SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Based on Euripides’ tremendous myth, The Bacchae, this work was commissioned by the Salzburger Festspiele and premiered there in 1966. It is a veritable thriller of an opera, describing the conflict between hard-headed rationalism and sensual delight, and the theme of mass hysteria it touches upon couldn’t be more contemporary. In a nutshell, Pentheus, King of Thebes, endeavors to forbid the cult of Dionysus and its followers, the Bassarids, and is murdered by his own mother.

 Naturally, it was only a matter of time before this explosive work by Germany’s greatest living composer would be produced in Munich, one of Europe’s leading opera houses. Henze’s music is regarded by some as a continuation of Richard Strauss’, and indeed, if you like Elektra and Salome, this opera is likely to be for you as well. It is spellbinding for its tonal force and its sound articulated in seemingly endless musical sentences, reminiscent of the prose of Ingeborg Bachmann, Henze’s muse of long-ago. The 81-year-old composer, who has long made the Eternal City his home, traveled to Bavaria for this special occasion, and at the premiere party, commented that he would be going back to Italy the following day with the feeling that he had “not lived in vain”. Who wouldn’t be pleased to feel that sort of satisfaction one day, and Henze is more than entitled to it!

But one can definitely be in two minds about whether Christof Loy’s symphonic reading of this work will achieve the status of ‘landmark production’, as the Staatsoper’s department of dramaturgy has been quick to suggest (at an introductory lecture before the performance). Granted, it has the merit of putting the music first, played by an enormous version of the Bavarian State Orchestra (32 musicians in the wind section alone, not to mention pianos, percussion, etc.) under the baton of Marc Albrecht, which brought Henze’s enthralling score to life. Johannes Leiacker’s sets and costumes are as minimal as they come  - an exaggerated reaction the monstrous 60’s Salzburg spectacle? -  featuring the chorus in gray togs, which give way to blindingly white underwear during the Dionysian rites. The only hitch is that yes, this all extremely lean and mean, riveting to the point of being scary (the little girl dragging around an effigy of Pentheus is in this vein), but what comes across is only the fear, not the fire – you almost have to imagine the passion and the ecstasy. Furthermore, Loy was so determined to include the ‘Calliope’ intermezzo deleted by Henze after the premiere,  that messengers from Munich made their way to Rome in order to persuade the Maestro to authorize it – which he did, against his better judgment, it would seem, since it felt like something of a Baroque bulge tacked onto an otherwise streamlined form.

All in all, the singers’ performances have more ‘landmark’ qualities than the staging.  First and foremost Michael Volle as an overwhelming Pentheus, as well as Nikolai Schukoff, who sang a mesmerizing Dionysus. The whole cast was a “crème de la crème’ selection of terrific Wagner and Strauss singers, including Gabriele Schnaut (a celebrated Elektra) as Agave, heldentenor Reiner Goldberg as Tiresias, luminous soprano Eir Inderhaug as Autonoe, Sami Luttinen as Cadmus and my personal favorite, Hanna Schwarz, who lent her luscious mezzo to the role of Pentheus’ nurse, Beroe. While the audience were taking their seats, a video line-up of the entire chorus was projected onto the curtain – and this was only fitting, since if anyone stole the show it was chorus master Andrés Máspero’s troupe, on stage almost the entire time and awe-inspiring to the very end when the lights are cut as if by thunderbolt.

Bettina Mara

Picture © Wilfried Hösl - published with kind permission of the Staatsoper München

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