Deutsche Oper Berlin: “Die frau ohne schatten”

Deutsche Oper Berlin, season 2024/2025
“DIE FRAU OHNE SCHATTEN”
Opera in three acts. Libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Music by Richard Strauss
The Emperor CLAY HILLEY
The Empress DANIELA KÖHLER
The Nurse MARINA PRUDENSKAYA
The Messenger of Keikobad PATRICK GUETTI
Barak, the Dyer JORDAN SHANAHAN
The Dyer’s Wife CATHERINE FOSTER
The One-eyed Man PHILIPP JEKAL
The One-armed Man PADRAIC ROWAN
The Hunchback THOMAS CILLUFFO
The Voice of a Falcon NINA SOLODOVNIKOVA
The Apparition of a Youth CHANCE JONAS-O’TOOLE
The Guardian of the Threshold HYE-YOUNG MOON
The Voice From Above STEPHANIE WAKE-EDWARDS
Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin, Kinderchor und der Junge Chor der
Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin
Statisterie (background actors) der Deutschen Oper Berlin
Conductor Sir Donald Runnicles
Chorus Jeremy Bines
Children’s choir Christian Lindhorst
Production Tobias Kratzer
Stage, costumes Rainer Sellmaier
Light Olaf Winter
Video Janic Bebi, Manuel Braun, Jonas Dahl
Berlin, 26th January 2025
The highly-acclaimed Richard Strauss soprano Lotte Lehmann who sang the Dyer’s Wife in the Viennese premiere of Die Frau ohne Schatten in 1919, was later sorry that she had not done more to popularise the challenging work. Its dense orchestration between chamber music such as in Ariadne auf Naxos for the scenes in Keikobad’s spirit realm and an Elektra-related large orchestra for the human realm, the symbolism beneath Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s libretto, and demanding vocal lines may have limited its immediate appeal. It was first performed in a non-German speaking country by the Wiener Staatsoper in Venice in 1934. After World War II, it started to spread by productions in Buenos Aires, Munich, Vienna, San Francisco, New York and London. The Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin followed suit in 1971 with a legendary production by the young Harry Kupfer and Otmar Suitner conducting, which ran until the early 1980s (a friend of mine is still raving about it). It was successfully staged at the Deutsche Oper Berlin by Philippe Arlaud in 1998 with Christian Thielemann conducting, and by the former director of the opera house Kirsten Harms in 2009. The curtain rose to the third production by Tobias Kratzer on 26th January. Generalmusikdirektor Sir Donald Runnicles does not fill Thielemann’s shoes who eventually established himself as a first-rate Strauss conductor in 1998. Runnicles’ interpretation is not a world of rich and sumptuous sound he relies on but he pushes the Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin to a fierce confrontation of lyricism and transcendence. His tempi are often slow and his dynamics tend to thundering noises, he avoids a sonic feast for the sake of a harshness that might go with the rough and unromantic production but does not have much to do with Strauss’s poetic fairy-tale music. Even the Deutsche Oper Berlin can’t easily pull together a production of FroSch as Strauss himself used to call it (“Frosch” means “frog” in German), the more so as two of the main parts had to be replaced at short notice. Daniela Köhler instead of Jane Archibald sings the Empress very well, her even soprano is able to negotiate an entrance including coloraturas, a trill and a skimpy high D as well as support the high tessitura, and unfold some dramatic power for the galvanising “Vater, bist du’s” in Act three. Clay Hilley has stepped in for David Butt Philip as the Emperor. After his breakthrough as Siegfried a couple of years ago, he tackles the challenging part with stentorian potency at first to handle the passages in uppermost range impeccably, especially in the extended falconry scene of Act two. Catherine Foster as the Dyer’s Wife is nothing short of first-class quality. Her limitless dramatic soprano blasts into the space with abandon, her musical performance may be comparable with Christel Goltz’s in Vienna in 1955. Barak, the Dyer is sung by Jordan Shanahan whose basically lyrical baritone falls shorter than that of his wife, even though his voice stays sonorous throughout and provides a well-needed counterpart to her high reaches. Marina Prudenskaya’s career started at the house twenty years ago in contralto roles such as Gaea in Daphne by Strauss, carried on at the Staatsoper Stuttgart and Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin where she has been in the ensemble since 2013 to take on dramatic mezzosoprano roles of the German, Russian and Italian repertoires. Her Nurse is the temporary highlight of her career with some demands on her lower range and frequent leaps above the stave, which she performs with ease. It’s a crying shame that she can’t show the more fiendish side of the role due to the production that reduces her to the Empress’s mother-in-law. As a well-to-do couple, the Emperors long for a child who they want to get by surrogate motherhood from the humble Dyers. Kratzer’s reading of the plot comes along as an interesting approach in Act one but he clings to it so much that he neglects all the other aspects of the highly complex story line, first and foremost that Emperor and Empress are separated throughout the opera until the Empress refuses to drink from the Fountain of Life and the Emperor is saved from being petrified. He stages the scene as a baby shower thrown by Keikobad who plays the piano while a pregnant friend, the Guardian of the Threshold beautifully sung by Hye-young Moon, offers the Empress the fountain water to drink. Rainer Sellmaier’s single unifying set on the revolving stage shows the Emperors’ stylish apartment and the Dyers’ mean laundry in turns while his costumes underline the social difference. An elaborate video by Janic Bebi, Manuel Braun and Jonas Dahl suggests in Act two that a doctor inseminates the Dyer’s Wife artificially who seems to lose the child in the finale of the act, illogically singing “Barak, ich hab’ es nicht getan!” (Barak, I haven’t done it). Act three starts with a couples therapy for the Dyers, Stephanie Wake-Edwards’ dark contralto Voice From Above is the therapist. The Nurse is arrested by the police after having tried to steal a baby from an obstetrics ward, the Dyers get divorced in the end, and the single father Barak shows up at a kindergarten to call for his daughter in the closing scene. The costly production, including the many background actors and the excellently singing Chor, Kinderchor and Junge Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin, seems to be a completely different story from the libretto and short novel by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. It has the potential for the cuts of the cultural budget the Berlin Senate decided recently. But there is a truth in it, what psychologists and psychiatrists are good for: destroy relationships.