Schreker Die Gezeichneten - Metzmacher Warlikowski

Franz Schreker Die Gezeichneten from the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich, conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, easily the most rewarding full performance ever. Metzmacher gets Schreker – revealing his modernity and originality.   There are many kinds of "modern". The idea that 20th-century music can only be atonal/tonal, or dissonant /romantic, is nonsense, a notion compounded by audiences who don't actually listen, but think through preconception. Schreker was a highly original composer, very much a man attuned to the creative ferment of his time, fuelled as it was by new ideas and social change.  Die Gezeichneten flows from the same Zeitgeist that produced Freud, Expressionism, modern art and literature.  In the libretto, Schreker makes a wry dig at Puccini and Strauss, meaning, I think, Johann rather than Richard, for Die Gezeichneten has a lot in common with Die Frau ohne Schatten.  Both operas, written at the same time and premiered within a year of each other, explore the nature of creative art through a lens of morbid psychology, which is a theme which runs through much of Schreker's work.  Directed by Kryzsztof Warlikowski, this production is musically sensitive and well informed, and also connects the opera to other currents in art and society in its time. This Die Gezeichneten goes a long way to restoring Schreker's true status in cultural history.

Metzmacher conducts the Vorspiel so the surging pulse heaves, as if propelled by ocean tides.  Salvago's Elysium is an island, as isolated as the man himself, surrounded by currents beyond his control.  The moon controls tides. The image of the moon appears in the libretto, intensified by musical figures that describe darkness and flickering light.  To the Greeks, the moon symbolized Athena, the goddess of art.  For Goethe, the moon symbolized chastity, inspired by his patroness, the Duchess of Weimar.  As the Vorspeil proceeds,  we see Salvago (John Daszak) , his head covered by a bag, looking towards an orb of white light that dominates the darkened stage.  Later, when Carlotta (Catherine Nagelstad) is seduced, the orb turns red (as described in the text).

Complex dichotomies operate throughout this opera, reflecting conflicts that can never be reconciled.  Ugliness and beauty, creativity and destruction, purity and corruption: thus the churning tensions in the music.  Metzmacher isn't afraid to emphasize the contrast between lush orchestration and the savage undercurrents.  Luxury is deception. Like the grotto, beauty is delusion.  Women are violated. Lust is joyless, motivated by power, money, and something even more sinister. Carlotta succumbs, as graphically described in the text and music. Wisely, Warlikowski doesn't depict the scene, concentrating on Tamare's braggadocio and the music around it. Salvago isn't as upset by the idea of Carlotta being raped as by the realization that she might have had a part in proceedings.  We see her dressed in white, her dress back to front.  The ensemble that follows isn't a trio, because all three characters are singing at cross-purposes.  No dissonance but no harmony, either.  Wonderfully astute writing on Schreker's part and well executed in performance.

Salvago creates Elysium to please his friends, as if by creating art he can compensate for his physical ugliness. How far is he culpable when his friends misuse his grotto for evil?  Carlotta falls in love with him partly because she can see good in him, but also because she sees the potential for artistic creation of her own.  In some ways, the second act is the heart of the whole opera. Carlotta's friend paints only hands, but the hands she paints are so expressive that they can portray whole stories. Art is invention, but can reveal deeper truths.  Thus Carlotta, an artist, sees  more  in Salvago than meets the eye.  Thus scene is brilliantly depicted, with imagination and sensitivity.  A second stage appears behind the singers. At first we see what appears to be a dragonfly, which turns out to be a young girl. She has the head of a mouse.  Her family are around her, too, sometimes interacting. Humans with mouse heads. We are in Die Frau ohne Schatten territory, or rather the world of surreal symbolism that fascinated a generation familiar with Classical antiquity, discovering psychology and Jungian archetypes. Clips of silent movies appear  behind the action. Scenes from Der Golem, and Frankenstein, where a "monster" shows tenderness to a little girl, then scenes from The Phantom of the Opera and Nosferatu where the "monster" isn't benign.  Thus Warlikowski makes connections between Die Gezeichneten and other Schreker operas, with other cultural memes which confront sexuality and fear.
 
Warlikowski doesn't need to show Carlotta with paintbrush and easel.  Her painting exists in her soul.  Does she love her creation more than reality?  Why does he pull back, paralyzed with inhibition, when his wildest dreams come true as she declares her love ? Why does she, too, pull back on the eve of their wedding ? Does she intuit that their relationship will be sterile due to his inhibitions ? Does she respond to Tamaro because he's sexual, or because he has the courage Salvago lacks?  Christopher Maltman, as Tamaro, is a hunk. Salvago lives in his head, while Tamaro lives in his body. He doesn't like mirrors because they make him face himself.  But can he escape? Warlikowski's staging (sets by Malgorzala Szczesniak) hints as what is not said.  Mirrors, often distorted, appear now and again, sometimes as physical mirrors, sometimes as subsidiary characters like Mattuccia (Heike Grotzinger) and Pietro (Dean Power), usually roles so small they don't get attention, but which exist for a reason. Salvago isn't the only person trapped in games in the guise of service to others.  A wonderful touch - Metzmacher himself is glimpsed on stage from time to time, reflected in the mirrors.
 
In this production, Salvago's spoken monologue is included, which makes a difference  since it shows how he reflects on his own condition though he can't break out of it.  Though he  didn't rape women, he is morally culpable by making the violence possible,. Extremely moving, especially since Daszak delivered it with great dignity.

Schreker writes an angelus into the music before the party.  Angels appear on stage, but angels dressed in nude suits.  They (male and female) are supposed to resemble showgirls but they dance so deftly en pointe that they're clearly ballet dancers with great technique.  The wedding guests are prissy: they don't like nakedness but sex is all around.  Later a voluptuous stripper bumps and grinds beside Salvago, who doesn't notice.  Either he's too uptight or he can't see the beauty beneath her poundage.  Eventually, like so many others before her in this production, she ends up inert, in a display case, unused.

At the end, Tamare sings about a village fiddler gone mad because  the girl he loved found another man. This is a reference to a medieval legend, which pops up often in German literature and song.  Salvago asks for his cap and bells. Has he gone mad, or are he and Tamare re-enacting an old saga ?? There are so many levels in Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, skilfully blended together,  Warlikowski's silent movie clips and business suits extend what is already in the opera, though  few productions come as close to its true spirit.  Altogether, the finest Die Gezeichneten that I can imagine, full of detail and sensitive to music and meaning.  Bayerische Staatsoper productions don't usually make it to DVD, but the audio recording to get is  the one on right HERE. Lothar Zagrosek, DSO Berlin from the Decca Entartete Musik series, which is the benchmark reference. Outstanding, and even Matthias Goerne (aged 26) in a minor role.

Please see my other articles on Schreker, Braunfels and others (including Strauss), and on silent film and Weimar.

Abschied and Vorspiel - Schreker and de Leeuw

Reinbert de Leeuw's Abschied from the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, conducted by Edo de Waart, recorded in Amsterdam in January, now on BBC Radio 3.  De Leeuw (b 1938) is a huge name in contemporary music, as organizer, supporter, conductor and pianist.  His numerous ventures have left less time for his own music. Though his output is limited, his work is good. Last year, at the BBC Proms, Oliver Knussen conducted his Der nächtliche Wanderer  (2003) (read more here)  Abschied is an early work, not a "farewell to life" but a starting point for new directions, looking back and looking forward.


Scored for large orchestra, de Leeuw's Abschied (1973) uses resources with magnificent sweep, suggesting a very late Romantic drama.  But darker forces rumble beneath the surface. Huge, dissonant chords, flurries of brass, rivulets of tense, bubbling figures.  As if a volcano were erupting, spewing forth lava.  Lush strings return, long sweeping lines that spread and whip backwards, as if propelled by unseen tides.  The middle section broods, passages tentatively developing before being cut off. A piano is heard within the tumult: what does this signify? Strange dissonances, but in lyrical patterns. Gradually, energy builds up, and the forward/backward dichotomy takes over. Fierce ostinato, Rite of Spring blocks merging with sweeping string lines that smear, eliding tones.  There is no resolution. Gradually sounds fade in volume and texture, single blows of percussion acting as markers. And then, it's over!  A witty piece, perfectly accessible, if not a work as sophisticated as Der nächtliche Wanderer.  But that's the point. In the forty years between the pieces, a lot has happened.

Preceding this Abschied a Prelude - Franz Schreker's Vorspiel zu einem Drama (1913) based on the prelude to Schreker's Die Gezeichneten, but expanded for stand-alone performance.  The opera encapsulated, in a sense. Far from being an obscurity, Die Gezeichneten is highly regarded, having been staged and recorded several times. In fact, there's a new production in Munich in July, to be conducted by Ingo Metzmacher, a master in this genre, with a superb cast, directed by Warlikowski. I can hardly wait.   Read here about the less musically stellar Lyon production with staging (David Bösch) that's much more faithful to the score than the famous Nagano/Lenhoff production from Salzburg many years ago.  In  Die Gezeichneten, the protagonist is rich, talented and artistic but shunned by the Beautiful People around him because he's crippled. "Branded" because he thinks he's ugly, he compensates by creating a palace so beautiful that it seduces all who enter.  Unfortunately the beauty generates evil : women are despoiled because they're desirable.

All kinds of levels of dis-ease in his opera, which touches raw nerves. No way would London audiences be able to cope.  So much for the nonsense that "Romantic" means unchallenging pap.  That attitude is "modern" and a betrayal of centuries of artistic development.  Schreker is looking backwards and forwards - no maudlin nostalgia here, despite the lush orchestration. Good programming (and performance) from de Waart and the RCOA.

Four Glinka sings from Henk Neven Doubt; Where is our Rose; Lullaby; Do not Tempt Me Needlessly wind up an interesting concert., releasing built up tension

Hartmann Simplicius Simplicissimus Independent Opera

K A Hartmann Simplicius Simplicissimuss with Independent Opera at the Lilian Baylis Studio this week, with Stephanie Corley, Timothy Redmond conducting the Britten Sinfonia. This was the first ever staging in the UK, and for a good reason. Simplicius isn't really an opera at all and much of its pungency derives from the fact that it's written with some Bavarian dialect.  Hartmann's source was H J Chr. Grimmelhausen,  whose book Der Abenteuerliche Simplicismuss (1669), is set in  the Thirty Years War, one of the defining traumas of German history, and indeed world history, since it was the first truly global war, acted out in South America and Asia as well as in Europe. "Anno Domini 1618 wohnten 12 millionen in Deutschland" quotes Hartmann in his introduction. "Da kam der grosse Kreig". Thirty years later, only 4 million remained.  In  Hitler's Proclamation to the German  People, he invoked twelve years of humiliation and two million dead to justify Nazi control. The myth of "The People" legitimized the Third Reich.  By reverting to  Bavarian dialect, Hartmann pointedly underlined that there was no single "German People", and that, in any case, the German past was bathed in blood.

Until now, there has been no English translation but this is no demerit. If non-Bavarians have to struggle with the text, that's a good thing since it makes a difference to enter into the arcane, folksy internal logic of the piece. It is not "our" world but a lost world we need to make an effort to penetrate. Though it portrays the past, Hartmann's Simplicius is in no way naturalistic. The "roles" as such operate as symbols. The narrative lies disguised in the music.  Its disjointed character and embedded references reflect a fractured society falling in upon itself. There are hints of Catholic chant, of Jewish song and of modern music, all things the Nazis despised, wrapped in quaint pseudo-medievalism.  Significantly, Helmut Scherchen, champion of new music, worked with Hartmann on  the concept.  Again and again, Hartmann's contemporaries like Braunfels, Schreker and Honegger (all of whom I've been writing about for ages) used history for subversion, not as dreamy romance.  Nazis glorified nostalgia. Sharp-minded composers saw through the bluff.  Hartmann's angular lines are meant to grate, not soothe.  Hartmann's Simplicius is didactic: Brecht's ideas on theatre adapted to music, "imagined theatre" as Henze called it, concepts of music drama still evolving today. Please read my piece on Beat Furrer's FAMA HERE.   

This has a bearing on performance, which is why I'm not at all convinced about naturalistic staging, whatever the period. A friend said of this Independent Opera production that the work might not have the cachet it has, had it been written ten years later. A perceptive comment, since it takes no brains to look back now on Nazi times. But there's a whole lot more to Hartmann's Simplicius than an anti-war narrative.  Hartmann's message is far more disturbing now that we may be entering troubled times where "the people" whoever they might be, are easily fooled by technological manipulation and demagogues without scruple. 

Simplicius is "Ein kleiner Bub bei den Schafen, kannte weder Gott noch Menschen, weder Himmel noch Hölle, weder Engel noch Teufel. Notice the pattern of opposite images, which flows throughout the opera. The text is set in rhyming couplets, typical of German tradition, and the music moves in a similar grave two-step. Simplicius is a "Holy Innocent", so pure he knows nothing of heaven or hell. In Tarot the Fool signifies someone who goes forth into the world without fear, facing danger but protected by his purity. Siegfried without the selfishness. Hartmann sets the part for high soprano though the role is male, to emphasize youth and innocence.

"Beware of the Wolf" warns the farmer. Wolf of course was Hitler's nickname, which he was rather proud of.  Simplicius doesn't know what a wolf is. so when the Landknecht  appears he thinks the Horseman is the vierbeiniger Schelm und Dieb the farmer warned about. "Weiss nit, Herr Wolf" cries Simplicius but the Landknecht attacks the farm and kills the Knän, die Meuder und das kleine Ursele (these archaic words give the piece a deliberate old-world air). A long passage describing the horrors of war, which ends with O armes geknechtetes Deutschland. Now Simplicius has wised up and heads into the forest where he meets a Hermit (another Tarot figure). The Hermit sings music like stylized monastic chant, wavering weirdly. He teaches Simplicius to sing Unser Vater (Our Father). Give us our daily bread". Simplicius, incorrigibly naive, asks auch Käs dazu? (and cheese, too?) Eventually the Hermit dies, leaving Simplicius to face the world alone. Provocatively, Hartmann writes into the death music an echo of the Kaddish.

After another powerful intermezzo,with swirling strings, plunging brass, evoking storms and storm clouds perhaps, Simplicius flies into the Governor's mansion. The soldiers boast of their tyranny and blaspheme. This chorus sound like drunken communal singing in a beer cellar, also a reference perhaps to the Nazis. This time Simplicius pipes up "that's no way to speak". "Can you hear the Mauskopf piepsen shouts the Governor. And of course, Simplicius's music is flute and clarinet. The Governor recites rather than sings, not Sprechstimme but something discordant, a lot like the speeches made where sense mattered less than sound. Some things don't change!  Then Simplicius speaks, at length. Words pour out at a shrill rapid pace, almost no time to take a breath. 
Simplicius harangues the listeners, without music to soften the effect. As she finds her strength her words are supported by drums. A militant but not military march?  And why?

Suddenly, Simplicius's voice rises in song. Es dröhnt die Stadt, es stapft daher, schäumende bitt're Jammersg'walt.  She's joined by the chorus, now representing farmers. The music suggests march: an unnerving reminder that the victims of war can easily become perpetrators of another.  The peasants sing "Ein gleich Gesetz, das woll'n wir han, vom Fürtsen bis zu Bauersmann" but they kill the rich folks anyway. Is this a revolt? The peasants simply stand and stare.  What's changed?  Darkness falls. Simplicius stands by the corpses. "Gepreisen sei der Richter der Wahrheit!"  The peasants hum quietly, wordlessly. Does this signify smoke or unthinking acquiesence? The Specher reminds us that by 1648, 8 million Germans were killed, nearly a quarter of the population at the time.  The music erupts in manic march. Is the cycle repeating?

Hartmann's Simplicius might well be something left unstaged, or minimally staged, since it is theatre of the mind.  In times when The People's Will takes precedence, maybe the mind, or the conscience preserves an individual, as Hartmann discovered in his "internal emigration".   I've written a lot on  Simplicius Simplicissismuss and on other works by K A Hartmann over the years, and also about other composers of the period. Please use labels below and at right.  Two recordings of Simplicius stand out : Heinz Fricke from 1985, and much better and punchier, Ulf Schirmer conducting the Münchener Rundfunksorchester with Camilla Nylund, Michael Volle, Willi Hartmann and Christian Gerhaher in 2009.  I have also heard Markus Stenz from Netherlands Radio, it's no match for  Schirmer and the idiomatic Munich style.