutching the white rose that the Infanta gave to him, but no one really feels any pity for the fool.

The history of the work and the period in which it was composed, 1922, are intriguing, inviting those interested to see in it something of Zemlinsky being rejected by Alma Schlinder, who described him as "a hideous dwarf" and then go on to marry Gustav Mahler. Zemlinsky initially asked Franz Schreker to set The Birthday of the Infanta, for which he would write the libretto (Schreker having already created a dance-pantomime Der Geburtstag der Infantin), but this developed into the similarly themed opera Die Gezeichneten with a libretto written wholly by Schreker himself. What is also interesting is that similar themes about the changing society and its troubling elements were also being explored in another art form, the German Expressionist cinema of Robert Weine's Dr. Caligari (1920) and Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (1922), and that is the direction that director Chris Moran chooses to illustrate this production for Wexford Festival Opera as part of their 'Pocket Opera' programme.

It's a style that works exceptionally well with the nature of the work. Lavishly orchestrated, the story of Der Zwerg has a similar florid quality to Salome without Wilde's Symbolist trappings in that work, the dark fairy tale rather suiting the absurdist Gothic tone adopted here. The production even included flickering silent cinema intertitles, showing the shadow of a Max Schreck Nosferatu-like figure in shadows on the wall to reflect the idea of horror and deformity rather than dwarfism. The court are monstrously panstick painted with heavy black eye makeup and dark lipstick. As with Wilde's story it's all heightened and mannered, matching the sometimes jagged rhythms of Zemlinsky's score performed here in piano reduction by musical director Christopher Knopp.

As with any reduced score production there is no place to hide here and the singers all proved to be more than capable of delivering the intensity of the work, despite the lack of its grand orchestration. Charne Rochford in particular put across the intensity and depth of the dwarf's heroic delusion and fervent love for the Infanta. Eleri Gwilym's Infanta was perfectly characterised and sung, disdainful, detached and self-absorbed but not to the extent that she can't take time to dispense some wilful cruelty to those around her. Charlotte Baker as her attendant Ghita also came across very well as did Ross Cumming as the Chamberlain-storyteller.

There didn't appear to be any attempt to draw any political or personal message out of the work, but Der Zwerg - much like Salome - has its own inner power and horror and works perfectly on its own terms as a strong piece of opera. There is limited opportunity for any ambitious messaging anyway in a reduced small scale production (certainly not the kind of resources seen in the spectacle of Deidamia on the National Opera House main stage the previous night), but yet again, as she demonstrated also with the Pocket Opera production of La tragédie de Carmen in this year's festival, Lisa Krügel's effective set and costume designs were outstanding.

External links: Wexford Festival Opera

Bernstein - Trouble in Tahiti & Poulenc - La voix humaine (Buxton, 2025)

Trouble in Tahiti - Leonard Bernstein
La voix humaine - Francis Poulenc

Buxton Festival Opera, 2025

Iwan Davies, Daisy Evans, Charles Rice, Hanna Hipp, Chloé Hare-Jones, Harun Tekin, Ross Cumming, Allison Cook

Buxton Opera House, 23rd July 2025

There have been double bills of short operas at the Buxton Festival in the past that have adventurously even managed to connect two different works that appear to have very little in common. I reviewed The Maiden in the Tower & Kashchei the Immortal by Sibelius and Rimsky-Korsakov in 2012 and La Princesse Jaune and La Colombe by Saint-Saëns and Gounod in 2013, but I don't think there has been one since then. This double bill for the 2025 Buxton International Festival is a hard sell however; two works with a very bleak outlook on relationships which, for all their differences, are actually complementary on some level. It still takes a little creativity to link Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti with Poulenc's La voix humaine, but in the Buxton tradition Daisy Evans managed to do that quite successfully, even if that meant doubling up the misery.

As bleak as the outlook is in each of these works individually, their strength is that they are very good at what they do. What they do is present a miniature opera with a concentrated intensity that suits material that would probably be less effective (and unendurable) if they were drawn out any longer. Their very concision make them special, allowing a singular mood to be explored, offering a rare intensity that would feel out of place in a longer work (although Ambroise Thomas has a go at rivalling such emotions with his long soliloquies and a mad scene that lasted a whole Act in Hamlet at the Buxton Festival on the previous evening). Whether the two works gain or not from being connected - or whether they even should be brought together - is debatable, but as far as the Buxton production went it did intensify the works without overburdening their inherent simplicity.

Trouble in Tahiti is a challenge in itself, almost setting itself up to be deeply unlikeable in a way that is hard to define. Bernstein's treads a tricky line between parody and satire, between seducing the audience with catchy show tunes that celebrate the ideal of the typical suburban American married couple (of the 1950s) by setting it to sunny music, with a cheesy chorus, radio jingles and musical numbers while at the same time throwing in some dissonance that hints that there is a dark and corrupting side to the American dream that lies beneath the surface. The libretto throws out some cliched lines, undoubtedly sold by idealistic musicals like the film 'Trouble in Tahiti' that Dinah goes to see, but yet they also reveal truths about the circumstances of a married couple at a standstill in their relationship and about to grow more distant.

There is a lot to 'unpack' in the contrasts of the sunny music and the reality of the disintegration of a relationship, so what you probably don't need in a production of Trouble in Tahiti is anything that just makes it even more 'troubling'. Or maybe you do, because while the opera hints at Sam being a bit on the fresh side with his secretary - something he doesn't even consider as cheating, but just a part of conforming to the natural law of being a man - Daisy Evans' production went further to show evidence of Sam's philandering. She does this quite cleverly (and maliciously) by tying Bernstein's work into Poulenc's La voix humaine.

The presence of Allison Cook behind a lace curtain in a warmly lit room off to one side of stage was an early clue to what was to come in the second part of the double bill, the little box room practically an ideal of a typical set for Poulenc's La voix humaine, a room designed to feel perfectly claustrophobic for a woman waiting on a phone call from her lover, feeling trapped and caged with no way out of her predicament. What you might not have expected however was Sam to wander into the room while he is supposed to be out at the gym and start undressing the lady in the room. It's there that Sam goes to deliver his master of the universe soliloquy, boasting of his masculine superiority, winning another kind of 'trophy'. Is the lady of La voix humaine his secretary, Mrs Brown? She's going to be let down by the time we get to the second part of the double bill. Things really aren't going to get any more cheerful.

"That was the most depressing opera I've ever seen", a lady exclaimed at the interval in the bar of the upper circle at the Buxton Opera House. "Wait until you see the next one", I warned. I didn't of course spoil it for the lady by telling her that La voix humaine is about a woman unravelling at the breakup of a relationship who attempts - and maybe even succeeds - in committing suicide while on the phone to her ex-lover. Perhaps I should have said something, as I'm sure she went home traumatised after Allison Cook's performance as the lady left hanging on the telephone.

That indeed is the unfortunate premise and fate of the lady of Poulenc's (what is usually a) monodrama. The perspective of the double bill production changes accordingly however, the little box room off to the side of Trouble in Tahiti opening up to show a woman spilling sleeping tablets over the dresser and floor as she tries to reconnect a faulty telephone connection so that she can pour her heart out to a man who traditionally we don't actually see on the stage. It's usually the case that no other figures are seen and no other voices heard - or needed in this intense piece - but here the phone is picked up in the home of Sam and Dinah.

Given this insight into the other side of the phone line serves to take in the wider context of what we are witnessing. We see Sam making silent gestures, trying to be placatory and being somewhat insensitive to what he probably sees as emotional blackmail, while it's clear that it really amounts to a call for help to simply hear a sympathetic human voice. That isn't found either when Dinah, tired of these mysterious calls to her husband, picks up the phone and is devastated by what she hears. Not for the woman's sake, of course, but for her own marriage and for which she will probably forgive her husband in the end.

La voix humaine doesn't need this. It's debatable whether it helps in any way to visualise the person on the other end of the line, and take such a determined stand on what their nature might be. We already get hints of that from the one-sided conversation, so it doesn't need to be spelled out. There is something to be said for just letting us see the woman, 'Elle', and Allison Cook did not need any additional props or bodies (the chorus from Tahiti also make mournful appearances) to get across the state of mind of her character. But the touches and the connections were subtle and unobtrusive, and it seemed that rather than opening up the claustrophobic drama, it may indeed have made it feel even more traumatic.

There was perhaps a greater challenge for Iwan Davies and the Buxton Festival Orchestra to marry together the two completely different styles of music for the two short operas, but they presented both superbly. As with the outstanding Hamlet the previous evening, the key to really making all these pieces work is in the singing. Perhaps even more so here since there is a lot of intense solo singing, although Hamlet had that too. Charles Rice as Sam and Hanna Hipp as Dinah were both tremendous, engaging you in their own personal worlds and making you feel the depth of their troubles in their clashes. Allison Cook, much like her Gertrude the previous night, also had a rather extended physical meltdown in this production of La voix humaine as 'Elle', and carried you along, all too emotionally involved in the torment she was going through. 

Whoever was responsible for pairing these two operas together - I imagine it was the Festival Opera director Adrian Kelly - really challenged the audience and put you through the wringer. You weren't going to see many smiling faces when you left the opera house, but it would be hard not to be impressed with the unique qualities of these works, the performances and the creative artistry in making two short operas that never sound all that appealing in synopsis come fully alive and show deep insights into their human characters.

External links: Buxton International Festival