Cologne scraps its major modern opera
NewsMessage received:
Due to the current incidence of infection and the tense pandemic situation, the Gürzenich Orchestra and the Cologne Opera have decided to postpone the production of Die Soldaten’.
Its composer Bernd Alois Zimmermann is the city’s most successful modernist.
Photo: Laura Aikin as Marie in Die Soldaten, Salzburg, 2012
‘Die Soldaten’ is an impressive outburst of atonal modernism, characteristic of the German postwar hangover. Zimmermann developed the idea of ‘die Kugelform der Seit’, the spherical form of time, and not as a line from past via present towards future. This is basically a combination of both a postmodern concept and the common sense of tradition which defines some musical values as atemporal and thus, open to reviving and development. Often Zimmermann combined different styles of music, which was controversial at the time – but not so much in his Soldaten.
The notion of time as a lineair thing and the idea that there are timeless things, find different meanings in science (lineair progressive developments to ever greater understanding) and the arts (where there is an accumulation of means but no artistic progress as such). In Zimmermann’s soldiers things happen simultaneously, hence his idea of things being present all the time. He takes it quite literally though, not symbolically.
The result is a post-apocalyptic world of awfulness, aptly realised in the music, harking back to early 20C Viennese aesthetics which were after WW II deemed the only way to depict a German morally-acceptable perspective:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dTXLxNIEcJ0
Zimmermann, inclined to pessimism and depression, committed suicide. For him, music was obviously not a liberating agent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernd_Alois_Zimmermann
I think a production of Die Soldaten should come with a health warning.
This was a new production by Calixto Bieito following François-Xavier Roth’s previous Cologne performances in 2018. Performances in Cologne, Hamburg and Paris. It’s a huge cast so very tricky to manage potential infection. Both Hamburg and Paris currently still selling tickets – is it just Cologne performance that is cancelled?
Hamburg has just posted a revised Zimmermann programme.
Probably they incorporated infection danger as part of the production.
Fascinating interview here with Michael Gielen, conductor of the first performance of ‘ Die Soldaten’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCg5Zx-qVFw
Interesting…..
That interview reveals clearly the typical thinking of postwar modernism:
– there should be infinite resources: the more, the better;
– complexity as a value in itself: the more the better (romantic cult of transgression of boundaries = progress);
– taking things literally: structure = rationalistic structure, not organic structure, the craziness of serialism: sterile;
– culture of the players, of the singers never taken into account;
– audiences don’t count, they have to swallow it because it’s good for them (reason never explained);
– if the performance is a scandal, this shows the artistic and historic importance of the work, because Schoenberg’s , Berg’s and Stravinsky’s early 20C scandals had demonstrated how wrong the boozjwazee audience always has been.
Typically Gielen mentions his eye problems as a result of trying to read complex modernist scores. Zimmermann himself had eye problems, probably for the same reason.
Zimmermann wanted to expose violence as a driving factor in interhuman relations. Well, after WW II there were hardly any people left who needed to be reminded. What he wanted to ‘say’ could have been said entirely and completely and probably much better within the practical limitations of opera productions. But he wanted to express things in a literal way, instead of in a metaphoric or symbolic way. It is like telling a story by trying to literally re-enact it in reality. Opera is, like literature and painting, a condensed and selective rendering of content.
Health warning or not, I found the Salzburg 2012 performance of Die Soldaten mesmerizing. The link to that full performance was taken off YouTube.
Would anyone have different link to the performance they’d be willing to share?
The 2012 Salzburg performance is what was released on Blu-ray by Euroarts. That Blu-ray release is still readily available from online classical shops like JPC, and well worth a purchase.
Thank you!