THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW • AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL
★★★★★★
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
REVIEW THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW: STRAUSS MASTERCLASS – KOSKY TRIUMPHS IN AIX.
There’s a buzz in Aix-en-Provence. Opera director Barrie Kosky and star conductor Klaus Mäkelä have thrown themselves into Richard Strauss’s enigmatic masterpiece Die Frau ohne Schatten. The result is a production that may not make the plot any easier to understand, but which, in return, strikes the audience right in the heart.
Kosky does not exactly help to unravel the peculiar story that Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal created in 1919. But that doesn’t really matter. For the master director succeeds in something far more important: turning this mysterious fantasy opera into a powerfully compelling artistic experience about the paths and pitfalls of love.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Die Frau ohne Schatten has always been a challenge. Hofmannsthal reportedly wished to create a counterpart to the mysterious dual world in Mozart’s The Magic Flute, and the themes revolve around fertility, identity and human transformation. In the logic of the work, the shadowless woman is a woman who has not yet left her mark on the world through motherhood.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
I have seen the opera four or five times, and its innermost idea is still not crystal clear to me. The mystique remains intact. And Kosky does not attempt to force the work into a single, unambiguous interpretation. Instead, he translates the opera’s dreamlike universe into a series of scenic visions that fascinate from start to finish.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
What makes Barrie Kosky quite special is his unique sense of variation. Whereas other directors – even the greatest ones – often find one powerful stage image and get stuck on it, Kosky is constantly moving on.
The stage images shift with perfect timing. Not just slightly, but completely. From chaotic, dark universes to almost clinically white spaces, as if the audience had been locked inside a gigantic Apple showroom. Each new image opens up a new dimension of the work.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Particularly impressive is Barak’s home, which appears as three small flats stacked on top of one another in a dizzying chaos of textiles, ropes, chemical containers and all manner of clutter. The towering structure is at times covered by an enormous sleeve, which reminded me of a warming cover pulled down over a Bodum coffee pot.
At other times, the entire structure is dramatically raised and disappears beneath the ceiling – or hovers a mere two metres above the stage floor, whilst new scenes unfold directly beneath it. The effect is theatrical, with an obvious element of suspense that keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Visually, the performance is quite simply a cornucopia. One of the most marvellous images arises when ten headless dancers take to the stage in black ball gowns sprinkled with silver glitter. They appear as grotesque temptations in an attempt to persuade Barak’s wife to sell her shadow. Later, they return – now armed with kitchen knives and with an expression straight out of a horror film.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
The evening’s most unforgettable spectacle is a gigantic head, which at first lies lifeless on the stage, but then rises and wanders about on eight legs. As if that weren’t enough, a figure later leaps out of the head, whereupon silver sequins and knives spill out through its eyes and mouth in an explosive theatrical climax. These are images one simply does not encounter very often in the world of opera.
Whilst Kosky triumphs visually, Klaus Mäkelä does so musically.
The young star conductor makes his festival debut with a bang. Under his baton, the Orchestre de Paris performs Strauss’s monumental score with passion, colour, transparency and dramatic intensity. I have never heard this music played better – not even in Berlin.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
The cast of singers is equally impressive. Michael Spyres delivers a brilliant Emperor, combining both power and elegance. Nina Stemme demonstrates once again why she ranks amongst the greatest opera singers of her generation, lending the Nurse monumental authority. Brian Mulligan creates the production’s warmest and most human portrayal as the down-to-earth Barak.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Six stars for Barrie Kosky and the Aix Festival. Not because the production finally makes us understand everything that goes on in Strauss’s and Hofmannsthal’s enigmatic fantasy world. It doesn’t.
But because it reminds us that opera does not necessarily need to be explained to be effective. Sometimes it is enough that it enchants, fascinates and moves us.
