Charles Tournemires „The Petit Paure d’Assise“ in Ulm | EUROtoday

What unexpectedly delights and can’t be defined to us, as a result of we are able to hardly derive it from what we all know, we name miracles. In this double sense, out of the blue delighting just like the troublesome explanability, what’s presently occurring on the Ulm Theater is a miracle. The director Kay Metzger, who will retire on the finish of this season, had the opera “Le Petit Pauvre d’A Assise” by Charles Tournemire edited 86 years after its creation and dropped at premiere as a director collectively along with his basic music director Felix Bender.

It is already the second tour of the Tournemire, after “La Légende de Tristan” had been on stage for the primary time in Ulm two and a half years in the past “La Légende de Tristan”. Metzger has now made Ulm, once more with an intensive accompanying program of lectures and concert events, an actual Tournemire metropolis.

A composer turns into audible who moved on the similar altitude of French music within the twentieth century like Maurice Ravel, Gabriel Fauré or Olivier Messiaen. So far, Tournemire, born on January 22, 1870 in Bordeaux and drowned in Arcachon in early November 1939, below unexplained circumstances, solely an esoteric titanium amongst organists who had been thought-about to be spun after they known as one of many best. But Messiaen-We owe this be aware to Wolfgang Rihm, who wistfully pursued the tournemire efficiency in 2022 from the bedside-had repeatedly identified his instructor in his evaluation programs and claims that his time would nonetheless come.

Much of what the trendy Messiaen’s originality steadiness can already be discovered at Tournemire: a concord that dissolves from the cadence binding and nonetheless retains a tonal gradient; the usage of free tone scales, even with recourse to the normal music of India; The preoccupation with birds and enthusiasm for Saint Franz of Assisi. Because 44 years earlier than Messiaen introduced his monumental epic “Saint François d’As assise” to the opera stage, Tournemire had already accomplished his 5 lyrical episodes in seven photos op. 73 in 1939.

Both composers are associated to their sources of inspiration, the outcomes sound so totally different. If the “Saint François” of Messiaen is a colossus that wishes to overwhelm the soloists resembling your complete equipment, Turnemire’s “Little Poor from Assisi” with music rigorous internalization isn’t overwhelming: Franciscan in aesthetics via and thru, barren, tender, however of glowing radicality. It is troublesome to clarify {that a} work of such an urgency might stay burst greater than 4 generations, maybe via the early loss of life of the writer, the abortion of the Second World War and the noise of the publish -war savantgarden, which aesthetically criminalized each look again.

Tournemire tells, with the textual content of his brother -in -law Joséphin Péladan, the founding father of the French Rosenkreuzer, the historical past of Franz von Assisi within the stations of the deletion of the humanistic tradition of the humanistic tradition of secular elites and the inheritance of his wealthy father, the vocation of Claras, the encouragement to the poor, the reception of the stigmata and loss of life.

In the primary image of his staging, Metzger makes concessions to the replace conventions of our current when he demonstrates the 9 muses and three graces as bitches of an amusement afternoon, dressed by Heiko Mönnich in magenta -colored jersey. This appears shiny at the moment, however defuses Turnemires fundamentalism, which tears off the distinction of humanism and Christianity, Parnass and Golgatha. Because this intention of Turnemires is as soon as once more offset by our heads: he truly doesn’t need to create a murals as the topic of distant consideration, however must be adopted by Francis within the succession of Christ. Its aesthetic radicality-which appears to take their end result by the paramount of the religious-symbolistic tune cycles “La Chanson d’ève” and “Le Jardin Clos” with Gabriel Fauré-is not motivated by the innovation competitors of modernity. Tournemire turns into “avant -garde” from the design of his international expertise as a believer, who usually fled to the lonely islands and yeu or into the Solesmes Abbey.

But Metzger takes the novel lifetime of Francis Ernst. When activists play the stage with the utensils of political industrial work-Fridays for future, LGBTQ flags-Francis shoots the muddle angrily from the stage. At the identical time, Metzger tells the connection between Franz and Clara as a latent erotic when the disclosure of the long run nun by Francis acts just like the preparation for a marriage night time. The later reception of the stigmata with him can due to this fact even be learn because of sexual self -suppression. These ambivalences make the staging notably robust.

The tenor Samuel Levine sings the St. Francis overwhelmingly lovely with ecstatic intimacy. And Maryna Zubko as Clara appears much less dramatic than usually lyrical. Dae-hee Shin as Clara’s father and Cornelius Burger as Francis’ father kind the distinction with an angular bass energy. As Bernard de Quintavalle, Markus Francke examines the group of the big followers within the choir, which Nikolaus Henseler rehearsed in an exemplary method.

The syllabic, mild -footed dialogues are primed by Bender and the Philharmonic Orchestra of the City of Ulm. But within the remodeling music, the Hymnic violence of Turnemires can develop, which nonetheless shrink back from sensual kitsch and religious pornography of a perfumed boudoir symphonics. With delicate, all useful explanability, streaking chords, that are counting on the loss of life of the saint, who solely mightly trace as tactful, which we can’t know, the opera ends as touchingly as it’s disturbing.