Nationaltheater
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| Images: Wilfried Hösl |
Aljeja – Evgeniya Sotnikova
Luka Kuzmič (Filka Morozov) – Aleš Briscein
Skuratov – Charles Workman
Šiškov – Bo Skovhus
Big Prisoner, Prisoner with the Eagle – Manuel Günther
Little Prisoner, Bitter Prisoner – Tim Kuypers
Governor – Christian Rieger
Old Prisoner – Ulrich Reß
Čekunov – Johannes Kammler
Drunk Prisoner – Galeano Salas
Cook – Boris Prýgl
Smith – Alexander Milev
Pope – Peter Lobert
Prostitute – Niamh O’Sullivan
Don Juan (Brahmin) – Callum Thorpe
Kedrill, Young Prisoner – Matthew Grills
Šapkin, Happy Prisoner – Kevin Conners
Čerevin, Voice from the Kirghizian Steppes – Dean Power
Guard – Long Long
Frank Castorf (director)
Aleksandar Denić (set designs)Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)
Rainer Casper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert (video, live camera)
Stefanie Katja Nirschl (live camera)
Jens Crull (video, live editing)
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)
Martha Münder (revival director)
Bavarian State Opera Chorus
(chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)
Bavarian State OrchestraSimone Young (conductor)
Frank Castorf might have been
born to direct From the House of the Dead.
In this, his third opera project – or better, his third opera project in the opera
house, for his Volksbühne Meistersinger
must surely be reckoned with, even by those of us who did not see it – many of
his hallmarks and those of his team are present, yet without the slightest hint
of staleness, of anything other than being reborn for and in the work. And how
the work suits such an approach; in many respects, the deconstruction has
already been done. Probably Janáček’s greatest opera, indeed his greatest work
of all, it is no accident that it is the one Pierre Boulez chose to conduct,
towards the end of his life. Alas I never heard that live, although in 2014, I would
see Patrice
Chéreau’s production in Berlin. That was, of course, a fine piece of
theatre, as indeed was Krzysztof
Warlikowski’s Covent Garden staging, seen earlier this year. Castorf, however,
revelling in its fragmentary nature – for it is in many respects his own –
triumphantly, I should say dialectically, offers the strongest sense of a whole
I have seen or could imagine. By taking it as it is, Castorf’s team and a
magnificent cast, aided greatly by Bavarian State Opera forces under Simone
Young in the finest performance I have heard from her, alert both to the needs
of the minute and of the greater architecture, present and represent the opera as
it is and might be. Quite without sentimentality, they write and rewrite, igniting
and reigniting that Dostoevskian redemptive spark that is both present and
absent throughout, depending when and where one looks and listens, how and with
what one pieces together one’s own narrative, musical and dramatic.
We are in Russia – no doubt of
that. It is Russia at a dark time – again no doubt of that. (When, however, was
that not the case, save for a few years under Lenin, and even then…?) But is it
a ‘real’ Russia? And what indeed could so impossibly naïve a formulation mean?
Live camerawork performs all manner of tasks, questioning our ability to
comprehend, to view, to narrate, whilst making it all the more necessary that
we try to do so. There is little doubt concerning the realism – until, that is,
a true Carnival of the Dead comes amongst the prisoners and the prison. Magic
realism? Perhaps, but if so, it is the blackest of magic to follow, perhaps
even to sublate, the blackest of comedy and (non-)redemption. Whereas, in his Siegfried and Gotterdammerung, Castorf took
us to an alternative historical path for the GDR, an alternative that turned
out not to be so very alternative at all, (Al)Exander Platz still a commercial,
post-socialist wasteland, Wall Street still failing to burn, here we seem
perhaps to have joined the USSR for an alternative 1930s.
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| Bitter Prisoner (Tim Kuypers), Prisoner with the Eagle (Manuel Gunther), Aljeja (Evgeniya Sotnikova) |
Or have we? Trotskyist hints
abound: the rabbit hutch (many thanks to my friend Sam Goodyear for having
pointed out the connection), Mexico too (‘Partido liberal’, we read on one of
many historical and/or imaginary signs), a film advertisement (in Spanish),
starring Alain Delon. (Hang on, if we are in 1972…?) Even a carnival bird
Aljeja, splendidly sung by Evgeniya Sotnikova, seems both to suggest and to
disavow that possibility. Or are we, was I, confusing him/her – here most
definitely ‘her’ – with the Prisoner with the Eagle, or his eagle? What might that mean here,
whether the confusion or the eagle? Russia or the USSR, however, it certainly
remains, even down to the affinity – which seems to have been overstated by
some – with Aleksandar Denić’s Walküre set (Azerbaijan, 1942). What does a sign for Pepsi Cola in English and Russian tell
us? And what, at the end, does the English poster invitation to travel to the USSR as
a holiday destination mean, not least in such appalling circumstances? Stop trying to ascribe meaning to everything: is that not what, as an imprisoned intellectual, one is compelled to do? Are we
to see the future and will it to work, or perhaps indict it? Is it just a joke, as suggested by the presence of a Ring crocodile? Who knows? We
shall never make the journey, just like so many of those prisoners, yet unlike,
perhaps, Gorjančikov, who thinks he has something written in his head. Like Dostoevsky,
like Trotsky, like Castorf, like our writer, Alexandr Petrovič Gorjančikov, we
write and rewrite. So too does the action all around, on stage, on film, seen
and unseen; so too, of course, does the orchestra.
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| Šiškov (Bo Skovhus), Statisterie and Chorus |
It is complicated, yes; how can
a fragmentary drama with so many ‘characters’ or at least people not be? But it
is also visceral, direct. Violence we see, we feel, whether we like it or not,
be it in the Guard’s sadistic flagellation (a truly nasty Long Long, almost a
match for the still nastier Governor of Christian Rieger) or in the metal of
the steppes’ orchestra. Opera too, even in this most inhospitable of
circumstances, is reborn. If the Wanderer seemed to have been an inspiration
for our noble prisoner’s initial journey to this camp, Peter Mikuláš capturing
both intelligence and a certain camouflaged nobility, then it is the Wotan of
the second-act Walküre monologue who
comes to mind in that of Šiškov. That is partly a matter of Bo Skovhus’s
searing portrayal, quite the most powerful performance I have seen and heard
from him in a long time. But everyone involved has played a role in putting
these pieces together, in constructing something from these musico-dramatic
shards. ‘A mother gave birth even to Filka,’ after all – and we know it,
because, like Šiškov, he sings, not least in this devilish incarnation from Aleš
Briscein. So too, earlier, do Don Juan (an outstanding Callum Thorpe) and his
pseudo-Leporello (another excellent performance, this time from Matthew
Grills), in a play-within-a-play. That, thanks to Castorf’s lengthy experience
with and rejuvenation of post-dramatic commentary, seems more of a
play-in-itself than I can recall – until, once again, it does not.
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| Šiškov, Cerevin (Dean Power) |
For, like Don Giovanni, this is redemptive
within and without, or seems to be: as I said, it takes life and drama as they are. A (post-)religious consciousness is at work here. It also,
perhaps, suggests what they might be, or at least what one day, when the revolution
comes again, the revolution to which we cling no matter what, we might hope it
to be. The noble prisoner leaves, though, so most likely not. He has used,
learned from his experience; so, we imagine, have we. The carnival of (Russian)
death continues. There is a chink of something uncertain. In the blackest of
comedies, we might even think it light. Humanity even – though are we not all
now post-human(ist) as well as post-dramatic? Who knows, who cares? This human
comedy and tragedy of which we are part rolls on, just as it did for those
Calderón-like figures of a reimagined Salzburg World Theatre in the celebrated post-war
Furtwängler Don Giovanni. The final
scene alienates – like Mozart’s. And yet, like that too, it moves (us). We have
experienced something, even if we have not a hope in our living hell of
learning what it may have been. We have, like this Gorjančikov, written a work of sorts in our head. No one will read it
or even remember it, perhaps it would be impossible for anyone to make sense of
its difficult, even nonsensical fragments; yet that spark of creativity, of
art, of that which Marx just as much as Schiller considered made us human, has
flickered. At least we think it did. Perhaps. Or at least we thought it did.
Once. Perhaps. We return, like Gorjančikov, like Trotsky, to watch the
post/non-human (non-)drama for the rabbits in their hutch, caged like us and yet (to the sentimental?)
more free. Perhaps.
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| Aljeja and rabbits in their hutch |
