Elektra - Landestheater Detmold - 3 March 2016

Elektra – Sabine Hogrefe
Klytamnestra – Gritt Gnauck
Chrysothemis – Susanne Serfling
Orest – Michael Zehe
Aegisth – Markus Gruber
Oreste’s tutor – Insu Hwang
Die Vertraute – Anneke van den Velden-Niggemann
Die Schlepptragerin – Christine Friedek-Dwornik
Young Servant – Bonghan Kim
Old Servant – Kyung-Won Yu
Overseer – Brigitte Bauma
Maids – Sarah Alexandra Hudarew, Rita Gmeiner, Martina Borst, Annette Blazyczek, Katharina Ajyba

Detmold Landestheater Orchestra, Chorus & Statisterie

Conductor – Lutz Rademacher
Director/designer/costumes – Christian von Gotz

In travelling around German theatres regularly, one often finds the most unexpected treats in the most unlikely of places. Detmold, a former ducal town in the Lippe district of north-east Westphalia, has a grand but diminutive 600-seater theatre that one would expect not to extend much beyond being able to stage Mozart. Yet a few seasons ago it put on its own Ring cycle, and this season has mounted a production of Strauss’s Elektra that is the equal of anywhere. Admittedly, the theatre had to use the authorised version for reduced orchestra (but so did Welsh National Opera, the last time it staged it in the UK), but the pit, which extends back under the stage almost in Bayreuth manner, is more capacious than it would seem.

Musically, Detmold assembled a first-class cast, who seemed to be relishing the chance to portray these often larger-than-life characters in such an intimate theatre. It allowed Sabine Hogrefe’s Elektra to articulate every detail of her role, without it becoming the yell that it can in huge houses. She sounds more of a mezzo than a soprano (and bears a passing visual resemblance to Christa Ludwig, another mezzo who stretched upwards on occasion), with a resonant chest register and strongly projected middle; only occasional high notes let her down. But her dramatic assumption of the role was all-encompassing, even if her final, fatal collapse was unconvincingly abrupt. Gritt Gnauck’s Klytamnestra conversely had more the air of a soprano than the usual mezzo, though her shaping of the character’s wily, whining turns of phrase was expertly done and her physical embodiment – a crippled duchess in vivid red – was over-powering. Susanne Serfling, a guest from the ensemble in Darmstadt, where she has proved herself as an estimable Sieglinde and Salome, made Chrysothemis more than the usual wet side-kick to her more forceful sister, and sang the role with admirable control and carefully coloured tone. Michael Zehe was an imposing Orest, though a rapid beat in his voice detracted from his legato line. Markus Gruber was an appropriately oily Aegisth in his short cameo before he has his throat cut, and the rest of the cast suggested a well-tended company at the height of its powers. The orchestral playing – perhaps exhibiting just a little thinness in its string complement in the closing pages – was vibrant, colourful and powerful under the baton of Lutz Rademacher.

Christian von Gotz’s striking production relocates the action from Ancient Greece to a bourgeois country house at around the time the opera was written (c.1909). The upstairs-downstairs/Downton aspect of the social order is emphasised, with the brutal Overseer encouraging the bullying of the Fifth Maid, who sides with Elektra against the others and joins in their butchering at the end. The setting contrasts the idyllic garden with the gruesome violence behind the scenes – and it’s inevitable that the clean linen that the maids are putting out to dry at the start will be blood-splattered by the end. With such intense acting from all concerned, to match the musical qualities, this is truly an Elektra to be reckoned with.

Der Diktator/Der Zar läßt sich photographieren - Anhaltische Theater Dessau - 28 February 2016

Photos: Claudia Heys

Der Diktator
The dictator – Ulf Paulsen
Charlotte, his wife – Stefanie Kunschke
The officer – Albrecht Kludszuweit
Maria, his wife – Iordanka Derilova
The dictator’s adjutant – Stephan Seefeld

Der Zar läßt sich photographieren 
A tsar from **** - Ulf Paulsen
Angele – Stefanie Kunschke
The assistant – David Ameln
The boy – Anne Weinkauf
The false Angele – Iordanka Derilova
The false assistant – Alexander Nikolić
The false boy – Kristina Baran
The ringleader – Albrecht Kludszuweit
The tsar’s companion – Andre Eckert
Forensic officers – Stephan Seefeld, Tizian Steffen
Men’s Chorus of the Anhalt Theatre Dessau
Anhaltische Philharmonie Dessau

Conductor – Daniel Carlberg
Director – Doris Sophia Heinrichsen
Set design – Nicole Bergmann
Costumes – Jessica Rohm

Both Ernst Krenek’s Der Diktator and Kurt Weill’s Der Zar läßt sich photographieren are one-act operas that were originally planned to be coupled with other works by the same composers. Both were also premiered with their original companions less than three months apart in 1928 (their composers were also born the same year, 1900) at a time when Zeitopers, short operas on contemporary themes, were at their height. And with plots similarly built around failed assassination attempts on a tyrant, they seem to have been destined to be paired up. At respectively only 25 and 45 minutes in length, though, they make for a short evening, especially as this new production represented the main theatrical event of the annual Kurt Weill Fest in the composer’s birthplace, Dessau. It was perhaps made to feel all the shorter for the admirable directorial links that were made between the two operas. Krenek’s self-penned story concerns a tragic turn of events when an officer’s wife attempts to take her revenge on a dictator for the blinding of her husband by the tyrant’s war-mongering; the dictator’s jealous wife intervenes when things get steamy between the other two and the officer’s wife is accidentally shot. In the more farcical Weill, a group of anarchists takes over a Parisian photographer’s, posing as its staff, in order to assassinate the tsar using a gun hidden in the camera.

For all its brevity, Krenek’s miniature finds room for an overture, interludes and character establishment, as well as a beginning, a middle and an end. Written as he was waiting for what would prove his greatest success, Jonny spielt auf, to reach the stage, it shares something of that work’s musical wit and craft. Weill’s opera, on the other hand, dates from the same period as Mahagonny and Dreigroschenoper, so at the height of his own powers. The music is actually more cutting than either of those two works, with more New Objectivity hard-edgedness, though it features what would be his first commercial hit, Angele’s Tango, played on a gramophone record at the opera’s climax.

Ulf Paulsen and Iordanka Derilova in Der Diktator

Doris Sophia Heinrichsen draws the threads of the two operas together skilfully. A simple set by Nicole Bergmann services tragedy and farce to equally good effect. Musically, the performance was very fine indeed, from the consummate singing of the cast to the vibrant and vital playing of the Anhalt Philharmonic in the pit under Daniel Carlberg’s expert baton. Ulf Paulsen played both the dictator and the tsar, pompously preening himself as the former (Mussolini was supposedly Krenek’s model), embarrassingly revealing himself as all too frail a human as the latter. As the love rivals in the Krenek and real and false photographers in the Weill, Iordanka Derilova and Stefanie Kunschke were a match for each other vocally, and the tenor of Albrecht Kludszuweit was particularly impressive as the blinded officer. It’s a shame that only two performances of this double-bill are scheduled – well worth catching if it returns to the repertoire.

Die tote Stadt - Theater Magdeburg - 27 February 2016

Photo: Nilz Bohme

Paul – Wolfgang Schwaninger
Marietta/Maria’s voice – Noa Danon
Frank – Roland Fenes
Brigitta – Undine Dreissig
Fritz – Thomas Florio
Juliette – Irma Mihelic
Lucienne – Jenny Stark
Gaston – Eric Schubert
Victorin – Manfred Wulfert
Count Albert – Markus Liske

Opera Chorus & Statisterie of Theater Magdeburg
Children’s Opera Chorus of Georg Philipp Telemann Conservatoire
Magdeburgische Philharmonie

Conductor – Kimbo Ishii
Director – Jakob Peters-Messer
Set design/lighting – Guido Petzold
Costumes – Sven Bindsell

I’m quite used to directors choosing to unfold a different narrative from the one that composer and librettist present in their work, and am generally accepting of this when done convincingly and with perceptive purpose. But I tend to draw the line at playing around with the musical integrity of a through-composed opera in order to pursue this goal. So when Jakob Peters-Messer cuts a crucial scene at the end of Korngold’s Die tote Stadt – the one in which Marietta returns to collect her mislaid umbrella – in order to maintain the fact of the character’s death to the very end, one feels a loss of faith in what one has seen up to that point. And up to that point it had indeed been a generally lucid and well-presented rethinking of a work that offers plenty of ambiguity of its own: how much is real and how much is Paul’s dream? Guido Petzold’s set uses a proscenium arch midway back effectively to mark off the boundary between these two states. Paul’s life takes place wholly in front of this translucent-curtained divide, and the other characters flit between the two, between his conscious and subconscious experience. As the final stage curtain falls, Paul is left alone in front of it – still facing his grief in the real world. Yet when we realise just before this ending that his strangling of Marietta was less the imagined expiation of his attempts to keep the memory of his dead wife alive than a last desperate act of a deranged man, one is left feeling betrayed of one’s trust in the director. There were some other questionable aspects as well, such as the sinister mauling of a young boy – the young Paul? – by Catholic priests at the climax of the Act III religious procession. The stifling effect of the Roman church on the ‘dead city’ of Bruges is a theme in itself (and explored in more depth in the recently revived Frankfurt production by Anselm Weber) and there’s room for an attempt at explaining the roots of Paul’s funerary idolatry in his childhood, but neither aspect was really pursued here. The shrine in which Paul keeps the mementos of his wife is inevitably the sacrificial altar, as it also furnishes the dancers in Act II with their Venetian gondola (a craft often said to resemble a coffin). So, flashes of brilliance, then, in a generally too ill-defined staging.

Fortunately, the musical virtues went a long way to make up for things. I had heard Wolfgang Schwaninger’s Paul in Regensburg in 2012, and was impressed then by his vocal command of what must be one of the most challenging tenor roles this side of Wagner. Here that ringing tone and stamina were again in evidence, while in a more dramatically intense, and indeed deliberately unsympathetic characterisation from this production’s director his acting was even more involving, and his forestage singing of the reprise of the Lute Song at the end was as moving as it has ever been. Israeli soprano Noa Danon, who I heard as Donna Clara in Theater Lubeck’s Zemlinsky double bill in 2014 and who has been in the Magdeburg ensemble since 2009, threw herself physically into the role of Marietta – as a convincing dancer, too – and coupled her stage presence with a vocal performance that was tonally alluring and technically fine-tuned. Roland Fenes’s Frank and Undine Dreissig’s Brigitte seemed hampered by Peters-Messer’s rather wooden direction of their characters (maybe this was a deliberate thing), and Thomas Florio’s Fritz sang Pierrot’s Lied with charm if without the truthful sentimentality of the best interpreters of the role. As for the orchestral playing under Kimbo Ishii’s direction (and the conductor must share some blame for the aforementioned directorial failure in agreeing to the shameless filleting of the final scene), after a somewhat lacklustre opening (not helped by the theater’s dry acoustic) it became ever more involving and seductive.

Au monde - Theater Aachen - 26 February 2016

Photo: Carl Brunn

The father - Randall Jakobsh
The oldest sister - Pawel Lawreszuk
Ori, the second son - Hrolfur Saemundsson
The oldest daughter - Sanja Radisic
Ther second daughter - Camille Schnoor
The youngest daughter - Suzanne Jerosme
The husband of the oldest daughter - Johan Weigel
The strange woman - Marika Meoli

Sinfonieorchester Aachen

Conductor - Justus Thorau
Director - Ewa Teilmans
Set design - Oliver Brendel
Costumes - Andreas Becker
Lighting - Dirk Sarach-Craig

Philippe Boesmans (b.1938) was a leading light of the Belgian avante-garde and the Liege school of Henri Pousseur until in recent years he abandoned it all for New Romanticism. His latest opera, Au monde, premiered at La Monnaie in Brussels in 2015 and received its first German production in this staging by Theater Aachen, which opened last December. Based on a stage play by Joel Pommerat, who fashioned the libretto, it combines the dramatic worlds of Chekhov and Maeterlinck to depict the not exactly clear relationships within a rich industrialist’s family: we have three sisters, two brothers, a husband of one of the sisters and the ageing father, as well as an ‘unknown woman’, whose presence appears to trigger events. Shades of incest, lesbianism and abuse colour the sexual politics; some of the 20 scenes are described in the synopsis as being ‘perhaps a dream’ – the world of the Belgian Symbolists seems to be re-evoked in this modern setting. And Boesmans makes the musical link, too, by using a language that at times could have come from the pen of Debussy (the French word-setting certainly brings Pelleas to mind), coupled with a 21st-century take on the late-Romantic styles of Mahler and Strauss. It’s well crafted, as one would expect from a composer of his experience, but also felt a bit Ersatz, a bit pastiche, and has the rather stylistically incongruous Leitmotif of Sinatra’s ‘My Way’, mimed at salient points by the strange woman and voiced offstage by the father (only one character, the second son Ori, is given a name).

Ewa Teilmans’s production sleekly presents the two-hour span of the opera with only the odd brief hiatus for unaccompanied scene changes (Boesmans seems unsure whether to provide interludes or to stop and start between scenes). The basic shell of Oliver Brendel’s set doesn’t change, but apertures open, furniture appears and disappears and the distinction between reality and dream is subtly blurred. Justus Thorau conducted the score with relish, though the orchestra’s strings – apparently notated by the desk – sounded undernourished and a bit fragile at times. The cast was uniformly good, but special mention must be given to Camille Schnoor’s focused and eloquent portrayal of the second-eldest sister, the opera’s most important role, and to the superbly varnished tone of Hrolfur Saemundsson’s Ori, the character whose return from the army to take over the family business just as he goes blind precipitates the drama. There are many loose ends in the narrative, as one would expect from a story told in half-lights and half-truths, and even a second reading of the synopsis post-performance did little to help, but for all the drawbacks, it was an opera that engaged brain and heart.

Ruhe in the Ruhr: 2

Baldeneysee

My previous posting on the subject of finding the picturesque in one of Europe’s most industrial regions concentrated on the Ruhr’s historic urban relics. This time my focus is on its scenic beauty. Yes, there is plenty – large swathes, especially around the river valleys, forests and open farmland that act as buffers between the main cities. This was often where the German equivalent of the Industrial Revolution originally started, with small-scale mining and cottage industries, before the heavier industry took over and concentrated themselves in the lowlands to the north.

When we talk of the Ruhr today, we tend to think of the whole region, stretching from Duisburg in the west to Dortmund in the east, Solingen in the south to Gelsenkirchen in the north. But the river which gives the area its name and reputation is actually one of these scenic wonders. Flowing down from the hilly Sauerland of the central German massif, it now takes a surprisingly rural route through the industrial heartland, winding in large, sinuous curves from Hagen, via the southern outskirts of Essen to Mülheim and out into the Rhine at Duisburg. For much of its length, this stretch glides through wooded valleys, often enlarged into reservoirs, and with its boating, walking and cycling opportunities has become the main ‘green lung’ and outdoors escape for the millions who live within its reach. In the south of the region, the Wupper and Düssel do a similar job. What follows are descriptions of three walks that, in my humble opinion, offer some of the best exposure to the charms of the Ruhr region’s countryside. All are based around using the area’s rail network for access.

A) Baldeneysee, Ruhr

The water provided by the Ruhr was crucial to the original exploitation of the area’s mineral resources, but is nowadays more important for human use. When the river was dammed just above the ancient town of Werden in 1933 it not only flooded the valley to provide drinking water for nearby Essen, but also allowed the installation of turbines to create hydro-electricity. (The dams that were the focus of the infamous ‘Dam-busters’ of World War II are upstream in the hills of the Sauerland.) The resultant Baldeneysee is now a beautiful, mature-looking lake, surrounded by forest and with its shore peppered with sailing clubs and hugged by a largely tarmacked foot/cycle path. A full circuit is shown locally as 14km, though my GPS registered it closer to 17km, and it is possible t

o do half that by using different suburban rail lines at each end of the lake. Depending on the season, there are various cafés and restaurants offering refreshment along the way.

Baldeneysee

Werden is a stop on the S6 rail line between Düsseldorf and Essen, running every 20 minutes during the week, half-hourly at weekends. This small town with an attractive Alstadt quarter is home to North Germany’s most significant late Romanesque abbey church, founded by St Ludger (who is buried in the crypt), one of Charlemagne’s bishops. In truth the interior is spoiled by typically hideous Baroque Roman Catholic excesses, especially a tasteless altarpiece, and there’s not much else to see apart from Ludger’s cask. Instead head down to the river and follow the shore upstream. The dam is about a ten-minute walk north of the town, and makes an interesting brief diversion to walk along the top, see the hydro turbines working and admire the views of the lake and up to the Krupp dynasty’s Villa Hügel sitting voluminously above the trees.

Villa Hügel looming over the lake

A wide, tarmac road, with minimal traffic, hugs the southern shore for 7km to Kupferdreh, paralleling a historic steam railway line for the last few kilometres – a relic of the numerous industrial lines that peppered the region. Here one can catch the S9 rail line that runs, at a similar frequency to the S6, between Essen and Wuppertal. Alternatively, cross the old box girder bridge over the upper end of the lake and follow its northern shore (foot and cycle paths frequently diverge along this stretch) back towards the dam and Werden. On the way, there’s an old mine lift, left as a memorial to valley’s former industry. If walking all the way back to Werden seems too much, one can cut the circumnavigation short by a few kilometres by catching the S6 at Essen-Hügel instead (this is the stop for the Krupp villa, which is open for visitors most days and is worth seeing in its own right for its moneyed opulence and interesting historical displays).

B) Müngsten Bridge and Schloß Burg, Wupper

Müngstenbrücke

Southwest of Wuppertal, the River Wupper takes a sharp turn to the south and flows between densely wooded hillsides in the Sauerland foothills – a particularly pleasant stretch. Take the S7 train from Wuppertal, or from Solingen, to Solingen-Schaberg station at the western end of Germany’s highest steel railway bridge, the Müngstenbrücke, which magnificently spans the deep Wupper gorge and has just been restored (the journey across by train is spectacular in itself). From the station follow the footpath that zig-zags down to the river, where’s there’s a visitor’s centre and, in season, a rope-pulled pedestrian ferry across the water. Head along the western shore, downstream, for several kilometres (largely flat, though there’s one steep diversion over a rocky outcrop), crossing the river where a small lane takes you to the village of Burg. Looming above the village is a well-restored medieval castle, now the regional museum and well worth the climb up (there is a funicular in season).

Burg church with castle in the background

This was once the seat of the Dukes of Berg, who ruled over much of the Lower Rhineland until subsumed by Brandenburg and then Prussia in the 17th century. Cross the river on the main road (Solingerstrasse) and take the first turning on the right after the corner (Friedhofsweg). Turn right on to a path that climbs up to the top of the hill. From here, a wide, high-level forestry track follows the river (down to your right) all the way back to the pier of the Müngster Bridge and a brief further climb back up to the station.

C) Neanderthal, Düssel

Recreation of a Neanderthal man in the museum

We have the region’s industry to thank for the discovery, in the mid-19th century, of the bones of our near-relative, Homo neanderthalensis, who lived in this area of the Düssel, just 12km from the centre of what would become Düsseldorf, some 40,000 years ago. Quarrymen excavating the rich deposits of limestone made the discovery in a cave here in 1856, in a then canyon-like section of the river valley named after a local pastor and naturalist, Joachim Neander, whose surname almost prophetically was concocted from the Greek for his true name, Neumann, or ‘new man’. In the intervening decades the canyon has been plundered of its limestone and the valley is now broad and tree-lined. Close to the fascinating Neanderthal Museum, devoted to the discovery and the prehistory of the area, are some concrete ‘beds’ on which one can lie and imagine the cave metres above your head, now in the open space of the valley. 

 

The striped poles mark where the discovery
was made, several metres above in what is now air!

One can walk up the valley from the museum, or make a longer, one-way walk that takes in more of the local scenery. From Gruiten station on the main commuter line between Düsseldorf and Wuppertal (make sure your train is scheduled to stop here), walk through the car park parallel with the rail lines and pick up the Neanderthalweg that soon becomes a footpath, down past a quaint farmstead and on to a path alongside the rushing Düssel river. Follow this upstream for a couple of kilometres; at the crux of a left-hand bend in the river a track head uphill to the left: climb up here until the road surface improves and you reach some scattered houses. Before the road takes a sharp left-hand turn, pick up a footpath that heads west through fields to another small road. Follow this to the left, take the right turn at the T-junction to its end, cross the main road and take the service road that runs parallel to the left. Cross back over the main road, follow the lane ahead until it becomes a path and enters the woods. From here a path descends down to the Düssel again and head downstream, passing an animal attraction and various prehistoric displays, to the museum. An enjoyable morning’s walk, with refreshment available at the museum cafe or the inn on the main road. From here, a short footpath climbs up to the Neanderthal station on the S28 line between Mettmann and Düsseldorf.

Bluebeard's Castle/Der Zwerg – Pfalztheater Kaiserslautern – 12 December 2015

Bluebeard (Guido Jentjens) and Judith (Alelheid Fink)

Photos: Thomas Brenner

Bluebeard’s Castle

Bluebeard – Guido Jentjens

Judith – Adelheid Fink

Der Zwerg

Dwarf – Heiko Börner

Donna Clara – Jihyun Cecilia Lee

Ghita – Arlette Meißner

Don Estoban – Alexis Wagner

Maids – Naomi Schäfer, Andrea Zabold, Christina-Mirl Rehm

Girls – Neung Mi Lee, Seung Min Baek

Infantin’s playmates – Women of the Chorus & Extra Chorus

Das Orchester des Pfaltztheaters

Conductor – Uwe Sandner

Director – Urs Häberli

Sets – Thomas Dörfler

Costumes – Ursula Beutler

Lighting – Manfred Wilking

The dwarf (Heino Börner), Clara (Jihyun Cecilia Lee) and Don Estoban (Alexis Wagner)

Double bills often work best when some thought has gone into the pairing. Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) is often twinned with the composer’s other Oscar Wilde opera, A Florentine Tragedy, and last years production in Lübeck (see here) made a good case for linking the two completely different stories. Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle makes an interesting coupling for Der Zwerg. There are parallels between the two composers, born a decade apart and both finding refuge from the Third Reich in the USA but dying within a few of years of emigrating. Both operas are based on what might broadly be termed ‘fairy tales’, though definitely from the darker end of the spectrum. Both also involve themes about revelation and self-revelation: Bluebeard’s innermost secrets are progressively revealed through the seven doors of his castle; the dwarf finally discovers the truth about his ugly appearance and dies from the pain. And both Bluebeard and the dwarf seek love but are betrayed by, respectively, self-deception and thoughtless leading-on.

Urs Häberli has made no attempt to link the two operas in his staging, and they inhabit visual worlds as different as their musical ones. Bluebeard’s castle is a split-level wall in shades of blue-grey, in which six of the seven doors are incorporated into the Mondriaan-like squares and rectangles (the other, for the lake of tears, is in the mezzanine floor). In fact I think this must be the first production I’ve seen which actually has physical doors, as opposed to other analogies for the openings on Bluebeard’s mind and realms, though the ‘contents’ are left to the imagination with changing colours of lighting. The interaction of the two characters is naturalistic and well directed, and there is a parallel in the baring of Bluebeard’s soul in the way he gradually removes garments – coat, gloves, jacket, waistcoat – as his secrets are uncovered; the fate of Judith, on the other hand, is to end up veiled and covered up along with the former wives. There was a sense that Adelheid Fink’s Judith was going through the motions for this last performance in a three-month run, and her slightly squally singing (the opera was given in the standard German translation by Wilhelm Ziegler) and unengaged acting detracted from the overall performance. Guido Jentjens’s Bluebeard, though, was richly sung and his fine acting projected much of the character’s pain and disappointment.

The Dwarf was a visual treat, with Ursula Beutler’s costumes giving a whimsical and contemporary twist to Renaissance Spanish court wear, with its extravagant wigs and ruffs. The brightness and lightness of touch of the direction only highlighted the ultimate tragedy, where the dwarf the Infanta, Donna Clara, has been given for her birthday is ultimately forgotten as another broken toy just at the moment his own self-revelation kills him. Heiko Börner, who had sung Peter Grimes in Krefeld only four days earlier (reviewed here), gave a gripping performance of the title role – touching, searing and lyrical in equal measure (and a better fit to his tenor than Grimes had been). Jihyun Cecilia Lee caught the Infanta’s childishness that drives the drama with singing that was bell-like in its clarity yet never sounded precious. The rest of the cast was just as convincing. But most impressive of all was the playing of the Pfalztheater’s orchestra under Uwe Sandner – quite simply the most texturally detailed, beautifully shaped and masterly performance of Zemlinsky’s irridescent score I’ve heard in the theatre.

Peter Grimes – Theater Krefeld – 8 December 2015

Grimes (Heiko Börner) with the sinister Dr Crabbe (Tobias Forstreuter) looking on.
Photos: Mattias Stutte

 

Peter Grimes – Heiko Börner

Ellen Orford – Anne Preuß

Balstrode – Johannes Beck

Auntie – Eva Maria Günschmann

First Niece – Amelie Müller

Second Niece – Debra Hays

Bob Boles – James Park

Swallow – Andrew Nolen

Mrs Sedley – Gundula Schneider

Rev. Horace Adams – Michael Siemon

Ned Keene – Rafael Bruck

Hobson – Matthias Wippich

Apprentice – Jonas Trebo

Dr Crabbe – Tobias Forstreuter

Chorus & Extra Chorus of Theater Krefeld und Mönchengladbach

Niederrheinische Sinfoniker

Conductor – Alexander Steinitz

Director – Roman Hovenbitzer

Sets – Roy Spahn

Costumes – Magali Gerberon

This, my third German Grimes of 2015 (see also here), was the first of them to be given the full Regietheater treatment. The previous two productions had displayed various degrees of naturalism, extending in Ulm’s case as far as Expressionism. Roman Hovenbitzer’s production for the twinned Krefeld/Mönchengladbach theatres extends to surrealism. He has latched on to the British seaside tradition of the Punch and Judy show and used it to cast light on the violence at the heart of the opera. The silent Dr Crabbe is the puppet-master, following and guiding the action, prodding characters into action and forcing Punch’s red cap on to them. The dock in which Grimes faces the coroner in the Prologue is also the puppet booth, and the puppet dolls are occasionally donned to mimic the actions of the people, the baby coming to represent the dead apprentices, whose shrouded, lifeless bodies both come to haunt Grimes in his final mad scene. 

Roy Spahn’s set is like the inside of a plywood box (an analogy to the puppet theatre again, made of the same material) with sides that open up to allow the towns-people to view the court from the outside and which provide a blank canvas for some highly evocative aqueous video projections. The Borough is represented by a model village and the Boar is little more than a rowdy gathering. Hovenbitzer portrays a society where casual violence is the norm: Mrs Sedley trips Ellen up as she is called to the court in the Prologue; knives are drawn in the pub – the idea being, presumably, that Grimes’s brutality (for which he exhibits remorse in the hut scene) is drawn from the environment in which he lives. 

The surrealism comes in with the populace’s fancy dress for the dance scene in Act III, highlighting the commedia dell’arte roots of the puppetry and which gives a gawdy, lurid hue to the posse that hounds Grimes to his death, waving their slapstick weapons like Punch. It also colours the characterisation of the townsfolk, with a certain amount of caricature of the ‘quaint Englishness’ that make this and Albert Herring favourites with German audiences. In a more naturalistic setting one could quibble about the clerical costuming of vicar and methodist preacher, though I liked the idea of Auntie as an escapee from behind the bar at Coronation Street’s Rover’s Return.

The production opened in Mönchengladbach in May and has been running in Krefeld through the autumn, with a few cast tweaks along the way. This final performance had the staging’s original Grimes in Heiko Börner, a singer who looked the part and was a compelling actor but who didn’t sound wholly comfortable with the language or the tessitura [he proved much more at home in Zemlinsky Heldentenor territory a few days later – see here]. Anna Preuß’s Ellen was a treat, with beautifully nuanced singing and strength of tone, though Johannes Beck’s Balstrode felt a little distant dramatically, though this may have been the fault of the direction rather than the singer, an imposing figure himself. Eva Maria Günschmann, who I have previously admired in the trouser roles of Octavian and Adriano (Rienzi) at this house, was as impressive as ever as a blowsy Auntie and Gundula Schneider, although looking formidable in her tweeds, for once under-played the more caricatured temptations of the role of Borough busybody, to good effect. James Park’s detailed Bob Boles, Andrew Nolan’s eloquent Swallow and Rafael Bruck’s fluent Ned Keene were all notable interpretations. The chorus didn’t have the power of Koblenz’s in the summer, but made a decent impression, and the Lower Rhine Symphony under Alexander Steinitz brought their months of familiarity with the score to bear in a performance with bite and plenty of atmosphere.