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The Salzburg Festival invites you to spend a season in hell

2022-07-28T02:43:41.876Z


At the official opening of the great Austrian event, an apparently humble concert gets everything right, while an ambitious operatic show turns into a frustrating and tedious experience


Ausřinė Stundytė (Judith) and Mika Kares (Bluebeard), walking on water and with the word "ich" ("I"), half burning each other with real fire, half reflected in the water that covers the stage, in a moment from the opera 'Bluebeard's Castle' by Béla Bartók staged by Romeo Castellucci.MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

Dante Alighieri and his

Comedy

, and in a very special way his

Inferno

, are behind quite a few shows at the current edition of the Salzburg Festival.

Waiting for the future, our current —and past— hell are wars, and the one that has been waged in Ukraine for five months is also being strongly felt these days in Mozart's hometown.

At the opening conference of the festival, on Tuesday morning, Ilija Trojanow, the Bulgarian-born writer and essayist based in Vienna, entitled his text

From him The sound of war, the shades of peace

.

And he referred to Valeri Guérguiev, excluded from this and many other European festivals due to his open collusion with the Vladimir Putin regime, as "the great speculator", also protected by "the mafia banks of his country".

On the other hand, there were no words for Teodor Currentzis, who was to direct the first great operatic show of the festival a few hours later on the same stage, the Felsenreitschule, and whom many voices have asked in recent months to also remove from the programming by the economic links of their groups with one of those banks protected by the Russian regime.

Art, Trojanow asserted, is polytonal.

War, on the other hand, is reductive, "it entangles understanding", and the language of war, which is what we have been speaking without remedy since February,

prompts you to answer questions with just a “yes” or “no”.

The ambivalences, the nuances, the chiaroscuros have been lost.

Nothing had to be done for

Jedermann

,

by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, which marks the beginning of each new edition of the festival since 1920, will be adapted to this year's theme, since it has God and the Devil among its characters.

More innovative will be the uninterrupted reading of the entire

Comedy

of Dante by seven actors from seven in the afternoon on August 15, thus mimicking similar experiences in 2017 (

The Man Without Qualities

) and 2018 (

Ulysses

).

Also in August, in three consecutive weeks (on the 12th, 19th and 26th), a symposium will be held on the

magnum opus

of Dante, in which writers, philosophers, artists and scientists will participate.

In addition to plays that deal with themes related, literally or symbolically, to hell, an exhibition at the Karl-Böhm-Saal shows the 34 drawings that Robert Rauschenberg made to illustrate

Dante

's Inferno, which can be seen together with an installation in video by Ilia and Emilia Kabakov, born in Ukraine, entitled

The Flying Komarov,

in which the vision of a life lived in freedom, without oppression, far from the hell of the former Soviet Union is told as a parable.

Pianist Igor Levit plays in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum in Salzburg. Marco Borrelli

In the so-called

Ouverture Spirituelle

, the series of concerts that is now the porch or prelude to each edition of the festival, and which this year is entitled

Sacrificium,

an extremely attractive and original program could be heard on Monday afternoon, led by once under the rubric

In memoriam

: two piano works with unmistakable political resonances;

a string quartet by Dmitri Shostakovich;

and

Alfred Schnittke's

Requiem .

Different genres, different performers and works all composed in the 20th century (in the first half the piano, in the second the quartet and the

Requiem

).

The artistic director of the festival, the pianist Markus Hinterhäuser, seems determined to modernize the once extremely conservative musical offer from Salzburg and, to be fair, there is no choice but to thank his audacity and applaud the originality of his proposals.

The seeds that are planted today will eventually bear fruit.

More information

The great theater of the world turns one hundred years old

Guernica (after Picasso)

, by Paul Dessau, is a short piece for piano inspired by the contemplation of the great work of the Spanish painter.

An inscription at the beginning of the score for the

Sonata “April 27, 1945″

, by Karl Amadeus Hartmann, explains its title: “On April 27 and 28, 1945, a river of Dachau prisoners of war crawled past us—infinite was the river, infinite was the misery, infinite was the suffering”.

Hartmann watched from his house this endless line of twenty thousand prisoners being rushed out of the camp by the SS in the face of rapidly advancing Allied troops.

The Schott publishing house has published the two versions of the work in the same volume, with notable differences between one and the other.

The most overtly political of today's young pianists, Igor Levit, unable to choose one or the other, played the first two movements of the 1945 version and the last two of the 1947 version, a wise decision that gives us the best of a and another and that, above all,

Marcia funebre

of the second, which contains one of the most desolate and hopeless music of the 20th century, with an almost obsessive use of the dot to increase its drama (

Con passione!,

writes Hartmann at the climax of this movement) and thus become related with the great models of Beethoven and Chopin.

The Hagen Quartet, during their performance of Dmitri Shostakovich's Quartet number 8, on Monday in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum in Salzburg.Marco Borrelli

Occasionally written on three staves in order to accommodate the enormous polyphonic richness of the writing, Hartmann's music moves between extreme dynamics and, except for Bartokian remnants in the fast sections of the final

Allegro risoluto

, the German composer displays an extremely personal, with an extraordinary last measure that encompasses four consecutive indications (1/4 + 1/8 + 3/4 + 4/16) and written on four superimposed staves that closes with two resounding chords marked

fff

and

secco!

(again with exclamation mark included) in the score.

It is a violent, uncompromising music that almost seems like a sound illustration for the

Disasters of War

by Goya, which is also what characterizes Dessau's

Guernica

, a short piece that reflects the inferno of the bombing that the Basque town suffered seen through the eyes of Picasso.

Of twelve-tone aesthetics, and dedicated to his teacher René Leibowitz, his

fierce

indication after the brief introduction gives a perfect idea of ​​his character, although in this case the music will end up slowly dying out,

losing

it , contrary to what Hartmann claims in the conclusion from his Sonata:

semper con tutta forza al fine

.

But both works are tributaries of the same river.

The first part of the concert abounded in this atmosphere of war or post-war grief, since Shostakovich's

Quartet number 8

was born in just three days in July 1960, within the framework of a visit by the composer to Dresden, a city literally and unnecessarily devastated by Allied bombs in February 1945 (WG Sebald wrote bravely on the subject in his

Natural History of Destruction

).

Dedicated "to the victims of fascism and war", and with a powerful autobiographical content (embodied in the obsessive use of a motif, Re-Mi flat-Do-Si, which corresponds to the initials of the composer's name and surname ), was performed by the Hagen Quartet, the most illustrious of those made up of native Salzburgers.

The three Hagen brothers (the most brilliant and most admired is undoubtedly Clemens, the cellist) and Rainer Schmidt were much more convincing in the three slow movements, played with perfect pitch, minimal dynamics and hardly any

vibrato

, which in the two fastest, in which the momentum and strength that Igor Levit had just squandered were missing.

Conductor Gregor Mayhofer and the singers and instrumentalists of musicAeterna greet each other after the performance of Alfred Schnittke's 'Requiem'.Marco Borrelli

The interest —and consistency— of the concert soared again in the second part thanks to the unusual opportunity to hear Alfred Schnittke's

Requiem

, a work with unusual instrumentation (trumpet, trombone, organ, piano, celesta, guitar and bass). electric, percussion, flexaton included) and inspired by the death of the composer's mother.

Banned in the Soviet Union, and camouflaged as incidental music for a performance of Schiller's

Don Carlos

, it was not premiered as an independent work until 1977 in Budapest.

Schnittke makes very loose use of the traditional structure of the Catholic mass for the dead (he omits the

Libera me

and

Lux ​​aeterna

sections , but instead incorporates part of the

Credo

, which he places after the

Agnus Dei

) and creates a concise, essential music, almost always with sparse textures (tenor soloist and half notes in the left hand of the organ and the electric bass in unison in

pianissimo

at the beginning of the

Sanctus

, for example), writing homophonic and mostly syllabic, frequent unisons also in the voices and a static and contemplative atmosphere.

Gregor Mayrhofer's direction at the head of a handful of the magnificent instrumentalists and singers of the musicAeterna choir was extremely restrained, without a single fuss characteristic of its founder.

All the soloists came from the choir itself (Schnittke, also original in this, claims three sopranos, an alto, a tenor and no bass) and at all times what seems to be the main objective of the Russian musician was achieved: to reach maximum intensity and spirituality. with the cheapest means.

The progressive and, in the end, total darkness that was made in the repetition of the initial section, which closes with the word “

requiem

” whispered by the sopranos over a long E of marimba and bell, was the perfect conclusion to a perfect concert held on Monday afternoon in the Great Hall of the Mozarteum.

The four videos of Shirin Neshat projected that night in the Kollegienkirche, better to forget them.

Water and fire as opposing forces in the staging of 'Bluebeard's Castle', by Romeo Castellucci, starring the soprano Ausřinė Stundytė as Judith.MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

Curiously, the grand operatic opening the following day, Tuesday afternoon, has much less history than this concert.

Everyone attended in their best clothes, celebrities posed for the cameras and politicians had to stoically endure the protests of a small group of demonstrators at the gate of the Felsenreitschule.

The program brought together a short opera,

Bluebeard's Castle

, by Béla Bartók, and a sort of auto sacramental by Carl Orff,

De temporum fine comœdia

.

What do they have to do with each other?

Any.

Furthermore, the quality of the music and text of Bartók's work is so immeasurably superior to that of Orff's failed experiment that coexistence squeaks on each and every hinge.

As if the forced twinning was not already problematic in itself, its staging has been entrusted to Romeo Castellucci, a lover of conceptual proposals and not always understandable, but fashionable in all the great theaters and festivals, as demonstrated by the two openings that he has starred in this summer: the Aix-en-Provence Festival, where he put images and plot and visual content to the

Second Symphony

Mahler, and this one from Salzburg, where he is a repeat offender, although one imagines him ideologically at the antipodes of this audience that was once so conservative and is now so willing to foster and acclaim

enfants terribles

like himself and Teodor Currentzis, his partner in the bizarre

Don Giovanni

from last year.

The Italian, little friend of compromising, has once again been faithful to his theatrical principles and aesthetics, but on this occasion he has put on a failed show from start to finish, which exceeded three and a half hours, which for many must have become endless.

Drawn to the powerful symbolism

of Bluebeard's Castle

, Castellucci prefers to leave it reduced to a constant opposition of water (which occupies much of the floor of the stage) and fire (which burns sequentially in a real way in various tubes that take on different shapes).

We do not see any of the seven doors, nor what is hidden behind each of them, because the great dark stage (black at the beginning, when a baby is heard crying after the initial intervention of the bard, here entrusted to Helena Rasker , and absurdly read in contrived English) seems to be the sick and tortuous mind of Judith, perhaps traumatized by the loss of that baby who later materializes in the form of a doll.

The confrontation between Judith and Bluebeard lacks strength, tension, to the point that both even dance —slowly, with choreography by Cindy Van Acker,

The singing sibyls in the first part of "De Temporum Fine Comoedia" by Carl Orff.MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

It doesn't help at all to see a little light in Currentzis' direction, bland in general, generous to the point of boredom in

pianissimi , tending to slow down the

tempi

excessively ,

its Hungarian elements blurred, without strength or color at times when the music should be prodigal in one or the other.

More impressionist than expressionist, the performance of the Greek director fails to cover or hide the dramatic hole opened by Castellucci.

The best thing is, without a doubt, the delivery (literally just soaked from dragging herself through the water) by the Lithuanian soprano Ausřinė Stundytė, whom we admired a few months ago as Renata in

The Fire Angel

of Prokofiev in Madrid.

She is the only one who seems to strive to bring some drama to the action, because Mika Kares is a seraphic Bluebeard, aloof and expressionless.

Represented in a minimal space (a large black curtain hangs near the proscenium), without taking advantage of the immense possibilities of the gigantic stage of the Felsenreitschule, Castellucci's conceptual experiment, which alternates successes and failures in its productions in equal parts, makes us get bored in an opera lasting less than an hour (although Currentzis, with his parsimony, far exceeded it) and that should have us open-mouthed and expectant from start to finish.

Things were even worse in the second part, because Orff's comedy about the end times, with texts in ancient Greek, Latin and German, is a difficult pastiche to digest: it is not surprising that he has not been back to Salzburg since half a century ago, which is where it premiered in 1973 with musical direction by Herbert von Karajan and stage by August Everding.

The work is divided into three parts: the first is starred by nine sibyls;

the second, as many anchorites;

the third, the last human beings, the director of the choir and Lucifer, the latter entrusted to two narrators.

Although the string section is reduced to eight double basses, the immense Felselreitschule pit was too small to accommodate the Orff macro-orchestra, with a prominent position for percussion, of course:

more than a hundred different instruments that require the participation of more than twenty performers.

The metal instruments had to be placed high up, on one side of the room.

Nothing Orff tells is of much interest, except for Origen's idea, which heads the score, that the end of all things will bring about the abolition of all evil.

The music is often elementary, simple, repetitive, monotonous, with numerous passages recited homophonically by the voices.

Castellucci dresses the sibyls and anchorites in black (later they change to white, the two great colors of Italian), invents a minimal uninteresting plot to justify their presence on stage and only catches our attention when, in the third part, he shows skeletons rising from under the ground and then covering itself with skin and flesh.

The icing on the folly comes at the end, with the presence of Judith and Bluebeard among those last human beings.

The resurrected bodies in the third part of 'De temporum fine comoedia', by Carl Orff.

On the hanging black plastic, which used to cover the stage floor, you can read 'Meine Haut' ('My skin').MONIKA RITTERSHAUS

Currentzis, once again leading the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra, with numerous Spaniards among its ranks, found here the ideal breeding ground to show off his entire catalog of gestural eccentricities: the one he frequents the most, pointing steadily with his index finger extended, which he did even in a case in which the supposed recipient of his indication was a singer who at that moment had his back turned and it was impossible for him to see him.

The most authentic moment of the score, the final canon for four violas da gamba (initially on a very low D of the piano, later without it), an oasis of sanity and common sense in the midst of so much nonsense, was recorded or, at least, electronically distorted and, above all, confused, so that it was absolutely impossible to distinguish, even with effort, each of the four voices.

The audience applauded at the end for what seemed more like a courtesy gesture towards the immense human effort displayed, and perhaps also impelled by the memory of what they had paid for the premiere tickets.

But they were brief applause, flat and without much warmth.

Dressed in their best clothes—tuxedos, bow ties, evening gowns, beads—everyone walked out of the Felsenreitschule smiling and satisfied, with no awkward, vociferous protesters in sight, after abandoning Judith's black, labyrinthine mind and dark scatological speculations. of Orff.

From their appearance, no one seemed willing to spend successive days, with Rimbaud, a true season in hell.

Vanitas vanitatum et omnia vanitas.

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Source: elparis

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