Godot’s waiting for Erwartung

I have just seen a dazzling production in Madrid of Arnold Schoenberg’s suicide monodrama Erwartung. Rather than being depressing it was elevated to a superior analytical plane by being paired with Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine, which is also about a betrayed woman contemplating self-destruction.

The two one-handers were conjoined by an intimate comic monologue in Spanish by the celebrated Almodovar actress Rossy de Palma. The Teatro Real was totally sold out and the experience (which I shall write about elsewhere) was transcendental.

Meanwhile, I hear that the opera in Wuppertal has put on a different companion piece to Erwartung. It is Ethel Smyth’s long-forgotten 1902 opera The Forest, which the FAZ finds ‘scenically memorable and musically brilliant’.

OK, readers. Can anyone come up with better pairings for Erwartung?

pictured: Malin Byström as the woman in Madrid’s Erwartung