SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Kurt Weill, Die Dreigroschenoper: (Concert Performance) Soloists, Chorus sine nomine, Klangforum Wien; HK Gruber (chansonnier/conductor). Barbican Hall, London 13.6.2009 (JPr)


German dramatist, Bertolt Brecht, and composer, Kurt Weill, collaborated with translator Elisabeth Hauptmann and conceived the musical gem The Threepenny Opera. This ‘opera for beggars’ was inspired by their experience of Weimar Germany, that period between the two World Wars when Germany was facing up to economic malaise and the bitterness of military defeat and Hitler began his rise to power. It was adapted from the eighteenth-century English ballad opera by John Gay, The Beggar's Opera, and offers a Marxist critique of the capitalist world. It was first performed at Berlin's Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in 1928 and was an instant success.

The text Brecht conceived is brittle and sardonic. He gives us a world of beggars and prostitutes where there is no kind of honour amongst thieves and where relationships are so fluid that everyone can betray anyone else if there is advantage is to be gained. Chief amongst the array of seedy, yet colourful characters is Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum who is the enterprising boss of the beggars, the Alan Sugar of the piece, whose only motive - like most of the characters in the piece - is profit. He disapproves of the relationship between MacHeath and, his daughter, Polly and conspires to have him arrested and hanged. MacHeath (or ‘Mack the Knife’) is the thieves’ leader who begins in total control and has London’s chief of police, Tiger Brown, in his pocket; as well as all the available women he can handle. He marries Polly Peachum, even though Lucy, whom he made pregnant, also claims to be married him, and also still has time for the prostitute Jenny.

The Threepenny Opera poses the question: ‘Who is the greater criminal: the man who robs a bank or the man who founds one?’ This alone would make this musical-as-social commentary as valid today as it was in 1928 were it not for the fact that MacHeath is saved from the gallows by a pardon from the Queen, along with a hereditary title. Thieves become Lords - the mind boggles - and Brecht and Weill show us nothing less a Victorian London just like today’s!

All this is set to Weill’s jazzy, dissonant, syncopated score which, is chock-full of inventive melody that brilliantly captures the ironic, mocking style of Brecht’s libretto. As Weill wrote himself he wanted ‘real’ music that was ‘Everyday music. Useful music … Tangos and foxtrots and waltzes. And the partnership between words and music should be one in which we hear both words and music and keep our ears open for irony.’

The story is good one and this evening should have been good too, and although the Barbican’s concert performance of The Threepenny Opera had its moments, it was a generally shambolic affair that would have had me walking out at the interval if I had not been reviewing it. With the conductor, most of the musicians, as well as, the chorus associated with Vienna I almost became embarrassed about my own Viennese ancestry. The whole thing seemed totally under-rehearsed, despite being the second night of a short European tour that had already been to Hamburg and will go on to Paris and Vienna.

What artists like Ian Bostridge, Dorothea Röschmann, Angelika Kirschlager, Florian Boesch and Hanna Schwarz, and even the band, Klangforum Wien, were doing associating themselves with this enterprise is a question only their agents will be able to answer. Another Austrian, the conductor/composer HK Gruber here as both conductor and - as he calls himself - chansonnier was ‘giving us’ his Jonathan Peachum. He looked something like the offspring of Woody Allen and Peter Ustinov and however talented he might be otherwise could certainly not sing. Nor did he - as he had suggested - speaking the text ‘in the pitch it was written by the composer’. He might have had plenty of time to rehearse with the orchestra but no one had coached him or had the courage to tell him his contributions (facing the audience, arms still conducting and growling) were spoiling the evening.

There was also the problem of the German narrator, Christoph Bantzer, who was reading a text in English - a language with which he is clearly unfamiliar. At one point he appeared to introduce some music that never materialised and I had more chance of understanding what was going on when he lost the plot - literally - and began speaking in German for a while at the start of Act 3.

Ian Bostridge was clearly unhappy; his opening song lay rather low for him and the voice he tried to use stuck in his throat. Although his demeanour stayed somewhat morose all night, his singing did improve and his ‘Liebeslied’ with Angelika Kirschlager’s wonderfully slinky, erotic and playful Polly was well sung by both of them. Ms Kirschlager alone appeared to know what Brecht and Weill wanted from a singer although also making a significantly stylish contribution there was Florian Boesch as Tiger Brown, though his role was relatively small.

Dorothea Röschmann’s ‘Pirate Jenny’ patter song showed the different technique that Weill requires from a trained singer and was something she struggled with. She is obviously familiar with singing on one breath and having more time than a quick fire song like this allows her. Hanna Schwarz sang her ‘Ballad of Sexual Dependency’ like Wagner’s Waltraute (a part she is famous for) but it had nothing at all with to do with Weill. However, Cora Burggraaf was wonderful in her ‘Jealously Duet’ with Polly, and their spiteful repeated shouts of ‘Dungheap! … Dungheap yourself!’ were one of the few highlights of the performance. Kenneth Chalmers’ vernacular surtitles were another of the evening’s successes helping out the unintelligible narrator.

The jazzy sounds of Klangforum Wien took a little time to get used to but they seemed be thirteen very talented performers and even sang the Act I ‘Wedding Song’ entertainingly. The chorus sang out well though their contributions were fleeting. Coordination between conductor and soloists disintegrated at the very end of the proceedings when he began three encores, much to the obvious surprise of the people supposed to be singing them. Music stands were rushed on, scores were hastily opened and we heard again the three (probably only) outstanding moments from earlier on; the Polly and MacHeath Act I duet, the Lucy and Polly Act II catfight and the complete Act III finale. With hindsight, if these had been first, I could have then gone home happy!

There were microphones present and whether this was for recording a CD release - or was (not-so) discrete miking for the soloists and other musicians - was not clear. If it was the former I suspect that the tapes have already been wiped to be used again.

Jim Pritchard 


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