PARADIS OG PERI • STAATSOPER HAMBORG
★★★★★☆
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
REVIEW PARADISE AND PERI: MUSICAL TREAT IN BOLD STAGING
The stage is set with beautiful poetry. The angel Peri has been banished from Paradise and cannot return until she has found three gifts to the Creator’s liking that can ease the circumstances and reopen the gates of heaven. Schumann’s oratorio from 1843 in a modern opera setting is a musical treat in Tobias Kratzer’s bold staging.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
On our miserable, crisis-ridden earth, she collects the last kiss from two lovers who choose to die together rather than be separated by a raging pandemic, the last sigh from a dying rebel, and tears from an old man who suddenly understands his own life by reflecting on the Next Generation in a climate-challenged future. Only after two rejections does she succeed in returning home to Paradise. Or does she not want to return after all?
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Originally a Persian mythological tale retold by Irish poet Thomas Moore, which German composer Robert Schumann used for an oratorio of high musical class for large orchestra, choir and soloists.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
The newly appointed creative director of the Hamburg Opera, Tobias Kratzer, who in recent years has won awards and recognition for, among other things, an audience hit of an innovative Tannhäuser in Bayreuth (read the review here on Det Sku’ Du Se) surprised audiences in his opening performance by staging this otherwise somewhat overlooked oratorio as a work of performing art. The result is spectacular and has German and international critics raving.
As a theatrical experience, Paradise and Peri is a musical treat in a highly original semi-staged performance that moves in a grey area between opera and concert. Kratzer has deliberately sought the unconventional as a statement in an effort to set a new agenda for the Hamburg Opera, which has gained a somewhat dusty image in recent years.
Kratzer wants to unleash his imagination and, not least, surprises in his upcoming productions, which bodes well for this resourceful opera house, which is so easy to visit from Denmark.
Peri is an ensemble performance in which only the title character really stands out, portrayed by the outstanding soprano Vera-Lotte Boecker.
Along the way, the fourth wall is broken several times, for example when an enraged female audience member goes berserk during the bloody fight scene, and no one in the hall knows what is going on.
The confusion repeats itself a little later when the crying, elderly man turns out to be a sobbing, well-dressed pensioner in the ninth row – and again when, towards the end, Peri crawls around the rows of chairs in a kind of soft opera stage diving, helped along by the audience’s outstretched hands, while live video footage shot from the stage follows the antics on a big screen. Beautiful, mass-choreographed choir scenes put the icing on the cake in a wall of sound.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
All in all, a spectacular, musically enriching and sharply cut 90-minute stage experience for the curious theatregoer, which scores five stars for its courage from GOT TO SEE THIS .
We look forward to following Kratzer’s upcoming productions. Have a good trip to Hamburg.
