Serbrennikov directs Schnittke in Zurich | EUROtoday

Ein schöner Mann. Blond und nackt. Anfangs macht er noch ordentlich Dampf, bis er Bademantel und Maske abgelegt hat. Dann verfällt er zur grässlichen Musik in einen Veitstanz, weiß nicht, ob er Hund, Antikenheld oder Dostojewskis Epileptiker ist: der Schauspieler und Tänzer Campbell Caspary ist der „Idiot“ am Zürcher Opernhaus. Maximale Auslastung ist garantiert. Männer und Frauen haben gleich viel Freude an diesem tätowierten Luxuskörper. Und auch im Stück selbst beglückt er beide Geschlechter. Zuerst die namenlose Frau, die sein Kind abtreiben lässt, worauf er sich deren Ehemann ­namens „Ich“ zuwendet und mit ihm in „Seligkeit“ lebt, bis er die eifersüchtige Ehefrau umbringt und aus dem Leben des Mannes verschwindet.

Vorlage ist die groteske Erzählung und Politsatire „Leben mit einem Idioten“ des mittlerweile in Deutschland lebenden Schriftstellers Viktor Jerofejew (den die Leserschaft dieser Zeitung vor allem als Essayisten und Putinkritiker kennen dürfte). Geschrieben hat er sie 1980 als Re­aktion auf seinen Ausschluss aus dem russischen Schriftstellerverband. Heute bezeichnet er sie als „Geschenk“ an die Sowjetunion, für das, „was sie lange vor meiner Zeit und dann auch mit mir gemacht hat.“ Der Idiot mit Kosenamen ­Wowa für Wladimir, rothaarig und spitzbärtig, ist das Konterfei Lenins. „Ich“ muss ihn zur Strafe für seine Empathielosigkeit aus der Irrenanstalt zu sich nehmen – eine Chiffre für allgemeinen Wahnsinn, ­Willkür, Gewalt. Bo Skovhus singt in seinem späten Zürich-Debüt die fordernde Partie mit oft ins Falsett verrücktem Bariton.

Since its premiere in Amsterdam in 1992, the opera “Life with an Idiot” by Alfred Schnittke has been performed to Yerofeyev’s libretto with political implications. That’s over now. Just in time for the composer’s ninetieth birthday on November twenty fourth, the Zurich Opera House is displaying a Swiss premiere of a particular operation by director Kirill Serebrennikov. In the in-house German libretto model, the Russian references are diminished to such an extent that the Sunday version of the “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” even suspected “censorship”. Instead of vodka, whiskey is drunk, the fool is now referred to as “Sweetheart”, and he not comes from the psychiatric hospital, however from a gallery for motion portray: He is an artist, and the artist is Serebrennikov himself.

The position of the fool is split: into the bare actor and the singer (Matthew Newlin), whose textual content consists solely of “Oh”, however who, as a revenant of the younger director, controls the motion on stage in a black outfit with a wool cap and necklace. In the second act he acts as an emcee and, based mostly on Dante, declares 5 (hell) circles for the damaging life with the fool. It isn’t advised chronologically, and the protagonists are additionally divided into contributors and observers of themselves.

As quickly as the lady studying Proust (with a convincing soprano: Susanne Elmark) declares that she was “cruelly murdered”, the fool alias Serebrennikov breaks by means of the again wall of the stage into the white lecture corridor, on the steps of which the choir has taken its place (stage design collaboration: Olga Pavluk). . He slowly works his manner ahead, trying to find his second self. She results in an after-image that’s as spiritual as it’s sexually oriented: the singer holds the bare man within the pose of Michelangelo’s Adam on his lap, shut behind him stands “I” – a mix of Pietà and male Anna herself. The two idiots then deal with one another to a pas de deux. This manufacturing isn’t about censorship, however concerning the open manipulation of the piece to glorify homosexuality. It culminates within the blasphemous canonization of the bare man with a halo in a slowly rotating show case, half monstrance, half tabernacle.

Now it may be argued that homosexuality remains to be suppressed in Russia, and never solely there. Furthermore, homosexuality is already a difficulty with Yerofeev and can also be coupled with contempt for ladies. The program booklet absolutely agrees with him and quotes from his “Male Wealth”: The man is “terribly stunning. What’s extra, its magnificence has nothing comparable in dwelling nature.” The poor peacocks! The poor women!

But Serebrennikov derives his egocentrism from Schnittke’s music: it is very flexible and allows a lot of freedom. Otherwise he often finds the music in the opera to be “constricting” and literally complains that he has to “serve the musical narrative”. He can’t completely ignore it in Schnittke either, firstly in the tango scene, in which a child plays the violin on stage without any fear (Mykola Pososhko). On the other hand, when Schnittke quotes Lenin’s favorite song “There was a birch tree within the discipline” – Peter Tchaikovsky had already used it in his fourth symphony – and a tree trunk wanders through the choir rows. Apart from that, Serebrennikov does everything that distracts from the music: a packed stage that is hard to miss, choir actions, video recordings, illuminated letters, shower orgies, a gray painting with a bloody central stripe so that “I” can feel like Renoir.

But perhaps it is also due to the music itself, which Jonathan Stockhammer holds together at the Philharmonia Zurich’s podium in its mixture of dullness, parody, film music, echoes of the Internationale, march-like stomping, chamber music solos, joyful dances and screams, that you feel the whole thing as something ticked off when it’s getting old. Only the freely added humming chorus “Autumn” from Schnittke’s film music for “Agonie”, on the very finish, dispels the skepticism.