Nadia Loschky directs “Lulu” on the Frankfurt Opera | EUROtoday

Durch den Klassiker feministischer Musiktheaterreflexion „Die Frau in der Oper: Besiegt, verraten und verkauft“ der französischen Schriftstellerin Catherine Clément zieht „Lulu“ von Alban Berg eine traurige Spur. An der Haupt­figur von Bergs letzter Oper nach Frank Wedekinds Dramen „Der Erdgeist“ und „Die Büchse der Pandora“ wird geradezu ein Exempel statuiert, wie Männer mit Frauen auf der Opernbühne um­gehen: Sie werden zum reinen Objekt ohne Gestaltungshoheit für ihr Leben; eigenes Begehren wird ihnen entweder abgesprochen oder aber dämonisiert, weshalb sie als sexuelles Verhängnis für den Mann aus dem Weg geräumt werden müssen.

„Lulu“, 1935 unvollendet von Berg hinterlassen und erst 1979 von Friedrich Cerha fertiggestellt, beschreibt dieses Geschlechterverhältnis zum einen als entwürdigend und inakzeptabel, fasst es aber zugleich wieder mythisch und damit als emanzipationsresistent. Darin ist das Stück, bei all seinem dialektischen Witz, wiederum problematisch und fällt in seinem Frauenbild zurück hinter die weitaus emanzipierten Gestalten bei Richard Strauss und Hugo von Hofmannsthal, ja, sogar hinter die fröhlich selbstbestimmt agierende Hanna Glawari in der „Lustigen Witwe“ von Franz Lehár.

The new production by Nadia Loschky at the Frankfurt Opera, under the extremely delicate musical direction of Thomas Guggeis, confronts this ambivalence of “Lulu” with admirable magnificence and a excessive stage of formal consciousness that sharpens the contours of psychological evaluation. Through Irina Spreckelmeyer’s trendy, refined costumes in all shades of beige and olive, the piece is about within the time when it was created, the early Nineteen Thirties, and the gender relationship is thus cleverly historicized. But by way of Katharina Schlipf’s strict stage – two interlocking semicircular partitions that may open or shut the room by rotating – and thru a exact choreography of the characters’ entrances and exits, the occasion is concurrently abstracted from its historic biotope.

Loschky reveals how Lulu is pulled out of the drain as an “earth spirit” by the animal tamer (Kihwan Sim, who can also be vocally highly effective) initially. She disappears there once more on the finish. This symmetry, in addition to that of the well-thought-out determine actions, displays the “symmetry fetish” (as Guggeis stated in an interview in this system booklet) of Berg’s composing within the scene. Berg structured the complete work on numerous twelve-tone rows, positioned a number of musical mirror axes by way of the rating and marked the turning level of the plot from Lulu’s social development to her decline (after the homicide of her husband Doctor Schön) with an orchestral interlude that’s in itself a palindrome is.

At the identical time, this “earth spirit” stays current all through the complete piece as Lulu’s “Anima,” performed silently by Evie Poaros. Even in higher society, Lulu cannot eliminate this gutter background. The separation of origin and future, self-definition by way of efficiency, not by way of descent, was nonetheless a privilege for males within the trendy period of that point. Lulu is diminished to origins and physique; If the trail into working life is blocked for her, the one means out ultimately is to enter enterprise. At the identical time, Lulu’s coldness within the face of the useless males round her turns into comprehensible: she internally protects her soul from the calls for of at all times having to be another person.

Brenda Rae as Lulu does it each convincingly and surprisingly economically. Vocally, she is a girl of lengthy, excessive tones, which is why the parlando within the center vary within the first image does not go well with her so effectively. But her “Song of Lulu” addressed to the viewers and the exclamation “O Freedom! “Lord God in Heaven!” are vocally of iridescent magnificence, whereas when it comes to appearing they’re extraordinarily conflicted, which expresses itself extra in rigidity and coolness than in actionism.

Simon Neal as Dr. Beautiful and Jack the Ripper impresses with the right use of his good, extraordinarily even baritone and exemplary diction. After the painter’s suicide (which Theo Lebow provides the colours of tenoral instinctual obsession), Berg follows an interlude that sounds quite a bit like Gustav Mahler. Here Loschky provides her actor Neal a silent scene of despair that erupts in a scream. It is a brief examine of tragic masculinity that finds an outlet for psychological deficits in the necessity to operate underneath bourgeois gender norms within the music, which is emotionally charged to the purpose of lamentation.

AJ Glückert performs Alwa with the painful melancholy of character incapacity as a lyricist with no probability of dominance. Claudia Mahnke, as Countess Geschwitz, combines declamatory wit with vocal heat. And Alfred Reiter sings Schigolch, whose title is harking back to a sewer amphibian, with the Aristocracy regardless of his horrible Guildo Horn coiffure.

In “Lulu,” Guggeis hears Berg’s continuation of Strauss’ “psychological counterpoint.” The ease and subtlety with which the Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra performs underneath his route as soon as once more demonstrates the position mannequin of Strauss’ conversational tone for Berg too (proper right down to the woodwind-loving stringiness of the instrumentation). The orchestra usually data the singers’ diction earlier than or after the actual fact. This by no means excludes sensual magic, however Guggeis avoids any heating up of pleasure for the aim of sublimated erotic consumption.