Tuesday, February 19, 2019

Wold’s Latest Opera Revisits Horrors of WWI

Karl Mohl (Angie Mautz) narrates the fate of the SMS Szent István, while the Lord of the Rats (Nadine Zeintl) presides over his subjects (photograph by Günter Jagoutz, from the Klagenfurter Ensemble event page for “Rattensturm”)

It is still very early in the year, but there is a good chance that the most significant opera event of this year may only be experienced by virtue of a film that was screened last night at the Little Roxie. The work is the one-act “Rattensturm,” the latest opera by Erling Wold, whose track record as an opera composer has been as distinctive as it has been prolific. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, the Klagenfurter Ensemble, named after the capital of Carinthia in Austria where it is based, commissioned Wold and his librettist Peter Wagner.

The idea for the opera came from the Ensemble’s Artistic Director Gerhard Lehner, who wished to commemorate one of the war’s most ludicrous episodes. This involved the sinking of the SMS Szent István, built to be the pride of the Austro-Hungarian Navy. While the adjective “unsinkable” never shows up in the opera’s libretto, the meticulous description delivered by Machine Operator First Class Karl Mohl (sung from a wheelchair by Angie Mautz) establishes the context for the presumed superiority of Austro-Hungarian military forces in a manner that makes comparison with the RMS Titanic inevitable. However, while the Titanic may have gone down due to the mismanagement of its own crew, the Szent István was sunk during its maiden voyage in June of 1918 by an Italian torpedo boat led by a captain with a combination of knowledge and instinct for clever maneuvers.

If Mohl is the narrator of the tale of the Szent István’s fate, he is abetted by a Greek chorus of five rats (Michaela Khom, Marilene Novak, Martin Ganthaler, Michael Uhlir, and Sebastian A. M. Brummer) residing in the ship’s belly, presided over by a “Lord of the Rats” (Nadine Zeintl). They establish a context that underscores the folly of waging war in the first place. That folly is first disclosed through a rat-by-rat citation of sources regarded as some of the finest figures in German-speaking intellectual life, including Robert Musil, Stefan Zweig, and Thomas Mann. Those figures are joined by representatives of other nationalities, such as Charles Péguy and Vladimir Mayakovsky.

The result is a text that devotes almost all of its time to describing what is happening, rather than enacting it. Fortunately, Wagner had the responsibility for staging the production; and, working with a minimum of visual resources, he successfully conveyed all of the action that unfolds. The Greek chorus of the rats (each of which establishes its own individuality) is supplemented by a musical chorus of two sopranos, two altos, two tenors, and two baritones. Like the instrumental ensemble, which consists only of a string trio (violin, viola, and cello), percussion, and keyboards, the chorus is primarily (but not exclusively) kept out of view behind the main portion of the stage where the action unfolds. All musical resources were conducted by Alexei Kornienko.

As might be imagined, the musical result was one of distinctive transparency. The eclecticism of Wold’s musical language provided just the right context for a staging in which there is an ongoing shift of perspectives among what is seen, what is narrated, and what is imagined. If that eclecticism covered a wide diversity of bases, it evolved through smooth transitions from one base to the next. Most significantly, there is an ongoing drive to the score that keeps moving, even when acts of narration hold an episode fixed in time while descriptions unfold. The result was an uninterrupted experience of about 90 minutes’ duration during which one never felt as if there was a lull in the action.

“Rattensturm” was given its premiere performance last year on June 13, scheduled to mark the 100th anniversary of the date on which the brawny Szent István was brought down by skillfully deployed Italian torpedos. This was followed by eight more performances during the month of June. One might think that, given how much imaginative staging was required to realize a libretto that was more metaphorical than narrative, translation to film would not be easy. Nevertheless, all nine performances were filmed; and, from that “visual database,” clever editing yielded an account through which the richness of both Wold’s score and Wagner’s staging could be appropriately appreciated.

The only downside to this account is that the result was scheduled for only one screening in San Francisco, and that screening took place last night. The possibility that this might lead to a staged performance is devoutly to be wished. Meanwhile, the video content that was captured and crafted into a document unto itself definitely deserves more exposure to wider audiences requiring more seating space than that afforded by the Little Roxie!

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