2023-10-22 20:22:06
It was actually believed that whatever this man touched would turn to gold. Last season, Christian Spuck, the new director of the Berlin State Ballet, played a key role in shaping the program. And what did the State Ballet proudly report before the summer break? 92.7 percent! The best capacity utilization since the company was founded!
Always the same pattern
So it was thought that the sensational successes would continue like this. But while Emma Bovary plunges into her misfortune on the stage of the German Opera, one is no longer so sure. No matter how outstandingly Weronika Frodyma embodies Gustave Flaubert’s famous fictional character, how great each individual duet is that she has with her husband Charles – from whom she dreams of great happiness, only to be disappointed by his stupidity while still in her wedding dress – it’s always the same pattern.
Her first affair is with Rodolphe, the landowner, who then coldly dumps her. With Léon, the student with whom she shares her romantic infatuation. The illusion of love is followed by disillusionment. At some point that’s enough. The beautiful ensemble scenes don’t help either. The depression that so delicately dances around Emma. The lavish ball at Vaubyessard Castle, the fun market in Yonville, the shrill, decadent theater in Rouen.
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Flaubert’s Emma cannot be understood in this way. Spuck described the challenge himself in advance. In story ballets, the female characters are usually great lovers and not ambivalent characters. How can this be told in a story ballet, this confusion of imagination and reality as a fundamental human drama? So you almost think that Christian Spuck has perhaps not completely failed with the famous template, but more than half failed. His “Bovary,” a very well-made but lukewarm ballet that perhaps even lacks a little more staidness in addition to its vitality. If it’s a conventional narrative ballet, then please also have all the trimmings.
Then the end comes. The long death of Emma Bovary, who not only cheated on her good husband Charles, who loved her so much, but also drove him to ruin with her addiction to luxury. It is a rare and strange phenomenon that a strong conclusion can also retroactively change everything seen before. That’s exactly what’s happening this evening. What Weronika Frodyma and Alexei Orlensco deliver as her husband Charles is outstanding. He as a down-to-earth lover who loves this Emma precisely for what he cannot have, her almost immaterial nature that longs for the otherworldly. And she, who, as she is dying, gets a brief glimpse of this love, which makes her shudder briefly – and is ultimately just fuel and buoyancy to stagger back into her dream worlds. It took all the effort beforehand for this. This much is certain: Christian Spuck wants success. But he doesn’t want to make it easy for himself – and that’s good news.
#long #death #Emma #Bovary