Doesn't it just rot your socks! Here
it is, we think, a chance to see Erich Wolfgang Korngold's
most important opera, Die Tote Stadt (The
Dead City). Many of us know its music from recordings.
Some of it is beautiful and all of it is powerful
and intriguing. All that has been missing is a chance
to see it acted as well as hear it sung.
Unfortunately, this wonderfully sung DVD is best
experienced with the video portion turned off. Director
Inga Levant has overlaid the production with so many
layers of gaudy symbolism, alterations to the plot
and sundry mischief that it's hard to penetrate to
the heart of what Korngold and his librettist Paul
Schott had to say. I don't want to belabour the point,
but there is far too much spurious action and distracting
stagecraft and no one coming to this opera for the
first time is likely to make much sense of it.
Granted, some of the gimmicks are very striking,
and a modest sprinkling of them might have made an
otherwise straight production more pointed. But the
opera is surrealistic enough in its unadorned form
that its audience is taken on an an already incredible
emotional, even psychic, adventure.
Tersten Kerl's Paul is way over the top dramatically.
He comes across as a surly, demented slob that no
one is likely to identify with. His singing is absolutely
gorgeous, though, particularly in the opera's one
"hit tune," Marietta's Song. Marietta,
with whom Paul shares this gorgeous duet (actually
the other way around) is equally stunning in the voice
department. She gets the character exactly right too:
a girl whom you might hesitate to take home to mother,
but a radiantly beautiful person within.
The other two principals . Uri Betukov as Frank and
Brigitta Svenden as Brigitta, sing their roles well
too and, given the weirdness that Levant lays upon
their characters, are reasonably convincing dramatically.
Die Tote Stadt, first produced when Korngold
was all of twenty-three, was the fourth of his seven
operas. His musical language has been described as
an amalgam of Puccini and Richard Strauss, but one
hears echos of Wagner and Mahler too and, very occasionally,
even Verdi. It is not so much derivative as eclectic
and, at it's best, it is very powerful indeed.
For more information on Korngold, his life and work,
see the review of his Violin
Concerto in the Sound Recordings section.
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