Deutsche Oper, Berlin
 |
| HEART CHAMBER, Regie: Claus Guth, Uraufführung am 15. November 2019, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Michael Trippel |
Her – Patrizia Ciofi
Her Inner Voice – Noa Frenkel
Him – Dietrich Henschel
His Inner Voice – Terry Wey
Soprano – Robyn Allegra Parton,
Micaëla Oeste, Jana Miller, Rachel Fenlon
Mezzo-soprano – Verena Usemann,
Anna-Louise Costello, Verena Tönjes, Jennifer Hughes
Tenor – Hans-Dieter Gillessen,
Lawrence Halksworth, Wagner Moreira, Martin Fehr
Bass – Philipp Schreyer,
Christoph Brunner, Simon Robinson, Andrew Munn
The Voice – Frauke Aulbert
Double Bassist – Uli
Fussenegger
Claus Guth (director)
Christian Schmidt (designs)
Urs Schönebaum (lighting)
rocafilm (video)
Yvonne Gebauer, Dorothea
Hartmann (dramaturgy)
Ensemble Nikel (Brian Archinal (percussion), Yaron Deutsch (electric guitar), Antoine Françoise (piano), Patrick Stadler (saxophone)),
SWR Experimentalstudio: Joachim Haas, Lukas Nowok, Carlo Laurenzi (live electronics)
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin
Johannes Kalitzke (conductor)
The day prior to seeing this,
the world premiere of Chaya Czernowin’s fourth opera, Heart Chamber, I had completed in draft a short introductory article
on the music of Schoenberg. That was doubtless part of the reason why various
works of Schoenberg came to mind both during and after the performance of this
fascinating new work; but I do not think it was—at least I hope it was not—only
on that account. An unnamed man and woman: one might think first of Verklärte Nacht, not least since Heart Chamber, subtitled ‘An inquiry
about love’, addresses, according to the composer, a ‘transformative path’,
namely ‘the elements of falling in love that expose us to our most intense
beauty but also to our most intense vulnerabilities and insecurities’. It was
really, however, Schoenberg’s first two operas, Erwartung and Die glückliche
Hand, which provided some context or framework for my response. Czernowin’s
conception, whilst far from breezily romantic, is nowhere near so dark, nor so expressionist,
as either. The sound of a surrounding vocal ensemble suggested as much distance
from Die gluückliche Hand as affinity;
that opera nonetheless afforded a reference point of sorts. Moreover, unlike
either of the Schoenberg works—though like, I suppose, his third and final
one-act opera, Von heute auf morgen—both
man and woman have a voice, here further amplified, in addition to actual
electronic amplification, by further solo parts for their inner voices.
It was less in subject matter
than in overall conception that Erwartung
helped frame my response. In letter to Busoni, written just
before beginning work on that score, Schoenberg presented a physiological understanding
of what he was about to portray: ‘For a human being, it is impossible to feel
but one sensation at a time. One has thousands at once. … And this variegation,
this multifariousness, this illogicality which our senses demonstrate, this
illogicality presented by their interactions, set forth by a soaring wave of
blood, by some sense- or nerve-reaction, this I should like to have in my
music.’ In Heart Chamber, Czernowin—and
I felt this with considerable, sometimes well-nigh overwhelming force before
reading a word about it—attempts ‘to create a true multisensory experience, an
experience of music in its sensual fabric, where music becomes smell, touch,
cutting pain, extreme vulnerability, pure joy, or euphoria. The transitions and
shifts between these states are uncontrolled and unpredictable.’ Reinventing
the operatic wheel, then? Perhaps, but is that not what any opera composer
worth his or her salt will be engaged in at some level? There is certainly here
a strong, even unusually strong, sense of aural and visual, compositional and
performative elements coming together dynamically yet also structurally—this is
perhaps more knowingly sectional, if undoubtedly interconnected, a work than a
post-Romantic piece such as Erwartung—to
create something we might yet know, if we must, as a Gesamtkunstwerk.
An
double bass solo (Uli Fussenegger), nervous and wide ranging, eventually settling on a narrower
bad of pitch oscillation – a minor second, if I remember correctly – is the way
in, an overture of sorts. Is this the heart or the physical and metaphysical chambers
within which it is confined? There seems no reason to choose. Listening and
watching, one registers different speeds, sometimes successive, sometime
simultaneous, of experience; a bowing as much as an electronic modification, the
spatial relationship between the excellent Ensemble Nikel to the side of the
auditorium and the orchestra in the pit as much as that between conductor Johannes Kalitzke and electronics, or
voices on and offstage. Nevertheless, at the structuring,
animating heart, if one may put it that way, of this opera there stand voice
and voices, singular and plural, generic and particular. One may say that such is
the case for any opera—and yes, in many ways of course it is. However, I think
it is probably fair to say that it is still more so the case for some operas,
and some types of opera, than others, at least vis-à-vis the orchestra, or
whatever stands in its place. For me, Heart
Chamber took one back, with an effect not entirely unlike—whatever the
differences in means—a work such as Pascal
Dusapin’s Passion, to the earliest,
Monteverdian days of opera: not in the sense of pastiche, nor even, as with
Dusapin, of reference, but, to quote Czernowin, of ‘being about the voice, about
using the voice, about communicating with the voice.’ That is, I know, what
some, more responsive to its charms than I, say of bel canto opera too; I shall leave it to them to comment on any
such affinity. Vocal colour, both through singing, prior recording (sometimes
set against the present), and complex yet meaningful sound design, multiplies,
not least in its potentiality for meaning.
Doubling
or more, whether of ‘real’ or electronic voices, invites reflection, just as will
any number of retellings of, for instance, the Orpheus legend. Vocal
externalisation of inner voices, often more the affair of instruments, of
harmony—and it is certainly not the case that there is none of that here—adds further
layers not just of meaning, sometimes of a daily contradiction we all know, yet
do not always acknowledge, but of experience both highly immediate and mediated. Such conflicts take place, related and unrelated, between song and speech, stage and film too. Incomprehension and frustration play roles as important as understanding and
satisfaction. This is often, then, the realm of the unconscious, as further
suggested by a number of dream sections, not always so readily distinguished,
but which both for Schoenberg (again to Busoni)—music as ‘an expression of feeling,
as our feeling really is, which connects us with our unconscious, not a changeling
born of feelings and “conscious logic”—and for Czernowin, more vocally, less
orchestrally—‘an additional singer (an internal voice) who reveals the
protagonists’ deep subconscious … The internal and external voices do not
always agree’—are perhaps the ultimate source of drama, even of ‘reality’,
whatever that may be. In neither is narrative straightforwardly the point,
probably still less so for Czernowin than Schoenberg. How one reacts to
countertenor (Terry Wey) mirroring and contradicting baritone (Dietrich
Henschel) and contralto (Noa Frenkel) doing likewise, yet never in anything so
banal as mirror image, for soprano (Patrizia Ciofi) is part of the way one
structures and indeed creates one’s own response.
This
landscape, however, is no forest, enchanted or disenchanted. It is
unrepentantly urban, quotidian, even in contrast with such settings. It could be anywhere; it might even be one of
the roads outside, just off Bismarckstrasse. Video work (roca-film) treads with
excellence that thin line between specificity and non-specificity, just as it
does differently, elsewhere, in nightmarish, invasion of ants, as psychological
as it is physiological; for what is ‘reality’ here? So too, more broadly, do
Claus Guth’s direction and Christian Schmidt’s designs, indeed the production
as a whole. A highly resourceful revolving stage creates and delimits spaces,
urban and physiological, perhaps even metaphysical too. That is more a question
for us, I think, than for the work and production as such. My first reaction
was that I should need to see and hear the opera again to be able to say anything
about it; sadly, that was not immediately an option and, in retrospect, time
for reflection was undoubtedly a good thing too. The experience, conscious
and unconscious, would doubtless be very different—just as it would with Cosi fan tutte or Tristan, and their treatments of a not entirely dissimilar theme. I should nevertheless be keen to
see and hear it again, especially given such committed performances, and have
no hesitation in recommending it to anyone for whom opera is both what it was
for Monteverdi, Mozart, Wagner, or Schoenberg and something necessarily different.
