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<\/a>Stella Doufexis entertaining the audience as Xerxes @Forster\/Komische Oper<\/p><\/div>\n
Other gestures are just for the sake of having some laughs. During Xerxes\u2019 aria\u2019 \u201cPi\u00f9 che penso alle fiamme del core,\u201d the set is dismantled to reveal cabaret-style lights reading \u201cXerxes\u201d which are then rearranged to read \u201cSex Rex.\u201d Doufexis points to the first word as she sings of her passionate flames, an adolescent touch that nevertheless seemed to delight the audience. The third scene features oversized dancing sheep who, while amusing at first, grow wearing as they began to interrupt the music with their \u2018baas.\u2019 Still, V\u00f6llm\u2019s costumes are so authentic and well crafted\u2014from these creatures to the gilded suits and towering plumed caps of Xerxes and his army to the chorus\u2019 Rafael-like cherub fare\u2014that it was easy to forgive the occasional relapse into directorial indulgence.<\/p>\n
The cast was generally strong throughout, delivering punch\u00a0lines with persuasive comic timing while maintaining high musical standards. Doufexis anchored the production with a velvety timbre, skillful dynamic nuance and a keen sense of Herheim\u2019s highly complex stage concept. When she stepped toward the audience at the end of the opera, eyes widened as if emerging from a time machine, it was hard to suspend one\u2019s disbelief. The mezzo Karolina Gumos was a charismatic, rich-voiced Arsamene, nailing her coloratura in the aria \u201cAmor, tiranno Amor\u201d in which she begs Xerxes to soften. The Swiss soprano Brigitte Geller brought the right touch of beguiling charm to the role of Romilda with a ripe lyric timbre, and Julia Giebel wielded her slightly underpowered soubrette to satisfactory effect as the pesky Atlanta. Katarina Bradic made for an even-voiced, desperate Amastre, and Dimitry Ivashchenko brought a resonant bass to the role of Ariodate. As the servant Elviro, the bass Hagen Matzeit made a stand-out performance in falsetto voice as a disguised flower vendor. Jungh\u00e4nel, an early music specialist, led the orchestra of the Komische Oper in an incisive but muscular account whose charged baroque expression at times compromised a sense of flowing legato, instead underscoring the sharp accents of the German language.<\/p>\n
The Seven Deadly Sins<\/strong><\/p>\nKosky could hardly have chosen a stronger statement of his vision for the Komische Oper than with his new production of Kurt Weill\u2019s Seven Deadly Sins<\/em>, which premiered February 12 and returned this month. To be sure, his 2011 production of Rusalka <\/em>featured gutted sea creatures and a German libretto that was too much to stomach for this reader, who once learned Czech and trekked all the way to Prague to hear Dvorak in its authentic setting (call me a purist). But with his latest undertaking, seen May 20, Kosky reveals an aesthetic restraint that is the antithesis of the slap-happy stagings which dominate the Berlin house. Weill\u2019s Seven Deadly Sins<\/em> was conceived with Bertold Brecht for Balanchine\u2019s Paris company \u2018Les Ballets 1933\u2019 as a ballet chant\u00e9<\/em> for the composer\u2019s two-time wife Lotte Lenya and the dancer wife of the British impresario Edward James. The score seamlessly weaves together popular song, cantata, and dance music, while the text refers to a single protagonist, Anna, who has been sent on a voyage throughout the U.S. to earn money for a small house her family is building in Louisiana. She is accompanied by a hedonistic alter ego whom she refers to as her sister\u2014also named Anna\u2014as she dances and turns tricks along the way, learning the consequences of pride, lust, avarice and other sins. The work conveys an even more direct critique of capitalism than The Three Penny Opera<\/em>, with a prescient understanding of the difficulties that the writers would face upon their imminent exile from Germany.<\/p>\nAs a prelude to the work, Kosky inserts a selection of seven Weill songs ranging from Berlin im Licht<\/em> (1938) to Wie lange noch?<\/em> (1944). Dagmar Manzel, a well-known German actress, emerges slowly from behind closed curtains to join her pianist (Frank Schulte) in a straight cabaret delivery in which she is lit by a single spotlight. As if to foreshadow the desperation Kosky creates in Seven Deadly Sins<\/em>, Manzel desperately tugs at the curtains during Youkali<\/em>, a tango that describes a fictitious utopia, only to pull them back entirely to reveal the orchestra for the central work. As Manzel recounts her travels from Memphis to San Francisco with mounting hysteria, occasionally breaking out into deliberately ungraceful ballet, the male quartet representing Anna\u2019s family sings from darkened balcony boxes above the stage. The most powerful tableau emerges in Los Angeles, where Manzel flap dances with a frozen expression of agony. While guilt-ridden allusions to the horrors of World War Two have become standard fare in Germany, Kosky\u2019s understated, expressionist touch was shockingly relevant in the city whose avant-garde culture once helped breed one of the most powerful artistic collaborations in history.<\/p>\n
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