ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Karl Amadeus Hartmann, Simplicius Simplicissimus
State Opera, Hannover; 19 January 2008 and in repertoire
reviewed by Michael Eagleton
Posted 23 April 2008

Following the lead of Stuttgart in 2004, Hannover chose the original, 1935, version (but not performed until 1949) of Hartmann's gritty three-part anti-war polemic, but then compromised that decision by using the enhanced orchestration of the 1957 version. Writing in the programme book, the production team (Frank Hilbrich, director; Volker Thiele, designer; Lutz de Veer, conductor) justifies this decision by suggesting that the earlier chamber version (scored for thirteen players) would be lost in the large spaces of the Hannover house (even though in Stuttgart, larger still, that was not the case). But they certainly had a point that the more marked contrasts afforded by the larger orchestra accentuated the extremes of their view of the piece. The tenderness of the strings in the interlude ending Part 1 - based on the chorale Nun ruhen alle Wälder ('Now all woods are still') - being only one moment of almost unbearable poignancy, following the destruction of the village community by marauding mercenaries.

And this was a staging in which the scenes of murder and rape were graphically presented, all within a sanitising white room whose ceiling and walls, chandelier and oddments of furniture, disintegrated graphically, one stage further, at the climax to each scene.

The narrator, a wholly committed and involved Franz Mazura, dressed in white like some ancient Seer, was already on stage, motionless and unnoticed against the virginal white, in exactly the same position as Simplicius will occupy, the sole survivor, ninety minutes later. Simplicius was sung by Olivia Stahn, who had already sung the part in a staging at the Berlin Konzerthaus in 2005, a bright boyish soprano though with a tendency to force her upper notes. Here she was no innocent shepherd - impaling toy sheep on a bundle of twigs in the Part 1 pastoral 'tree-dream' - but, in a white body stocking (and looking, unfortunately, rather like a maggot), a sexless, restless voyeur.

The one positive in this battered life is the Hermit of the central episode, part father figure and mentor, who ultimately digs his own grave and dies, leaving Simplicius once more at the mercy of the violent world. Tenor Hans Sojer was disappointing, insecure in pitch and inadequate in characterisation in a role which surely demands a steely solidity. In Part 3, at the banquet for high society, the Governor and his sidekick Captain were suitably freakish Michelin men, stomping around and extracting their mawkish pleasures from those below them. Their grotesque duet (Latchezar Pravtchev and Albrecht Pöhl) could have done with a touch more venom. The chorus, in the auditorium for the speaking chorus at the end of Part 1, eventually crowded onto the stage as if off the street, bringing proceedings to a spectacularly violent conclusion.

It is the return to Hartmann's first intentions which allows the final curtain to fall, in silence, as Simplicus takes his place, quietly surveying the carnage, to be the next Narrator, for the next war.

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