Conductor Marc Albrecht, Director Christof Loy, Sets Johannes Leiacker, Costumes Barbara Drosihn, Light Olaf Winter. Cast: Heliane Sara Jakubiak, The ruler, her husband Josef Wagner, The stranger Brian Jagde, The messenger Okka von der Damerau, The doorman Derek Welton, The blind judge Burkhard Ulrich, The young man Gideon Poppe, Chorus and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
I haven’t been to any musical events with a live audience since the Berlin Phil concert on 4th September, first because of a bad cold, which gave me paroxysms of coughing for a few weeks – quite inappropriate for concert-going….. And then, given that my domestic partner was going on a much-looked-forward-to walking holiday in Greece, I decided not to go to any big audience events until after she left, to ensure I didn’t give her Covid, with domestic consequences too distressing to think about. So 6th October was to be first live event I’d been at for over 4 weeks – I had a ticket booked for a Halle concert (Elder conducting yet another Heldenleben but also Pavel Kolesnikov playing Rachmaninov’s 3rd piano concerto). However, because of the ripples of the train strikes of 5th and 8th December, there was neither a train home from Manchester to my village after the concert nor a train to Buxton from which I could have got a taxi, and our shared car wasn’t available. So I decided to take an evening out to get to hear Das Wunder der Heliane by Korngold in a streamed recording from 2018 by the Deutsche Oper, at home.
I had never heard a note of this work before and, I have to say I was rather more impressed by it than I thought I would be. It’s a glorious late Romantic mash up of Richard Strauss, Mahler, Puccini and a few others. I found it more attractive than what I’ve heard of Strauss’ late operas between Arabella and Capriccio (maybe Daphne is an exception to that broad statement), with washes of colour, gorgeous harmonies, and glittering polytonal hues. Perhaps its sound world is a bit dense and monotonous after a while and maybe there is a lack of variation which would prevent it being seen as a masterpiece – there are not many distinctive melodies (though the aria “Ich ging zu ihm (“I went to him”) is very fine/. But all in all it still feels to be a gripping stage piece. Korngold was 30 when it was first performed but after 1933 it fell into a void, and has only recently begun to be occasionally performed in the 21st century – though much less so than The Dead City, which has two new productions planned in the UK between 2022 and 2023. It’s quite a long opera – maybe 2 hours and 40 minutes and occasionally I thought it would have worked better if it was 30 minutes or so shorter.
In essence it’s a fairy tale, a story of love, hatred and redemption of an almost Wagnerian kind, which (most of this is courtesy of Wikipedia) revolves around the Ruler, who is a cold despot incapable of love, his forlorn wife Heliane, who is loveless, a Dionysian Stranger with a message of love and joy, and a people in the Ruler’s kingdom waiting for a redeeming miracle. The Ruler suffers because he is unable to win the love of his wife Heliane. Since he is unhappy, he will not tolerate his subjects living in happiness. The Stranger had recently arrived in the land and was bringing the people joy; as a result, he is arrested and sentenced to death. The story concerns the love of Heliane for the Stranger when she meets him the night before his execution, the rage of her husband, and her protestations of innocence (though she is in love with the Stranger there is no sexual contact – though she does bare herself before him). Eventually the Stranger commits suicide and the enraged Ruler says she will only be judged innocent if she can make the Stranger rise from the dead. Eventually of course she does that, the Stranger offers a blessing to the people and banishes the ruler whose power is broken. The Stranger takes Heliane in his arms. ‘United in their love they rise to heaven’ says Wikipedia
The production offered a single set for the three acts, a slightly 20’s art-deco large function room with wooden panels and daylight coming through windows in the ceiling. The costumes too were sort-of 20’s, predominantly in dark brownish/blackish colours with the exception of Heliane, for the most part in white and the Stranger in a grey suit. Movement and interaction between the characters seemed natural and unforced. The director staged the ending – which could be a nightmare to get right – very effectively: slowly everyone except Heliane and the Stranger falls to the floor, as though asleep, and they both walk out of the room into a new life – I guess justifying the one set approach, so that its constrictions can be felt to have been thrown off at the end.
I thought Sara Jakubiak as Heliane was terrific. She’s not someone I’d heard of before, but she had the voice, the looks and the ability to be convincing in close-up in her acting that made her a really powerful exponent of the role. Brian Jagde as the Stranger was strong-voiced, if a bit unrelenting (but that maybe how it’s written) but, for someone who’s meant to be charismatic, a bit stolid and unmoving. We didn’t really get a glimpse of any manic zeal. Josef Wagner was I though very convincing as the Ruler. The glimpses we saw of Marc Albrecht seemed to indicate he was enjoying himself hugely
John's musical journey 