King Lear survives the confinement of the pandemic and is resurrected on the Teatro Real | Culture | EUROtoday

Lear, Aribert Reimann’s opera primarily based on William Shakespeare’s tragedy, ought to have premiered in Spain in April 2020. But the unfold of the coronavirus made it unattainable. This work, which has the stage path of Calixto Bieito, is now offered on the Real and appears to be the work of future as a result of, via a pandemic, one of many nice questions it raises takes on appreciable weight: what will we do with our elders? “They are not part of society, they are annoying, we lock them in residences so we don’t see them. Before, they stayed in the family and the young people took care of them. Not now. For me, this is the most important question this opera asks,” explains baritone Bo Skovhus, who leads the solid. Lear It could be seen within the Madrid theater from January 26 to February 7.

The story is that of a king who, bored with ruling, decides to divide his kingdom amongst his three daughters. Two of them deceive him to win within the distribution and the third, probably the most honest, finally ends up being left with nothing. From right here the intrigues start… and the blood. Shakespeare’s textual content speaks of vainness, ambition, energy… But additionally of the passage of time. “Lear wonders: ‘Does anyone know me? I was king recently. Can anyone tell me who I am?’ We are all going in that direction. We get older and see the things we can no longer do. The question is: when you get older, are you no longer good for anything? He fights against this and for me he is a central element in the opera,” says Skovhus.

The Danish baritone, who has already performed this function a number of occasions, says that the very first thing he does is open the rating and throw it on the ground shortly after, as a result of he thinks it’s unattainable to sing it. “That’s why it’s already a little broken,” he laughs. And he provides: “Then I gradually get into the character.” Asher Fisch, answerable for musical path, follows Skovhus’ sport: “I didn’t throw the score on the floor because I knew I had to conduct with it. Additionally, I read it in digital version on the tablet. Of course, when I arrived and saw that they gave me a sheet music version I said: ‘I can’t work with this, I lose the vision of the musicians.’ So they printed me a smaller one. I will throw it away at the end if the production goes wrong.”

The origin of this Reimann opera was a proposal by the nice baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. It was he who requested the composer to create a piece primarily based on The Lear King and this one, which premiered on the Munich Opera in 1978, ended up changing into his masterpiece. Many have There have been makes an attempt to set Shakespeare’s works to music, however few have been profitable. Of these made within the twentieth century, Fisch saves two: Summer evening Dream y Lear. And he clarifies: “If we performed this music in a concert version, I think we would lose the audience in 20 seconds. The actors and the context of the scenery support the music. You connect with the audience and it becomes something wonderful, with a fantastic meaning.” Fisch additionally highlights from the manufacturing now being offered on the Teatro Real that each one the musicians enter the pit. The orchestration that Reimann thought up could be very highly effective and on different events not all of the performers have accommodated it. “When it premiered in Munich there was no physical place. The percussionists had to go to another room. The harps didn’t fit either. “I am delighted because there is space for everyone here.”

Yves Lenoir, answerable for the revival, spoke in regards to the set design: “When Calixto presented this production in Paris in 2016, he explained his approach to me through the personal relationship he had with the work. He told me about the death of his father, which occurred when he was young, and that he was at the head of his bed until his last breath. That memory had remained engraved in his memory: the progressive abandonment of the body that is losing the link with the world in which we live. For Lenoir it is essential that everyone goes to see this opera because it directly challenges each viewer. “We are faced with a series of paintings and there exists in all of us a base, a bank of images, that makes these paintings make sense for us, that generates an inner vertigo in us,” he provides.

Bieito, who was not in a position to attend the press convention, left some phrases recorded on video: “I thought about the woods of the theater where all of Shakespeare’s plays took place and we created a space burned with wood, a theater… a palace full of iconography, Spanish painting, images of German expressionism. Full of neuroses, contemporary hysteria, the need for compassion. Seeing this opera is like going to the Prado.”

With the premiere of LearReal crosses off the listing one other of the productions that it had left to current after the pandemic stoppage. The passenger, which could be seen in March, would be the penultimate of the postponed works. It will solely be then Iris, by Pietro Mascagni. “We still owe it to you, but it will end up appearing, don’t think that you are going to get rid of it,” concludes Joan Matabosch, creative director of the Real.

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