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Die Tote Stadt
We had so much fun watching Erich Wolfgang Korngold's (1897-1957) masterpiece, we are kinda sad he did not make it to the 1960s: if his psychedelic opera, die tote Stadt, is any hint, he would have written the ultimate LSD trip arias. For lack of psychotropics, die tote Stadt has to make do with funky wacky dreams. Quite naturally in fact, it's a Viennese guy writing music in Freud's Vienna, and Sigmund had just put out his interpretation of dreams twenty years before.
So we get this surrealist story: Paul is depressed as he lost his wife Marie; however, he ran into another woman, Marietta, in the streets of Bruges (the dead city the title refers to) who is an exact look-alike for his wife. Yeah, it's like Vertigo all right, or Orpheus: you too can get your dead wife back. Anyhow, Paul passes out and Korngold hits us with The. Dream. Sequence. Opera storylines don't care much for a semblant of realism. But this one really gets off the the road, in a good way! Marietta comes back, all clad in white, with a bunch of Pierrots, and Paul and her have this seduction thing going on, and then Paul kills her. Oh noes!
Pictures courtesy of SF Opera/Terrence McCarthy; Tortsen Kerl above (with his double Ben Bongers), and Emily Magee below. Group scene: Andrew Bidlack, Daniela Mack, Bryan Ketron, Lucas Meachem, Alek Schrader, Ji Young Yang.
But it was all a dream, and a litte introspection later, Paul realizes that he's clinging a bit too hard to the past, and happy ending ensues. This opera has not been seen in SF before, and it has been quite rare in fact, except for the current revival fad of the latest few years. One reason, maybe: you must have a convincing production to make the alternance between dreams and reality comprehensible to the audience. This one here is amazing: Paul's room in the front is dedoubled upstage with a mirror-like image. You see two Pauls sleeping on his chair, him here and his reflection up there. Then, in the neatest trick, the room and its image decouple! There's a whisper of how-did-they-do-that in the audience. Quite simply indeed, it was no mirror, but just another set, with another (silent) actor standing in for Paul. Smart, and awfully efficient. Two thumbs up for Willy Decker's production, and Meisje Hummel stage direction. The thing with dreams, it's that they tend to put you to sleep. No chance this time around.
Music-wise, Korngold is not an operatic household name. You'd have told us his name before we saw the show, and we'd be, poor guy, just one letter away from a .com domain name in solid gold. Yet he delivers a rich score, with textured orchestration and a couple show pieces. It has the right influences of the period: you'll find echoes of Strauss (in particular, the clock motif of der Rosenkavalier), and the entrance of the dream clowns playfully takes on Wagner's entrance of the Rhinemaiden. Runnicles has his way with the score. The large orchestra seemed a little less assertive when we saw the show on its second night than for the opening, according to them reviews.
We only mentioned Paul and Marie/Marietta so far, because they have the lion's share of the singing. Paul was described by Janos Gereben in the Ex as "sung heroically and gloriously" by Torsten Kerl, and well, it's a bit over the top, but not that far off. Emily Magee has to be sultry wearing a white costume that looks like a sicko ward camisole with a bald shaved head during Act II. And she pulls it off!
We have to mention the excellent job of the rest of the cast, former Adler fellow Lucas Meachem in particular, and current Adlers Ji Young Yang, Daniela Mack, Andrew Bidlack, Alek Shrader, and a special contribution by Katharine Tier.
Die Tote Stadt
War Memorial Opera House.
Shows: tonight, 7:30pm, Sat Oct 4 2008, 8 pm; Thu Oct 9 2008, 7:30 pm; Sun Oct 12 2008, 2 pm.