Hashish and marijuana rolled into one: that’s how the Austrian
opera expert Marcel Prawy once described the principal aria in
Korngold’s Die tote Stadt, the turbulent and luscious creation
that had its premiere in Vienna in 1920 when its “wunderkind”
composer had reached the heights of 23. Korngold’s music, in
whatever setting, always resembles some kind of drug, although
its potency here is at least tripled by the story the opera
tells: one of obsessive love, grief and murder, sourced from a
Belgian symbolist novel of 1892 with pre-echoes of Hitchcock’s
film Vertigo.
Staging the opera persuasively isn’t easy,
as proved by an old DVD of a hideous production from the
Strasbourg Opera House. But this time, in a 2019 staging from
Munich: wow! Half of its lustre derives from the uniformly
excellent cast, led by Jonas Kaufmann as the harried and
disorientated widower Paul, who can’t move beyond the loss of
his late wife. In his hands the character is neurotic and noble,
unsympathetic one minute, touchingly bruised the next. Here is
the full human kaleidoscope, etched in every agonised cry from
Kaufmann’s deepening tenor voice.
Acting and singing
become even more fused in Marlis Petersen’s astonishingly vivid
performance as Marietta, the wife lookalike and good-time girl
who gets invited into Paul’s home, bed and inner being. Clearly
loving every note of the teeming score, Kirill Petrenko does a
magnificent job conducting the BayerischesStaatsorchester,
balancing Korngold’s marzipan opulence with glimpses into the
heart of darkness hidden within.
Simon Stone’s
production, first seen in Basel in 2016, completes the triumph
by sending us spinning through soulless if colourful modular
units that may not conjure up the novelist Georges Rodenbach’s
“dead city” of Bruges, but certainly drive and clarify the drama
as characters, sets, reality and dream intermingle on the Munich
theatre’s revolving stage.
Note, too, the rare flow and
subtlety of Myriam Hoyer’s video direction, which never lets a
spattering of close-ups muddy the bigger picture. And she ends
on a most happy inspiration as Kaufmann’s character finally
finds peace: a close-up of Petrenko’s hands, closing off the
orchestra’s tender last chord. (Bayerische Staatsoper (DVD)
