“Thou shalt not take lightly the great name of Death”. So, sung to a weird version of the tune of Ein Feste Burg, ends the closing chorale of Viktor Ullmann’s Der Kaiser von Atlantis. To the best of my knowledge there has never been a commercial video release of this work but it was filmed as a BBC/WDR co-production in 1977 and broadcast in both Britain and Germany. I just got my hands on a copy of the BBC broadcast and thought it was well worth writing about.
So I thought the obvious antidote to Robert Carsen’s Dialogues des Carmélites would be the recording of Ollie Knussen’s Where The Wild Things Are and Higglety, Pigglety, Pop that was sitting in my ‘to watch’ pile. It’s a 1985 Glyndebourne recording and the Associate Director is one Robert Carsen, assisting Frank Corsaro. So it goes. Actually it was rather fun, if a bit irritating in the way that children’s literature written for kids with ADD seems to be. The music is terrific and not at all dumbed down. The sets and designs, as well as the libretto, are by Maurice Sendak himself and there’s some pretty neat lighting by Robert Bryan. The Wild Things are really cool and almost make up for the fact that Max (played here by Karen Beardsley) is an appalling little s$%t who needs a good kick in the backside. HHP is a bit more restrained and simultaneously manages to be less fun but also less annoying. It has a rather splendid lion and Cynthia Buchan does rather well as, to the best of my knowledge, the only Sealyham terrier in opera. Knussen conducts the London Sinfonietta and they sound really good. Continue reading
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