So much history and yet the place is still so inconspicuous. The fa\u00e7ade of the building, which has housed Hotel Post since 1942, is easy to miss among the tightly spaced buildings of Fleischmarkt. In the mid-20th century Wiener Kammeroper, established shortly after the war by the Hungarian-Austrian conductor Hans Gabor, found home here after numerous twists and turns. Exactly eight years ago the company was taken over by Theater an der Wien. A group of young artists, the Junges Ensemble, began to present performances in a small hall adjacent to the hotel, trying their hand not only at Baroque and contemporary operas, but also at intimate adaptations of masterpieces from the core repertoire. Nobody could predict that in 2020 the Kammeroper would turn from a kind of opera studio into a melting pot brimming with ideas \u2013 an experimental laboratory for solutions to overcome the crisis that has painfully affected the entire music sector and will not let go.<\/p>\n
Miriam Kutrowatz (Idaspe). Photo: Eriks Bozis<\/p>\n Those who were lucky enough to get tickets for the September premiere of Vivaldi\u2019s Bajazet<\/em> \u2013 less than one hundred and fifty people, because half the seats in the auditorium had to be empty \u2013 stood in a side street, wistfully looking through the window at the closed theatre caf\u00e9. When the door finally opened, they quickly put on their masks and staggered inside to take their seats and shake off the evening chill. At first no one paid attention to an inconspicuous bespectacled man who was bustling around, bringing more and more props, then testing their acoustic properties with a smile on his face. After a while the spectators began to realise that the man was preparing a recording studio on stage. A few minutes passed. The mysterious bespectacled man brought the last object from the wings: an old-fashioned reel of tape. He crouched down on the proscenium and put it in the orchestra pit. At that moment the sounds of the Italian overture burst out from the depths. Played live, of course. Only then did everyone understand that the new production directed by Krystian Lada started before the opera itself. In a moment we were to find out that the inconspicuous man on stage could also be the cruel Tamerlano.<\/p>\n Last year, when I nominated Lada for the Passport Award of the Polityka<\/em> weekly, I was not sure yet whether I wanted to give the award to a director and dramaturge or an opera activist. I believed that it was reasonable to nominate Lada, considering his belief in the vivacity of the form, his conviction that the opera speaking the language of a modern theatre would touch the hearts of the audience as authentically as a good movie or a novel, his courage in presenting the burning issues of today\u2019s world on stage. This Warsaw-born young artist who now lives in Belgium found his way into opera via a route that was completely different from that of most Polish directors. He studied abroad: literary studies and dramaturgy at the University of Amsterdam. He was not yet thirty when he became director for dramaturgy and cultural promotion at La Monnaie. He worked as a journalist and editor. He wrote librettos, stage adaptations of literature and scripts for television programmes. He polished his skills as a dramaturge under the watchful eye of the best in the field, including Ivo van Hove and Pierre Audi. He participated in the Young Talents programme of the ENOA (European Network of Opera Academies). He was a member of the advisory team at Opera Europa, a Brussels-based non-profit organisation bringing together European opera houses and festivals. Three years ago he founded The Airport Society: an association of artists and activists who explore the subtle network of connections between contemporary opera, and the world of technology and the reality of current social phenomena. It was with this group that he made his debut as a director: with the performance Aria di Potenza<\/em>, in which he highlighted the \u201coperatic\u201d aspect of politicians\u2019 speeches, juxtaposing them with famous arias.<\/p>\n He attracted my attention shortly afterwards, in 2018, when he directed Bellini’s I Capuleti e i Montecchi<\/em> at the Wroc\u0142aw Opera. I realised during the pre-premiere interview that I was dealing with a sensitive and modern-thinking \u201ctheatre animal\u201d rather than yet another arrogant progressive who had forced his way onto the opera stage. Lada carefully picked out the tropes contained in the musical text and tried to present them using the language of contemporary theatre. What\u2019s more, he demonstrated that he had a sense of humour: in the Wroc\u0142aw production he had the belligerent Capulets wear the Fowler Brotherhood\u2019s uniforms and invited a delegation of Brotherhood members to the premiere. They came dressed in full fig and would not stop admiring the director\u2019s concept.<\/p>\n Miriam Kutrowatz, Sofia Vinnik (Asteria), Rafa\u0142 Tomkiewicz (Tamerlano), and Valentina Petraeva (Irene). Photo: Eriks Bozis<\/p>\n Since then Lada has been involved in several extremely different projects \u2013 from the monumental open-air Nabucco<\/em> in Wroc\u0142aw, through the shocking installation Unknown, I live with you<\/em> in the former chapel of the Bridgettines in Brussels, featuring music by Katarzyna G\u0142owicka and drawing on the poetry of the participants in the Afghan Women Writing Project \u2013 I wrote about the performance later that people cried, covered their eyes and then returned to watch and hear it all again \u2013 to Rossini\u2019s Sigismondo<\/em> at the Opera Rara festival in Krak\u00f3w, where Lada brilliantly combined the musical narrative with references to Matejko\u2019s historical paintings.<\/p>\n He directed the Viennese Bajazet<\/em> in a similar spirit: half-joking and half-scary. This three-act opera, composed in 1735 for the opening of the Verona carnival, is really hard to grasp. In addition, in cannot in all honesty be called a work by Vivaldi, because it is an example of the pasticcio<\/em>, a fashionable genre in those days, in which musical sections from operas by different composers were combined to create a new story with a completely new libretto. The complicated story of the Ottoman sultan Bajazet and his daughter Asteria held captive by Tamerlano, the ruler of the Uzbek Turks, was compiled by Vivaldi in a quite twisted manner. He himself wrote arias for the \u201cgood\u201d characters and when it came to the villains he used music written by other composers: Giacomelli, Hasse and Broschi \u2013 perhaps to emphasise mischievously who really knew his musical m\u00e9tier.<\/p>\n Lada drew upon the ancient \u201ctheatre within theatre\u201d convention, placing the action of the opera in a studio whose owner \u2013Tamerlano, unsurprisingly \u2013 is making a radio drama about Bajazet. On a bright, almost empty stage (with just recording equipment and props for sound effects \u2013\u00a0 excellent set design by Didzis Jaunzems) \u2013 the drama unfolds with the actors not so much portraying their protagonists, but revealing, unintentionally and often against their will, their own identity, surprisingly similar to that of characters they play. It is basically a production about the power of conventions, stereotypes and ordinary human prejudices. It is not the \u201cstranger\u201d, the awe-inspiring Bajazet (Icelandic baritone Kristj\u00e1n J\u00f3hannesson), but the inconspicuous Tamerlano (countertenor Rafa\u0142 Tomkiewicz displaying excellent acting and vocal skills) who turns out to be a real villain. Tamerlano\u2019s metamorphosis in the finale and the far-fetched happy ending concocted by the librettist have all the features of the grotesque. Only the \u201cgood\u201d Idaspe (played by the phenomenal young Viennese singer Miriam Kutrowatz) \u2013 a friend of the \u201cbad guy\u201d Andronicus \u2013 remains a mystery until the very end. He observes the events from a distance and manipulates everyone at the same time. Is he a sound director responsible for the entire broadcast? An omniscient narrator? A sexless, emotionless spectre functioning on the fringes of human existence?<\/p>\n Valentina Petraeva, Rafa\u0142 Tomkiewicz, Sofia Vinnik and Kristj\u00e1n J\u00f3hannesson (Bajazet). Photo:Herwig Prammer<\/p>\n Some of Lada\u2019s ideas seem to be almost over the top \u2013 like the partially animated projections of the wild fantasies of Tamerlano and his henchmen. Yet there are a few things that redeem them easily: the consistency of the overall concept, the perfect cooperation with the rest of the team, especially with Natalia Kitamikado, the designer of visually sophisticated costumes, and, last but not least, the fact that Lada understands the specificity of the opera form. He doesn\u2019t content himself with adoring its allegedly old-fashioned and exotic beauty. He can talk to this beauty in her mother tongue.<\/p>\n The Bach Consort Wien was conducted in the Viennese Bajazet<\/em> by the singer and conductor Roger D\u00edaz-Cajamarca, who led the ensemble with energy and enthusiasm, though perhaps not very subtly. Fortunately, the singers could again rely on the director, who is well-versed in music. Lada knows how to place accents in a Baroque da capo<\/em> aria, when to encourage singers to improvise, and when to restrain their ideas, whether to leave them empty-handed or, on the contrary, to give them lots of props so that they can focus on what they should focus.<\/p>\n If this season at Theater an der Wien passes without any major obstacles, can be looking forward to other surprises on the microscopic stage at the Fleischmarkt, including an intimate adaptation of Tristan and Isolde<\/em>, which will be the directorial debut of the Wiener Staatsoper star, the bass G\u00fcnther Groissb\u00f6ck. There are no stars at the Kammeroper. There are people young in age and spirit who want not to revive opera after the pandemic, but to keep it alive now \u2013 with a great deal of love and very little money.<\/p>\n Every Viennese knows the song about the \u201cdear Augustin\u201d, a street musician who during the Black Death plague of 1679 got drunk, blacked out, spent all night in a pit with dead bodies, and survived. Not everyone draws the right conclusions from the story \u2013 it is not a parable about artists being immortal. It is a song about the hope that someone will get them out of that lime pit. Krystian Lada and the young Theater an der Wien artists are certainly worthy of it.<\/p>\n Translated by: Ilona Duchnovic There used to be an inn here, called The White Ox, set up by shepherds and cattle traders by the tollgates of Vienna. In 1762 Leopold Mozart checked in here \u2013 on his first tour with his two child prodigies: daughter Nannerl and six-year-old son Wolfgang Amadeus. In the 1820s the inn was turned into … [Read more…]<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,7],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"entry","1":"post","2":"publish","3":"author-mangusta","4":"post-5164","6":"format-standard","7":"category-posts-in-english","8":"category-wedrowki-operowe"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5164"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5172,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5164\/revisions\/5172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/atorod.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/a7A20gSA-scaled.jpeg\")
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\nOriginal article available at: https:\/\/www.tygodnikpowszechny.pl\/nowa-odsiecz-wiedenska-165412<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"