Tag Archives: zamojska

The Infernal Comedy

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The Infernal Comedy: Confesions of a serial killer is a “Drama for one actor, two singers and orchestra” based around the story of real-life serial killer Jack Unterweger. It features John Malkovich, Laura Aikin, Aleksandra Zamojka and the Wiener Akademie under Martin Haselböck. It was written and directed by Michael Sturminger and filmed in front of a live audience in Vienna’s Kronacher Theater in 2009. It’s a really creepy piece in which Malkovich plays the dead Unterweger on a book tour promoting his posthumous memoirs. Unterweger’s string of anecdotes, puzzles and philosophising is punctuated by arias from the two sopranos from works by Vivaldi, Mozart, Weber and others on the theme of women’s mistreatment by men. During much of this Malkovich is portraying the humiliation and murder that Unterweger inflicted on his victims on the two singers. This is probably the only chance, short of a Stefan Herheim production, that you’ll get to see Laura Aikin strangled with her own bra. It’s really creepy.

The performances are really good. Malkovich, of course, is that rarity; a Hollywood star who can actually act.  Not only does act, and very well, he does it with an Austrian accent.  He is very convincing as Unterweger.  Some of his angry outbursts are really quite terrifying.  The girls sing really well and are totally committed to doing what they have to do on stage, which largely consist of putting up with considerable indignities from Malkovich/Unterweger while still managing to sing. The orchestra, on period instruments, sounds just right. The whole thing is very well filmed and has really good DTS 5.1 sound (DD 2.0 and 5.1 as well). The English subtitles for the arias are a bit odd. I have no idea what “I encore you to Lethe’s opposite bank” means! There’s a 45 minute “making of” documentary on the disk as well but it’s not very illuminating.

All in all, well worth a look.

Mozart and sheep puppets

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When the Salzburg Festival decided to do all 22 Mozart operas for the 25th anniversary in 2006 there must have been a fair amount of thought put into to what to do about the lesser works. I have to say that the solution they came up with for Bastien und Bastienne, written when Mozart was twelve, and Der Schauspieldirektor is most ingenious. The director, Thomas Reichert, came up with the ingenious idea of combining the two singspiels and performing them with puppets in the Salzburger Marionettentheater. The work breaks into three parts; a largely spoken prologue based on Der Schauspieldirektor where Frank (Alfred Kleinheinz) and Buff (Radu Cojocariu) audition the puppets for the roles in Bastien und Bastienne. The puppetry in this section is quite wonderful. The decision is made to split cast Bastienne which sets up the soprano rivalry for the final part of extracts from Der Schauspieldirektor. In between we get the performance of Bastien und Bastienne with Cojocariu singing the magician Colas on stage with the puppets while Bernhard Berchtold, Evmorfia Metaxaki and Aleksandra Zamojska sing from the pit. It’s charming complete with puppet sheep. The finale well exploits the difference in voice between the fuller, more mature Zamojska and the brilliant coloratura of Metaxaki. It’s lots of fun with some good gags and excellent singing from the young cast, especially Cojocariu. The orchestra is the Junge Philharmonie Salzburg conducted by Elisabeth Fuchs.

The video direction is by Stefan Aglassinger. He does a good job of producing a coherent video which is not easy because the action takes place on stage, in the pit and around the auditorium. It was filmed in HD and the picture is an excellent 16:9. Sound options are PCM stereo and DTS 5.1. There are English, French, German and Spanish subtitles. The disc includes a reasonably interesting “Making of” documentary.