ICSM Online Journal > Reviews

Zemlinsky: Der Kreidekreis
Bielefeld, 18 February 2006 and in repertoire

Reviewed by Michael Eagleton
posted 14 Feb 2007

The pleasant Jugendstil City Theatre in Bielefeld, which has played a significant, if sometimes controversial, part in the rehabilitation of several works of the Weimar years, is currently being refurbished, and so the resident theatre and opera company has decamped a couple of tram stops out of town to the multi-purpose Rudolf-Oetker Halle. Temporary raked seating has been installed, but there is no orchestra pit and only a small stage with no machinery, thus limiting the choice of repertoire for the current season. Zemlinsky’s penultimate opera. Der Kreidekreis, with its straightforward setting, small cast and moderate orchestra was not an obvious choice, but nevertheless an interesting and welcome one.

The play by Klabund (real name Alfred Henschke) had proved highly popular since its first staging in Meissen in 1925. Zemlinsky would probably have seen it in Prague , where it was given at the Neues Deutsches Theater in the same year, (with incidental music by Viktor Ullman). Based on the same Chinese legend, Klabund’s version is quite different from Brecht’s highly politicised ‘Parable’ of twenty years later. Although recognisable as an attack on the corruption of German society in the Twenties, it nevertheless has an other-worldly, rarefied atmosphere. There is little that is specifically Chinese save the names of the characters, most of whom who are no more than ciphers who step forward to introduce themselves, play their part in the drama, and disappear. Only the ‘heroine’, Haitang, a symbol of purity, is present throughout. Haitang is sold by her mother, heavily in debt, to Tong, a tea-house owner, in spite of the protestations of her brother, Chang-Ling, an impecunious revolutionary. There she meets Prince Pao, but is immediately sold on (at a profit) to the rich mandarin Ma as his second wife. She bears Ma a son, and the first, childless, wife Yu Pei is so jealous that she poisons Ma and blames Haitang. who is arrested. Before the Judge who she has bribed along with the witnesses, Yu Pei claims the child as her own. Pao, meanwhile, has assumed the throne on the death of the Emperor, and decrees that all condemned criminals shall appear before him. Chang-Ling is adamant that the new ruler will be no better than his predecessor and Haitang is marched off through a snowstorm to the city to appear before the Emperor. The true mother of the child is revealed by the test of the chalk circle, and Yu Pei is led away. Pao then admits to Haitang that he himself is the father of the child, having had his way with Haitang as she slept, that first night at Tong’s tea house.

Zemlinsky responded to Klabund’s sensibility with music of almost neo-classical restraint and reserve. There are simple songs, much spoken dialogue, and not much more than an occasional stylised phrase of the orient. There are hints of jazz (the orchestra includes saxophones and banjo), but kept on a tight reign. Only in the final, ecstatic duet are the lovers united in a lush neo-Romanticism. That Zemlinsky achieved a success with such sparse, clinical textures, goes some way to account for the continued interest in the piece; next to the two one-act works, Der Zwerg and Eine florentinische Tragödie it is the most performed of his operatic works.

Bielefeld ’s production (by Gregor Horres, in his own designs) promised much, but ultimately disappointed. The stage was grey and bare, with a few large Chinese lanterns around the perimeter. The characters were dressed in a sort of picture-book oriental style – Haitang in white, Yu Pei in a menacing red, Ma in a smart fur-lined coat and so on. So far, so good. The problem lay in the direction, which compromised that picture book detachment with a too-intense realism. Chang Ling became a blind, almost demonic, half-wit rather than spoilt radical, while Tong for some reason kept returning as a sinister sidekick for both Judge and Emperor, indulging in some gratuitous violence. Ironically, the one scene which needs a touch of realism to work its magic, the journey through the snowstorm in which Haitang bemoans her fate to the elements, was blandly staged – no snow, and the ballade and dialogue for the escorting soldiers which frames her aria was sung off-stage.

Full credit is due to Peter Kuhn, Bielefeld ’s Music Director since 1998, for a lovingly detailed and precise account of the score. No doubt it helped that the orchestra was not incarcerated in the pit (the Bielefeld theatre has always seemed to me to have an unhelpful acoustic, which hopefully will be improved during the rebuilding). The singing was variable: the soprano Sabine Passow as Haitang, for all her experience in European houses was in disappointing voice, and Annina Papazian as Yu Pei was excellent. The rest of the cast were all drawn from the resident ensemble: Michael Bachtadze, baritone, originally from Tiflis, was impressive as Ma, as was the youthful tenor of Luca Martin as Prince Pao, and the small parts for coolies, nurse, etc., were all well taken.

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