<Translated from Deutsch automatically>
"Burn, burn brightly, so as not to be extinguished. One, two, three." Peter Tchaikovsky's opera "Pique Dame" opens with a chorus of small girls. A little later, boys imitate the military. The opera thus begins with the rehearsal of social roles: the girls as guardians of the hearth, the boys as soldiers. The opera also ends with a game—a card game. The German officer Hermann has lost and kills himself. Before that he sang: "What is our life? A game." The piece is stretched between children's play and card game. In the middle, there is a play within a play, a shepherd's intermezzo in a Mozartean idiom. Life as a game in which the individual must find his role—that, according to the architecture, is what "Pique Dame" is about.
What does the director Thilo Reinhardt do in his production at the Komische Oper Berlin? He first cuts the children's chorus. He is not concerned with architecture and form, but with psychology. Hermann is a fanatic of order and a poor wretch in his version. He can no longer keep up with the risky lifestyle of the newly rich Russians after the collapse of communism. And then he also falls in love with the sophisticated Lisa, the fiancée of Prince Yeletsky. Hermann freaks out. For Reinhardt, "Pique Dame" is the musical description of a psychosis. He even shows Hermann's split personality by doubling the performer. All around, in the hotel lobby, battleship grey and tank-scout-car green (set design: Paul Zoller), the merciless smart set of fun capitalism is milling about. In the shepherd's play, communism is ridiculed: Daphnis and Chloë form up, holding hammer and sickle aloft, into Vera Mukhina's 1937 statue "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman". These capitalists are not likeable. In the last scene, they even rape Lisa, who—unlike in Tchaikovsky's version—did not go into the water. Evil people, really evil people.
But Tchaikovsky does not ask about good and evil at all, but about happiness and unhappiness. For he is a tragic figure. He has pity for the unhappy person, but also respect for fixed forms. When he distinguishes between soul music and society music, the latter is not deceitful. Mozart was Tchaikovsky's ideal of the congruence of soul and form. Forms grant protection and support. Asking about the meaning of such forms is far from Reinhardt. Instead, criticism and psychology. In psychology, however, Reinhardt, as are the singing performers at the Komische Oper, is quite good. The tension between the characters is high, every step, every look is thought out and everything is real music theatre, not a costumed concert.
Vocally, one listens up at the small roles: Thomas Ebenstein as Tchekalinsky, Jan Martinik as Surin have light, elegant and clearly declaiming voices. Karolina Gumos as Polina provides a slenderly guided, yet warmly glowing alto and high text comprehensibility. Kor-Jan Dusseljee as Hermann manages the irrationally-apathetic acting remarkably well. Orla Boylan's Lisa could be thought of as less dramatic, although it makes sense if one can hear her inner nervousness, her soulful exhaustion in her voice, as here.
Of course, Anja Silja as the old Countess is the star of the evening. She revels in her memories as the Muscovite Venus of Paris like a picture-book diva. And how she then, a mixture of Marlene Dietrich and Juliette Gréco, steps out of her sequined dress and sings that French song that Tchaikovsky borrowed from André Grétry—that must be seen and heard. "Lust has its own horror and everything has death," it says in Eichendorff. Lust, horror, death—Anja Silja brings that to a gruesomely magnificent point here.
As conductor, Alexander Vedernikov, the musical director of the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre, stepped in a few days before the premiere. A stroke of luck. For Vedernikov possesses calm, circumspection, knowledge and taste. Precision has long been a strength of the Komische Oper orchestra. Now discretion and carefulness are added. In the woodwinds, one can hear that decisive articulation does not have to be oversharp. The rustling of the May night air in the second act in the strings and harp alone is worth a visit to this production, which in terms of staging too often confuses spirit with zeitgeist, but musically is capable of captivating far from all haste and hysteria.
Source.
"Burn, burn brightly, so as not to be extinguished. One, two, three." Peter Tchaikovsky's opera "Pique Dame" opens with a chorus of small girls. A little later, boys imitate the military. The opera thus begins with the rehearsal of social roles: the girls as guardians of the hearth, the boys as soldiers. The opera also ends with a game—a card game. The German officer Hermann has lost and kills himself. Before that he sang: "What is our life? A game." The piece is stretched between children's play and card game. In the middle, there is a play within a play, a shepherd's intermezzo in a Mozartean idiom. Life as a game in which the individual must find his role—that, according to the architecture, is what "Pique Dame" is about.
What does the director Thilo Reinhardt do in his production at the Komische Oper Berlin? He first cuts the children's chorus. He is not concerned with architecture and form, but with psychology. Hermann is a fanatic of order and a poor wretch in his version. He can no longer keep up with the risky lifestyle of the newly rich Russians after the collapse of communism. And then he also falls in love with the sophisticated Lisa, the fiancée of Prince Yeletsky. Hermann freaks out. For Reinhardt, "Pique Dame" is the musical description of a psychosis. He even shows Hermann's split personality by doubling the performer. All around, in the hotel lobby, battleship grey and tank-scout-car green (set design: Paul Zoller), the merciless smart set of fun capitalism is milling about. In the shepherd's play, communism is ridiculed: Daphnis and Chloë form up, holding hammer and sickle aloft, into Vera Mukhina's 1937 statue "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman". These capitalists are not likeable. In the last scene, they even rape Lisa, who—unlike in Tchaikovsky's version—did not go into the water. Evil people, really evil people.
But Tchaikovsky does not ask about good and evil at all, but about happiness and unhappiness. For he is a tragic figure. He has pity for the unhappy person, but also respect for fixed forms. When he distinguishes between soul music and society music, the latter is not deceitful. Mozart was Tchaikovsky's ideal of the congruence of soul and form. Forms grant protection and support. Asking about the meaning of such forms is far from Reinhardt. Instead, criticism and psychology. In psychology, however, Reinhardt, as are the singing performers at the Komische Oper, is quite good. The tension between the characters is high, every step, every look is thought out and everything is real music theatre, not a costumed concert.
Vocally, one listens up at the small roles: Thomas Ebenstein as Tchekalinsky, Jan Martinik as Surin have light, elegant and clearly declaiming voices. Karolina Gumos as Polina provides a slenderly guided, yet warmly glowing alto and high text comprehensibility. Kor-Jan Dusseljee as Hermann manages the irrationally-apathetic acting remarkably well. Orla Boylan's Lisa could be thought of as less dramatic, although it makes sense if one can hear her inner nervousness, her soulful exhaustion in her voice, as here.
Of course, Anja Silja as the old Countess is the star of the evening. She revels in her memories as the Muscovite Venus of Paris like a picture-book diva. And how she then, a mixture of Marlene Dietrich and Juliette Gréco, steps out of her sequined dress and sings that French song that Tchaikovsky borrowed from André Grétry—that must be seen and heard. "Lust has its own horror and everything has death," it says in Eichendorff. Lust, horror, death—Anja Silja brings that to a gruesomely magnificent point here.
As conductor, Alexander Vedernikov, the musical director of the Moscow Bolshoi Theatre, stepped in a few days before the premiere. A stroke of luck. For Vedernikov possesses calm, circumspection, knowledge and taste. Precision has long been a strength of the Komische Oper orchestra. Now discretion and carefulness are added. In the woodwinds, one can hear that decisive articulation does not have to be oversharp. The rustling of the May night air in the second act in the strings and harp alone is worth a visit to this production, which in terms of staging too often confuses spirit with zeitgeist, but musically is capable of captivating far from all haste and hysteria.
Source.
These capitalists are not likeable.
Peter Tchaikovsky's opera "Pique Dame" at the Komische Oper Berlin
Peter Tchaikovsky's opera "Pique Dame" at the Komische Oper Berlin
Jan BRACHMANN, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, January 28, 2009
