Extinci\u00f3n<\/em>. Marcel Borr\u00e0s. Photo: Teatro de La Abad\u00eda<\/p>\n The Se\u00f1or Serrano group has for years been exploring the theme of increasing destruction of the natural environment, combined with a tragedy for humanity, inevitable in the face of this catastrophe. This time, however, the group decided to couple this vision with the music of a Catalan Benedictine monk, Joan Cererols, performed live by members of the Teatro Real chorus and instrumentalists of the Nereydas ensemble conducted by Javier Ulises Ill\u00e1n. The artists chose two masses by Cererols, popularised in the Iberian world by the memorable recordings of La Capella Reial de Catalunya conducted by Jordi Savall:\u00a0Missa de Batalla<\/em>, commemorating the victory of the Spanish army and regaining of control over Naples in 1648, after\u00a0the independent Neapolitan Republic episode, which lasted less than a year; and the slightly later Missa pro defunctis<\/em>, dedicated to the victims of a plague epidemic, which decimated the population of Barcelona in the 1650s.<\/p>\n As usual, \u00c0lex Serrano and Pau Palacios \u2013 the director and dramaturg of\u00a0Extinci\u00f3n\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 abandoned a coherent linear narrative in favour of free-flowing digressions. From the conquistador Francisco de Orellan\u2019s expedition to find the legendary land of El Dorado to the illegal \u2013 on account of a civil war \u2013 exploitation of the Congolese deposits of coltan, this modern \u201cgold\u201d, needed to produce smartphones, among other things. From reflections of philosophers and physicians on the seat of the human soul to dilemmas associated with artificial intelligence. Everything intertwines and intermingles as if in a dream: a hand immersed in the black soil of the Amazon forest fishes out a mobile phone, a hand immersed in the body of a dead human releases liquid gold from his guts. Destructive fanaticism goes hand in hand with an orgy of consumerism. All these images, generated\u00a0on site with the help of three performers \u2013 Carlota Grau, Marcel Borr\u00e0s and Serrano himself \u2013 transformed and projected on a screen placed upstage, reminded me vaguely of Rodrigo Garc\u00eda\u2019s scandalising Golgota Picnic\u00a0<\/em>. Unlike most of my Polish colleagues I saw that production live. I was not outraged, but was left with a feeling that somebody was reinventing the wheel. I had a similar impression when watching\u00a0Extinci\u00f3n\u00a0<\/em>\u2013 at times vivid, but more often getting bogged down in a chaos of confused associations, unnecessarily revealing the \u201cbehind the scenes\u201d at the expense of the magic of the theatre. I felt that magic only in the finale, in the perverse scene of the redemption of humanity by the sacrifice of its consumeristic madness. The convulsive dance to the sounds of the\u00a0Agnus Dei\u00a0from\u00a0Missa de Batalla\u00a0<\/em>(phenomenal Carlota Grau) took place in a shower of fresh popcorn pouring from hot \u201cthuribles\u201d hanging above the stage. Memories of Golgota Picnic<\/em> were revived again: the buttery aroma of Garc\u00eda\u2019s buns symbolising excessive feeding of the multitude blended for me with the buttery aroma of popcorn \u2013 the incense in the twenty-first-century temple of universal excess. The metaphor may not be revelatory, but it is finally clear.<\/p>\n Extinci\u00f3n<\/em>. Carlota Grau in the final scene. Photo: Teatro de La Abad\u00eda<\/p>\n Unfortunately, apart from this one exception theatrical actions did not go hand in hand with the narrative of Cererols\u2019 mass. This is partly the fault of the overall concept, pushing the musicians to the background with regard to the performing artists and, above all, the performance itself. While the instrumentalists from the Nereydas ensemble were impeccable, although their subtle, stylish playing often got lost way upstage, the Teatro Real chorus members lacked either the will or the skill to get to grips with the unique idiom of the Catalan composer. Intonation was poor, there were no dynamic nuances, and the insecure and often unbeautiful singing smothered both the intricacies of the polychoral texture of Missa de Batalla<\/em> and the rough asceticism of\u00a0Missa pro defunctis<\/em>, in which Cererols consciously alludes to the late Renaissance rhetoric of Tom\u00e1s Luis de Victoria\u2019s works.<\/p>\n Thus I treated Extincion\u00a0<\/em> as an interesting, though not fully successful performative experiment, pinning more hopes on the creative team and performers of\u00a0The Marriage of Figaro\u00a0<\/em>on Teatro Real\u2019s main stage. Initially, this was supposed to be the premiere of a new directorial vision of Lotte de Beer in a co-production with the Aix-en-Provence Festival, but as early as last December a decision was made to replace de Beer\u2019s controversial and, to put it mildly, not very successful staging with a revival of Claus Guth\u2019s notorious 2006 production. Guth\u2019s Salzburg staging once generated extreme controversy and was treated by many critics as an attempt on Mozart\u2019s masterpiece. Refreshed years later, it leads to the conclusion that an attempt on a sacred interpretative tradition was made at the time not so much by the director, but the conductor, Nikolaus Harnoncourt. It was Harnoncourt who, with Guth\u2019s considerable help, extracted from the score of The Marriage of Figaro<\/em> unexpected tones of grotesque and tragedy, supported by expressive acting on the part of the singers and clear, ascetic sets designed by Christian Schmidt.<\/p>\n The Marriage of Figaro. <\/em>Andr\u00e9 Schouen (Count Almaviva), and Uli Kirsch (Angel). Photo: Javier del Real<\/p>\n In the Madrid production the focus again shifted a little and the whole, especially when compared with Guth\u2019s later stagings in Vienna and Frankfurt, seemed almost like a classical approach, largely in keeping with the authors\u2019 intentions. Only now did I appreciate the aptness of the mirror-like division of the stage space into the \u201cdownstairs\u201d part; the \u201cupstairs\u201d, inaccessible to the lowly mortals, where only those closest to the count and countess were allowed; and the ambiguous mezzanine, a place of actions going beyond the convention, actions the nature of which we can only guess. Once again I was stunned with admiration at the precision of the Countess and Count\u2019s silent quarrel to the accompaniment of the wedding march in Act 3. I was much more sympathetic this time to the introduction of the additional character of Angel (Uli Kirsch), who in Guth\u2019s concept is not only a defeated Cupid but also an alter ego of the na\u00efve, hormonally tormented Cherubino.<\/p>\n The production does have its weaknesses, but their number is small enough not to disrupt the flow of the narrative and to provoke the audience not only to reflect, but also to burst out laughing. I find Ivor Bolton\u2019s approach to the whole more acceptable in some respects than Harnoncourt\u2019s dark interpretation. Bolton conducts\u00a0The Marriage of Figaro\u00a0<\/em>with an assured hand, avoids too sharp contrasts in tempi, but strongly emphasises expression instead, bringing out from the texture plenty of underappreciated details (like the splendidly accented grace notes in the bassoons and oboes in the wedding march). He is also helpful to the singers, who were truly excellent in the first cast I heard \u2013 led by Julie Fuchs (Susanna), dazzling in her acting and extraordinarily musical, a singer with an agile soprano with a beautiful silvery timbre. Marie Jos\u00e9 Moreno (Countess) was not much inferior to her in terms of the beauty of her voice, and even surpassed her with the power of expression and maturity of interpretation in the melancholic aria \u201cDove sono\u201d. It\u2019s been a long time since there were two baritones so cleverly juxtaposed in the leading male roles: one robust, impetuous, and tinged with a distinctive plebeian note (Vito Priante as Figaro), and the other noble, velvety, irresistibly seductive in his singing (Andr\u00e9 Schouen as the Count). Although Rachael Wilson\u2019s light, silky, well-assured mezzo-soprano sounded too feminine for the trouser role of Cherubino, the singer masked this shortcoming with brilliant acting. Particularly memorable performances in the supporting roles came from Monica Baccelli, an expressive singer with an extraordinary sense of comedy, as Marcellina and Christophe Mortagne, an excellent French character tenor, as Basilio.<\/p>\n The Marriage of Figaro<\/em>, <\/em>Act 3. Photo: Javier del Real<\/p>\n It\u2019s a strange feeling, travelling across the operatic world these days. Every sound, every gesture and every image is absorbed, analysed and contemplated: just in case the current journey should turn out to be the last. And then all this is described. With passion but also out of a sense of duty, because \u2013 to refer to Mar\u00edas again \u2013 the world depends on its storytellers. Also the enchanted world of opera.<\/p>\n Translated by: Anna Kijak<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As Javier Mar\u00edas once said, Madrid seems to be in a hurry to say everything. My visits to the Spanish capital have always been very brief. This time I spent nearly a week there, in the company of friends who know the city inside out \u2013 and yet Madrid kept nudging me, showed me unknown … [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":["entry","post","publish","author-mangusta","post-6574","format-standard","category-posts-in-english","category-wedrowki-operowe"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6574","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=6574"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6582,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6574\/revisions\/6582"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/atorod.pl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/extincion-ensayos-14.jpg\")
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