2023-06-13 17:17:00
RRigid Catholicism, rapturous willingness to die, somber persuasion – and in between, on a dreamy summer’s day, a champagne picnic in the sheep pasture in East Sussex, no contradiction. At the private Glyndebourne Opera Festival, hit like many musical theater institutions in Britain by the severe cuts to the Art Council, Françis Poulenc’s more moving nuns’ melodrama “Dialogues of the Carmelites” was shown for the first time.
Barrie Kosky’s staging – his second production at Glyndebourne – was celebrated. Kosky avoided any Nunsense, taking the bewildering piece seriously, narrowly and minimalistically. And emphasized courage and the modernity of its authors.
You don’t want to be a pessimist. Nevertheless, it seems as if the at least 400-year-old history of the opera genre came to an end on an evening in Milan in 1957. At least in terms of the worldwide acceptance of a work by the public and thus its immersion in the repertoire.
Of course, there is nothing sentimental here
Because Françis Poulenc’s supposedly so religious confessional piece “Dialogues des Carmélites” has been repeatedly reinterpreted in all important houses and put to the test in recent years. Admittedly, this opus by three very Catholic authors was long considered sentimental. Poulenc compiled his libretto from Gertrud von le Fort’s 1931 novella The Last of the Scaffolds, which is based on historical facts during the French Revolution but definitely anticipated the looming Nazi era, and from the resulting stage play and screenplay by George Bernanos.
Of course, there is nothing sentimental here. This was made clear by this harsh tones, loud and aggressive production, both in the pit and on stage. Because this work, which in its clear, haunting, theatrically practical musical language internalized but also reduced Debussy’s flowing impressionism, finds its own and very clear stance despite all its decency.
Katarina Dalayman as Prioress Madame de Croissy with Sally Matthews
Quelle: Richard Hubert Smith
16 nuns are the main characters, all of whom were beheaded in 1794, but what they deal with is touchingly universal: man’s fear of existing, longing and search for meaning, consolation and (red)solution, overcoming a petty earthly existence, the rising as ever so faint light in the universe. Which means of artistic expression could be better created for this than the directly emotionally touching genre of opera? Which, of course, could easily be vulgarized, belittled, kitschy.
It is all the more astonishing that at the height of serialism, dodecaphony and other thin-lipped avant-gardisms, a charmingly sophisticated, gay, at times superficial sound juggler like Françis Poulenc mastered this commissioned work so confidently. And this turned into – as the title suggests – a deeply serious discourse about belief and being safe, fulfillment and duty. He remains eminently theatrical and created five wonderful, carefully separated roles of women. Kosky, the ex-head of the Berlin Komische Oper, and the Glyndebourne music director and Berlin DSO head Robin Ticciati, who works congenially in the Graben at the podium of the London Philharmonic Orchestra, get completely involved in this closed world without any color.
Five main characters are formed
The young, always anxious Blanche takes off her yellow rococo dress right at the beginning against the will of her resentful father (Paul Gay) and her doubting brother (Valentin Thil) to enter the convent, there to find peace from the world that frightens her, then stays only black and gray – as well as the perspective narrow alley that outfitter Katrin Lea Tag built from cracked concrete walls and which is often only illuminated by a single neon tube.
Here it is all about service to Christ and the community; each of the nuns deals with it differently. It is always fascinating how Poulenc forms these five main characters and how Kosky defines their character profiles through stillness, silence and shadows – while Robin Ticciati draws them with a fine sound brush like sharply cut lines.
The Blanche is here with the quite tart, mature Sally Matthews, who nevertheless bases her despondency with bright tones. While the new Mother Superior – Golda Schultz lends compassionate femininity to Madame Lidonie – is strikingly young. The old prioress, Madame Croissy, has died defiant with her faith struggling with death – a great, evilly grandiose scene for Katarina Dalayman. Karen Cargill is the robust, domineering-protective Mère Marie, who eventually leads Blanche on the path. And Florie Valiquette finely embodies the innocence of Soeur Constance, who steadfastly serves her master.
Once a little harmonious green pops out of the bare wall when weeding in the monastery garden. When the revolutionary anti-church situation outside escalates, black sauce runs streakily from the ceiling. In the second part, the outside world literally bursts through the wall with its deadly, angry, now contemporary-wearing henchmen.
Everything is taken from the sisters, they are rounded up like cattle, their hair is shaved, signs of shame are tied around their necks. They’ll hang on the wall at some point. Soon her shoes, which she had just clenched, are lying underneath, with every dull scaffold hatchet fall, a pair is thrown in from outside. Kosky calculates such Holocaust associations.
Robin Ticciati also steers more and more strictly towards the goal, dressing this so humane score, which ends with an opera finale that is particularly stirring in its stoic finality, in dark, transparent, almost transcendent sounds. They drive these “dialogues” unobtrusively but steadily, giving them their heartbeat, their breath. The applause for this is huge – also from Lydia Tár in the audience: Cate Blanchett is a friend of Barrie Kosky’s.
#Opera #confessional #scaffold