Jonas Kaufmann, Marlis Petersen, Andrzej Filończyk, Jennifer
Johnston, Mirjam Mesak, Corinna Scheurle, Manuel Günther, Dean
Power; Choruses of the Bavarian State Opera; Bavarian State
Orchestra / Kirill Petrenko
BSO Recordings
As
Simon Stone’s production of Die tote Stadt opens, Brigitta and
Frank are peering through the windows of Paul’s house in Bruges.
A very cold, very modern-looking house it is, too: one of those
boxy low-rise apartments that you see on outlying housing
estates while travelling into a major European city. But as Paul
returns and pulls dust-sheets from his furniture, we begin to
glimpse the outlines of his former life. Arthouse cinema
posters, retro-chic furniture – evidence of a taste for things
past that had presumably been a shared pleasure with his dead
wife but which has spiralled, in her absence and his loneliness,
into a troubling but wholly understandable obsession.
In
short, while Stone’s updated setting might upset purists,
there’s a depth and emotional intelligence to this staging that
disarmed my initial resistance, and which, by the time it
reached the apparition scene at the end Act 1, had me (and this
almost never happens outside the theatre) in tears. Marie
appears as Paul last saw her, clearly in the final stages of
cancer; an idea that makes absolute sense of his veneration of
her hairpiece after her death, and draws singing and acting of
almost unbearable tenderness and poignancy from both Jonas
Kaufmann and Marlis Petersen.
‘Their ‘Glück, das mir
verblieb’ is one for the ages, as Kaufmann goes to pieces and
Petersen quietly reaches for his hand’
Set against
moments like that, the visual absence of the still waters and
tolling bells that shimmer and resound through Korngold’s score
ceases to register – though there’s nothing in Ralph Myers’s
designs to suggest that this isn’t the ‘dead city’ of Bruges,
just not the picture-postcard bit. It’s a strikingly realistic
updating, faithful to the spirit and (mostly) the letter of the
score. The one major departure comes in Act 3’s religious
procession: a vision of singing schoolchildren and Magritte-like
figures in bowler hats. But then, this is part of a dream
sequence (signalled by a David Lynch-like flickering of the
lights), and it’s true to what we’ve seen of Paul’s imaginative
world. The way that Stone, Myers and the lighting designer
Roland Edrich blur hallucination and reality throughout Act 2 is
highly effective, and video director Myriam Hoyer steps lightly
around the revolving set design, which colleagues who were
present tell me was a distracting element in the theatre.
The central performances, meanwhile, are magnificent, with
Kaufmann giving a detailed, believably frayed portrayal of a man
struggling to hold on to his dignity as his life unravels. The
textured darkness of his lower register conveys pain just as
convincingly as his high notes soar. Petersen’s performance is,
if anything, even more compelling. She’s a multi-layered
Marietta, with countless vocal inflections and small gestures
revealing an underlying tenderness and sympathy even at her most
facetious, before transforming voice and persona into a radiant,
ravaged vision of Marie in that brief but devastating Act 1
apparition. In Act 3’s climactic duet she unleashes a vocal
ardour that all but overtops Kaufmann – which, given that this
is one of the finest performances I’ve seen from him, live or on
disc, is saying something. Their ‘Glück, das mir verblieb’ is
one for the ages, as Kaufmann goes to pieces and Petersen
quietly reaches for his hand.
The other roles are just as
persuasive. Jennifer Johnston’s Brigitta, in particular, is
warmly compassionate and Andrzej Filończyk (as Fritz) sings his
Act 2 waltz song with style and a hint of irony, his face
painted like Heath Ledger’s Joker (the cheerful chaos of the
players’ digs is vividly evoked – the posters on their walls are
for Hollywood movies, whereas Paul prefers Antonioni and
Godard). Petrenko, in the pit, has an absolute command of
texture and tension. His Bavarian orchestra can deliver lushness
without limits, but Petrenko knows precisely when to probe and
when to let Korngold’s tuned percussion show its teeth. He finds
unsuspected shadows and subtleties in the lower reaches of the
score, making unarguable sense of the paradox (still
mind-boggling after a century) that a 23-year-old composer could
create one of opera’s most affecting studies of grief, and do so
in music of such life-affirming inspiration and colour. QED: on
every level, a glorious achievement.