Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
The Trusts Community Foundation Opera in Concert
Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) by Erich Korngold
The Auckland Philharmonia and The New Zealand Opera Chorus
Auckland Town Hall
July 8th
Reviewed by John Daly-Peoples
Erich Korngold’s music is not generally well known and the most people will have heard of variations of his film music in the work of John Williams. The dramatic music of Star Wars and Indiana Jones owes much to Korngold’s innovative stylistic approach.
He was probably one of the most important film composers of the mid twentieth century with work which transformed the way in which film music was composed. His successes earned him numerous awards including two Oscars, notably for the Errol Flynn film “The Adventures of Robin Hood”.
His opera Die Tote Stadt (The Dead City) when it debuted in Germany in 1920 was considered to be an important work and was performed around the globe at the time. However, his work was banned under the Nazi regime and it was some time before it began appearing in opera houses.
While it was performed in several European opera houses in the late twentieth century it only had its first UK staged performance in 2009.
The work tells of Paul, living in Bruges, who some years ago lost his wife Marie and his infatuation with her dominates his life. He keeps a room in his house as a shrine devoted to her which contains various memories of her – clothes, scarves, images of her and a long tress of her hair along with candles and fresh flowers.
He meets Marietta who reminds him of his wife but the relationship for him is not for a new start in life but for Marietta to replace his wife as a simulacrum of her. His housemaid Brigitta and best friend Frank remonstrate and plead with Paul about his preoccupation with his retaining the memory of his wife.
He tells them that he has a new girlfriend Marietta and that things will change. When she arrives at his house it is clear that it is her resemblance to his dead wife which attracts him to her.
After Act I the other two sections have a surreal quality to them and can be seen as distortions of Pauls mind. He sees Marietta leading a group of nuns and a theatre troupe perform spontaneous cabaret event with references to sex and death.
He eventually strangles Marietta which brings him back to reality and in the final part of the work Marietta returns to say farewell along with Frank who urges Paul to leave Bruges with him.
The opera’s theme of the loss of a loved one, coming to terms with grief and moving on was a theme which was particularly relevant to a Europe which had suffered widespread loss during World War I. The work can also be seen in terms of sexual obsessions and the influence of Freud\s “Interpretation of Dreams” which are suggested in the dream sequences.
These elements underscore the preoccupations and tensions between sex and death as well the notions of pure and profane love. Paul wavers between being a rational, normal person with feeling for Marietta and a man on the edge of madness or sexual obsession and is outraged when Frank admits to an affair with Marietta.
Korngold’s music is expressionist as was much of the art of the period but he manages to combine this with the romanticism of the nineteenth century along with a melodic modernism. There are traces of Verdi and Puccini as well as Strauss and Lehar with the music provides a strong melodic line which gives great scope for all the singers.
Paul sung by Aleš Briscein was able to show a range of emotional states with singing that ranged from the serene to the nervous, through to the cruel. Several of his sequences showed a voice racked with an anguish touching on madness.
Manuela Uhl sang the role of Marietta as well as the lesser role of Marie. She was able to convey the complex character of Marietta changing the power and the mood of her singing to emphasise the varying aspects of her personality ranging from the tender to the coquettish and angry. She appears to be in love with Paul, intrigued by her power over him, fascinated by her attraction to him and shocked at his use of her as a surrogate.
Her singing of “Marietta’s Song” in Act I which touches on happiness and sorrow was exquisite and Korngold cleverly inserted the theme into the work on several on other occasions throughout the work.
Paul in his attempts to woo Marietta is convincing in the way he conducts himself and expresses his love but this is really all about transference and requires Marietta to be just like his wife. Whenever Marietta strays from his script or asserts herself, he becomes agitated and violent. In the penultimate scene he attacks Marietta, strangling her with his wife’s length of hair.
There were times when the singing of Uhl and Briscein was blissful and lyrical, taking them to an idyllic place and then it would evaporate to be replaced with a savage acidity.
It’s a great pity that the role of Brigitta has only a couple of short sequences. Sung by Deborah Humble her bright clear voice and simple and straightforward manner emphasised the sense of the despair she displays in agonizing about Paul’s predicament. Richard Šveda’s Frank is the voice of reason in contrast to Paul. His serene, composed singing highlighted the differences between the two male characters.
There was no set but a smoky haze hung over the orchestra and singers intended to represent a mist shrouded Bruges and its canals.
The orchestra under Giordano Bellincampi gave a stirring performance, providing atmospheric tones as in the misty opening of Act II as well as dynamic deliveries of Korngold’s dramatic, cinematic style compositions .
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