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| Images: Bernd Uhlig Dr Kieron (Thomas Lehman), Creature of Light (Andrew Dickinson) |
Meister Astaroth – Bo Skovhus
Miriel – Siobhan Stagg
Creature of Light – Andrew Dickinson
Anima – Kangmin Justin Kim
The Bright Girl – Narea Son
Cornelius – Aaron Godfrey-Mayes
Dr Pulski – William Desbiens
Dr Raubenstock – Karl Huml
Dr Spinberg – Jürgen Sacher
Designs – Jeremy Herbert
Costumes – Janina Brinkmann
Lighting – James Farncombe
Video – Sophie Lux
Choreography – Sasha Milavic Davies
Dramaturgy – Angela Beuerle, Michael Sangkuhl
Chorus of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Christian Günther)
I really wanted to like this opera, Unsuk Chin’s second, following her widely and justly acclaimed Alice in Wonderland (2004-7). After all, I travelled from London to Hamburg expressly to attend its opening night. In some ways, I liked and admired it; or rather I liked and admired much of the music and stage performances, above all Thomas Leaman’s commanding account of the central role. It pains me to say that, nonetheless, as a dramatic and even theatrical experience what we saw and heard in Die dunkle Seite des Mondes (The Dark Side of the Moon) fell considerably short of the considerable hopes invested in it. My sense, moreover, was that mine was not, sadly, an eccentric reaction.
A Faustian tale is no bad start; opera in particular and drama more broadly continue to flourish in development and variation of time-honoured subjects, to which something more timely will necessarily be brought. The (anti-hero), Dr Kieron, is a scientist, Dr Kieron, an unbearable, impossible colleague, who dismisses and needs the work of others, but who harbours the secret of his haunting by visions, which lead him to the realm of a ‘soul healer’, Meister Astaroth. Inspiration came originally from Chin’s interest in the relationship between the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Friedrich Jung.
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| Meister Astaroth (Bo Skovhus) |
Chin’s score announces a darker soundworld, aptly enough, than that of her previous opera and indeed many other of her works, yet it is possessed, at least in its stronger sections, of many of the inventive qualities, especially rhythmic and timbral, that have justly lent her great esteem. There is exuberance and a true sense of potential in the orchestral lines, vividly brought to theatrical life, so far as I could discern, by the Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra under Kent Nagano, the house chorus a welcome addition in its several appearances. The beginnings of both acts, more than just the beginning in the first, offered the most compelling music and also, doubtless far from coincidentally, registered strongest in dramatic terms. Broadly, Kieron’s world convinces more than Astaroth’s, which may or may not be the point. Dramaturgically and theatrically, it seems conceived – in my case, it was certainly received – in a traditional way. A story is told on stage through words and music. There are no obvious metatheatrical questions posed; nor is there an evident desire to play with narrative, let alone a sense of the postdramatic. There is nothing wrong with that; many fine operas still take on such a form and probably always will. Traditional operatic virtues, then, probably need to register more strongly.
The libretto, however, and more generally the plot come across as hopelessly contrived: not artificial in an arch or detached aesthetic sense, but mostly unfortunate. This, I am afraid, is also Chin’s work, written in collaboration with Kerstin Schüssler-Bach. It piles up words, fails to establish characters – most glaringly, in the case of the women, mere projections in a sense that surely extends beyond feminist critique – and often seems bizarrely unsuited to opera. I should actually go a step further and say that the problem was less its wordiness, although that certainly did not help, than that wordiness simply not having been very good. It would have come across unfortunately, had there been no music at all. Put another way, literariness needs to be good – very good – and if you are not a Hofmannsthal, remains better avoided. When something merely aspires to literariness, if indeed that is what is going on here. I honestly cannot imagine anyone caring about the characters—and it was not clear what else there was to care about. At times, an anti-war message seemed to surfacebut then it disappeared; or perhaps I had imagined it. It is surely not coincidental that the music’s invention registered most strongly when there were no words to get in the way. Then there is the length. On the face of it, it was refreshing to be presented with something that dared to be different, not to be confined to the consensus of how long an opera ‘need’ be. Like any artwork, it should probably be as long as it needs to be, but no longer. Offering something roughly the length of a Mozart-Da Ponte opera (done whole) shows ambition, if only it were realised.
There was a good deal to suggest, however, that this had been developed as a whole, extending considerably beyond the composer’s work on her libretto. At its best, Dead Centre’s production seemed to ‘listen’ to the score and not only to the words. Without merely mirroring, movement, lighting, and much else seemed to spring from the same source, for instance in the set’s swaying to convey the drunkenness of the bar. If anything, though, it seemed too often to remain tied to the words and drama. If it would be too much to hope that a different staging might have redeemed them, something a little more interventionist might nonetheless have added something, perhaps fleshing out the characters rather than simply presenting them, such as they were. Even something that accentuated the c.1930 setting, present when one reflected yet not registering as something that mattered, might have contributed something. Live camera did, in a straightforward way, homing in on particular characters – for instance, during bar ‘crowd’ scenes – and register their facial reactions.
Thomas Lehman’s assumption of the principal role, Dr Kieron, was thus in some ways all the more impressive: a fiercely intelligent act of apparent conviction, which created a character almost in spite of what he was presented with. Bo Skovhus, as Meister Astaroth, similarly impressed with great stage presence throughout. Kieron’s former lover and morphine addict, Mirel, was woefully under-characterised in the work, but Siobhan Stagg did what she could, her coloratura duly sparkling—and suggestive of what might have been. Kangmin Justin Kim’s Anima was quite a star turn, splendidly feminine of tone and gesture, so much so that it was only when I checked the cast list I realised this had been a countertenor. Aaron Godfrey-Mayes made for a sympathetic Cornelius, assistant to Kieron. All seemed well sung; there was nothing evident for which to reproach the musicians, whether on stage or in the pit.
A puzzling and, in many ways, frustrating evening, then, but one I was nonetheless pleased to have experienced. Not only because one learns from when things go wrong, though surely there is much to be learned here; but because I remain convinced there is something waiting to be released here. Where that leaves the opera, I am not sure. It is difficult to imagine the music, or rather some of it, retained and a new libretto fashioned. Perhaps there is some radical surgery that could be performed. Perhaps the best of it could be reworked into a shorter opera or another work entirely. Perhaps different performances and stagings would make a difference. Or perhaps I am entirely wrong: first night reports are notoriously littered with wrongheaded criticism. No one would be more delighted than I to find my criticisms misplaced, to owe the creators an apology, and to welcome a new work to the repertory. We shall see.
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