Bregenz Festival: To hell with the German National Opera

2024-07-18 09:09:58

EIt’s actually amazing that it is “Freischütz” as the famous opera of the longest administration has not been to the Bregenz Festival on Lake Constance in 77 summers. It has been in East Holstein since 1951 Eutin given as an open-air opera.

It began around the 125th year of the death of the inventor Eutin was born Carl Maria von Weber to honor. Since then, free throws have been thrown and maiden goals have been scored in more than 200 games in front of 1,700 spectators each. This year has a new production by Anthony Pilavacci. The first start is July 19th.

In Vorarlberg Bregenz But the troubled national opera of the German national opera should now turn into a terrifying, violent massacre for the hope of 186,000 visitors in 28 performances, as a brisk play on deep fears in the village of snow dust that slides into a lake, with new (intermediate) words and the new appearance of the lake level, which is used this time in a completely different way.

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It should not be determined too much by an enigmatic image – the skeleton “Masked Ball”, “Tosca” face, “Bohemian” cafe table, “Troubadour” refinery, “Carmen” cards, “Turandot” palace wall or “Rigoletto” comic head – but instead as a kind of hidden sound image, it will become easier and different, having more in touch with the audience in the way Zombie XXL.

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Cinemascope director for this: Philipp Stölzl, a tried and tested film, music video, theater and opera maker since “Rigoletto”, who always has to have a bang. His motto is: “Get scary podcasts.” He performed his opera in the same way in 2005 in Meinigen with the work, then in the view of Nosferatu.

And let the staid, nationalistic music play about a test shot, strong suitors, beautiful virgins in the forest, hunter’s luck and praise to God, along with its humming melodies, was now to mutate in, on and above water – into. a damp ghost train with music, into a brilliant horror film show, to colors, macabre Metzel operetta, to a bloody emancipation theater and to an absurd splatter dress in a cool groovy look. If possible, everything at the same time. An amazing popcorn show with music.

Not only Agathe jumps into the river, a whole village drowns in the lake

Source: dpa

Stölzl also wanted to improve the seemingly old-fashioned, passive female characters Agathe (with a great tonal arc: Nicola Hillebrand) and Ännchen (prickly, soubrette-cheeky: Katharina Ruckgaber). This is why one is pregnant and the other is a young woman. As a couple, they want to escape until the secretary, not the forester Max (gentle-tranig: Mauro Peter), kills them. He hanged himself for this and went into the hole.

This is what happened during the movement and some strange music by Ingo Ludwig Frenzel, which was performed and accompanied by a triple sinner on the far right in the demon garden. The other male roles are often left behind in the noise and noise of the extras, especially Max, who seduces Kaspar (bass gling: Christof Flammesser). Only Prince Ottokar (Liviu Holender), who cannot sing, has a great appearance as the mighty blue King Ludwig in the Disney sleigh.

Of course, Samiel the devil is also different and he is on stage for much longer than usual: a loud, screaming Mephistopheles in an orange Gollum cloak, physically agile and jittery that Moritz von Treuenfels is constantly shouting. Jan Dvořák wrote many additional words for him, because Satan can also sing along and intervene again and again in musical numbers. There are also many sound effects, howling wolves, falling snow, coffins, gunshots, thunder, thunder, birdsong.

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The stage design (also Stölzl) with its eleven boarding houses with a sleeping church tower, a cheesy moon and 28 bare trees is cleverly copied from Tim Burton, somewhere between “Sleepy Hollow” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas “. This crouches on the snow mountain and is reflected in the swamp water, from which a horse frame with a fire wheel rises up to the candy-colored, smoky Wolfsschlucht serpent Nessie. An almost Hollywood-worthy mermaid ballet appeared here before. How this “Freischütz” is only for musicians with horseshoe marks: everyone is cold here and you have to go into the lake at least once; even bad people have to be protected.

Within the spectrum, Weber’s music is not easy to show an edge in sound. Again and again, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra is off under the powerful management of Enrique Mazzola, who is also well-documented in Lake Constance. But the balance with very long speeches needs to be adjusted better; So opera repeatedly became the soundtrack to a carnival stop.

Changing of the guard on the lake

And of course, even the devil as the director of the hellish theater can see that, the bath has to be followed by a happy ending. So the meaning of opera is reversed. And the hermit (Andreas Wolf), called at the last second, is allowed to announce God’s blessing to everyone as a kind of old Pope, while the Lamb of God dances like a disciple of the moon.

The first thing is that there is something, the first thing is color. You don’t have to think. This also applies to this Bregenz “Freischütz” as it did to the four large-scale productions in the lake during the ten-year period of Elisabeth Sobotka. He is saying goodbye to the Berlin State Opera as a conductor.

It was succeeded by the Finnish singer and former conductor of the Helsinki Opera Lilli Paasikivi. For 2025 he has organized “Oedipe” by George Enescu at the Festival Hall. And in 2026, Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” will cough itself to death on the lake for the first time.