Rex appeal
Rihm adapted Sophocles’ tragedy for Götz Friedrich’s Deutsche Oper Berlin at a time when a new generation of German composers was breaking with serialism and dabbling in more expressive musical forms. His version, available for the first time on an Arthaus Musik DVD
Oedipus is portrayed as a kind of marionette controlled by fate, with little exploration of how his own flaws or the exercise of free will contributed to his downfall. Half-sung atonal passages and amplified offstage voices articulating the inner monologues give even the reflective moments a gripping, otherworldly feel.
It was never supposed to be entertaining. Rihm viewed compositions such as Schoenberg’s Erwartung as a starting point for psychological drama and was strongly influenced by the avant-garde playwright-director Antonin Artaud, whose Theater of Cruelty strived to depict truths no one wanted to witness. Small wonder then, that he was attracted to this classic tale in which a savior becomes a corrupter.
In this production, blood, harsh lighting and primitive gestures overlap with pantomimed recollections of Oedipus’ youth. Shrieking orchestral winds and frantic percussion convey torment and a sense of doom as Oedipus is confronted by a steady drip of revelations about his past. By the final tableau, the king is utterly defeated, blinded by his own hand, separated from his children and denounced by the elders of Thebes. He staggers off the stage with a cane and dark glasses, humiliated yet destined to live on.
While it may come off as severe and gratuitously cruel, the work’s structure is ambitious and carefully layered. Short, dissonant musical ideas crisscross, clash and blend in a narrative that has echoes of Webern, Varese and Nono. The orchestra consists only of brass, woodwinds and percussion until the moment Oedipus takes out his eyes, when two piercing violins join the fray.
The fragmentary approach carries over to Rihm’s text, which overlays a heavily abridged German translation of Sophocles by the Romantic poet Friedrich Hölderlin with text and commentaries by Friedrich Nietzsche and Heiner Müller. Rihm reconceives the classical chorus as 16 solo male voices portraying prisoners, sailors, soldiers and priests, who are interwoven into the plot rather than standing above the action as some kind of supreme authority.
It would all make for a compelling, expressive piece of abstract music, if it was only shot through with more humanity. There’s an impersonal efficiency to the way the scenes unfold — and only a handful of moments when the torrent of expressionism lets up to reveal a flesh-and-blood characterization, such as Jocasta, before she hangs herself. At the end, there’s no calming effect or cathartic release, only the kind of relief one gets emerging from a haunted house full of monstrosities.
Some lusty boos are heard at the final curtain, mingled with enthusiastic cheers for a cast that navigates the difficult, unfamiliar score with confidence. Conductor Christof Prick coaxes an utterly committed performance from the Deutsche Oper orchestra, making the dense, cacophonous accompaniment sound kaleidoscopic while supporting the singers’ shifting rhythms and speech with balance and precision.
Baritone Andreas Schmidt admirably essays the tricky title role and delivers a vivid yet tasteful characterization through his gestures and facial expressions. He was comfortable enough in this kind of rep to later participate in the company’s world premiere of Henze’s Das verratene Meer. American mezzo Emily Golden is equally persuasive as his mother-wife Jocasta, while the tenor William Pell is a menacing Creon. Baritone William Dooley is the blind prophet Tiresias.
The video, originally shot by Sender Freies Berlin and directed by Brian Large, is excellent for its age and captures Andreas Reinhardt’s minimalistic sets and the production’s projections and dramatic lighting. One drawback is the absence of a libretto, which would help make sense out of the more densely scored sections.
Oedipus has only received a handful performances since its premiere run, including a 1991 production at Santa Fe. The most lasting impression comes from its orchestration, which is more inventive and evocative than the stage business. Devotees of contemporary opera will be intrigued by the intellectual approach and the score’s enduring power. Others looking for a more traditional, dramatic treatment of the classic tale may find Rihm’s take opaque and not especially memorable.
Monsieur œdipe to the parterre podium, please. Now is your time.
I’m thinking m. croche and Henry Holland had better get on board this train along mit.
Do you mind overly much if I catch the next train? I’ve only heard two of Rihm’s operas --Die Eroberung von Mexico and Die Hamlet-maschine-- and I’m not really a fan.
Thanks.
Mr. Holland:
You have been re-routed through to the Ferneyhough Express.
The Management expresses their regret you were put on the wrong train.
I noticed that you mentioned something about a Bloch MACBETH….I am going to guess this is at the Long Beach Opera as I cannot, in my wildest imaginings, feature the LA Opera presenting this work.
There is a huge bleeding chunk from this Macbeth on a Gala CD of Inge Borkh and I must say she is very impressive and makes the case for the work. Perhaps it is on YouTube, and I urge you to give it a listen if you haven’t already. I recall glancing over that score, based on this recording, and believe it was rather simply notated and in that regard rather deceptive as to the overall effect of the piece. I hope you get a chance to see it, and if you do, write about it.
Luckily, I have the opera on CD’s, it’s this recording:
http://www.classical.net/music/recs/reviews/m/mas34100a.php
I’m looking forward to it, though given that Long Beach Opera is staging it at the Port of Los Angeles --yes, where cars from Asia arrive etc.-- and has a propensity for doing stuff in parking garages and swimming pools, I might wait for the reviews to come out before deciding.
I’ll take the bait, since I caught this production at the Deutsche Oper -- just once, in rep -- back in nineteenninetymumble. I think Adriel’s review is in most respects quite just. To borrow Adorno’s phrase for Schoenberg’s Erwartung, Rihm was in full “psychic seismograph” mode with this score. The surfeit of musical rhetoric, much of it quite violent, made the music hard to retain. It was an opera you experienced, that happened to you.
There was no recording at the time (and certainly no Youtube clips available), so I’ll look forward to hearing the whole thing again to see how my recollections stand up.
I remember thinking at the time that Rihm was setting out to do a couple things with this opera: 1) demonstrate that the “Neue Einfachheit” label with which he was associated did not mean “Easy Listening”. This score, from what I recall has none of the tender tonal moments of the pivotal Third Quartet or the extravagant romanticisms of the Fremde Szenen. 2) the violence of the music was a reminder to his Fereinkurse confreres that music should be about something, not just an exploration of “material”. More consequential for Rihm than the “New Simplicity” label bandied about the time was the New Expressionism, of which he became a leading exponent.
I’m really curious to see how well Rihm’s music stands up over time. Certainly all the birthday events from last year show that there’s been little slackening of interest in his work. But his musical technique is elusive -- his works demand a special kind of moment-to-moment “Mit-erleben”. The automatic-writing effect Rihm cultivates gives his works a kind of attention-grabbing immediacy, but it also threatens the work to make his work rather undifferentiated and even trivial. (I heard Ferneyhough once quip “Rihm’s manuscripts are fascinating documents, but somehow once you see the music set in ordinary type it seems less interesting.” Consider the source, naturally, but I’ve had similar experiences with Rihm’s music myself.)
Golly, I start to write about Rihm and my word-order goes all Teutonic on me. Last sentence of the second paragraph should read:
While Rihm was often associated with the label “New Simplicity”, the label “New Expressionism” probably better represents the totality of his work.
Thanks for the mention of Ferneyhough, I need to dig the discs of his Shadowtime out of the mess of CD’s I have piled in a corner and give them a spin.
A review that is both intelligent and generous of spirit! Bravo!
To refer back to the piece itself -- the following was published in the Guardian (UK) in 2002 -- I hope it’s interesting.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2002/jan/05/arts.highereducation
[Note to the cher public: please do not copy and paste an entire article from a source available online. Please paste the URL instead and interested readers can go to that link. - La Cieca]
Damn… it went in the wrong topic… sorry all.
Very interesting review. I am unfamiliar with this opera and I don’t know nearly enough about Rihm’s music (I have only heard Dionysos). He is such an unusual bird among contemporaries!
Too bad that most new works get staged for one initial run and then pretty much disappear from the face of the Earth.
On a more general level, I fully sympathize with Adriel’s piece of wishful thinking that is unfortunately applicable to the majority of contemporary operas:
It would all make for a compelling, expressive piece of abstract music, if it was only shot through with more humanity.
Yes, more humanity would be welcome sometimes, but sometimes, as in Lear, that lack of humanity is the whole point. You know if Verdi had written Re Lear, there would have been a 10 minute duet between the baritone and soprano as Lear and Cordelia say their tearful farewells, whereas in the Reimann, Lear drags her corpse in, rages at everyone and everything and dies. No hope, no repentence, no forgiveness.
Yes, but a post-Falstaff Verdi wouldn’t have been nearly as predictable as your describe. It would have been fascinating to see what Verdi would do with the story at the end of his career.
But he wasn’t going to write a Re Lear “at the end of his career” (sorry, I botched the last attempt at linking within the text so here goes):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Re_Lear
He seriously looked at doing it in the mid-1850′s, thus my comment in that vein. Yes, he was “obsessed with the subject” for ages, but so was Britten and scores of other composers. The only two composers I know of (corrections welcome) that actually completed a King Lear opera are Reimann and Aulis Sallinen.
Also Antonio Cagnoni, a contemporary of Verdi:
http://www.donizettisociety.com/Newsletters/articlenews108.htm
This was recorded on Dynamic a few years ago.