Tag Archives: erod

Der Kaiser von Atlantis

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coverViktor Ullmann’s “one act play” Der Kaiser von Atlantis gets talked about a fair bit but fairly rarely performed.  Operabase lists only three productions worldwide in the last five years.  It was written in Theresienstadt to a libretto by Peter Kien and nether composer nor librettist survived the war.  It’s quite short; well under an hour, and is usually seen as a parody of Hitler and the National Socialists.  I think it’s quite a gentle parody though, especially given when and where it was written.

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Der Freischütz in Dresden

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At first blush Axel Köhler’s 2015 production of Weber’s Der Freischütz for Dresden’s Semperoper seems entirely traditional but as it unfolds it reveals some real depth that pretty much restores the sense of horror that the original audience felt.  It’s set in an indeterminate time period in the aftermath of war.  The first act looks quite conventional but there’s a very tense air to it with both sexuality and violence just below, and occasionally above, the surface.  The atmosphere is greatly enhanced by our first look at Georg Zeppenfeld who is a very fine and rather plastic Kaspar.  There are echoes here of his König Heinrich in Bayreuth.

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The Merchant of Venice

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André Tchaikowsky’s The Merchant of Venice was written in the years leading up to his premature death in 1982 but, despite interest from ENO in the 1980s, it did not get a full performance until David Pountney decided to stage it at the the 2013 Bregenz Festival with Keith Warner directing.  It’s hard to explain the neglect though Pountney ascribes it some degree as the fate of the emigré  (the composer being a Polish Jew domiciled in the UK).  The Merchant of Venice is a really solid piece.  It’s got all the elements; a strong story, a really interesting but not overly intimidating score and really good writing for voice (it really is singable).  It’s the right length at around two and a half hours and it doesn’t call for unreasonable orchestral or vocal forces.  John O’Brien’s libretto even manages to overcome some of the objections to staging Shakespeare’s play.  While one might consider the Shakespeare piece to be antisemitic, O’Brien’s libretto is much more clearly about anti-semitism.  There’s also a clear homoerotic element in the Antonio – Bassanio relationship and perhaps too in Portia – Nerissa.

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The dream is over but the night not yet

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So closes Aribert Reimann’s 2010 opera Medea.  It’s a two hour piece in four “pictures” that premiered at the Wiener Staatsoper in 2010 and the Blu-ray/DVD recording is taken from that initial run.  Actually there’s a good deal more nightmare than dream in this version as, I suppose, there is in just about any version of the Medea story.  This one draws on Franz Grillparzer’s version for the libretto and is entirely concerned with events after Jason and Medea reach Corinth.  It’s unusually sympathetic to Medea herself with Jason and Kreon very much the villains.

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