Alemania
Coming Alive
Jesse Simon
Stravinsky’s much-loved Petrushka and Ravel’s lesser-known L’Enfant et les Sortilèges are connected by a central notion of animation: in the former the three puppets are given an autonomy that extends beyond the puppet-master’s hands, while in the latter a series of inanimate objects are brought mysteriously to life for the purpose of punishing a wayward child. Indeed, the two works would seem an obvious choice for a double-bill, and it is perhaps only the restrictions of genre that have prevented the two from appearing together more often. Traditional notions of ballet and opera, however, proved largely irrelevant to the theatre group 1927; their astonishing new productions at the Komische Oper, in which the dazzling orchestration of each score was matched by unceasing visual invention, made for an evening of near-constant delight.
The staging of each work involved live actors and singers synchronised with animated projections. It was a risky approach in so far as anything less than a flawless execution would have threatened to break the enchantment by drawing attention to the mechanics behind the artifice. Yet everything was seamless. The brilliance of the stagecraft produced in the audience a constant sense of wonder, and the stories unfolded at a such a furious pace that it was all but impossible not to become completely immersed. With each new scene and its attendant set-pieces, the distinction between stage-magic and real magic became increasingly blurred.
The approach was most successful in Petrushka, which opened in high gear and somehow managed to sustain an extraordinary level of energy and inspiration for some forty spellbinding minutes. The story was presented not as a ballet, but something between a pantomime and a circus act. Petrushka the clown, Ptitshka the acrobat and Patap the strongman appeared first as silent film projections but soon emerged into the real world of the stage; yet despite their newfound physical being, their actions were still guided by the large animated hands of the sinister puppeteer. Petrushka in the prison of the puppeteer’s box longed for the love of Ptitshka, but his desire for freedom was even stronger; and while the early scenes sketching the love triangle were all wonderful, the whole production gathered immeasurably in exuberance during the extended sequence of Petrushka’s escape into the large and overwhelming world of the funfair. After a series of adventures – culminating in an indescribably brilliant dance routine with two animated Cossack dogs that would, on its own, have been worth the price of admission – Petrushka is re-captured, but is able in the closing moments to find one final means of escape.
Stravinsky: Petrushka. 1927 (Suzanne Andrade, Esme Appleton, Paul Barritt), concept, animation and direction. Markus Poschner, conductor. Berlin Komische Oper, January 2017 © Iko Freese, 2017
The strength of the production lay in the fact that 1927 were able to find a visual analogue for nearly every flute chirp and snare crack of Stravinsky’s elaborate score; certainly the self-contained world of the story – a Russian funfair populated by an assortment of grotesque characters – never suffered from a lack of clever flourishes and ingenious sight gags. Yet it was the tireless performance of Tiago Alexandre Fonseca in the title role which gave the staging its humanity. With an expressive face and a physical prowess that would have kept him employed during the silent film era, Mr Fonseca delivered a tour de force of rope climbing, trampolining and running through nightmare worlds, all while conveying the high emotional stakes of his attempted escape.
Perhaps the only failing of Petrushka is that it set the bar for the evening impossibly high; although the staging of L’Enfant et les Sortilèges was similarly rich in ideas, it could not quite maintain the manic energy or constant visual invention of the evening’s first half. Which is not to say there wasn’t much to enjoy. Ravel’s delightful fable, which tells the story of a child who destroys its room and is then hounded by the destroyed objects, has a cast which includes a teapot, a maths textbook and several species of animal. It is notoriously difficult to stage convincingly, but in bypassing the physical constraints of a more conventional production, 1927’s mixture of animation and live action came admirably close to the story’s fantastic spirit.
As in Petrushka, 1927 sought to give visual form to each beat of the score, and the most immediately gripping scenes – the child drowning in a teacup, or being snatched from a tree-branch by a dragonfly – drew clear inspiration from Ravel’s most excitable flourishes of orchestration. Yet these scenes were interspersed with moments where one could feel the desire for spectacle pulling awkwardly against the narrative demands of music and dialogue. If the child’s nightmare world did not quite convey the same consistency as Petrushka’s funfair, the child’s eventual transformation yielded a touchingly optimistic conclusion that was sweet but not cloying.
Ravel: L’Enfant et les Sortilèges. 1927 (Suzanne Andrade, Esme Appleton, Paul Barritt), concept, animation and direction. Markus Poschner, conductor. Berlin Komische Oper, January 2017 © Iko Freese, 2017
Nadja Mchantaf, in her finest scenes, brought an essential undercurrent of doubt to the central figure of the child; if there were a few moments when the presiding sweetness of her delivery seemed oddly matched to the evil intentions of the character, she had little difficulty illuminating Ravel’s gently winding melodic phrases. She received strong support from a solid ensemble cast (including several singers who remained offstage) most of whom covered multiple roles; Talya Liebermann as the Sun and Esgi Kutlu as the mother were both especially engaging. The evening was further enhanced by unsurprisingly fine choral work from Vocalconsort Berlin.
Markus Poschner’s spirited traversal of Petrushka emphasised both the percussive energy and the exaggerated carnival spirit of the score, teasing out the slightly off-kilter elegance of the newly-animated puppets and conveying a genuine sense of wonder and terror during Petrushka’s escape. If the reading was perhaps too brash and immediate for the concert hall or the home stereo, it matched the vigour of the production perfectly. Mr Poschner found greater scope for sensitivity in L’Enfant, creating delicate interludes, while imposing a certain logic on the work’s sudden and frequent shifts in mood. Petrushka may have been more ostentatious, but L’Enfant was arguably the more fully realised performance.
Audiences have been delighted by theatrical effects and acts of physical prowess for centuries and, even when we can see the ropes and pulleys, there is still a primal thrill that comes with witnessing people on stage defy gravity. Yet for all that 1927’s Stravinsky/Ravel double-bill at the Komische Oper was generous in its serving of spectacle, what was ultimately most impressive about the evening was neither its technical wizardry, nor its acrobatic feats, nor even its seamless blending of the physical and the virtual, but rather the simple satisfaction of a fable well told.
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