Schreker - Der singende Teufel (Bonn, 2023)

Der singende Teufel - Franz Schreker

Theater Bonn, 2023

Dirk Kaftan, Julia Burbach, Mirko Roschkowski, Anne-Fleur Werner, Tobias Schabel, Dshamilja Kaiser, Pavel Kudinov, Carl Rumstadt, Tae Hwan Yun, Boris Beletskiy, Ava Gesell, Alicia Grünwald, Wooseok Shim, Hyoungjoo Yun

OperaVision - recorded 19th May 2023

The early twentieth century operas of Franz Schreker tend to be drenched in gothic horror and symbolism, heightened with lush beguiling orchestration that does tend to date them somewhat, aligning them with the likes of Marschner's Der Vampyr than with the more experimental direction music was to take under Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School around that time. Although there is a lot of silliness and dubious psychology in the self-penned libretti of Schreker's operas, there are nonetheless deeper issues that can be found underlying the melodrama, the folk tale treatment no less a valid means of touching on fundamental human questions than Wagner's explorations of legend and mythology.

That's not to say that Schreker comes close to what Wagner achieved in his works, but there is nothing inherently wrong with the method, and it can provide interesting insights when directed with attention to the subtext. Not that you get many opportunities to see Schreker's work performed. Two major works Die Gezeichneten and Der Schatzgräber are occasionally revived, others rarely, some almost never. Schreker's legacy has been affected of course to a large extent with him being a Jewish composer banned by the Nazis as well as the changing face of music at the turn of the 20th century, but some recent revivals of those rarer works have proved the value of his work sitting alongside other largely neglected German and Austrian operas from this period, where only Richard Strauss seems to have survived beyond the shadow of Wagner and the War.

Der singende Teufel, 'The Singing Devil', is a real rarity, one of those 'almost never' works, with not even a full recorded version of the opera out there. From the opening scene, portentous in his high drama and ominous in its symbolism, the familiar characteristics of a Schreker opera from Der ferne Klang up to Irrelohe which preceded it are all there to see. In some kind of fantasy Middle Ages setting, Amandus, an organ builder, is proud of the completion of work on his latest piece. The local priest Father Kaleidos however warns him that the magic organ that was father's legacy still needs to be addressed. Created to produce heavenly music, instead the monster organ emits only unearthly demonic sounds. His father went mad, but the organ remains and must be fixed to inspire others towards God.

Meanwhile in the cave of the Priestess Alardis, a pagan gathering chooses Lilian as their emissary to challenge the authority of the church. They want her to seduce Amandus, who they consider a fool and call "the monk". Somewhat deliriously, Amandus gets caught up in the pagan parade, seeing it all as some kind of mad dream brought on by proximity to the organ, but Alardis, Lilian and a drunken knight Sir Sinbrand pose a very real threat. In the ensuing struggle, Amandus is challenged by Sinbrand to a duel as he attempts to protect Lilian. The priest rescues Amandus and urges him to use the organ to repeal the pagan attack.

Schreker's previous opera Irrelohe seemed to mark a conclusion to the composer's neo-Romantic period, Der singende Teufel moving into the post-Romantic, but although there is less extravagant orchestration, musically as well as in terms of subject matter it remains very much in the individual idiom of the composer. The Theater Bonn production emphasises the personal themes in the work with a subtle change of Amadus from an organ maker to a musician who is striving to perfect his art. Decadence being a characteristic of Schreker's work, there seems - again like Der ferne Klang - to be special pleading in the tradition of Tannhäuser for the artist being unrestricted by traditional laws and morality. The symbolism of the organ is evident and even explained at the start of Act III. "The organ is like a person fulfilling tasks, controlled and guided by the soul. The bellows correspond to the lungs, the pipes the throat ...the soul the wind that sweeps through the bellows ..." It's about the battle for the soul of man, which competing religions think is their preserve, but it is the artist who reflects the better nature of man, or the fullness of nature, his art created under the spell of his own suffering.

Although it is somewhat overheated and dubious in its philosophy, it's not the subject or the music that present difficulties with Der singende Teufel as much as the often impenetrable and nonsensical utterances of the characters in the libretto. Aside from the theme outlined above, it doesn't really have a great deal else to say. It's easily reducible to 'good versus evil', not unlike his rather more entertaining final opera Der Schmied Von Gent. What this one amounts to, with the arrival of a pilgrim at the conclusion, is a round dismissal of all religions, where a belief in God is shown to be predicated upon the furthering of their own interests. Schreker, not unlike in Irrelohe, sees only one way out, which is destroying of such dangerous and inhibiting beliefs, an eradication of the old ways. The burning of the monster organ by Lilian brings a beauteous sound.

Evidently a great deal of the success of putting on a Franz Schreker opera and dealing with its more problematic questions and ideas rests with the production and the performances. The director Julia Burbach plays to the strengths of the work, such as they are, as a colourful entertainment with dramatic conflicts in the contrasting and opposing forces of good and evil. There is still plenty of symbolism there for you to pick apart or you can just enjoy the beauty of Schreker's score and choral arrangements. The transforming of Amandus as a musician helps bring Schreker's own personal experiences into the production, making it perhaps a little more meaningful, and Burbach introduces her own symbolism with 500 empty seats forming a cage and pages of music score scattered around to reflect Schreker’s preoccupations as the artist protagonist. Dancers also bring the conflict within the music to life.

The singing is good or at least adequate for the most part. The roles of Lilian and Amadus have their challenges in terms of the size of the roles and the dramatic expression of their individual torments, but both tough central roles are performed well. Mirko Roschkowski has that high light lyrical tenor role with a little bit of steely strength that is needed for this kind of role and convinces entirely as Amandus. Anne-Fleur Werner is a little light in places but brings commitment and intensity to the role of Lilian. Tobias Schabel sings the Priest well, Pavel Kudinov is good as Sir Sinbrand, Dshamilja Kaiser a little on the weak side as Alardis, but is often set against choral singing which can be hard to rise above. It looks like Theater Bonn used stage microphones rather than radio mics for this streamed recording on OperaVision, so it would be difficult to give an accurate account of the singing, but this is definitely a good overall production of a rare Schreker work.

External links: Theater Bonn, OperaVision

Schreker - Irrelohe (Lyon, 2022)

Franz Schreker - Irrelohe

Opéra de Lyon - 2022

Bernhard Kontarsky, David Bösch, Tobias Hächler, Piotr Micinski, Ambur Braid, Lioba Braun, Julian Orlishausen, Michaël Gniffke, Peter Kirk, Romanas Kudriašovas, Barnaby Rea, Kwang Soun Kim, Paul-Henry Vila, Antoine Saint-Espès, Didier Roussel

Opéra de Lyon - 25th March 2022

It's tempting to consider Franz Schrecker as a product of his time, a brief period of post-Wagnerian bliss between the wars in the first half of the 20th century when music was still able to wallow in extravagant orchestration and decadent subject matter with dubious psychological underpinnings. For some it would be easy to dismiss that as having no place in the modern world of music, still less in the harsh times of the present day. All the more so since those ideas come to fruition and fullest expression in Schreker's 1924 opera Irrelohe, a work that has come to be seen as the natural conclusion of this style of music, which subsequently fell rapidly out of fashion, burning like the castle of Irrelohe in the opera itself in some kind of self-fulfilling prophesy.

In reality, the subject of the opera is timeless. Maybe not much in that it has universal application and relevance, although I'm sure some imaginative director could put such a complexion on it. Rather its universal qualities lie within its wildly Romantic storytelling on the level of... well, maybe not the grand mythology of Wagner or the turn of the century reflection on man's relationship with mythology in the works of Richard Strauss, but perhaps with less ambitiously and with less grandiosity drawing from the classic genre of horror filled folk tales.

No, a mere glance at the synopsis of the plot of Irrelohe reveals that it is not filled with meaning and subtle suggestion, as the composer himself would admit in the face of his critics, but it does deal nonetheless with dark human impulses and history. If a director wished to see it in the context of Schreker's time it could be seen as a reflection on the madness of war, of violent masculine urges that can't be suppressed, resulting in a cycle of horror that can only be redeemed though a cleansing by fire. There are certainly modern equivalences for that, but I'm not sure any of them would add anything to the work.

Schreker however was indeed working to an area of philosophical thought, drawing from the works of Otto Weininger, relating those violent urges to sexual impulses and the roles that men and women play working in dialectic opposition to one another. It was just one of many strange philosophical ideas floating around at this time. Irrelohe wears its subtext openly, borne aloft by the over-heated music, just in case you fail to catch it or be persuaded by the limitations of the libretto. That's hard to imagine however, as it's expressed as a full-blooded Gothic horror, one that nonetheless revels beautifully in the mood of the situation.

Irrelohe immediately establishes that mood of a dark foreboding with a population living in fear of the mysterious castle perched on a hill over the village of Irrelohe. Lola tells her son Peter the story of how the lords of the castle and village live under a curse that drives them to venture forth, ravage young women in the locality and die young. She herself has been a victim to Count Heinrich, and Peter is to discover that he is the fruit of that illicit union. One young woman however, Eva, braves the danger and resolves to marry the current young lord, leaving Peter infuriated. There are however others keen to bring about the downfall of the rotten dynasty of Irrelohe by burning it to the ground.

David Bösch, who previously directed another Schreker opera Die Gezeichneten for Lyon that I was fortunate to see in person in 2015, is happy to play to those qualities in the work and recognise the cinematic qualities in Schreker's score. The opening titles are emblazoned across the screen as if it were a classic black and white horror B-movie, a silent one as it later appears (not that any early silent movie would enjoy such a rich orchestral accompaniment). The movie inserts effectively extend the drama beyond the limitations of the stage sets, if not quite bring any greater depth out of the work.

Not that anything else is needed with Schreker's score sweeping you along in the ludicrous drama of Eva's strange attraction/submission to the quite clearly deranged and dangerous Count Heinrich. They are not the only ones whose behaviour is strange and borderline deranged. Lola's folk-song refrain and devotion to her rapist seems to be slowly pushing her over the edge. Christobald, who once loved Lola, has enlisted a group of minstrels to burn the place to the ground. Peter, with the blood of the Count of Irrelohe in his veins is tortured with deep Freudian complexes that also appear ready to be unleashed in sexual violence.

Falko Herold - who also worked on the sets for this year's Festival Rigoletto for Lyon - again manages to find suitable locations for this drama to play out. Act I has a small tavern for Lola and Peter with the castle ever-present, looming over the village of Irrelohe. Act II, opening with an obligatory lost in the dark woods film sequence, reveals a stage of war-torn burnt-out remains of trees before taking us into the decaying Suddenly Last Summer-like glasshouse that juts from the side of the castle overlooking the village. Act III brings a conflagration to the miniature of the castle that extends its cleansing out over the land.

Rather than the cleansing fire allowing Eva and Heinrich the opportunity to look ahead to a better new world in Schreker's unlikely optimistic conclusion, Bösch sees no redemption, allowing Eva to also perish at her own hand. The ending needs some big statement, but I'm not sure this one works either, but it's hard to make anything about this drama work convincingly. The music is much less of an issue and the veteran conductor Bernhard Kontarsky allowed the whole wondrous beauty of Schreker's musical vision to weave its own magic of fluctuating moods and sinuous lines. No excuses need be made for that and it was truly a long-awaited joy to experience this particular Franz Schreker opera performed on stage. It didn't disappoint.

If anyone could bring a level of conviction to the characters beyond those dubious psychological archetypes, it was Canadian soprano Ambur Braid as Eva. There are limits to what you can do make any of these characters relatable, but in terms of singing this was a standout performance that impressed with the sheer force of her commitment that reflected her character's single-minded determination to see through her belief in bringing about change. I enjoyed Julian Orlishausen's Peter similarly for throwing himself into a character who because of the difficult circumstances of his origin has little redeeming qualities, or perhaps just less hope of redemption. 

Tobias Hächler's gently lyrical Count Heinrich showed, by way of contrast, another slightly effete side to "the masculine curse" or whatever you want to call it. It's in Heinrich that you are tempted to seek that deeper, perhaps subconscious or unwittingly premonitory self-destructive impulse that would see Schreker and many other composers working within this musical idiom or school labelled as degenerate 'Entartete' composers and banned by the Nazis. The subsequent conflagration initiated by the Third Reich would almost erase their music from history in its wake, but with productions like this, the revelatory Opera Vlaanderen production of Der Schmied Von Gent and surely more revivals of Die Gezeichneten and Der Schatzgräber to come, we can't discount the possibility that these works might still have deeper truths to reveal to us yet.

Links: Opéra de Lyon

Schreker - Der Schmied von Gent (Antwerp, 2020)

Franz Schreker - Der Schmied von Gent

Opera Ballet Vlaanderen, Antwerp - 2020

Alejo Pérez, Ersan Mondtag, Leigh Melrose, Kai Rüütel, Vuvu Mpofu, Daniel Arnaldos, Michael J. Scott, Leon Košavić, Nabil Suliman, Ivan Thirion, Chia-Fen Wu, Justin Hopkins, Thierry Vallier, Simon Schmidt, Onno Pels, Erik Dello

OperaVision - February 2020

From just about every aspect, the Opera Vlaanderen production of Franz Schreker's Der Schmied Von Gent must be one of the highlights of an unfortunately curtailed opera season, but that's something we've come to expect from the adventurous Flanders company, a selection of whose work we've been fortunate enough to see streamed on OperaVision. Aside from the curiosity value of a neglected work by a composer currently enjoying something of a revival and re-appreciation, the fact that there is a local connection with the Flemish city of Ghent makes this an attractive proposition, and it's one that the company treat with great affection and attention to detail.

Schreker's final opera from Der Schmied von Gent is quite unlike the more typical sumptuous orchestrations of the composer's previous works. The irreverent and almost comic tone of the work is very different from the lush extravagant fantasies of Die Gezeichneten, Der Schatzgräber, Irrelohe and a long way from Schreker's first staged opera Der ferne Klang. As a Jewish composer working in a musical medium that would be classed as Degenerate, the opera was however not greatly appreciated when it was first presented in Berlin in 1932 and was all but lost in the ensuing troubled years, Schreker himself dying in 1934. In this Opera Vlaanderen performance it turns out to be not only a worthwhile revival of a Schreker curiosity but simply a wonderful opera.

Der Schmied von Gent may not be as lofty and philosophically searching in its aspirations as Schreker's other works and it does get a little bogged down in the historical period detail of the sixteenth century Eighty Years War between Spain and the Netherlands, but there is certainly more of a down-to-earth human quality in this opera that perhaps arises out of the Faustian pact in its plot. Ghent blacksmith Smee is taken advantage of by a beautiful she-devil Astarte who catches the smith at a low ebb, ready to throw himself in the river after losing business due to the actions of a rival blacksmith Slimbroek. He's promised seven years of prosperity but after that, he belongs body and soul to Astarte. That doesn't seem like a bad deal to Smee, but when the time comes, he tries to find a way to escape from the Hellish pact.

There's not much here that is particularly profound or philosophical, it's not something that touches insightfully on human nature and it's not as if the opera's themes can be endlessly explored and updated for new meaning or contemporary relevance, but like any fairy-tale like story it does have important truths and observations to make. Plunging into history and war, evoking horrors and tyrants, religion, devils, Schreker's opera even brings Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus to the stage. What it certainly has then is the essence of opera, of drama writ large, heightened human emotions and behaviours, expressed with feeling and passion. Schreker's compositional ability and dramatic writing is perfect in terms of pacing and tone, making the whole drama thoroughly engaging.

The Flanders production, visualised and directed with considerable flair by Ersan Mondtag, recognises those characteristics perfectly and confidently expands on it, capturing all the life, colour and magic of the situation in a way that only opera can. The set and costume design is impressive; highly stylised, colourful, cartoonish and playful, completely fitting with the tone of the work. In Act I and II the revolving background set rotates between a simple Ghent street scene with an archway running through it that when turned around reveals a demonic figure devouring a baby towering over the town, the tunnel a gateway to Hell that allows all the devils to arrive. The whole set is used, battlements and towers, tunnels and streets, background and foreground, populated by strange caricature figures. Constantly revolving, it's more than just magically fantastical, but emphasises the two aspects and two sides of the same nature.

It's open for interpretation whether that's two side of human nature, the nature of life in the city of Ghent or the nature of war. On their own however the first two acts provide plentiful colour and entertainment, but there's more to give in Schreker's opera and in the Vlaanderen production. Having deceived the agents of Hell with trickery, they are reluctant to admit Smee when his human time on Earth comes to an end and it appears he's not welcome in heaven either. It's a little superfluous perhaps but Schreker is able to fill this act with majestic heavenly choirs, more colour and humuour. Mondtag uses this act also to consider Der Schmied von Gent as a work that is not just about historical injustice of a long forgotten past but as Smee is revived in the future to witness the liberation of the Congo from Belgian rule and bondage, it's a reminder that the struggle against evil is a constant battle and very real.

The Vlaanderen production and the performances are world class but it's the work itself that most impresses. Kurt Weill and the German music hall are often cited as influences on Schreker's late change of musical direction, but it shows a much wider range of contemporary influences and references, from Hindemith and Zemlinsky to the playful extravagance of the early Strauss of Feuersnot in its satirical tone and irreverent comedy. It consequently has a wonderful down to earth human quality that is missing from Schreker's other works, and although even those are rare enough, only rediscovered properly in recent years, it seems incredible that other than one notable recording on CPO, few have looked seriously at Der Schmied von Gent or given recognition to its qualities.

Alejo Pérez clearly has a ball with the wonderful range and variety of the score, confidently holding all the variations of pace and tone together. Musically, it's an absolute joy. The singing performances can't be faulted either with Leigh Melrose wholly immersed in the glorious character that Smee presents commanding attention throughout with some fine singing and playful acting. Kai Rüütel is also excellent as his wife and Vuvu Mpofu is superb as Astarte, fully convincing as a seductively-voiced she-devil. Unquestionably, Opera Vlaanderen do full justice to the merits of Schreker's final opera, and it's revealed to be something of a marvel.

Links: OperaVision, Opera Ballet Vlaanderen

Schreker - Der ferne Klang (Stockholm, 2019)

Franz Schreker - Der ferne Klang

Royal Swedish Opera, 2019

Stefan Blunier, Christof Loy, Agneta Eichenholz, Daniel Johansson, Johan Rydh, Miriam Treichl, Andreas Lundmark, Jeremy Carpenter, Lars Arvidson, Vivianne Holmberg, Marie-Louise Granström, Madeleine Barringer, Ola Eliasson, Klas Hedlund, Daniel Ohlmann

OperaVision - October 2019

Franz Schreker's first breakthrough opera Der ferne Klang in 1912, like much of the composer's work that followed, has the same sense of a flawed utopian ideal that is common in the composer's later "decadent" works like Die Gezeichneten and Irrelohe. It has something in common then with other post-Wagnerian German and Austrian composers of the early twentieth century (most obviously Korngold's Die Tote Stadt or Das Wunder der Heliane) whose work would later be classified by the Nazi's as "Entartete", "degenerate" because of their Jewish connections.

Like those other works by such composers at the turn of the century the influence of Wagner is inescapable, and Der ferne Klang is very much seeped in Wagnerian romanticism both musically and thematically. If it perhaps doesn't have the same sense of purpose or philosophical rigour of Wagner's best work - few do - it is however considerably more than a pale copy or a mere fantasy aligned to the master's style, and in its own way Schreker's works tap into the concerns of their time at the beginning of the 20th century in the desire to find or create a better world.

Certainly the comparisons with Tannhäuser are immediately obvious in the situation of Fritz, a heroic artist with a pure vision, a composer who sets off on a self-imposed pilgrimage searching for "a distant sound", the otherworldly music of harps that he must pursue: "A noble ambition floats before my eyes and I must be free!". To do this means sacrificing his love for Grete, his obsession with the distant sound causing him to fail to recognise the beauty he already has before him in the young woman's love, until of course it is too late.

While Fritz is off in pursuit his elusive ideal the main part of Der ferne Klang is concerned with the fate of Grete. Left in an unhappy family situation, her drunken father Graumann prepared to gamble her away in a game to the landlord of the drinking den to whom he is heavily in debt, she runs away to try and find Fritz. Along the way she falls into the seductive clutches of a glamorous lady and ends up a high class prostitute in a nightclub on an island in Venice where she is adored by the clientele, and in particular pursued by the Count.

To settle matters Greta promises to marry whoever can tell/sing the best story, meaning that Act II of the opera even has its own version of Tannhäuser's singing contest in Wartburg. Rather than it being an occasion to seek to find ennobling truths and dispel false artistry based on received wisdom rather than hard-won experience and innovative ideas, you get the impression that Schreker uses this occasion more as an opportunity to provide a bit of musical variety, colour and cabaret.

In reality however the Count's relentless pursuit of Greta is in a way a similar pursuit for a 'ferne Klang', one that differs from Fritz's vision in that it has a predetermined outcome - winning Greta - and thus is less pure than Fritz's noble and idealistic journey into unknown realms. In a way then the singing contest does serve a similar purpose to that of the one in Tannhäuser. In Der ferne Klang however the nobility of that outcome is less sure, the dream of a paradise uncertain or maybe even an impossible ideal. Does that make striving for truth any less worthy even if it doesn't reveal what we hope it will?

That conclusion, which comes in Act III, is where Christof Loy has to really do the work in this production for the Swedish National Opera. Up until then it all seems a little lacking in this director's usual modern touches and ideas, keeping to a period setting of classical elegance. As ever, Loy is just seeking to reflect what is there in the music, matching the settings and drama to the lush orchestration of Schreker's score. Since Act III opens with a long musical interlude, Loy has more room here to develop and contrast and blend the reality with the dreams.

And since Schreker also provides the opportunity by setting Act III backstage after the performance of Fritz's great masterpiece, Loy takes advantage of exploring how dreams and reality can be brought together in art, in opera. His re-encounter with Grete brings Fritz great disappointment when he is made aware of her degrading circumstances and his renouncement of her at the end of Act II inspires him to the discovery of the 'far off sound' he has been looking for. Since his opera is considered a failure however, there's some ambiguity around whether life informs great art or whether art is at best only a flawed shadow of life. The chances are that, like Fritz, the only way we can judge whether we've taken the right path and grasped what is important is when it's too late to change anything.

If it doesn't make any grand gestures then or bring about any great revelations, Loy's direction very much explores and enhances the value of Schreker's Der ferne Klang. The same can be said very much for Stefan Blunier's conducting of the Swedish National Orchestra which revels in the lush beauty of Schreker's wonderful flowing orchestration. Like Richard Strauss, there's also considerable beauty and challenges in the vocal writing but when it's done right, as it is here with Agneta Eichenholz's Grete and Daniel Johansson's Fritz, both soaring in their self-delusion, shattered in their clash with reality - the effect is ravishing. How wonderful that the Swedish National Opera treat this beautiful neglected work so well.

Links: OperaVision, Swedish National Opera

Schreker - Die Gezeichneten (Munich, 2017)

Franz Schreker - Die Gezeichneten

Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich - 2017

Ingo Metzmacher, Krzysztof Warlikowski, Tomasz Konieczny, Christopher Maltman, Alastair Miles, Catherine Naglestad, John Daszak, Matthew Grills, Kevin Conners, Sean Michael Plumb, Andrea Borghini, Peter Lobert, Andreas Wolf, Paula Iancic, Heike Grötzinger, Dean Power

StaatsoperTV - 1 July 2017

Franz Schreker's opera Die Gezeichneten is an unusual work, characteristic of a very specific style and of the period of its composition. It's a fairy-tale for the turn of the 20th century, with a late Romantic approach to its ideas and musical development that is perhaps a little too decadent and rich for modern tastes. In this opera, as in much of his other lyrical-dramas, Schreker poses some interesting questions in relation to the function of art that the post-Wagner opera world was (and perhaps still is) struggling to resolve. After 100 years of near neglect, the growing popularity of this particular opera suggests however that it's a question that is not only still relevant but becoming a more urgent issue for our contemporary society.

As far as Schreker is concerned, the pressing question of what should be the function of art and the role of the artist as an outsider is similar to the one considered by Wagner in nearly all of his important opera works. Composed in 1919 however, the world that Schreker explores in Die Gezeichneten is a very different place, and the rules and guidance that might have served as an example no longer seem relevant or are unable to take hold in a rapidly changing world that has gained a new perspective on humanity through Freudean psychoanalysis and the horrors of the First World War. If Die Gezeichneten follows the path of a fairy-tale, it's a fairy-tale where the darker undercurrents are now laid bare on the surface to serve as a reflection of what they say about modern society.

The post-Wagner/post-Parsifal/late Romantic composer/artist/idealist would like to believe that art provides a means of human transcendence from these horrors, but the former ideas about what constitutes art and beauty are now no longer quite as clear or as pure as might once have been thought. Elysium, the Utopian island of marvels and beauty created by the deformed dwarf Alviano Salvago in Die Gezeichneten, has become corrupted as a playground for the rich and the powerful to cultivate 'exotic' tastes, abducting children and exploiting the misery of others for their own pleasure. As Count Tamare describes it, it's a corruption of the realisation of a dream of beauty. There's clearly something there that resonates with our own times and this is keenly explored by director Krzysztof Warlikowski in his new production of the work for the 2017 Munich Opera Festival.

With its creator a deformed and ugly figure of ridicule, the Elysium created by Alviano in Die Gezeichneten (The Stigmatised) is in himself representative of the function of art to transform the ugly reality into something beautiful. Carlotta is another artist capable of recognising the beauty of Alviano's true nature and expresses it in the painting of his pure soul. It's the validation of their belief in a higher purpose for art that leads them to love, but also to believe that they have a true and purer understanding of art and beauty. Unfortunately their great ambitions prove to be not only incompatible with the reality of the world, but they prove to be corrupting of their own nature. The seductive power of beauty in the form of Graf Andrea Vitellozzo Tamare leads Carlotta astray, while for Alviano, love has given him god-like aspirations that reveal an ugly side to his nature.

"Give me Carlotta" pleads Alviano when he is in danger of losing her love to the debauched libertine Tamare, "then I'll be a prince, a king, a god". Love has conferred Apollo-like aspirations in Alviano that align with the Wagnerian ideal of the supremacy of the artist in society, but instead he shows himself to be vindictive and egotistical, a "troll" at heart. It seems that the moment the true nature of beauty is grasped by the artist, it confers a sense of power and influence that turns him into a monster who is incapable of responding to that supreme vision of beauty without corrupting and destroying it by his very nature.

That's certainly the image that Krzysztof Warlikowski emphasises in the 2017 Munich production with his usual cinematic references. The director relies on the imagery of David Lynch's depiction of 'The Elephant Man' as a beautiful soul trapped in a monstrous body, but there are also significant scenes projected for classic silent horror films. There is the scene from 'Der Golem' where the monster is confronted and destroyed by the beauty of a child with a flower; a similar confrontation in that famous scene at the lake in 'Frankenstein'; the unmasking of 'The Phantom of the Opera' reveals the ugly side of his nature; and in 'Nosferatu' beauty will expose the monster to an unbearable light that destroys him. Apart from a scene of Duke Adorno working out in a boxing ring and figures starting to appear as mice, Warlikowski sticks fairly closely and directly to this principal theme in the first half, with Elysium a modern art gallery, replete with a Tate Modern style turbine hall showing a brilliant disc, where the idea of art is something living rather than traditional.

In Act III however, after a spoken word reading of Schreker's account of himself as an artist that associates him with Alviano, Warlikowski and Malgorzata Szczesniak's sets and costumes take these themes in an entirely unexpected and unpredictable new direction. So rich is the enigmatic ideas and imagery of the latter scenes of Die Gezeichneten, and so untethered to any kind of musical resolution, that you would expect a similarly free-associative and imaginative response from the director and he certainly delivers. There is an acceptance of art as a "realm of magic" and for Warlikowski the realm where all these concepts can be considered and explored is indeed that of the opera stage. So figures with heads of mice, virtually naked dancers, a reclining figure in a glass cage, all form part of the Elysium of the opera stage, where art is beauty, but it is also challenging and - vitally - alive.

The performances of John Daszak and Catherine Naglestad in particular are perfect fits for Warlikowsi's ideas. Daszak is simply outstanding, his voice lyrical and flexible, full of expression and capable of revealing a darker edge. Catherine Naglestad has a rather more robust soprano voice than the usual piercing but brittle edge of Straussian sopranos like Manuela Uhl or Anne Schwanewilms with whom we usually associate Schreker roles, but her voice brings a rich corrupting glamour to Carlotta. Christopher Maltman is a strong presence as Tamare. I'm not a fan of Tomasz Konieczny's bass-baritone voice and don't find it pleasant here, but as Duke Adorno it doesn't have to be and it strikes an appropriate note of discordance that lies within the music also.

Conducting the work, Ingo Metzmacher wrings all the troubling beauty out of chromatic lines that suggest that a resolution to the themes raised in the opera is unattainable, but between Schreker, Metzmacher and Warlikowski you almost feel that this is as close as the work can come to a state of transcendental perfection. An ambitious selection of works have been instrumental in the success of the Bayerische Staatsoper's exceptional 2016-17 season, attaching creative directors to the projects, finding the right conductor and singers who can bring some new and original ideas to them, and Die Gezeichneten is no exception.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV

Schreker - Die Gezeichneten (Lyon, 2015 - Lyon)

Franz Schreker - Die Gezeichneten

Opéra de Lyon, 2015

Alejo Perez, David Bösch, Charles Workman, Magdalena Anna Hofmann, Simon Neal, Markus Marquardt, Michael Eder, Aline Kostrewa, Jan Petryka, Jeff Martin, Robert Wörle, Falko Hönisch, James Martin, Piotr Micinski, Stephen Owen

Lyon - 13 March 2015

Selected as one of three thematically connected works in the Opéra de Lyon's 'Les Jardins Mystérieux' March 2015 opera festival, the mysterious garden of Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten is a rather disturbing one, a paradise that holds altogether darker, twisted roots. The Lyon production of this rarely performed yet enchantingly beautiful work was accordingly dark, recognising perhaps the historical origins of Schreker's composition, as well as its continued relevance today.

The libretto for Die Gezeichneten (translated as 'Les Stigmatisés', the Stigmatised) was written by Schreker on the request of fellow composer, Alexander von Zemlinsky. The work is based on the play Hidalia by Frank Wedekind (famous as the author of Lulu), but the inspiration also comes from Oscar Wilde's 'The Birthday of the Infanta' - a work that Schreker had already written as a dance-pantomime 'Der Geburtstag der Infantin'. Zemlinsky's identification with the cruel little tale stemmed from his own insecurities regarding his relationship with Alma Schindler, later Alma Mahler, and it would become the subject of his own opera based on the Wilde story, Der Zwerg (The Dwarf).

It's not difficult to see why Schreker's libretto may not have entirely suited Zemlinsky's intentions. It doesn't have a happy ending or even a noble one, but rather seems to suggest that there is a darker side to everyone. Even the best of intentions, corrupted by a sense of pride, love or even self-empowerment, can have unintended consequences. Schreker's own experience following the success of Die Gezeichneten would seem to follow a similar trajectory, the composer being appointed to a prominent position as a Music Director in Berlin, before falling victim to the anti-Semitic policies of the Nazi party and seeing his influence and musical reputation slip into decline.

In Die Gezeichneten, the stigmatised outsider is Alviano Salvago, a scarred, hunchbacked nobleman in 16th century Genoa, who has created a beautiful island paradise called 'Elysium'. Unknown to Alviano, the Genoan nobility have been using the underground grotto of the island to abuse children that they have been abducting from the city. Aware that he cannot be loved for his appearance, Alviano intends to enhance his reputation by donating the island as a gift to the people of Genoa. The nobles appeal to Duke Adorno to preserve their playground, Adorno unaware that his own missing daughter Ginevra Scotti is one of the victims held captive in the grotto.

Alviano finds another powerful enemy in Count Vitelozzo Tamare. Tamare is in love with Carlotta, the daughter of the Podestà. Carlotta, an artist following her own independent spirit, has rejected Tamare and is attracted rather to the hunchback, wanting to paint him, but Alviano's lack of confidence prevents him from exploring whether the attraction goes any deeper than artistic. Indeed, once Carlotta finishes her experimental portrait of Alviano's soul, she seems to lose any further interest in the strange little man, but Alviano, flattered by the attention of Carlotta, is now a changed man.

Lyon's production, directed by David Bösch, spared the audience none of the horror of this dark fairy-tale nor the disturbing implications and undercurrents that run through the subject. There was little sign of any Romantic decadence or period glamour here. The true nature of the Genoan nobles' activities was laid out clearly, posters showing pictures of abducted children in screen projections, lusts openly displayed as the men shared videos and pictures of the abuse carried out, groping and grasping at horrified young women. The scenes of abused children in the grotto, when it is uncovered in the final act, are horrifying, some of victims wearing rags, some dead, others with blood spilling down their legs. And yet, for all the realism of the treatment, there was still an otherworldly hallucinatory aspect to the nature of the work.

Partly that's down to the themes being just as suggestive as the abstract dark fairy-tale nature of the plot, and partly it's down to how that is expressed in the music. The themes that rise to the surface are those of the abuse of power, the corrupting influence of power, the gratification of desires and the inevitable downfall of a corrupt society. But it's also about art, the power of art to explore beneath the surface and show the true nature of the human soul. If you delve into such places however, you can also be sure of finding some unpalatable truths. This fits with the post-war view of the barbarism unleashed by Great War, but its essential truth is borne out in Schreker's own later experiences, when through his Jewish ancestry, his own art would come to be regarded as 'Entartete', degenerate art, by the National Socialists, who would come into power and leave similar devastation in the wake of the Second World War.

The question of whether Schreker's own art with its grand, elegant flow of lush post-Wagnerian orchestration, is capable of delving into those places is debatable, but in Die Gezeichneten at least, it has a place. Tied to these themes moreover, it's not ambitious to say that the work is capable of being expressive of how these themes can be applicable to many different facets of life. If there's any kind of disparity between the dark decadence of the work and the surface beauty of orchestration, Schreker's score is revealed to be much more muscular and expressive than one would think under the direction of Alejo Perez. Art is transformative, but it can also be twisted and corrupted. The meansure of that is in the dissonance that creeps into this beguiling music, and Perez and the Lyon orchestra bring this out clearly, not letting the audience be entirely seduced by its chromatic spell, but reminding us that it has a sinister side to it.

It helps that the musical performance works in conjunction with the imagery on the stage, but the singing is also a vital ingredient in this work. Having previously known this work with a more heldentenor style of performance from Robert Brubaker in the role of Alviano Salvago at Salzburg in 2005, it was quite a change to hear the softer timbre and delicate delivery of Charles Workman in the role here. This worked wonderfully however, Workman's luxurious tones contrasting with Alviano's marked and disfigured appearance. It was a captivating performance, remarkably clear in enunciation and carrying across the huge orchestral forces in a strong expressive delivery. Magdalena Anna Hofmann impressed as Carlotta, a difficult role that has to reach some near-impossible heights, and if the securing of those notes wasn't pitch-perfect every time, she brought a degree of personality to the work's complex artistic female character.

Links: Opéra de Lyon

Schreker - Die Gezeichneten

Franz Schreker - Die Gezeichneten

Salzburger Festspiele, 2005

Kent Nagano, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Robert Brubaker, Anne Schwanewilms, Michael Volle, Robert Hale, Wolfgang Schöne, Bernard Richter, Markus Petsch, Mel Ulrich, Thomas Oliemans, Guillaume Antoine, Stephen Gadd

EuroArts - DVD

There's a gorgeous and somewhat disturbing sense of decadence about this Salzburg Festival production of Franz Schreker's Die Gezeichneten that nonetheless feels wholly appropriate for the work. Schreker is a neglected and now unfashionable early twentieth century German composer who saw his influence and popularity fall into decline with the arrival of the Nazis. The lush orchestration of his extravagant romanticism likewise felt out of place in a harsh new world that had been rocked by two brutal world wars in the first half of the century. His work however - tentatively finding its way back into the repertoire - retains a certain fascination precisely for this unique character of that path of post-Wagnerian German Romanticism that was forever lost in the new reality of the world.

That character - and that extraordinary musical style - is very much in evidence in Die Gezeichneten, a title that is difficult to translate, since it means 'the drawn man' (i.e. the object of an artist's work), but it also implies 'a marked man'. Written on the request of fellow "degenerate composer" Alexander Zemlinsky, the story is about the tragedy of an ugly man, a hunchback, who is unable to find love. It's a subject that seems to close to the heart of Zemlinsky, who himself a short opera adapted from an Oscar Wilde story based on this theme (Der Zwerg - The Birthday of the Infanta), the composer having been famously rejected by Alma Mahler, who described him as "a hideous dwarf". Zemlinsky was supposed to have scored Schreker's libretto, but in the end it was Schreker who completed the entire work himself.

Revived for the Salzburg Festival in 2005, performed in the outdoor setting of the Felsenreitschule, it's an extraordinary experience to hear the wonderful lush Romanticism of Schreker's flowing orchestration with all its Tristan und Isolde-like unresolved and dissonant chords creating a sustained tension, given full expression under the musical direction of Kent Nagano, but it's one that also works well with Nicholas Lehnhoff's stage direction. Set in 16th century Genoa, the work opens with a group of rich decadent nobles, dressed here in extravagant exaggerated costumes, bemoaning the possibility that they might lose access to the wonderful island paradise of Elysium that has been created by Alviano Salvago for their pleasure. Salvago is a hunchback who believes he is too ugly to set foot on the island himself and, abandoning any hope of ever being loved or accepted, he is about to give the island back to the common people, leaving the nobles without any place to practice their secret vices against the daughters of Genoa.

Lehnoff's set captures the essence of this situation, matching the musical description with a stage that consists of one huge toppled statue, one hand clawing at the air with the head detached, and having the performers clamber over the pitted and broken surface that hints at and eventually reveals the dark concealed depths of the grotto within it. More than just accompanying the musical content however, the elaborate set also mirrors to some extent the nature of Salvago himself. Salvago starts to nurse hopeful expectations when he meets Carlotta Nardi, the daughter of the Podestà who describes herself as a painter of souls, who is intrigued by the hunchback and wants to paint him. Salvago starts to believe that she is someone who can recognise his inner beauty - revealing himself to be the same as everyone else - and Carlotta consequently loses her fascination for him the moment she finishes the painting.

Musically and lyrically, Die Gezeichneten is a fascinating and beautiful work that could only have been written at this time - in 1918 - the fin de siècle decadence of the nobles coming crashing down with the harsh realities that are revealed about the workings of the world. That's apparent very clearly and evocatively in the musical construction, the early part of the opera awash with Strauss-like extravagance in the tones and textures - reminiscent of how Strauss would approach the later Die Liebe der Danae (1940) - but also with that Wagnerian Tristan und Isolde-like sensibility of suspending dissonant chords to float around and intermingle to create an unsettling yet compelling soundscape. Schreker's libretto is equally lyrical and extravagant in its pronouncements and in its dramatic tensions, particularly in the eloquent descriptions of the arrogance of the nobility and in the wounded pride of Graf Vitelozzo at being rejected by Carlotta in favour of Salvago.

All the decadent poetic musing however ("Life seemed to me a source of constant joy... When I stretched out my hand, I held a rose, drew in its fragrance and pulled the petals off"), comes crashing down when an actual name - Ginevra Scotti - is attached to the vices, revealing their nature as being rather more sinister, involving child abduction and abuse. The exquisite floating dreamlike reverie of the musical arrangements similarly coalesces into something much more concrete at this point, revealing the nature of the dissonance that has been hovering at the edges of the work. Evoking Stanley Kubrick's 'Eyes Wide Shut' orgy scene in Act III with the assembled guests hiding behind masks, Lehnhoff's stage direction is completely on the same page as the score, and the statue of grand nobility that has retained some dignity and grandeur even in its toppled form up to this stage, is split open to reveal its corrupt inner nature.

The complex nature of the various characters is perhaps most powerfully described - or at least is more obviously evident - in the nature of the writing for the singing voices.  Fortunately, the cast are all extraordinarily good here. Anne Schwanewilms in particular is just outstanding as Carlotta - I've never heard her sing better, even in some of the more challenging Strauss roles. There's a lushness to her tone here, the vocal writing and her character giving her the opportunity to demonstrate an impressive range, rising to soaring heights in a flowing legato, particularly in Carlotta's Act II scenes with Alviano Salvago. The writing for Salvago is also very interesting, the character written for a Heldentenor voice (or at least performed here as such), even though he is an outwardly weak and physically deformed. The contradiction between his inner and outward nature is expressed very well in this manner by Robert Brubaker. Michael Volle's lush Straussian baritone rounds out this impressively cast production as the decadent Count Vitelozzo.

Only available on DVD, the performance does seem to have been at least shot in HD, and even in the Standard Definition format, the 16:9 widescreen image looks beautiful, with good detail, clarity and colour saturation. The audio tracks, LPCM Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 and DTS 5.1, are also fine, capturing all the warmth and colour of the orchestration that Nagano reveals so well. There are no extra features here, and no full synopsis in the booklet, although there's a good essay that covers the main points in outline, along with some background information on the composer and the work. The DVD is NTSC, Region-free, with subtitles in German, English, French and Spanish.