The Altenburg-Gera Theater brings Gottfried von Einem’s opera “Dantons Tod” out of the blue and helps the audience to have an artistically great evening, regardless of small deficits.
The operas of Gottfried von Einem have become very quiet in recent years, although they were played quite often in East and West during his lifetime – the Austrian died in 1996 at the age of 78 – for a contemporary. This is probably the result of the constant narrowing of the current market-conforming repertoire, which all theaters seem to feel obliged to legitimize themselves.
So it is all the more honorable that a small house like the Thuringian Theater Altenburg-Gera keeps trying to set bright national accents. Intendant Kay Kuntze rewards this trust with a daring season opening in terms of repertoire, by staging “Dantons Tod” from Einem’s first opera with in-house forces.
The sensational success that von Einem achieved with “Danton’s Death” based on Georg Büchner’s drama about the aftermath of the French Revolution was primarily fueled by the longing for spiritual salvation shortly after the end of the war. The story of the ex-revolutionary leader Danton, who resigned to the abuse of power by his former henchman Robespierre until he was finally eaten up as a child of his revolution, was designed as a parable from the start. The main role is not played by Danton at all, but by the chorus as “the people”, who quickly change their steered opinion, but who then defend it all the more fanatically and, instead of demanding bread, are satisfied with guillotined heads to curb their anger.
In retrospect, Einem Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt in 1944 claimed to have been one of the most important initials for the composition. Recent biographical research has revealed that Einem himself, who had good contacts with the Nazi nomenclature, was a fervent admirer of Hitler after a meeting in Bayreuth at the latest and only afterwards realized which “seducer” he had been taken in by.
In this respect, the play, which premiered in Salzburg in 1947, serves the narrative of those who were temporarily blinded, who were merely goaded on by the fanaticism of the masses and were thus allowed to consider themselves relieved of their own responsibility. It is not for nothing that the “workers’ Marseillaise” sounds at the foot of the guillotine – as if only the lower classes were susceptible to despots and the supposedly thoughtful elites were merely victims of the mass psychotic pull. This demarcation from the “ignorance of the masses”, which the anti-hero Danton sees himself as the victim of, is also continued in the program booklet in a questionable way.
Therefore, the play loses none of its timeless message: The idea of a constituted, mature society failed not only because of Robespierre. At some point, every revolution became independent and became its own, often dogmatic, caricature, giving birth to despots who were overthrown by new revolutions. The only thing that remained the same was people’s desire for physical or psychological violence, which is directed against anything new and different, against any deviation from arbitrary norms.
Kuntze’s direction also refers to this aspect. He dispenses with obvious updates and deliberately leaves the play in the time of the original story – with wigs, knickerbockers and everything that goes with it (stage and costumes: Martin Fischer). The parallels to despots dead and alive, or those who would like to be, are self-evident.
The most meaningful scene is at the end, when the two executioners – the smallest and most important roles at the same time – sing a sentimental song about the moon after work and thus glorify the inhumanity of their actions as normal with the popular excuse of only having done their job. With Kuntze, they stagger across the stage in wheelbarrows, from which a severed head sometimes rolls off – a tragi-comic symbol of insane human violence.
With this direct reading without forced interpretation, Kuntze shows great trust in his audience, but then he is not quite so sure of his expressiveness: Because out of sheer enthusiasm about contemporary texts, which he might find suitable when exploring the material, he pours his staging with it countless insertions of these quotes, as if an opulent program were projected onto the stage. It’s frustrating.
And yet: Gera experiences a great artistic evening here. Musically and scenically, the small stage does not have to hide from any big city. This applies to both the title role, in which Aljandro Lárraga Schleske portrays an excellent mix of quarterly hedonist, brilliant thinker and fatalist, and his friend Camille (Isaac Lee). First and foremost, Anne Preuss is convincing with her unquestionably grateful role as his wife going insane: With her human emotions, she opens the audience’s access to the many anti-heroes who get bogged down in endless discussions.
The chorus, augmented by guests, also does an amazing job, especially when it is lined up directly on a bridge in front of the audience for reasons of urgency. A challenge when you have to hear each other on the one hand and the orchestra behind you on the other. This in turn is managed by general music director Ruben Gazarian with a lot of sympathy for von Einem’s tonal language, even if it is sometimes very loud and the protagonists on stage are often covered up.
Trained harmonically on Strauss and Mahler, the Austrian composer hardly ever crossed the boundaries of tonality, merely expanding it with a few bitonal experiments intended to serve the plasticity of his almost expressionist music. This score, rich in superbly mastered instrumental solos, is therefore not easy to handle, but it remains interesting in any case. And it is one more reason to make the journey to Gera.
The opera“Dantons Tod” will be performed again in Gera on September 23rd and 25th and October 1st and 3rd. theater-altenburg-gera.de