Shortly before death, life passes by a dying person once again. This is at least a common assumption. In the opera ‘Fin de partie’ (Endgame), originally written by Samuel Beckett, with music and newly interpreted by György Kurtág, the life of the main protagonist Hamm, who is otherwise confined to a wheelchair, ends on a Ferris wheel.
Under the direction of Johannes Erath, the Lindenoper is now presenting a new production of the work, which premiered in 2018.
It is just one of several moments in which Kaspar Glarner‘s stage design is highly symbolic. On the one hand, the Ferris wheel stands for Hamm’s memories of his childhood and, on the other, for his entire life, which went round in circles and was never characterised by positive progress. The ‘endgame’ that Hamm has to play here on the Ferris wheel is characterised by long suffering and seems to have no end. Although the Ferris wheel is colourful, it has fallen and is lying overturned on the stage, and the stage lighting by Olaf Freese makes it look gloomy.
The music, conducted by Alexander Soddy, is just as gloomy at times. At the same time, the music is experimental, which is immediately apparent in the prologue, which, like the epilogue, frames the performance with a poem sung in English. The orchestra also uses instruments that are unusual for an opera, such as the Eastern European accordion bayan and a cimbalom.
The singing of Hamm (Laurent Naouri), his servant Clov (Bo Skovhus) and his parents Nell (Dalia Schaechter) and Nagg (Stephan Rügamer) does not come across as full of fervour, as we are used to from classical operas, but alternates back and forth between suffering voices and sly irony.
Despite the sombre atmosphere, amused giggles can be heard from time to time in the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, which is not full to capacity. Beckett’s protagonists are clowns, but in tragic roles in which almost everything fails. ‘Nothing is funnier than misfortune,’ says Nell to Nagg. The couple can no longer walk either. They have lost their legs in an accident and have to live with their son in rubbish bins, some of which already resemble urns. Dirty rubbish bins in contrast to white costumes. A classic alarm clock stands there and shows how time slips away.
Their dreary everyday life is bland, their singing plaintive to provocative, silly and cynical. Their own son is a ridiculous nuisance with his outlandish thoughts. The play is written in song, in French – the audience has to be attentive.
Here, no one listens to the other, the futile attempt to retell the old joke about the Englishman who went to the tailor, which had created a connection when Nagg told it to Nell on the engagement trip on Lake Como, becomes a divisive, leaden farce.
There is a mutual dislike between parents and son. When his mother dies, Hamm has his servant dispose of her in a black bin liner. He forces his father to listen to a story he tells him and offers him a chocolate in return. The father is deceived by Hamm. The chocolate does not exist. In the background on stage, films are shown that bring to mind a happier but lost world when the parents were younger and full of vitality. As the father confesses, they never gave their son any love or care. Hamm calls him his ‘producer’.
Hamm and Clov also hate each other. But their mutual dependence keeps them together. Everything is constantly repeated, the almost three-dimensional stage set simultaneously shows the here and now in a burning glass and, parallel to this, the constant repetition of the daily routine, waking up, getting ready for the day, getting ready for the night of the wheelchair-bound Hamm by the servant Clov. Impressively depicted by negative films running in fast motion. The master needs his servant because he is in a wheelchair, and the servant needs a job. The wheelchair is half bicycle, referring to the earlier tandem accident, but not functional as such – mobility and freedom are prevented. It is only when Hamm realises that his painkillers have run out that he knows that after the death of his parents, things will also be over for him. ‘I don’t need you any more,’ he says to Clov.
Hamm has a dog, but it is already dead or was never alive or was stuffed afterwards – you don’t know, it accompanies him faithfully and Clov knows how important it is to its master, he puts it lovingly in his arms, a single spot of caring that makes you shudder – as its body shell lies on the ground and it had already set off in the direction of the Ferris wheel to appear as a glittering clown.
After one act, it’s all over. György Kurtág has shortened half of the play. However, the hopelessness still unfolds its effect due to the sometimes paralysing lengths. In Samuel Beckett’s original version, civilisation is in the process of disintegration following a catastrophe. This is reflected in the dysfunctional family waiting to die. In Kurtág’s work, this state of the world can be surmised. There is no outside help for the four protagonists and in his final performance on the Ferris wheel, Hamm is left in solitude.
There are shouts of bravo and well-deserved applause, the open-minded audience spans many generations.
György Kurtág has succeeded in creating a convincing opera experiment that definitely deserves many more spectators and listeners in the future.