WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW • STAATSOPER UNTER DEN LINDEN
★★★★☆☆
Photo: Hans Jörg Michel
REVIEW THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW: ATTRACTED AND REPELLED BY HARD-TO-READ OPERA
The Woman Without a Shadow is a transgressive, musical heavyweight of four and a half hours with a fairytale plot that is so cryptic that even seasoned opera buffs struggle to follow it. Add Claus Guth’s staging, which is so full of molded allegories, metaphors and extemporized interpretations that for long periods you wonder what is really going on.
Richard Strauss and his librettist Hofmannsthal, who was also responsible for Der Rosenkavalier, allegedly sought to create a work that could rival The Magic Flute in mysticism and implicit symbolism. They succeeded in their mission and labelled this opera as their masterpiece.
Photo: Hans Jörg Michel
Strauss’ music is for advanced listeners and is characterized by being almost experimental, sonically exceptional with a crushing rush of dazzling orchestration. This Berlin performance at Staatsoper Unter Den Linden is a revival from 2017 and not a beginner’s opera. Incidentally, it was one of kasper Holten’s big import successes at Covent Garden.
Photo: Hans Jörg Michel
The story centers around an oriental emperor who is threatened with being turned to stone if he does not cast a shadow on his childless wife.
The demand is symbolic and means that she must become a normal human being and bear children. Now the hunt is on to find a falcon that the emperor wounded when it perched on his wife’s forehead during their first meeting, where she appeared in the guise of a white gazelle. From there, it’s all downhill in a plot that hallucinates like an LSD trip, which I give up trying to explain.
Photo: Hans Jörg Michel
I have become a fan of the German stage director Claus Guth after strong opera experiences in Frankfurt (Jenufa) and Madrid (Orlando). In this production, too, he has created an absolutely original staging, even if it is close to losing its grounding.
Photo: Hans Jörg Michel
Claus Guth doesn’t shy away from highly psychedelic, interpretive sequences. Repeated video animations show swimming sperm and ultrasound scans of fetuses quietly screaming in the womb. Sailing rowboats and actors in strange animal costumes populate the scene in one subtle sequence after another. A gaggle of children appear in the finale along with an unresolved sense of happy ending.
The Empress has agreed to buy a shadow of another woman, but refrains at the last minute, and the whole thing ends up as a celebration of the value of love and a kind of redemption through self-awareness.
Photo: Hans Jörg Michel
Finnish/Swedish Camilla Nylund impresses with her vocal strength in the demanding role of the Empress. An audience of connoisseurs responds with a standing ovation. Her lyric soprano is youthful, effortless and highly cultivated, wrote Berliner Morgenpost.
The Woman Without a Shadow is a spectacular stage experience in an enthusiastic musical universe, but let’s be honest: If you are the type who believes that musical theatre should be understood in real time, this show is not for you.
As a viewer, I feel simultaneously attracted and repulsed by the many, hard-to-read messages hiding behind the show’s explicit expression and end up a little ambivalently at four stars from Got To See This.
Paradoxically, I want to watch it again to crack the codes and decipher the mystery. Maybe it’s okay not to understand everything right away. Maybe the thought and reflection is part of what makes opera exciting.
