Tag Archives: kratzer

What one calls a happy marriage

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Richard Strauss’ Intermezzo is a very strange semi-autobiographical piece apparently dealing with the married life of Richard and Pauline Strauss thinly disguised as Court Composer Robert Storch and his wife Christine.  What is really a bit weird is how these two characters are presented.  Herr Storch is a bit stuffy and self absorbed but Frau Storch is just awful.  She is rude to everyone, especially her long suffering maid and other servants, and she overreacts bizarrely to just about everything.  She’s spoiled, self-centred, vain and generally a giant PitA.

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A Fidelio in two halves

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I have long been of the opinion that Beethoven’s Fidelio is structurally flawed.  The first and second acts are so different intone and dramatic intensity that it never seems quite to hang together.  Tobias Kratzer obviously shares this view but being smarter than me finds a way to leverage it.  For his production at the Royal Opera House in 2020 he takes the two acts and effectively makes the second a commentary on the first.  It’s worth quoting his own words:

Like no other opera, Beethoven’s Fidelio falls into two unequal halves.  Act I is a historical melodrama on freedom and love in the post-Revolutionary era.  Act II is a political essay on the responsibility of the individual in the face of the silent majority, a musical plea for active empathy.

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Maskarade

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Nielsen’s Maskarade is a comic opera to a Danish libretto based on an 18th century play.  The version given in Frankfurt in 2021, and recorded for video, updates it to contemporary times and uses a rather racy German translation by Martin Berger.  It’s really rather fun!

1.henrikleander

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A metatheatrical Tannhäuser

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The more I see of Tobias Kratzer’s work the more impressed I get.  Here we look at his 2019 production of Wagner’s Tannhäuser at Bayreuth.  It’s the kind of production that traditionalists get off on hating and there were boos at curtain call though they were absolutely drowned out by a storm of applause and stomping.  Personally, I found it insightful, at times very funny, and deeply, deeply moving.

1.hut

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Grim, dark Hoffmann

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One of the interesting things about Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffmann is that there is no definitive edition so creative teams have a lot of flexibility in how they cut and combine material.  Director Tobias Kratzer and conductor Carlo Rizzi created a really interesting take for their production at Dutch National Opera in 2018.  It’s a very modern, very dark interpretation that while it keeps Offenbach’s music (though not interpolations like Scintille diamante) and the words are all from (some version of) the libretto the storyline varies a lot from what we are used to while keeping intact the central psychological fact that Hoffmann is incapable of relating to real women.

1.party

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Double dwarf

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The Deutsche Oper’s production of Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg, recorded in 2019 in Berlin, is directed by Tobias Kratzer who seems to be the rising star among young German opera directors.  I can see why.  This is a thoughtful and clever production that really does have something to say without being unduly gimmicky.

1.piano

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