2024-09-25 12:16:08
Johann Christian was the only one of Bach’s children to really leave his mark on opera history. In Leipzig they now try to tell his opera “Amadis” for the whole family. The children are very bored.
Leipzig simply did not function without Bach. And because the Protestant great-grandfather Johann Sebastian did not write any operas, but the people here are always hungry for musical theater, they have to do otherwise. Bach Festival 2024 at least presents the Dutch composition “Apocalypse”which combines a story about the Münster Anabaptist movement with vocal works by the old Bach to create a pasticcio – as if he had been a romantic composer who had left on baroque forms.
Or you can help yourself from time to time with works by various Bach children. One of the four children of the union left something special at this point – the youngest, Johann Christian (1735 to 1782), Milan or London Bach. About 25 operas were recorded by him, almost all of them in Italy, most of them lost.
One last one, Amadis of Gaulpremiered in France in 1779 in Paris in the presence of Queen Marie-Antoinette. It goes back to a popular chivalric novel; Bach’s original also goes back to Lully’s Philippe Quinault libretto – retro was already modern then.
In 2011, Johann Christian Bach’s Leipzig Bach Festival presented the newly rediscovered “Zenaida” at the Bad Lauchstätt Concert Hall, which was also recorded on CD. And “Amadis, Knight” has been announced for the Bach Festival in 2025. “Amadis” was first released in Germany at the Hamburg Opera in 1983, and Mannheim performed the French version in 2009, which was also released on CD at the Palazetto Bru Zane in 2011. The Bach Festival contribution has already been presented at the Leipzig Opera. For the first time, the new Thomaskantor Andreas Reize stands in the opera hall of the Gewandhausorchester.
But even his committed practice, colorful and full of spirit, could not save this chaotic past. Because it is advertised as an opera for the whole family, the house does not specify a recommended age on its website. And many children were simply too small for this crudely shortened two-hour version, which of course will not want to tear up or write the opera, which oscillates so charmingly between Italian and French styles.
They can’t read supertitles decorated with emojis, they can’t face the complex, baroque intrigue – and they’re bored. What a shame, there is one of the rare “Amadis” performances, but the colorful orchestrated score with its wonderful repetitions is poorly cut and the delicate details of this much appreciated work are lost shouted impatiently.
It’s fun here when Andrea’s charm shines through the baby brass instruments, which she works using Papa Bach’s methods, and when she offers the sugar monkey opera. But the director Antje Thoms did not satisfy anyone. His musical staff, dressed in bright retro chic (like here in the blessed John Dew days), had to perform a primitive puppet show with real people in a dirty machine room surrounded by a neon frame.
It might sound funny in the videos, but in real life on stage it’s flat. And it hardly conveys anything of the complicated story in which the knight Amadis is finally brought together with his Oriane by a good fairy, while the vile but magical siblings Arcabonne and Arcalaus try to kill him three acts.
In Leipzig, none of the understudy was very good; So you have to make do with a little manga parody, a unicorn from the purple Lillifee Universe, cute vinyl clothes, big eyelashes and a Cheshire cat with green glowing eyes. The staff, augmented by two Saxon voice-over jokes from the future, shuffled around, climbing the podiums up and down. Nothing is said in truth, either for children or adults.
Until the happy ending fairy in a rainbow dress made of river rings cleverly breaks her bright heart. At least what’s left seems very interesting with its closeness to Mozart. So please, more Johann Christian Bach operas, but please for adults!
#Bachs #son #Leipzig #Knight #Lillifees #kingdom