Hindemith’s opera “Cardillac” in Meiningen and Zurich | EUROtoday

The similarity between the motion of products and sexual activity, between promoting and courtship, between the act of buying and orgasm, was already evident in 1867 within the excursions on the fetish character of products in “Capital” by Karl Marx, proper right down to the linguistic metaphors. The astonishing achievement of the Alsatian playwright Ferdinand Lion is that in his 1926 libretto for Paul Hindemith’s opera “Cardillac” he linked these financial concerns with Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic drive idea and ETA Hoffmann’s profound reflections on the whole amorality of artwork in his novella “The Fräulein von Scuderi”. The outcome was a breathlessly feverish, lurid and violent stage crime novel that, 42 years earlier than Herbert Marcuse’s guide, illuminated the connection between “drive structure and society”.

“Cardillac” additionally hints on the manipulability of the lots and places an enormous query mark behind the mantra of the Western world {that a} free market and a free society essentially belong collectively. Capitalism right here enslaves particular person want and collectivizes it, which is why totalitarian tendencies are inherent in it. All of those could also be the explanation why “Cardillac” is now more and more returning to the opera stage within the days of the twilight of democracy: in December in Essen, now in Meiningen and Zurich. The hundredth anniversary of the premiere and Hoffmann’s 250th birthday are – because the consumer-critical productions clearly display – what pursuits our current least in regards to the piece.

“Cardillac” really takes place in Paris round 1680. Cardillac is a grasp jeweler who can not half together with his ornamental artistic endeavors, which is why he murders all consumers of his work after the acquisition and returns the items of knickknack to his possession. The homicide solely fails with the officer who needs to marry Cardillac’s daughter. But as a result of the officer needs to guard his bride’s father, he accuses the gold vendor of being the perpetrator. This does not appear very credible, and so the individuals demand a press release from Cardillac, who claims to know the actual perpetrator – in any other case his workshop could be looted. Cardillac confesses and is lynched.

The Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó, whose movie “At the Sea” is at present in competitors on the Berlinale, merely relocates the motion on the Zurich Opera House to what’s now a shopping center, in whose furnishings Monika Korpa even had a golden glass elevator put in. In this clear tube of ascent and descent, there’s groping and rape, items thieves are crushed up by safety forces, the cavalier of Cardillac within the Fantomas masks is stabbed in order that the theater blood simply splatters. In between: the mindless, twitching, addicted mass of individuals trend victims with their purchasing baggage from luxurious boutiques.

This is an opulence that fires off the important thing stimulus of client criticism in a matter of seconds and thus offers an city, scattered viewers the moment satisfaction of getting understood one thing. But Mundruczó does not present far more than this floor bluff. The characters are roughly sketched relatively than illuminated, and their relationships with each other – the alleged incest between Cardillac and his daughter – are solely asserted in momentary poses relatively than labored by. For this director, displaying and understanding needs to be as fast as getting ready a sizzling drink in a espresso machine.

The German-Italian director Giulia Giammona on the Meiningen State Theater is totally completely different: she and the designer Susanne Maier-Staufen got here up with a sequence of cellular showcases. In these showcases, items of knickknack are exhibited, sensational crimes are offered, and other people pose like the woman who guarantees the cavalier an evening of affection if he brings her jewellery from Cardillac. In an extended course of, the viewer understands the showcase as a common type of presentation of capitalist society. As Günther Anders formulated in his guide “The Antiquatedness of Man”, the ontological crucial in client society is “Being = being advertising”. It is a common exhibitionism that mixes venality and narcissism.

This shouldn’t be the one factor the place Giammona, an incredible younger expertise in opera directing, is okay and intelligent on the identical time. She chisels the narcissism within the lovemaking between cavalier and woman – with the textual content now paralleling intercourse and homicide, penis and dagger within the metaphor of being pierced – additional within the poses of a pre-digital posting (each step is photographed). She describes Cardillac’s obsession with work as an virtually animistic relationship between the jeweler and his materials. She takes the time to rigorously formulate paternalism – that’s, the reversal of accountability and care between father and daughter. At the top, Giammona in Meiningen will get an enormous image: the choir and Cardillac stand on separate rings of the revolving stage and transfer in reverse instructions in the direction of one another with out reaching one another. The recreation of attraction and repulsion – the textual content says: “Stay! Flee! Turn your face away! Stand up to the horror!” – is put into movement.

Musically, you possibly can hear that Meiningen’s normal music director Killian Farrell, who will quickly be transferring to Nuremberg, is a shiny, quick-thinking particular person. He creates order and clear vocal hierarchies in a small orchestra of simply 35 musicians. He sharpens the place Hindemith’s orchestration appears too blurred. But he does not let it get too loud for the singers. Baritone Shin Taniguchi as Cardillac has room for the vocal softness and vulnerability of an artist, giving his brutality as a assassin an entire different musical dimension. Lena Kutzner because the daughter can blossom lyrically in Meiningen with a full, clear, intensely melodious soprano. Roman Payer additionally has the prospect to sing the officer as a hero of accountability: loving, cautious, hardly ever displaying off.

In Zurich, then again, individuals sing very loudly. Gábor Bretz is a mindless Hulk from Cardillac. Anett Fritsch’s elegant voice because the daughter appears unusually brittle. Michael Laurenz as an officer has to behave as a borderline moronic ruffian and at all times acts within the higher pace vary, clear however uniformly aggressive. In Zurich, the Cavalier with Sebastian Kohlhepp and the Lady with Dorottya Láng have very partaking and beautiful vocals.

The conductor Fabio Luisi could be heard in Zurich about how nice his expertise with “Cardillac” is. This is the third time he has rehearsed the opera, and what he makes audible goes far past clear edges and sharp traces. There are orchestral breakthroughs into the filigree. Finesse of seduction and infatuation shimmer by the neo-objective fugues. And the choir ready by Klaas-Jan de Groot has a barely larger impression in Zurich than in Meiningen.

However, Mundruczó saves one punchline for the top of his Zurich manufacturing: the transfiguration of Cardillac as an incredible artist who acted in holy insanity is proven because the officer and Cardillac’s daughter gilding his physique. The reminiscence of a assassin itself turns into a commodity and is built-in into consumption, thus transferring Hoffmann’s description of the amorality of artwork to capitalism.