“Lohengrin”, Kirill Serebrennikov’s war dog

2023-09-25 20:00:10
“Lohengrin”, by Wagner, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, September 23, 2023, at the Paris Opera. CHARLES DUPRAT/OPERA NATIONAL DE PARIS

Highly anticipated, the production of Lohengrin, by Wagner, which marked the debut of director and filmmaker Kirill Serebrennikov at the Paris Opera, provoked standing ovation and boos: proof that opera remains a living art. The Russian, who now lives in Berlin, has nestled the story of the Wagnerian legend deep in the troubled brain of Elsa, a war victim inhabited by post-traumatic visions. Some are of incredible beauty and strength – such as the opening film in black and white, which sees Elsa’s farewell to her brother Gottfried (soon to disappear at the front), their descent through a forest towards a lake, where the teenager will bathe, naked, revealing striking wing tattoos on his back. Others are more conventional, like these images of soldiers filmed during an assault, whose open mouths seem to want to hold their rifles, likening the weapons to apocalyptic musical instruments.

War is the heart of Serebrennikov’s work. She crushes the bodies. It kills souls. The swan knight is none other than a creation of Elsa, locked within herself in the guilt of having survived. Magnificent first act where, in a white bathrobe, she madly dances her madness through the intermediary of two young women with long hair, traversing with a sort of drunken exultation a mental space of rooms in a row, where appear in turn this and those who persecute her. The walls themselves will begin to rotate when the knight who has come to defend him appears.

Devastation of the world

But this Lohengrin dressed in light fatigues is not who we think. He is a worrying warlord who perpetrates the only murder in the opera, that of Telramund, a mutilated veteran, who tries to oppose the general conflict. Also, instead of the nuptial ceremony supposed to unite Elsa with her hero, Serebrennikov deployed an enfilade of soldiers uniting hastily before dying or returning to the front. The decor, initially strictly divided into distinct spaces, will gradually make the partitions disappear to open up onto a devastation of the world, where the living, the wounded and the corpses rub shoulders. It is in this whirlwind of life that Lohengrin will say goodbye to Elsa, after giving her his military identity tag, to join the Grail Knights, the elite unit of Montsalvat to which he belongs.

Lohengrin (Piotr Beczala) and Elsa (Johanni van Oostrum), in “Lohengrin”, by Wagner, directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, on September 23, 2023, at the Paris Opera. CHARLES DUPRAT/OPÉRA NATIONAL DE PARIS

Punctuated with videos, words and graffiti drawn live, Serebrennikov’s show is served by a sharp direction of an actor, the three hours twenty in black and white (an hour more with the two intermissions) spend as much time faster than the vocal stage is of flawless quality. Announced as suffering, King Heinrich of Kwangchul Youn is replaced at short notice by Tareq Nazmi, with generous bass and nobility of phrasing which symbolize the emblematic figure of a power of which the volcanic herald of the king, the bass-baritone Shenyang, constitutes the double exclamatory.

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