Berliner Zeitung 8/9 March 2003

SCARCELY AN OVERTURNED GLASS
Madness in the theatre:

The Zeitgenössische Oper Berlin presents two one-act operas by Peter Maxwell Davies
By Wolfgang Fuhrmann, Translation: Rosmary Thomas

What a strange thing music really is. When dealing with borderline experiences of human existence, it is always there, together with love, death, religion – and madness. But where does madness belong – to the borderline or absolute cases? We don‘t know because it doesn’t talk to us. But how does it sound?

The British composer, Peter Maxwell Davies, provides two answers to this question: „Eight Songs for a Mad King“ (1969) and „Miss Donnithorne’s Maggot“ (1974). Both are monodramas. The Zeitgenössiche Oper has combined them. Thursday was the premiere.

Eliza Emily Donnithorne (1826-1886) became engaged – against the will of her father – to an office employee of a trading firm. On the day of the wedding – the table was set, the carriage ready to leave for the church – the bridegroom did not turn up. It was reported later that he had been seen in India. Miss Donnithorne – who moreover was already pregnant – went mad. For the rest of her life, she lived in the Sydney family home, which gradually turned into ruins, with only two female servants and innumerable books; still in her bridal gown, the wedding breakfast table still set, she waited for her bridegroom for the rest of her life.

Miss Donnithorne became famous through Charles Dickens‘ literary dedication of her in his novel „Great Expectations“; it is likely that the American War of Independence cost King George III (1738-1820) his sanity. In 1811 he was finally deposed, after opening a speech to Cabinet with the ceremonial greeting: “My Lords and Peacocks“.

Senile Bride

Miss Donnithorne and George II meet each other in the Hebbel Theatre. In the first half of the evening, Marta Rózsa, a ghostly woman in bridal robes, invites the high society of Sydney to her wedding breakfast (“May you all choke“), while the King creeps round sadly and silently, his only pleasure being to blow out the candles. In the second part – which follows without a break – Tom Sol becomes the central figure while Miss Donnithorne silently idolizese him. The production by Sabrina Hölzer, who is the Zeitgenössiche Oper’s regular director, is as usual minimalistic: On the revolving stage there is nothing but a large wedding breakfast table, each place decorated with an Origami swan, which turns unceasingly from beginning to end. Sabrina Hölzer has resisted the obvious and clumsy attempt to make a battlefield out of the festively decorated table in the course of the evening, on the contrary Rozsa and Sol creep most carefully between the plates and candelabras, with scarcely a glass being overturned. This never-changing circular motion sets the right scene, you can almost imagine that the end of the work connects up with the beginning again, but here again, the producer leaves the conclusion to the spectator.

Davies‘ music borders between observation and empathy. One never rightly knows whether the tonal system – siren-like shooting violin glissandi, ticking and rustling xylophone chatter presents an ironic-grotesque commentary arising from the distance, or comes across to us from within the madness. And this position, so difficult to determine on this or that side of the borderline is indeed the starting point for compositions about madness.

“Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people. With songs and dances, with apples and with milk.“ King George III.

The evening – particularly in the second half – was decidedly amusing. This was due mostly to the compositions being furnished with stylistic quotations, indeed with pseudo-baroque recitatives and arias. When King George sweeps through the room in his plumed coat like a large animal, when he flirts unashamedly with Miss Donnithorne, who instinctively waddles behind him with abrupt hen-like head movements, or when the King shows his naked leg from under his black robe – there seems a hint of Mony Python in the air.

Musical Hickups

Rózsa and Sol do however sing absolutely seriously, and although required to perform beyond the normal limits of singing – wonderful for instance Rozsa’s hickups – they are never tempted to overdo it. And the six musicians (Davies wrote the work for his ensemble, the „Pierrot Players“) play with concentration under the baton of Rüdiger Bohn taking meticulously into consideration the various degrees of activity in the score between dull and exalted feelings.

So that finally there remains only the obstinately repeated question: How is it that Berlin’s cultural policy with such dedicated, well-thought out and careful work as is achieved by the Zeitgenössische Oper, can act so negligently and grossly as it did last year, when promotion of the ensemble was reduced for a short time to nothing?