SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

 

Production: 

Ingo Metzmacher, Conductor
Pierre Audi, Stage Director
Jonathan Meese, Set Design
Jorge Jara, Costume Design
Jean Kalman, Lighting
Martin Eidenberger, Video
Klaus Bertisch, Dramaturgy
Jörn H. Andresen, Chorus master

Cast:

Johannes Martin Kränzle, N.
Mojca Erdmann, First Soprano
Elin Rombo, Second Soprano
Matthias Klink, “A Guest” / Apollo
Virpi Räisänen, Mezzo-soprano
Julia Faylenbogen, Contralto
Uli Kirsch, “The Skin”
Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus

Something seems to have gone deeply awry at this year's Salzburg Festival. The 90th anniversary of the world's most expensive summer music bash is all but Mozart-free. (Well, not quite: But there is just one offering from Salzburg's most famous son: Claus Guth's 2008 rather dark staging of Don Giovanni.)

Otherwise, the operatic fare is surprisingly heavyweight, and by no means easy fare for an audience which, let's be honest, is not exactly known for its artistic or intellectual adventurousness. OK, the champagne and caviar classes won't be deprived of glamour entirely: Salzburg's perennial darling, Anna Netrebko, is starring in a revival of Romeo et Juliette and Rolando Villazon is here, too..

But 20th-cemtury juggernauts such as Elektra and Lulu are hardly the sort of works you would normally expect Salzburg's monied elites to sit through without complaint. And most surprising of all is the success which has met a brand-new work Dionysos by Wolfgang Rihm, Germany's most prolific composer.

On the fourth and final performance of its mini-run here, there were dozens of people brandishing "Suche Karte" (Ticket Wanted) signs and most of them went away again empty-handed. Of course, it would be unfair to dismiss the ultra-conservative Salzburg audiences as nouveau-riche air-heads, with more money than sense..

Indeed, there can't be many people who could readily understand Dionysos -Rihm's 10th work for the stage - at first take: you'd have to have an encyclopaedic knowledge of Greek mythology, a doctorate in philosophy and know the life and works of Friedrich Nietzsche inside out for that. Nevertheless, it was surprising with how much genuine warmth the audience greeted the 58-year-old composer when he took his bows at the end of the two-hour evening.

Every word of the libretto to Rihm's "opera fantasy" is by Nietzsche himself, taken from his fragmentary "Dionysos Dithyramben", which were first published in 1889 and which sometimes read like the ramblings of a madman. But out of these, Rihm has managed to fashion an allegorical, at times almost phantasmagorical libretto that takes key elements of Nietszche's own biography as its framework.

The main character, called simply N, is a rumpled middle-aged poet who can barely speak. In the opening scene, he bears more than a passing resemblence to Alberich in Wagner's Ring, as he desperately chases and tries to catch two voluptuous nymphs who mock him. One of the nymphs then turns into Ariadne, who joins N in a boat and is willing to succumb to him if only he will say something. All he can utter is: "I am thy labyrinth."

A tousle-haired and radiant young man called Ein Gast (a Guest) then appears. And the two set out on a journey together, climbing mountains, crossing abysses and braving a ferocious storm. Next, the two turn up in a brothel, where they become rivals for the attention of four prostitutes all called Esmerelda. The Guest is then torn to pieces by a swarm of screaming Maenads. He returns in the shape of Apollo who presides over the ritual flaying of N’s skin. The skin takes on a life of its own and witnesses the beating of a horse by a man without a face. The skin wants to embrace the horse and sinks into the arms of Ariadne.

You surely won't be alone if you can't make any sense of all that. But here are a few markers to point you in the right direction: N is clearly Nietzsche, who used the name of Dionysos, the Greek god of inebriation, for his own signature.

Nietzsche had a fantasy affair with Cosima Wagner, whom he addressed as Ariadne in secret love letters. He made advances to her as he rowed her in a boat on the Vierwaltstaetter See. Nietzsche went mad, presumably as a result of syphilis contracted on visits to a brothel. His final descent into madness and silence in the last 10 years of his life was believed to have been triggered by an incident in Turin where he saw a horse being beaten by a coachman.

Even bearing this in mind, the libretto can hardly be said to have a linear or half-way cogent story line. Nevertheless, for all the apparent obscurity and impenetrability of the text, Rihm's score is anything but cerebral: it is ecstatic and orgiastic, a breath-taking, kaleidoscopic sweep of stylistic allusions from Bach to Schumann, Richard Strauss and Berg. The composer makes superhuman demands of the singers, not least of N - who was originally to have been sung by Matthias Goerne - and Ariadne.

Dionysos was 15 years in the making, with Rihm binning his original first draft of the score late last year to start everything again from scratch. Goerne finally pulled out of the project, leaving Johannes Martin Kränzle to step in at short notice. Kränzle's slim, mellow baritone may not have the depth and richness of Goerne's, but his performance was faultless and totally affecting.

Mojca Erdmann's light and supple soprano mastered the stratospheric coloratura of Ariadne with astonishing laser-point accuracy and Matthias Klink's tenor had a fiery sheen to it in the double role of The Guest/Apollo.

Rihm could not have found a better conductor than Ingo Metzmacher to guide singers, orchestra and audience alike through the daunting complexities of the score. The direction of Beirut-born Pierre Audi was also admirably clear and uncluttered. But perhaps one of the biggest surprises of the evening were the sets by German painter, sculptor and performance artist Jonathan Meese, who has never worked in opera before, but whose cartoony pop-art visuals -- complete with "Mars Attack" heads -- were full of wit and zest.

Dionysos was given a very short run of just four performances here. And while Salzburg's ultra-swank Haus für Mozart was nowhere near sold out, it was very respectably full. Of course, only time will tell whether the piece, with its obscure and opaque text, will find a firm place in the canon of contemporary operatic works. After Salzburg, this particular production travels to Amsterdam and Berlin and my advice would be to catch it if you can.

Simon Morgan