After Tobias Kratzer’s extremely convoluted attempt of making Arabella compelling to an audience that seems to be his own entourage (the rest of the world keeps watching costume dramas on TV without looking back), I confess I had misgivings about the rescuing forces of woke-ness in the Deutsche Oper Berlin’s new staging of Richard Strauss’s Intermezzo by the same director. However, curiosity got the best of me and here am I for one of the last evenings in the run.
I had seen Intermezzo only once in Basel in a staging that updated the action to the 1950’s and told Intermezzo as the story of a woman forced to share her husband with the love of his life (i.e, music). Mr. Kratzer, predictably and daringly, updates the plot to our days. There are cellphones, cars, airplanes, and a housewife in the middle of all that. And that remains the problematic issue of a staging otherwise successful in efficient Personenregie, striking sets and costumes, surprisingly to-the-point comic timing and imaginative use of videos (especially during the interludes, where we either saw the orchestra playing live or pre-recorded material to make us believe that Robert Storch was conducting etc etc).
And yet there’s the figure of a housewife. In the 1920’s, any respectable married woman was a housewife, with few exceptions. Eligible young women would normally have no professional training and would stay at home preparing for the next ball to find herself a husband. However — and that’s a big “however” — that was not the case of Pauline de Ahna. She had a job and was very good at it. As a matter of fact, Strauss met her while WORKING TOGETHER WITH HER. He proposed to her when she dared to disagree with him, the conductor and composer of the work in which she was featured as the prima donna. Strauss repeatedly said he ADMIRED her as a singer. He was glad to have someone like her at his side, rather than a spiritless missus at home. She herself made a point of retiring from the stage because this was what society expected from her. I mean, a woman like her in the 21th century would have probably kept her career while being married to a famous composer, the same way Lorraine Hunt did while being Mrs. Peter Lieberson or Cathy Berberian before her when married to Luciano Berio. In other words, a housewife as Christine Storch in our days would make us think rather of The Real Housewives of Orange County rather than a successful artist whose unused genius must have vent in tantrums against a husband who did actually appreciate the way she spoke her mind.
This is probably why Christine comes across as rather petty in this staging, and the director’s attempts of making her cooler basically backfire all of them. Her having an affair rather than flirting with Baron Lummer makes her insincere, her refusal to confess her love for her husband (here she is forced to “open her heart” reading from a score written by him) makes her seem cold and unfeeling, her appearances with costumes of her husband’s main characters — funny as this was — involuntarily make ridicule of someone who actually appeared in costumes in her successful career as an opera singer. Therefore, I don’t know if Christine — and the opera is about HER — gained anything in her excursion to the 21st century. I wonder what a woman director might have done of it.
R. Strauss’s less often staged operas are no less ambitious than the famous ones. Scores like Intermezzo require everything from singers and orchestras, and yet we rarely see them in first-class circumstances. This is why it was so exciting to hear the Deutsche Oper orchestra letting it rip with such gusto in it. Here there was no impression of caution or inexperience. Under the baton of Dominic Limburg, who took from musical director Donald Runnicles for the last performances in the run, the strings extravagantly performed Strauss’s busy writing with richness of tone in perfect blend with a colorful woodwind section and, above all, a Wagnerian team of brass instruments. Everything glistened, bubbled, bounced in a Straussian tour de force. Bravi. This also means that this was a tough job for the cast. Fiurina Stücki, the Christine in Basel, replaced Maria Bemgtsson for the two last performances. While in Basel, she had a smaller auditorium and a less formidable orchestra, she still managed to create in Berlin the same impression of spontaneity through her clean phrasing, brightness of tone and good diction, even if her soprano was a tad better focused back in Switzerland. In terms of acting, she seemed a bit less convincing in the first part of the opera and increasingly gained in depth when the story develops away from the rosé-hip jelly part. Philipp Jekal’s smooth baritone is a bit tested by the writing in the competition with the orchestra, but his technique is solid and he kept it under control to the end of the opera. He too handles his lines with immediacy and textual clarity. To make things better, his acting is excellent throughout. Thomas Blondelle has the ideal voice for the Baron Lummer, although he is not make to look as young as he should. A wig might have done the trick. Anna Schoeck offered a terrific performance as Anna, the maid, almost stealing the show ar some points. All minor roles were cast from strength from the ensemble, especially the veteran Clemens Bieber, in firm, bright voice as Stroh. Tobias Kehrer as the Kammersänger is a glamorous cameo, and it was endearing to find Nadine Secunde as the notary’s wife.
Are you going to Khovanshchina at Staatsoper Sunday evening?
Hi, Jerold! Yes, that’s the plan.
.Hope plans work out as scheduled. Looking forward to the. Khovanshchina performance as well as your review. Must take train from Dresden tomorrow to Berlin to get to it.
Great! So we’ll be able to compare our impressions!