2023-05-30 15:12:46
“Shipwreck of a Myth” – “Naufragio di un mito” – that’s certainly the name of no musical theater work in the entire history of opera. For Salvatore Sciarrino – along with Giorgio Battistelli, who has a world premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin at the beginning of June, currently Italy’s most important living composer – this is of course just one of various complex subtitles for his stage plays. Their youngest was now due to premiere at the Hamburg State Opera.
“Venere e Adonis” is the transcription of an ancient myth reproduced by Ovid. Just as the 76-year-old composer, who lives in Umbria, marked the beginning of his now 18 theater works 50 years ago with “Amore e Psiche” in Milan. It is also a matter for the boss, in which, in rare artistic unity, Hamburg’s general music director Kent Nagano is on the podium and the staging director George Delnon is at the director’s desk.
The genre designation is of course a bad omen, because what is shown in the following, actually short 70 minutes in six scenes, prologue, epilogue and interjections, is quite dragging and is so untheatrically static that the construct is often referred to as a cantata would refer to the concert hall. The myth actually bathes in the theatre.
Salvatore Sciarrino has certainly succeeded in some fascinating music-theatrical works in the past decades, culminating in the much-performed Gesualdo variation of the “Deadly Flower” (1998) – in the original “Luci mie traditrici”. But “Superflumina”, first performed in Mannheim in 2012 as a monologue by someone stranded at a train station, was also exciting. The baroque opera allegory “Ti vedo, ti sento, mi perdo”, co-produced in 2017 by La Scala in Milan and the Berlin State Opera, is less so.
The Hamburg story goes like this: Venus – married to Vulcan and constantly cheating on Mars – fell in love with the mortal youth Adonis. The jealous gods (creaky Vulcano: Cody Quattlebaum; supple Marte: Matthias Klink) place an arrow of Cupid (nimble: Kady Evanyshyn) in his quiver. On the next hunt, he makes a wild boar furious, which Adonis mauls to pieces. It was painted many times, set to music by, among others, John Blow in 1683, Reinhard Keizer for the Hamburg Gänsemarkt Opera in 1697 and 300 years later by Hans Werner Henze for Munich.
By the way, that in the background is supposed to be an anemone
Source: Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
In the adaptation of antiquity by Salvatore Sciarrino and his librettist Fabio Casadei Turroni, a wild wine now gets a voice for the first time, and even more: the leading role. Named here elegantly “Il mostro”, the harsh baritone Evan Hughes can already be heard at the beginning, still invisible, as well as in four commenting “a parts” between the scenes. So we learn a lot about the state of mind of the creature who falls in love with Adonis and also swaps identities with him at the moment of death.
So does love win in death? This is discussed in unison by all those involved in a lengthy epilogue, just as in the prologue, behind a veil between video clouds, eight whitewashed gable figures rather dullly worried about the boar’s emotional world. And a buffo pair also comments. As Fama, divided into soprano and baritone (Vera Talerko, Nicholas Mogg), singing in unison.
It all unfolds dead serious, tired of education and without any meaning for today’s audience. Also because the production seems as slippery as an unimaginative window dressing. Starting with Marie-Thérèse Jossen’s ugly, skin-colored and white, ostentatiously metrosexual costumes, to George Delnon’s bland, rigid arrangements with the lover on the sofa and the gods as exalted, constantly aroused little men letting on steam. Two walls (stage: Varvara Timofeeva) shift predictably, and at the end the wounded Adonis in his fur coat turns into a purple checkered flower (supposed to be an anemone), the other petals of which sail sadly from the ceiling.
As Venus, Layla Claire glitters and glistens, terribly anemic; Randall Scotting as a proper countertenor Adonis in a fishnet shirt sounds incomparably juicier. And yet this time it finds little echo in Sciarrino’s parched orchestral treatment. Of course, it is again dazzlingly multifaceted, yet quickly recognizable in terms of sound. Sciarrino has once again refined his neogallant, very personal style somewhere between Arte Povera and rhetorically engraved madrigal mannerism.
The sound splits in waves into imploring whispers, hissing, and rustling. Nervous microglissandi ensure a moving, fragile background. Above that, the monotonously plaintive moving vocal line in small, fast intervals. Rich in melismas and with many dotted lines, often on just one note, the vocal parts meander in varied repetitions.
This results in a multi-faceted inner tension, paired with a yearning southern, even bel canto sound impression. This creates sound effects that never push themselves to the fore and yet leave the unmistakable Sciarrino stamp on everything. Its sometimes extremely fine webs, full of subliminal sensuality, allow Kent Nagano to flourish with sovereign composure. The fact that the often infatuated Sciarrino magic doesn’t appear this time has other, unfortunately shipwrecked, causes.
#Opera #Venere #Adonis #Hamburg #wild #boar #sings