SECULAR LITURGIES

Power of Germany

Tom Sutcliffe on The Tempest at Lübeck and the importance of Germany to the survival and success of opera in Europe

T

wice since Christmas I have been to Germany to see new productions of Te Tempest, Tomas Adès’s opera that was premiered at Covent Garden in February

2004, for which my wife Meredith Oakes wrote the libreto, ‘aſter Shakeseare’ as it says. According to Grove’s Dictionary of Opera there had already been 57 operas writen based on the Shakeseare play before this one, almost all of which had vanished without trace. But in the current season the Adès version has not only been premiered in Germany at the Frankfurt Opera, it has also had a second completely different production in Lübeck by the local opera company there. And, as in other places where it has been heard (Strasbourg, Copenhagen and Santa Fe), the public does seem to go for it – which is gratifying.

Operatic melodic tradition

Music critics who think new serious operas should follow

in the path of Schoenberg and Stockhausen, or at least acknowledge being part of that movement of modernism, sometimes complain about Adès’s feeling for the old operatic melodic tradition. His music for Te Tempest manages to be modern and expressively discordant sometimes, but also to evoke without strain the atmosphere of the seventeenth century. One role in particular, Ariel,

is unlike anything ever heard on the opera stage before – unbelievably stratospheric, way beyond the range of the Queen of the Night in Te Magic Flute, and very demanding to sing. Before Lübeck, every time the opera was performed Ariel had been sung by the wonderful Cyndia Sieden, who created the role at the Garden, in a production which also involved quite a lot of rope- work flying through the air. But in Lübeck somebody new got to do the part, Louise Fribo, who made her debut six years ago at the Royal Danish Opera as Barbarina in Figaro. What is interesting about Teater Lübeck’s

tackling

of the Adès work is the fact that the Lübeck company is not particularly distinctive or unusual. Brogli-Sacher’s fine interpretation of the Wagner epic staged by a Cypriot director

34 ■ newdirections ■ April 2010

Anthony Pilavachi has got as far as

Siegfried without dropping a stitch.

Te Tempest cast

were two-thirds in the local ensemble, a u g m e n t e d with a few guest singers. Te role of Prosero was sung by a Scotish baritone who has been on contract in Lübeck for nine years and therefore is unknown in Britain.

Financial details

I asked Mr Brogli-Sacher for some financial details about

opera in Lübeck whose population is 211,000. Te opera part of the town theatre company gives 109 performances a year in the fine Jugendstil theatre built in 1908. Te ensemble has 11 singers, with five youngish others in the ‘opera studio’. Salaries per month for the singers range from €1,900 up to €3,800 (and I susect as usually in Germany there is a thirteenth month paid, plus large contributions to superannuation and medical insurance). Te city pays nearly €6m in support of its theatre, and the Schleswig-Holstein state government tops that up with almost €10m. Te chorus of 28 was topped up with eight paid extra singers for Te Tempest. Te orchestra is 80-strong. Tis season there are eight new

opera productions being given by the company, and eight revivals of existing productions from previous seasons – 16 works in all – including Evita and Leslie Bricusse’s Jekyl and Hyde, as well

as Masked Bal, Gypsy Baron, Arabela, Andrea Chenier, Cunning Litle Vixen, and Turandot.

Meanwhile in Cardiff Welsh

National Opera is this season managing only one home-grown new production, Meistersinger staged by Richard Jones. Germany is the world’s operatic engine. Let’s hope they keep at it. If they ever stopped, it would be the end of opera as a living art form. ND Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40