2024-09-22 14:06:09
Carl Orff was once a big name in the music business. A Bavarian producer with a somewhat forgotten brown history. In Hamburg they tried again with “Trionfi”, three Orff operas based on “Carmina burana”. A test report.
It seems more than dead even if a few small opera houses, concert halls and musicians from Gelsenkirchen to Braunschweig, Stock-on-Trent, Nantes, Sønderborg, Ljubljana and Oakland are currently preparing the world hit “Carmina Burana” in one scene. or the symphonic method, the time of Carl Orff, who died in 1982, this corner and, above all, the Bavarian classical philologist’s vocal reformation with brown spots, it seems to have ended. You don’t even have to use the Nazi party against him anymore, because he was a follower like many of his fellow inventors at the time.
That is why there is now an object of the theater like the early times in the Hamburg Opera. General music director Kent Nagano, who at the end of the last season was able to bring out his teacher in “Saint François d’Assise” of his teacher Olivier Messiaen, which was postponed due to the pandemic, in an important production at the Elbphilharmonie, open your final season on the Elbe with Carl Orff’s “Tionfi”.
These are three groundbreaking cantatas, already composed extensively, from 1937, 1943 and 1953, which Orff put together in 1953 to form an impressive trio. Then it was publicly premiered by Herbert von Karajan at La Scala in Milan – and we screamed.
The “Carmina Burana”, by far the most famous work, stands in Latin for ancient songs from a collection from the Benediktbeuern Monastery, from which Orff took 24, wrapped them in the old drone accompaniment, hitting rhythms like church keys and divide them into three parts. “In the spring”, “In the tavern” and “Snake of love adventures”.
Even the charming “Thou Fortuna” at the beginning, with its figure of the wheel of fortune raised and let down, represents the vicissitudes of fortune and prosperity, the longevity of life, the joy of the return of spring, of sharp. , gluttony, joy and lust are done.
Karajan as an obstetrician
The “Catulli Carmina” goes back to the poems by the Roman writer Catullus set to music by Orff, which the composer later married with a Latin-texted process about Catullus, his lover Lesbia, their friend Caelius and two prostitutes. The orchestra consists of four pianos, four timpani and large percussion – in pale imitation of Stravinsky’s ballet “Les Noces”, written in 1917.
The “Trionfo di Afrodite” for three sopranos, two tenors, a baritone and a bass with a mixed choir, completed for the Scala production, works as the finale of “Catulli” – as a representation of an ancient wedding ceremony with trionfo (jubilation ) for the goddess of love. The Latin and ancient Greek text is based on poems by Catullus, Sappho and Euripides.
Karajan as a high philosopher – as he did again in 1973 in the mysterious “Play of the End of Times” at the Salzburg Festival, which also had Latin songs – this also testifies to the deep fall of the Orff musician. that has since gone completely out of fashion. His 13th grade career was almost never fun.
After all: Salzburg tried Orff’s “Endgame” again in 2022 with at least positive results in installing Romeo Castellucci with Teodor Currentsis on the podium. This summer is a fitting children’s opera on the Salzach: Orff’s “The Kluge”. But “Trionfi” was last performed in 1990 at the opening of the Munich Opera Festival. And – despite Wolfgang Sawallisch’s practice – it was a mega-flop that disappeared without a trace after a few performances. Although “Trionfi” starts as a sweet, stomping fillet with “Carmina Burana”.
In Munich, the failure was not due to a few more following structures, but above all to the direction of the theater maker of the left-wing tower Johann Kresnik, often referred to as “dance berserker”, which is still too far. avant-garde for the conservative Bavarian State Opera at the time. In Hamburg, Calixto Bieito is not a sad leader. And so he said on the first page: “We draw attention to the scenes that have a sexual meaning in which some actors have appeared without clothes sometimes. Recommended age: from 15 years/class 10. ” This is of course preceded by melodies sometimes in ancient Greek, Latin, Middle High German and German.
And although in Hamburg they cleverly put the famous “Burana” at the end with applause, the old two-part before the break is more interesting this time. Also because it is musically and scenically more poetic. And because – only the house singer wants to learn the final lesson – the great Ukrainian singer of Liatoshynski Capella Kiev, who has an amazing voice and performance, was brought in at the last minute for “Catulli” and “Trionfo”. With these committed singers, Calixto Bieito organized a minimalist, harmonious dance theater of the battles of the sexes reminiscent of Pina Bausch in the narrowness of Rebecca Ringst, a simple white stage frame in front of the orchestra behind them.
It is led by the highly self-revealing tenor Oleksiy Palchykov and Nicole Chevalier, who shares her soprano vocals and emotions between attraction and abandonment. They kiss, touch and love each other with passionate passion, the singer follows this with his pagan songs in a strict rhythmic orgiastic that does not mince words.
Men in wedding dresses, women with lipstick smeared lips, a few naked extras, a little woman, a chicken, Fortuna as an old woman and the ubiquitous Mori memento – there are many Wuppertal cultural devices in amazing harmony, Orff’s current arrangement. The form and detail is precisely that of the house by the two assistants in the balcony and the interpreter giving musical cues in the first row of stalls in front of the covered singer’s pit.
In contrast, the more opulent “Carmina Burana” falls off quickly. On the narrow stage now, with the big singer in the background, the sound is not as precise as Kent Nagano’s intense efforts. Because the collective actually just a second what they sing, muddying between the plastic grapes when the grapes are harvested (in the spring?) and the spill (the first two lines pull up the plastic splash guards) beetroot juice.
A fat Bacchus blesses the harvest while drinking, then the Oktoberfest party turns into a good orgy with dirndls and a retro look (costumes: Anja Rabes). Cody Quattlebaum’s fat stuffed monk shows a very thin baritone, Sandra Hamaoui in Court of Love a delightfully high soprano. The star of the song, of course, is Siwani, who has a fire in the oven, by countertenor Jake Arditti, who cleverly sings in his fluffy diaper and walks around in his fluffy diaper.
That’s until the wheel of speech rattles again, see for the songs that have long since degenerated into advertising jingles. Orff as an annoying retro rascal at the pseudo-medieval festival. Where the beginning consisted of broken bars and unworkable harmony, this extraordinary revival now reigns in the sound of preparation. And with this stage ringing noise, the inimitable Carl Orff, whom the Nazis already called (“Bavarian music nigger”), could not really be saved.
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