2023-05-29 19:46:22
Axel Ranisch is directing “Saul” at the Komische Oper. The severed head of Goliath is celebrated and a chorus of jubilation is sounded. A spectacle.
“Saul” production at the Komische OperBarbara Brown
Flags are waved at the beginning and end of Axel Ranisch’s production of “Saul” at the Komische Oper Berlin. In the beginning, the flags are colorful and those who wave them are dressed in everyday clothes. In the end, the flags are gray and tattered – and those who wave them and sing a triumphant chorus wear bleeding camisoles, have white faces and are smeared with blood.
The story that lies between these images is the tragedy of a royal family. A young man, David, gets in and leaves no one indifferent: the children Jonathan and Michal fall in love with David, the eldest daughter Merab is repelled by the humble origins of the intruder. Father Saul is torn and wants David dead. Because after his victory over Goliath, the hearts of the people literally fly to him.
Ranisch is not interested in spelling out the connection between the small war and the big war. This works well because “Saul” itself is elliptically narrated. At the end, for example, we see nothing of the war, no aria sure of victory, no battle music, just a recitative messenger telling that Saul and Jonathan have fallen – and then the process rises to the bright sounds of the funeral march.
In his operas, Handel tended to have too much action to deal with so that each singer could present himself with the fullest possible range of emotions. In his first master oratorio from 1737, on the other hand, it is more about pointed characterization and psychologically credible development. Saul’s descent from ruler to psychotic who asks a witch to summon the dead prophet Samuel – these are excitingly new and unusually negative dramas, but ones that can at times seem incomplete on stage.
A sparkling coexistence
Ranisch rather highlights this event. For example, he designs a glittering coexistence of the obviously bisexual David with Jonathan and the pregnant Michal in a shared apartment with a disco ball and huge speakers. A life that Saul has little to gain from. The private is opposed to the public, which is dominated by the severed head of Goliath – a creepy scenario by the stage designer Falko Herold, impressively realized by the stage service of the Berlin Opera Foundation. As this head rots and lies around as a skull in a dead landscape after the break, the plot takes its catastrophic course.
“Saul” production at the Komische OperBarbara Brown
Such images are effective, set their own accents and result in a formally coherent process. However, the staging seems to avoid what one could identify as the themes of “Saul”. For example, the theological aspect – Saul loses God’s support because he ignores his instructions – is rather underexposed scenically. As the High Priest’s Song by Tansel Akseybek, all of this is remembered rather than depicted.
David himself remains an elusive character who has comparatively little to sing. Musically it is therefore a nice idea to entrust the great Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen with a song by Herbert Howells after the final chorus. Leading into the completely different stylistics of British tonality of the 20th century, the piece opens up David’s hidden melancholy character and shows Cohen as an altus of unique mellowness – this fits better than Handel’s intended jubilant choruses, one of which sounds as a painful contrast.
Jonathan appears as a faithful soul
Rupert Charlesworth as Jonathan, on the other hand, is given the opportunity in numerous arias to portray Jonathan as an unconditionally loyal soul, his tenor voice combining clarity and absoluteness into a speaking vocal gesture. Likewise, the pure and simple affection of Michal for David shines from Nadja Mchantaf’s soprano – why she is portrayed in Alfred Mayerhofer’s costume as a bling-bling girl is a mystery.
Penny Sofroniadou as Merab remains too distant in defending against David as a spouse and in dealing with the whims of his father. Luca Tittoto impressively portrays the decline of Saul – not necessarily with a reverberating bass, but with increasingly pale colors. The Orchestra of the Komische Oper supports him under the direction of David Bates with a richly nuanced sound. The scene in the witch of Ensor, appropriately sung in a non-binary manner by Ivan Turšić, becomes the climax of a sophisticated tonal dramaturgy, which in Handel also includes the melodic figurations and the sometimes inhibited, sometimes flowing course of the harmony.
The orchestra sounds – supported by natural trumpets and baroque trombones – absolutely true to style and rhetorically instructed without exaggerations. In addition, there is a fantastically agile, small but wonderfully present choir, which David Cavelius rehearsed in the spirit of the best British choirs. His performance in the last scene, with its singularly dying entries, the moving lament and the rise to the jubilant chorus, forms one of the most impressive choral scenes to have been heard in Berlin opera houses in recent years.
#impressive #choral #scenes #years