Salzburg, Austria — spoken by the general public.
There was no fear that the Salzburg Festival’s conductor Theodor Currentzis would attract boos or that devastating protests would be dispelled on Tuesday. Since the invasion of Ukraine began, there has been controversy over his support for the Russian state of his ensemble Music Aeterna, the silence of the war, and the relationship with his fellow president Vladimir Putin. However, at the beginning of a new double bill led by Currentzis and featuring members of the Music Aeterna Choir, the audience responded with applause alone.
The festival itself was scrutinized by standing beside Kurrenzis. Unlike the Metropolitan Opera in New York, which has shown a strong attitude towards Russian artists associated with Putin, such as Valery Gergiev and Anna Netrebko, Salzburg closely watches the sanctions list of the European Union. .. statement“I see no basis for artistic or economic cooperation with institutions or individuals who are sympathetic to this war, its agitators, or their goals.”
Do Currentzis and Music Aeterna fall into that category? Based in St. Petersburg, they are primarily sponsored by the Russian state agency VTB Bank, which is licensed this year, and prominent Russian officials participate in the ensemble’s board of directors. As a group, it has no public position on war, but organizations and critics have primarily demanded it on the security of their Western perches.
At least, Currentzis seems to have fallen into career-oriented behavior. Since 2004, he has built MusicAeterna towards international status. In recent years, it has become clear that Russian funding is unacceptable as the ensemble becomes freelance. To survive in the West without a scandal, you need a new home and a new sponsor. And the longer this war is, the more impossible it is to be silent as the group’s current position.
In an interview on Monday, Marx Hinterhauser, artistic director of the Salzburg Festival, said that if people were looking for a statement from Kurrenzis, “the signs are there.” His work subtly criticized the beliefs of the Russian state and the troubled history of the 20th century. And in 2017, he spoke frankly about the arrest of director Kirill Serebrennikov, who was widely seen as a punishment for his theater critical of life under Putin.
The example can go in either direction. But on the surface, Currentzis remains a mystery. There was little political revelation on Tuesday’s double bill if his previous project provided a sign of his belief. It was only the art making itself that made the decision.
And it was like a sequel to last year’s collaboration between Currentzis and Castelucci. Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” staging increased the score by more than an hour beyond normal execution time, and recitatives were delivered at the speed of thaw in the nearby Alps. .. I remember spending four hours in Grosses Festspielhaus trying to figure out why such an interpretation was needed. There is no answer yet.
Both men are ambitious and provocative quarters. Apart from that, they were able to do an awe-inspiring job. Together, they seem to allow complacency to be frustrating to each other.Their Bartok and Orff were created for uneven nights, as there could be a doublet — a “bluebeard” of false tempo and dynamics, but a “comoedia” for flaws in all works. Was performed more convincingly than above Herbert von Karajan’s original recordingWith a characteristically monumental yet slightly luxurious staging.
Again, the evening was longer than necessary. Each score contains about an hour of music. Taking a break, the double invoice was executed in just over three and a half hours. This is because, with some tempo choices, most of the time Orff’s scene was filled with a new, atmospheric, transient passage written by Currentzis. This prolongs the work, which doesn’t seem to be fun in the first place, and Castellucci didn’t say much.
His greatest interpretation statement was to bridge the two works, but it does not appear to share far beyond the various scales of apocalyptic events. In “Bluebeard,” it’s intimate — a slow-burning drama in which a wife reveals the painful world of her new husband and destroys both. And in “Comeodia”, which premiered in Salzburg in 1973, it is cosmic and has an impersonal and positive Christian vision at the end of time.
Castellucci has an oral prologue of “Bluebeard”, the role of a cameo called a bard, who was later given the grandeur of reading in line with the musicalized speech of “Comoedia”. (The bard also plays Christian Reiner, who returned as Lucifer at the end of Orff.) And he passes the action of the first opera through the second opera: Bluebeard and his wife Judith. Here is an established couple in the sadness of losing a child, and in a dreamy dark space of only water and fire. Peace will come to them at the end of “Comodia”. So they come back with a redemption to render Judith as a kind of Eve that brings universal reconciliation.
Elsewhere, visual motifs (masks, costumes, and even stains) are repeated throughout both works, but are otherwise aesthetically distinct. The problem is that these Easter eggs, along with the clearer gestures and stylized movements choreographed by Cindy Van Acker, enhance the meaning and, decisively, the emotional influence of either piece. , Is to exist to justify double billing. Both Bartok and Orff come out with a feeling of poor operability.
That feeling wasn’t lacking in performance. As Judith, the soprano Auslin Standite performed a strange treatment of the character — always on the verge of self-immolation — at least convincing, with little intense humanity in staging. (Her counterpart, bass Mika Kares, was a resonating but wooden bluebeard, a passive being that should have been better than he unravels.) The Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra is organic. Playing with unpredictability and skillful precision, he gave the orchestra animal strength.
When they took the wrong step, they were chasing the Currentzis baton. This was less reliable than when he and the orchestra gave a moving and bold explanation of Shostakovich’s “Babin Yar” symphony at the Ouverture Spirituelle festival last week. His reading of the accumulating opera “Bluebeard” is one of the rich tempo and high emotional temperature, despite the hair-growth power of Standite’s voice, with nowhere to go and occasional coat of arms singer. Drowned.
However, Currentzis takes on Orff — realized by the orchestra with a combination of the Music Aeterna Choir, Bach Chor Salzburg, Salzburg Music Festival and theatrical Kinderchor games — enjoying the primitive and ceremonial nature of the work and rattling. It rang. A collision that you can feel deep in your ears.
It was not to be missed that his podium was empty at the last recorded moment of the “Comodia” score the night he was looking for signs of Currentzis’ work. So he had no place to be seen as a single sentence spreading over the super title screen on stage: Pater, peccavi. Father, I have sinned.
Who Are You? The Play of the End of Time
Until August 20th at Felsenreitschule in Salzburg, Austria. salzburgerfestspiele.at..
