ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Schreker, Die Gezeichneten
Het Musiektheater, Amsterdam; first night 18 May 2007 and in repertoire

Reviewed by Michael Eagleton
posted 23 July 2007

This production, by the Austrian director Martin Kušej, originated at the Staatsoper Stuttgart in January 2002, where it caused something of a stir. This was a good year for the Schreker revival – there was also David Alden’s wacky but engaging Schatzgräber in Frankfurt, followed closely by the two versions of Das Spielwerk in Damstadt and Kiel – but by general consent Stuttgart seemed to have nailed down that elusive yet crucial problem of reinterpreting these pieces in a way which recreates for today’s audience the frisson of the time of its composition. And with Kušej in person recreating his conception, it was good to be reminded just how radical and spine-chillingly good a show this was.

Though it was not premiered (in Frankfurt) until 1918, Die Gezeichneten was very much a product of the immediate pre-war years, the turmoil of Freud – and of Wedekind, who earlier had started, but did not finish, a drama set in a brothel on an island., and who wrote of bourgeois society being crippled by sexual inhibition. Die Gezeichneten – the title is much neater in German than a clumsy English translation of The Marked Ones, or The Stygmatised – is a member of that group of works which includes Max von Schillings’ Mona Lisa and Zemlinsky’s Eine florentinische Tragödie, which were set in Renaissance Italy. The connection with Zemlinsky is pertinent, for it was he who asked Schreker for a libretto ‘on the tragedy of the ugly man’. As Schreker worked on his commission, though, the subject began to take on an operatic shape of his own. Unpeturbed, Zemlinsky then went his own way, with Der Zwerg the result, based on the same Oscar Wilde source as had provided Schreker with the scenario for his earlier ballet Der Geburtstag der Infantin. But though Schreker is known to have researched thoroughly the historical background of his characters, the opera is an exploration of any number of contemporary preoccupations Alviano is a hunchback, but has an inability to face reality in spite of, rather than because of, his disability, and retreats into his own fantasy world. Carlotta’s weak heart will give cease its beating if she ever dares the physical love-making she longs for, and the virile young nobleman Tamare cannot contain a desire which eventually destroys his world and that of those around him.

The merit of Kušej’s conception, along with that of his designer Martin Zehetgruber (they were fellow students in Graz and have worked together regularly), is that all visual references to Genoa, Italian noblemen, hunchbacks, et al., have been banished. We meet Alviano, naked, emerging from some kind of cesspool, and as the stage brightens, we see only grey walls, and metal cages, like some huge underground filing cabinet. The ‘noblemen’ – such as can be seen on any Saturday night in almost any town – fling him a pair of trousers and a shirt, and a stick, which for the rest of the opera seems to become an extension of his character. This is a broken, angry man, whose idyllic creation on his island has been sullied by the debauched activities of the youth of the town.

Act 2 has the same bare walls, but with reflective panels at the rear of the stage. Alviano is in Carlotta’s studio. She is a photographer, rather than a painter, capturing Alviano’s ‘soul’ in a series of attitude poses – after each take the stage is briefly blacked out and an Alviano double appears, holding that particular frame. As their passion intensifies, the effect is of a film-sequence of would-be lovers. Eventually, Carlotta is willing to give herself, but the real Alviano demurs.

In the final Act, set on Alviano’s secret island of Elysium, the atmosphere is lightened yet sinister, with a series of revolving mirrored doors. Naked forms mingle with the crowds of tourists with their digital cameras – some quite confident that this is Art with a capital A, others, the more matronly among the ladies, not knowing quite where to look. Slowly – over the hour and more span of the Act, the crowd succumb to the intoxication of Alviano’s paradise, and lose their inhibitions, and much of their clothing. Orgies are notoriously difficult to stage, but this was more successful than most! The dénouement is played out among this seething mass, the protagonists finally thrust to the front of the stage – Carlotta admitting that she has given herself to Tamare and is now fatally stricken, Tamare stabbed in rage by Alviano and, as the stage darkens, Alviano now completely deranged, returning to the depths from which he materialised three hours before.

The performance by the Romanian Gabriel Sadé as Alviano was nothing short of a tour de force, as it was in Stuttgart, when he was named Opernwelt ‘Singer of the Year’. One can imagine the part more beautifully sung – certainly more accurately sung, but as the centrepiece of a brilliant piece of theatre it was riveting. Another hero was Kristine Ciesinski as Carlotta – not least because she was supposed to have shared the role with Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet but on the latter’s withdrawal through illness was singing the complete run. Her voice seems to have filled out somewhat, and was an exciting match for Sadé. Another reprise from Stuttgart was Wolfgang Schöne’s rock-solid Lodovico Nardi, the local mayor, Carlotta’s father, and Tamare, the leader of the local virile gang was the American Scott Hendricks, confidence personified.

The conductor was Ingo Metzmacher, who one suspects was itching to get his hands on this score, since his career received an early boost when he took over a production of Der ferne Klang in Brussels at days notice in 1988 following the abrupt withdrawal of Christoph von Dohnányi. Metzmacher was perhaps a little more expansive than Zagrosek in Stuttgart, enabling him to point up every nuance of this intoxicating score. Schreker’s mastery of a huge orchestra is unsurpassed in this work, and time and time again the very audacity of it catches the breath. It helped, of course, having the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra in the pit – actually more of a valley in this glorious theatre. The playing was simply stunning, and the same could be said of the whole evening.

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