Die Gezeichneten - The branded by Franz Schreker

[pjme]

Great ! I got tickets for this performance in Amsterdam.
I'll come back to it tomorrow with more details ( must work early..)

The music is really impressive ( the Koncertgebouw Orchestra!), the staging....dull & rather silly ( an orgy in underwear).
But then Schreker's own libretto ( ca 1915-1918) isn't easy to come to terms with ,and isn't a exemple of logic and clarity in the first place...




Peter

[uffeviking]

We discussed this outstanding opera in the old forum. Here is one of the many posts:

http://www.good-music-guide.com/forum/index.php/topic,10308.0.html


Enjoy your evening and then tell us about it. Can't wait! Your blurb does not say who directed it. Since it's Amsterdam I hoped it would be Pierre Audi.

[pjme]

I left the Muziektheater with mixed feelings yesterday. Nothing wrong in the pit : Ingo Metzmacher & the Concertgebouworchestra feel very much at home in this grandly excessive score and I was constantly surprised by the sheer richness of sound, the many exquisite instrumental combinations , the neverending stream of melody. A huge  decadent Art Nouveau construction to be admired at a ... safe distance.
Very good and -literaly-committed singers/actors : Gabriel Sadé as Alviano and Kristine Ciesinski as Carlotta, Scott Hendricks as the evil & handsome beast Tamaré....Veteran wolfgang Schone as Lodovico Nardi ( but the cast is much larger- there are ca 30 characters).

Austrian Director Martin Kusej made this production for Stuttgart and he discarded firmly every reference to Schrekers own stage directions. Neither luxurious 16th century palaces, silk or velvet, gold panelled rooms, nor glorious Italian landscapes or blueish horizons....Everything is black and ugly,dirty ,often blood stained. A nightmarish ironmongery and hall-of-mirrors combined. It worked more or less in the first and second act, but could not convince in act three when the action takes place on Elysium, an island filled with the wonders of Science and Art,Beauty and Wisdom....
Kusej made the difficult plot even more obscure by dressing all the leading characters in plain, dark or white costumes.
The  silly orgy ( chorus members in underwear) ,strobosscope effects and lots of blood did not change this pseudo Shakespearean play into a Greek drama.
Even so - Schreker is getting attention . His music will get a chance to survive.

Peter

[uffeviking]

Thank you for reporting back! I am sorry the directing was so, 'different'. In the Nikolaus Lehnhoff production at the 2005 Salzburg Festival, Schreker's instructions also were not followed, but the venue of the Felsenreitschule was used for an astonishing effect fitting this opera.

If you can, try to get the EuroArts edition of the DVD and really enjoy Die Gezeichneten.

[pjme]

Yes, I saw photographs of that production and read about Lehnhoff's intentions. His interpretation seems to fit Schreker's tragedy much better.

Stiil, a day in Amsterdam is always a pleasure!

[uffeviking]

Peter, you helped me decide which opera DVD to watch this afternoon. From your description I can only say there is a difference like day and night between the production you saw and the Lehnhoff. Just one scene, the Orgy: All participants, male and female are dressed alike in huge black ostrich feather hats, white body stockings and black tangas over them; thigh-high black leather boots to finish off the costumes. The most important aspect: Nobody moved! Everyone stood in relaxed poses, almost like statues and the emphasis was completely on the ravishing music conducted by Nagano.

Darned, I want T.C. or Nigel to come back here, they always found big collections of opera photos. I would like to see more of this Amsterdam production, especially what Martin Kusej did with the tragic love scene between Adorno and Carlotta.

[pjme]

Hi Uffe, that -important & moving- love scene became a photo shoot. Carlotta is no longer a painter, but a - ca 1920- photographer. Every snapshot she takes is than doubled by another look-alike actor ,who takes Alviano's pose - at the climax the strobes come in.....Too bad!
The orgy was unbelievable in every way : chorus members undress and "mime" ( minutes long) intercourse : boring & ridiculous.
Here are some photographs :

[pjme]

And some more :




The love scene

[pjme]

And more  :





The wonderfull island Elysium :

[uffeviking]

Thank you Peter! What a shame this director misrepresented Schrekers gigantic opera and made it into a bloody, gory exhibit. This Carlotta is a rather aged virgin!  I hope she at least sang well.

I hope it has not turned the audience away from any further exploration of Schreker. I have a CD of his Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin, a reconstruction of the 1913 version commissioned by the Schreker Foundation and performed in 2003 at the Kiel Opera. I don't know if it was filmed, hopefully it was and we can get a DVD of it. I have listened to it only once and needs a repeat or two to fully grasp it, but so far I like what I heard.

[Chaszz]

Thank you Peter! What a shame this director misrepresented Schrekers gigantic opera and made it into a bloody, gory exhibit. This Carlotta is a rather aged virgin!  I hope she at least sang well.

I hope it has not turned the audience away from any further exploration of Schreker. I have a CD of his Das Spielwerk und die Prinzessin, a reconstruction of the 1913 version commissioned by the Schreker Foundation and performed in 2003 at the Kiel Opera. I don't know if it was filmed, hopefully it was and we can get a DVD of it. I have listened to it only once and needs a repeat or two to fully grasp it, but so far I like what I heard.

New York City classical radio station WQXR broadcast part II of this opera Saturday as part of a series of neglected works. All I can say is, more! more! more! what a composer!!

[Chaszz]

Would anyone specifically recommend any other operas by Schreker?

[bhodges]

I'm going out on a limb a bit, recommending a piece that I've not yet heard  , but friends were basically raving about Der ferne Klang (The Distant Sound) (1910) that just received its first North American staging a few weeks ago at Bard College, so I suspect you might want to seek it out.  One friend who played in the orchestra said it was "just gorgeous."  (I would have gone myself, but the dates didn't work, alas.)

Conductor and festival organizer Leon Botstein has an hour-long talk on the piece here, and the New York Times review is here. 

--Bruce

[listener]

There's also Schatzgräber, Der     is/was on Capriccio  60 012  -    on my stack to be heard again as I've completely forgotten what it's like.

,

[Superhorn]

  Let's hope the Met will do this opera sometime soon and really do justice to it in terms of sets and direction as well as musically, and avoid the eirotrash approch.  Is this a pipe dream?

[Guido]

The opera is Eurotrash! I'm mostly joking, but seriously though it's a seriously disturbing and disturbed plot, the music both completely apt and completely unsettling for the subject matter. It's also fairly ludicrous, but not so ludicrous that it can be laughed off. I actually can't imagine it being staged in the period in which it is set - nothing about the music even begins to hint at it. It's completely in line with Korngold's Die Todte Stadt and Das Wunder die Heliane and Strauss' Agyptische Helena, though where it fails perhaps is that Schreker cannot compose a memorable melody unlike these two. Somehow it very rarely seems ravishing like Strauss and Korngold can be, despite it being on the surface quite similar - maybe because there's more tension than there is release? Too much foreplay and not enough orgasm?! Not sure. The best bits are probably the Overture and then the last 15 or so minutes of Act 1 which has a Korngoldian aria for soprano.

It's incredible that such an nervously febrile, orgasmic, orgiastically lush score can be sustained for such duration, but there it is.

Don't know the other Schreker operas well enough to be able to comment in detail on their similarities/differences, but they're certainly comparable in sound, if not in their intensity and subject matter.

[Guido]

Listening to Der Ferne Klang now and I agree with your friend - some ravishing stuff here, though I find the characters hard to care about. Would love to see it staged.

[Superhorn]

  I got to know this magnificently over-the-top opera from the excellent Decca recording,which is part of the acclaimed Degenerate Music series, conducted by Lothar Zafrosek,and which I think is probably very hard to find now.But if do come across it,grab it!
   Check arkivmusic.com,the best website on the internet for hard-to-find classical CDs.

[Wanderer]

  I got to know this magnificently over-the-top opera from the excellent Decca recording,which is part of the acclaimed Degenerate Music series, conducted by Lothar Zafrosek,and which I think is probably very hard to find now.But if do come across it,grab it!
   Check arkivmusic.com,the best website on the internet for hard-to-find classical CDs.

It's high time they re-issued it (the whole series, actually). It has some portions that were cut from the - otherwise sublime - Salzburg production with Brubaker and Schwanewilms.