It is not an easy opera. From the first note, it intends to make people uncomfortable with its violent portrait of vanity and human greed. But as was demonstrated yesterday in its Spanish premiere at the Real, it captures the public and leaves them with no escape. The adaptation of Shakespeare's King Lear that Berliner Aribert Reimann composed half a century ago triumphed this Friday among the Madrid public with an unusual naturalness, taking into account that for some its experimental avant-garde vocabulary is still indigestible. Five years ago it would have been unthinkable that in a premiere performance of the Real with a 20th century opera the defections in the middle part would be so few. And the evening ended with a standing ovation and six minutes of applause.
The secret of success lies in a sensational confluence of factors: on the one hand, the disturbing and abrasive score that alone recreates that filial tragedy in which the arrogant father has to go through a tremendous storm of violence by his thirsty daughters. of power, to come to understand, already in full desolation, the value of human affection. Reimann's work is a tour de force for the orchestra, especially rich in percussion, and especially for the singers, whose vocal line seeks dissonance without being out of tune. But it achieves a miraculous balance between musical expression and the cadence of the text, sprinkled with Shakespearean reflections.
"The king believes that happiness comes from stupid equality," says the jester who embodies the clairvoyance of the protagonist himself when he decides to be magnanimous and give the inheritance to his daughters. Or "when parents wear rags their children become blind"...
On the other hand, there is Calixto Bieito's montage, which adds its truth to Shakespeare's truth. The Burgos - and Catalan - stage director surpasses himself opera by opera, carrying out in this a powerful theatrical exercise for which he uses contained violence. And he administers it at a very slow tempo. Here it is shown in a different register that has nothing to do with the recent L'incoronazione di Poppea del Liceu or with the brilliant Angel of Fire from Real itself. Here he borders on German expressionism, even in the pictorial. Well, he strips the scene to give priority to the emotions, harmonizing the wide range of them that this monumental Shakespeare hides. "It is unfathomable, it is a Sistine Chapel," said the director.
The thirteen singers - and the historic German actor Ernst Alisch in the role of the jester - perform on a stage made of aged and burned boards reminiscent of those of the Globe Theatre, the English playwright's own theater. A wall of them, illuminated from the background, cracks at the moment in which the daughters abandon hypocrisy and show their true face, thus evoking the inhospitable forest in which their father, Lear, is exiled and dispossessed... A canvas that remember some
Premiered in Paris in 2016, this production was scheduled to arrive at the Real when the coronavirus pandemic broke out. And it was necessary to wait four more years in order to have the same cast, led by Bo Skovhus. The Danish baritone, who is still in top physical and vocal shape, as if two decades had not passed since his remembered Billy Budd del Liceu, manages to keep his entire being in a sustained state of anguish/regret/embarrassment/hysteria, without ever falling. never in overacting. Just like the rest of the cast. Another prodigy of Bieito's directing of actors... "Remember Bo, in the end what you see is the cosmos," were the last instructions over the phone before the Madrid premiere.
The cast remains the same, yes, although with some exceptions. The soprano Ángeles Blancas, winner of the Ópera XXI award for her celebrated Jenufa from the Teatro de la Maestranza, plays the cruelest of the daughters, Goneril, who ends up committing suicide due to the impossibility of obtaining power, but not before having put an end to all the world. Also Danish, Susanne Elmark plays Cordelia, her good daughter, who refuses to flatter her father and gets him to disinherit her.
-Yes, but now you will see how the father is going to give the inheritance to Cordelia.
-That's sung. But then the sisters will kill her to prevent it.
Two elegant women from Madrid's jet set were having this conversation during the intermission, as they moved through the corridors of the Real, tremendously interested in the new opera. Or in the history of his inheritance.
And indeed, the kind daughter will try to save the aging monarch, now senile, in a scene in which Bieito evokes Mantegna's Lamento sul Cristo morto. Although later he will be the one to mourn her, after being strangled by her sister Regan (Swedish soprano Erika Sunnegårdh). The performers were highly applauded at the end of the massacre, like the rest of the cast: roles for which authentic soloists are necessary.
Maestro Asher Fisch received a loud ovation along with the orchestra, although in Bieito's absence (he only spent the first week of rehearsals in Madrid) no one from the stage team came out to say hello. There was no need: the applause was unequivocal, this time there would have been no protests for the montage. The male choir, directed by José Luis Basso, made its contribution, perfectly integrated into the millimeter action.
Aribert Reimann was not among the audience, since at 87 he is not in a position to travel, but in his place the composer sent his doctor! At the Paris premiere he even admitted that he would not have imagined his opera in this way, but that Bieito had undoubtedly improved it. Dr. Ralf Berthel, who turned out to be a fan of Jordi Savall, agreed that this version of Lear "goes straight to the core" and assured that he would tell Reimann in detail everything that happened in the coliseum in the Spanish capital.
Why do you think that Verdi, like Debussy, Berlioz or others previously tried to make this Shakespeare an opera and did not dare?
"Because it was huge, every character was... Reimann did it at the request of Fischer-Dieskau, the baritone," noted Dr. Berthel. And he undertook it obsessively. By the way, Claus Henneberg's German libretto is not taken from a current translation of Shakespeare's original from 1605, but from one from 1770. "Upon discovering it, the librettist said that that period German did capture the necessary tone." It is remembered by the doctor himself who, obviously, knows his patient beyond his anatomy. At 87 years old, Reimann is still active and is currently in the middle of a new opera based on Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde's classic. The Deutsche Oper Berlin has announced that it would premiere it, although at the moment there are no delivery times.
Finally, it is worth noting an essential factor in the success of Lear at the Real: the persistent didactic line that the theater carries from the artistic direction. First with the daring Gerard Mortier, who perhaps found an audience still refractory to the news. And then with the sagacious programmatic line of Joan Matabosch, who has managed to get the theater-going crowd interested in the next title, The Passenger, by the nationalized Soviet Pole Mieczysław Weinberg, who suffered from Nazi and also Stalinist anti-Semitism. Based on the novel by Zofia Posmysz, he finished it in 1968 but censorship kept it in the drawer until its premiere in Moscow in 2006...
