| Germany's reunified
capital boasts an idealistic auxiliary opera company that calls itself Zeitgenoessische
[Contemporary] Oper Berlin, which accomplishes prodigies of first-rate operatic and
dramatic quality on a bare-bones budget. The glorious tradition of experiment that made
this city so exciting during the Weimar Republic (1919-1933) clearly lives on in such
praiseworthy ensembles as this one. This past May it courageously tackled
"Neither", Morton Feldman's highly experimental minimalist setting of an
exceptionally wispy text written for him by Samuel Beckett. It now has revived "The
Ghost Sonata", Aribert Reimann's 85-minute opera based on the play by August
Strindberg - surely the gloomiest play that even Strindberg ever wrote, arguably the
gloomiest in the history of the world. This revival
- the 19th since this work's 1984 world premiere in Berlin, where Reimann lives - also has
taken place in the Hebbel-Theater, an admirable institution devoted to experimentation in
every artistic field that involves a stage. Local critics have praised it, then and
now, as a masterpiece. I regret to say that my critical conscience compels me to
submit a minority report.
Aribert Reimann, world-famous as an outstanding pianist partner favored by numerous
top-flight singers, cast his lot with the free atonalists during his postwar student years
here with Boris Blacher. Without ever moving even close to the more audacious postwar
avant-garde, he has remained constant to that anti-melodic genre of composition. He tends
to avoid the term opera, preferring *Musiktheater*, for which he has written a total of
seven works. His "Lear", composed for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, has enjoyed
productions in many major houses in Europe and abroad; on October 30th, in Munich, Zubin
Mehta will conduct the world premiere of his newest, "The House of Bernarda
Alba", based upon Federico Garcia Lorca's tragedy.
"The Ghost Sonata" deals with material so grotesquely somber that it constantly
risks lapsing into the fatal danger of the involuntarily comical. (Item: Strindberg called
one female cast member "The Mummy" - a crazed old woman condemned to spend her
life hidden away in a cabinet as penance for a sin long past.) To the great credit of
Sabrina Hoelzer's staging and a cast exceptionally talented not only musically but also
dramatically, this production almost miraculously manages to avoid that. Etienne Pluss's
set and costumes also contribute importantly.
Advance publicity focussed on the artist cast as The Mummy, the role she had also sung in
the original production 16 years ago: Martha Moedl, for several years the queen of
Bayreuth's first postwar annual Wagner festivals almost half a century ago - meanwhile
almost 89 years old. In this new production she
actually sings only two or three notes, but the opening night audience's reaction at the
end amounted figuratively to rushing onto the stage and smothering her with kisses. A born
stage animal of uncanny presence, Moedl doesn't act, she simply is - and still most
effectively, at that.
Reimann's score amounts fundamentally to sound effects, some of them deliberately ugly,
interspersed with vocal writing of a type that unavoidably has a cruelly punishing
physiological effect on at least some of these singers' vocal cords, leaping from the
extremely low directly to the extremely high and back, including some writing for the poor
tenor that zooms up into the stratosphere. To their collective credit, the singers and the
twelve instrumentalists and their conductor Ruediger Bohn coped with even the most satanic
difficulties with verve and bullseye accuracy.
Among the cast of fourteen, Tom Allen, Christian Baumgaertel, Malin Bystroem, Viktor
Lederer, Guenter Neubert, and Adalbert Waller also especially stood out. Two nights after
this premiere, the company tossed Aribert an additional bouquet when three singers -
Ursula Hesse, Assaf Levitin, and Eiko Morikawa - presented four unusually substantial
Reimann songs that amount almost to concert arias.
Paul Moor
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