Godot’s waiting for Erwartung
OperaI 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
This pairing was already done by Jessye Norman. It works beautifully.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzAKD1EcjdA
Elektra
Fantastic combination…I could also image Erwartung paired with Senza Sangue by the late Peter Eötvös or Bartok´s Bluebeard´s Castle
Erwartung goes well with Bluebeard’s Castle, as was done at Covent Garden in 2001.
I recall the Met doing “Erwartung” with “Bluebeard’s Castle’ and I’m 99% certain that I was there.
In 1989, the Met paired
Erwartung with Bluebeard’s Castle. Jessye Norman sang in both and Samuel Ramey joined her in Bluebeard.
Thank you. I’m sure I was there!
Morton Feldman’s “Neither” (libretto by Samuel Beckett)
I sure would love to see/hear Feldman’s “Neither” again.
Bluebeard’s Castle. Robert Lepage’s production for Canadian Opera Company – which I think traveled to EIF – was just stunning.
Billy: ‘I have a theory: Godot was not waiting for Erwartung. Godot did not appear because he was the mad woman’s murdered lover.’
“Bluebeard’s Castle.”
Peter Maxwell Davies:
“Eight Songs for a Mad King”
Why not together with ‘Von heute auf morgen’ and ‘Die glückliche Hand’, his other short operas. I saw all three at the Leipzig Opera in 2008–an amazing evening.