Music
Der ferne Kiang (Grand Theatre, Leeds)
Bewitching flim-flam
Robin Holloway
The Artist's suffering Life, transmuted and fulfilled by his Work, is a common- place of the fin-de-siecle romanticism from whose rotting corpse modernism was born. The most familiar instances in music are Strauss's bombastic self-portraits, vanquish- ing his critics or confronting his wife over marital bed and family breakfast, and Mahler's angst-ridden self-projections in symphonies that run like an ongoing soap opera. The theme is international, but specifically Germanic are the operas, stem- ming from Wagner's Mastersingers, which place fact- or fantasy-creators at their heart. After Wagner's Hans Sachs come Pfitzner's Palestrina, Hindemith's demon jeweller Cardillac and tormented painter Matthias Griinewald, Moses the carver of concepts in Schoenberg's opera, the painter and composer in Berg's Lulu, the composer and poet in Strauss's Capriccio.
These exalted, idealistic operas have a squalid underside. Soulful mystico-erotic kitsch about the Artist was as sure a recipe for success in the decadent epoch as Green themes are now. Thus the works of Franz Schreker swept across middle Europe before withering without trace in the altered political atmosphere of the 1930s. In the lands of their first popularity they have long been enjoying a revival. With Opera North's new production of Schrek- er's Der ferne Kiang this country can taste for the first time the most famous of them, exactly 90 years after its inception and 80 after its premiere.
The story is simple. Fritz, a writer, is drawn from his sweetheart Grete by a mys- terious sound which compels him to follow. Crete then escapes a repugnant marriage proposal and is protected by a mysterious old woman, part earth-mother, part pro- curess, who prevents her suicide and sets
her on her true path — so effectively that in Act II, ten years on, Grete is queen of
La casa di maschere, a 'pleasure-house' on an island in the Venetian lagoon. Desired by all but bored and self-disgusted, she promises her favours to the man who tells the best tale. The Count (sombre) and the Chevalier (frivolous) are upstaged by the unscheduled arrival of a dark stranger - Fritz, in search of his elusive sound. His chapter of woe wins Grete's prize, but he
makes the bad mistake of asking her to be his wife, a word contemptible in these sur- roundings, whose real nature he only now realises. Disdaining the Count's challenge to duel over a mere whore, he launches forth again after his ferne Kiang, and Grete settles for the Count. Act III, five years later, begins outside a theatre where Fritz's new play receives its premiere. A woman is brought out overcome by faintness. She is not merely the 'fallen woman' she appears, and is taken the next morning to see the sick author. Rallying, he declares that he has now found his distant music and can resolve his play satisfactorily; but then dies in Grete's arms.
Does Schreker have a voice of his own? While its provenance is unmistakable, it never actually resembles the Wagner, Strauss, Mahler, Schoenberg which lie alongside, or the Berg to which it tends. More clearly audible is heady passion from Puccini and delicate coloration from Paris. Nevertheless I detect only intermittently a fully coherent personal language — for instance at the moment in Act I when Grete is deflected from suicide by moon- rise over the lake and nature shimmering in response, and its equivalent in the third act where Fritz listens, spent and entranced, to the spring morning birdsong in his garden. Elsewhere skill, fluency, opulence, drama, are unfailing. Perhaps it is appropriate that they reach their zenith in the depiction of the brothel in Act II. The deployment of off-stage voices, then in Grete's aria the alternation of accompaniment phrase by phrase between gipsy band on stage and orchestra in the pit, are dazzling in their virtuosity. And if the dazzle leaves me in the end emptied out rather than nourished, this too is appropriate enough.
Opera North's brave revival of this bewitching flim-flam certainly maintains their enterprising reputation. But I found Brigitte Fassbaender's production com- monplace and the stage-set startlingly hideous. Der ferne Kiang is anything but timeless. It needs visual lavishness and it looked like a community arts project. But the orchestra, under the company's musical director Paul Daniel, sounded like a mil- lion dollars; and since half of it was placed on stage there was plenty for the eye to enjoy; especially the two harps and the celesta who actually realise the glistening shimmer of the `mysterious sound' about which the work revolves. So if one averts `It's the North Bonk Show.' one's gaze from the surrounding impover- ishment one can see the work's very sub- ject, the most telling visual feature in a production which is well worth a long jour- ney to hear.
Der ferne Kiang continues in repertory at the Grand Theatre Leeds and will tour to Manchester, Hull, Stratford-upon-Avon and Nottingham. Information: 0532 459351.
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