Camilla Nylund (Empress). Photo: Ludwig Olah
Only once, in the middle of a pianissimo part of the prelude, there is a brief, loud, tinny rumble behind the closed curtain. Theater is a craft, and where there is work, it is sometimes unintentionally loud. “Provincial theater” murmurs my conservatively dressed neighbor, pronouncing the “B” and “D” as softly as one does around the Elbe meadows. It remains the only provincial throw-in of the evening.
“The Woman Without a Shadow” is a mammoth work. If this term is often used to describe long or lavishly cast operas, it applies here: Strauss and Hofmannsthal had been working on the material since 1911 and the piece was completed in 1917. It was not until 1919 that the premiere was held in Vienna. In between: rejections from Oskar Kokoschka as set designer, a specially written book with notes for the director and a completely botched premiere in Dresden, which Strauss loved so much. The reasons for this are complex: the work requires extremely good singers, the orchestral line-up is complex (Chinese gongs, rod, wind and thunder machine, organ, glass harmonica), and the stage action is full of technical finesse. The set designer Alfred Roller wrote to Hofmannsthal shortly after the premiere: “The stage seems to be such a poor facility that for every scenic advantage you have to accept a disadvantage…”
Strokes of genius are ahead of their time. Over a hundred years had to pass before the necessary technical means were available for the stage directions and stage changes as desired. The new “Woman without a Shadow” in Dresden fulfills the deepest wishes of the Strauss/Hofmannsthal/Roller triumvirate. Directed by David Bösch and staged by Patrick Bannwart, a three-and-a-half-hour rollercoaster ride through psyche and film history has been created. Bösch uses numerous quotes from films by Fritz Lang, Sergej Eisenstein, Alfred Hitchcock, Andrej Tarkowski but also modern horror films such as “The Ring” and “Saw”. It doesn’t hurt that he sometimes lays it on too thick and the projections on the white curtains, which symbolize the dream sequences, further illustrate what’s happening on stage. Because the opulent orchestra under Christian Thielemann would have stolen the show from any other approach to the stage action. It can be said without false reservation: for the first time since Thielemann came to Dresden, the events on stage and the sound of the orchestra are congenially interwoven.
Stage designs like those from the ink drawings of Andrey Klassen… (Photo: Ludwig Ohla)
The plot is so complex that it needs an arc to logically link the many details, hints, metaphors and developments of the characters without becoming too intellectual and foregoing the essentials, the emotions. The direction and orchestra succeed completely here: there are moments in the evening that make even experienced theatergoers shudder. The events around the dyer’s house are almost physically unpleasant. When the dyer Barak returns home from the market in the first act and sings about his wife’s changed nature, it is a tangible, real pain of alienation. Oleksandr Pushniak is not a stage singer, he plays with the details of his costume in a variety of ways as he uses the different timbres of his voice for joy, sadness and pain. Opposite him is his wife, Miina-Liisa Värelä – desperate, frightening. When she dumps unborn babies into a bucket of bleach, you want to scream in disgust. The absolutely bombastic finale of the second act, orchestrally tear-jerking, the singing and playful collaboration of the world stars Camilla Nylund and Evelyn Herlitzius is highly demanding in all facets, the stage action is a mixture of Hitchcock’s “The Birds”, Christian Alvart’s “Oderbruch” and Baran bo Odar’s “Dark” – just incredibly scary.
But it’s not always the film perspective that David Bösch brought to the stage. The many lyrical moments of the opera seem like the events in Andrey Klassen’s ink works. The duets with their numerous details could be viewed and dissected for hours. The interaction of the singers in the stage setting with rapidly changing use of light takes the audience from joyful, Bachanal euphoria to Kiefer’s concrete sadness in a matter of seconds.
Musically, the piece is a cocktail of “Magic Flute”, “Freischütz”, “Elektra”, “Rosenkavalier” and “Lulu”. Each of these operas is musically complex enough on its own. With a few exceptions in the woodwinds, the Staatskapelle oscillates this balance in a practiced and routine manner. The music, the grease for the scenic emotions, does everything to give the complexity of the plot a broad arc and many small emotions.
Miina-Liisa Värelä (Barak’s Wife), Evelyn Herlitzius (The Nurse), Camilla Nylund (The Empress), Tilmann Rönnebeck (The One-Armed Man), Oleksandr Pushniak (Barak), Tansel Akzeybek (The Hunchback), Rafael Fingerlos (The One-Eyed Man), Children’s choir of the Semperoper Dresden. Photo: Ludwig Olah
After this long evening, the audience rewarded those involved with an overwhelming ovation. There is also a little pain of separation. A snippet of conversation overheard during the break: “Next year things will be less glamorous here.” It’s not about glamour. If there is a piece that reflects the current zeitgeist in its complexity and confusion, then it is “Woman without a Shadow”. If there is a production that can bring the antiquated genre of opera closer to a young, Netflix-spoiled audience, it is this one. Because it doesn’t provide answers, it asks questions. Because it doesn’t want to please, it makes you curious. Because you can hear real craftsmanship rumbling. These are the essential aspects of making a visit to the opera more than just putting on your wedding suit every year and taking the obligatory selfie in front of Ferdinand Keller’s decorative curtain. Maybe a little less glamor would actually be a good thing.
Oleg Jampolski / About Author
Lawyer, journalist, board member of the PARAGONE circle of friends of the Dresden State Art Collections. Studied law in Leipzig and communication in Mittweida. Traineeship in Düsseldorf, including stints at ARTE in Strasbourg. During his studies, he worked as a surtitle répétitioner at the Saxon State Opera in Dresden for six seasons. (Author photo: Urban Ruths Photography)
More posts by Oleg Jampolski
2024-03-29 22:07:39
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