|
Back
Dinner with Two Cadavers München
Nationaltheater
07/13/2025 - & July 16*, 2025
Henry Purcell : Dido and Æneas, Z. 626
Arnold Schoenberg : Erwartung, opus 17
Sonya Yoncheva (Dido), Günter Papendell (Æneas), Erika Baikoff (Belinda), Rinat Shaham (Venus), John Holiday (Sorceress), Elmira Karakhanova (First Witch), Sara Jakubiak (Eine Frau), Opernballett der Bayerischen Staatsoper
Zusatzchor der Bayerischen Staatsoper, Christoph Heil (chorus master), Bayerisches Staatsorchester, Valentin Uryupin (conductor)
Krzysztof Warlikowski (stage director), Malgorzata Szczesniak (sets & costumes), Felice Ross (lights), Kamil Polak (videography), Claude Bardouil (choreography), Christian Longchamp, Katharina Ortmann (dramaturgy)
(© Bernd Uhlig)
The idea of coupling two short operas is not a new one. The most common pairing is Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci with Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, as seen a week ago at this theatre. In the 1940s, New York’s Metropolitan Opera presented Salome in a double bill with Gianni Schicchi.
However, coupling two works as disparate as Purcell’s Dido and Æneas and Schoenberg’s Erwartung is novel, but also rather depressing, as both works veer to the melancholy. Polish director Krzysztof Warlikowski’s stagings can range from the riveting to the dull. His Don Carlos for Paris was lacklustre and pretentious, while his Káta Kabanová for Munich (seen last week) was absolutely glorious. I took a chance on this present coupling, but in the end thoroughly regretted the gamble.
To call this performance pretentious would be too kind, as it had little going for it. This is unfortunate, as the two works share an anguished heroine, and with some creativity the two stories could in fact be successfully coupled. Moreover, the idea of blending baroque and twentieth century works is an intriguing one, and more appropriate than mixing either period with Classical or Romantic works.
When the production premiered two seasons ago, it shared the same heroine, necessary for continuity. However, here, each work had its own. Alas, Sonya Yoncheva was Dido, a role that even in her prime, a decade ago, would not have suited her. At that time, she was endowed with a beautiful light lyric soprano, but as she sang ever heavier roles, her voice developed an unpleasant wobble that has hampered almost everything since, as was the case for her Imogene in Bellini’s Il pirate in Milan a few seasons ago.
Unfortunately, Warlikowski does not seem to think much of either opera, for he cluttered both with endless distractions in both works. True, neither is replete with action like La Gioconda, Tosca or Rigoletto, but this is the beauty of these two deeply moving, emotionally internalised works. The visual chaos onstage throughout was Warlikowski’s way of animating what he must have thought were dull works. The result is that he succeeded in making them so. Though the entire performance lasted an hour and forty‑five minutes, it felt longer than the most tedious Götterdämmerung.
Transposed from Queen Dido’s palace Carthage in Antiquity to an alcoholic woman’s cottage in Northern Canada or Lapland under heavy snow, Purcell’s melancholy opera conjured severe depression before it even started. A video showed an amplified image of the interior of the cottage. In the background, a snow‑covered forest increased the already high degree of paroxysm. The witches who conspire against Queen Dido are picnickers in the snow, conniving in front of the cottage, in Dido’s view. Perhaps the idea is that the mentally unstable woman imagines everyone conspiring against her. As Purcell’s opera ends and Schoenberg’s starts, the unstable woman shoots both Æneas and her sister Belinda, presumably as she suspects this Nordic Æneas is running off with her sister, and not to Italy to found Rome.
Rather than have one work flow into the other, Warlikowski felt a need for a transition. Through a video, we enter a tunnel, though in his staging both works occur in the tundra at the present time. To be hip, we are subjected to ten minutes of sound pollution and young people, previously at the picnic on the snow near Dido’s cottage, breakdancing. Dear Lord, spare us.
For lovers of Early music who may have been apprehensive of Schoenberg, the trauma of breakdancing would have found sweet relief in this decidedly modern work. Though the visual clutter continued, the story did not allow for additional picnics. The cottage was split in two: in one, the Woman in Erwartung sang with the cadavers of Belinda and Æneas next to her, and in the other, a good‑looking man was undressing and then changing into formal clothes in a kind of homoerotic striptease. The director may have felt the public needed relief from Schoenberg. Toward the end, the woman bounds into the apartment to have dinner with her now elegantly dressed neighbour. At the end, the two cadavers stand and join her for dinner. Again, the whole episode may have been the fantasy of a deranged woman.
Russian-American lyric soprano Erika Baikoff was one of the rare positive aspects of this Dido and Æneas, in addition to the well‑rehearsed Chor der Bayerischen Staatsoper. With eyes closed, Erwartung was musically magnificent, thanks to the Bayerisches Staatsorchester and the incandescent American soprano Sara Jakubiak, memorably magnetic as Arabella in Madrid two seasons ago. Her beautiful phrasing and deep emotion as the Woman in Schoenberg’s short work rendered the evening worthwhile, even though at one point we were expected to endure Jakubiak dining with two zombies.
Ossama el Naggar
|
