Scenes from two marriages: Tobias Kratzer presents a ‘Frau ohne Schatten’ at the Deutsche Oper as drama between the desire to have children, artificial insemination, surrogacy and divorce. Donald Runnicles fully exploits the score with all its facets and colourful nuances without covering up the singers.
You have to hand it to Tobias Kratzer: The Munich star director always knows how to create impressive storytelling, which is now fully at the service of the piece written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, even in the face of a complex, if not convoluted and overloaded plot such as Richard Strauss’ “Frau ohne Schatten”.
At the end of his ‘Strauss cycle’ at the Deutsche Oper, this may not always be entirely convincing, but it is an adequate means of creating an appealing interpretation with a view to conveying the material with an abundance of symbolism, mythologising and, above all, that term used by the composer himself, the ‘musician’s armour’ through the huge orchestra.
Rainer Sellmaier has placed a central, playable turntable on the stage, which is separated by a wall in the centre and represents the living space for the two married couples of the well-off Empress and Emperor and the dyer Barak and his wife, who run a laundry here and, together with Barak’s three brothers (Philipp Jekal, Padraic Rowan, Thomas Cilluffo as a trio of lower-class singers), belong to the precariat.
It is the classic marriage between man and woman that Kratzer has placed at the centre of his interpretation. A woman without a shadow is the one who has not yet had children. This is also already the case with Strauss as an allegory of the traditional family image. The Empress is childless. Right at the beginning, the ghostly messenger delivers the Amazon parcels with the equipment for the children’s room. Patrick Guetti sings this with a wonderfully flowing, precise and warm bass.
Together with the stern wet nurse, the Empress sets off in search of a suitable surrogate mother. In Barak’s laundry, his wife is dissatisfied with herself and the world. She fries fish fingers (the abstruse work idea of the voices of the unborn children singing from the pan is a good solution) and watches television adverts from the Fertility Company (‘We can help’), which wants to fulfil children’s wishes. Videos of artificial fertilisation of egg cells flicker on and off in the background.
Catherine Foster sings and performs the role of Barak’s wife with intelligent disposition and authentic sincerity. At first, she refuses to be artificially inseminated. This quickly changes thanks to small luxury gifts from the wet nurse and the Empress. Eventually she does undergo the procedure. Which fails, as she suffers a miscarriage. Her vocal duet with her husband Barak in the third act is a vocal highlight of the evening with radiant, flowing intonation. Jordan Shanahan as Barak scores throughout the premiere evening with a nuanced, precise, softly timbred but highly intelligible tenor.
Clay Hilley as the Emperor, who was still a little forced at the beginning with a slightly too expressive voice, convinces at the beginning of the second act with a flowing, beautifully shaped tenor. The decisive scene in this marriage turns out to be the house party, at which he first tries to flirt with a younger woman, only to get drunk and go back to bed with his wife after a brief flirtation in a club. The motif of the falcon flickers wonderfully from the pit. After all, Strauss’ opera is also a hymn to love. And so, at the end of the opera, the two find themselves reunited on the kitchen counter as a loving couple.
But Kratzer doesn’t quite trust the cosy idyll: Barak and his wife try couple’s counselling, but end up in front of the divorce notary. This is not a complete demystification of the fairytale world as announced in the programme, but a bit of refraction is always good for the play.
Marina Prudenskaya plays the Nurse as a strict, bourgeois string-puller. Her mezzo is very intelligible and expressive, but on this premiere evening she tends to be a little indifferent in the lower registers. At the end, her sudden desire to have children also breaks out: At the paediatric clinic, where same-sex couples also pick up their ordered children, she tries to steal an infant. In keeping with the radiantly composed C major finale, Kratzer concludes with a nursery with many child extras.
Daniela Köhler plays the Empress with youthful freshness in a large but lyrical interpretation of her profound soprano. She unpacks the baby presents for the birth party in the melancholy violin solo in the third act with nuance, beauty of form and great enthusiasm.
The choirs, directed by Jeremy Bines, cannot be seen but know how to make their voices heard concisely and precisely. In general, ‘Die Frau ohne Schatten’ is so large-scale that it is always important not to drown out the singers. And Donald Runnicles on the podium of the Deutsche Oper orchestra succeeds in doing this across the board: in the interludes with a large, controlled outburst, restrained in the dialogue scenes, agile and precise in the transitions and tricky rhythmic changes, a highly suggestive performance with gripping tension across all acts.
The premiere audience cheered, with a few boos that seemed unjustified.