Press Reviews       LAST DESIRE Press Reviews of the World Premiere on December 12, 2004     back    Blinded by their own sexual imaginations, the blinded ones are transformed into characters in the drama. The countertenor Daniel Gloger becomes the young Syrian, drunk with love, and the old, mercilessly disillusioned Herodias, a flabby aristocratic whore of days long past, fitted out with sagging breasts and a potbelly bulging out of her undergarments. The bass Andreas Fischer becomes King Herold and his opponent, the prophet Jochanaan. The boy Darius Paul-Knecht turns into Herodias’s page… and the drama’s great question mark. For he walks down the runway at the end of the piece, headless and dressed in dainty girl’s clothing—the boy as a projected, transvestite Salome. Does that mean the gift-wrapped box that Herod carries around with him has Salome’s head inside it rather than Jochanaan’s? This devastating male-fantasy twist is at least suggested by Michael v. zur Mühlen’s production, when, at the same time, the countertenor’s head rises up as if severed from the carpet of stuffed animals and warbles in the most feminine tones... And the music? All the free-floating personality fragments seem to coalesce in the figure of the bald violist—the only instrumentalist to participate in the drama—who wears dark glasses with thick black frames like the popular singer Heino. Depicted as blind, he is thus the only one among all these blinded figures who is intuitively able to “see”. Luca Sanzó embodies emotional states in musical form. Ronchetti assigns him a virtuoso selection of Bachian double-stopped passages as well as agitated tremolos and wildly scaling sonic vectors. Cannstatter Zeitung For the outside observer, there is something fascinating about the way the Forum never regards works as finished, but always views them as provisional results of ongoing artistic processes. And yet the resulting impression is always chaotic. One must part with one’s notion of a completed artwork in order to feel at ease in the Staatsoper’s extraordinary experimental theater. And composers and performers sometimes find this as difficult to do as does the audience. This new version of Salome, however, could be a point of entry even for those who have stayed away from the Forum until now for fear that it would be all too elitist and aloof. Stuttgarter Nachrichten The piece also plays with the subjunctive mood, or mood of possibility. Appearance and reality, reality and projections, and music past and present vie with one another in a spirited collaboration. One seems to hear echoes of Bach, Handel, and especially Rossini; choral solemnity is juxtaposed with wild coloraturas; one thing peeks through the other; and who knows, perhaps the whole world—on both sides of the boards that only signify the world but are not the world—is nothing more than will and representation? Stuttgarter Nachrichten Last Desire by Lucia Ronchetti is an attempt to erase these images or at least to play with their existence. At the Forum Neues Musiktheater, the opera in one act divided into seven scenes, which lasts just under an hour, received its premiere. The text of Wilde’s Salome was adapted by Tina Hartmann. In this version, Salome is not present as a character. She is only allowed to exist in the minds of the protagonists: a young man, played by a countertenor (Daniel Gloger); a somewhat older man with a deep voice (Andreas Fischer); a boy soprano (Darius Paul-Knecht); and a violist (Luca Sanzó). They must use their voices—live or electronically altered and/or multiplied—to suggest the demented and feverish theater of images unfolding in their heads. And in the course of this theater piece (directed by Michael von zur Mühlen), which is as surrealistic as it is realistic, they must undergo multiple metamorphoses into other people and travel the stations of an obsession to the bitter end... They practice all the variants of art song in the process, from the madrigal with its mannered style to expressionistic, animalistic outbursts. Ronchetti works masterfully with quotations and allusions. Thus, for example, she places fragments from Rossini’s Viaggio a Reims, shredded beyond recognition, in Herodias’s aged, lascivious mouth. The young Syrian must express his adoration for Salome in rhythmically elaborate madrigalisms. Herodias’s page, with his vocalises, could be a character in a Handel opera. The violist’s part is sometimes reminiscent of Bach’s solo violin partitas. The fusion of stylistic elements turns this opera into a dazzling expressionistic artifact. The music received an exemplary performance. Stuttgarter Zeitung The action at the Forum Neues Musiktheater alternated between the present moment of waiting and the psychological drama of the past. In his extreme quest for beauty of sound, Gloger utilized his high register to excellent effect and moved meditatively between and within his own tone color. However, the premiere was also striking for its rhythmic proximity to Henry Purcell’s opera King Arthur. Modally colored harmonies dominated in the vocal passages. An often breathtaking chromaticism and an intensive conversation with the English tradition took center stage... The alternating play of light and shadow gained intensity in electronic effects, in which human figures suddenly flashed into view. The boy wandered in despair at the sight of the young man’s collapse. Michael von zur Mühlen attached importance in this context to a plausible direction of the actors, which sensitively emphasized the mysterious connections among the characters. At the end, the 'black' stage opened up onto endless space, and echo effects produced unusual dynamic contrasts. The audience applauded enthusiastically. Reutlinger General-Anzeiger Musically, the heart of the piece are the virtuoso vocal parts, which might have been composed expressly for the performers, Daniel Gloger and Andreas Fischer. Dramatically, it is the cliffhanger that Michael von zur Mühlen, the director, succeeds in conjuring onto the little stage with a minimum of effort. Ronchetti reaches deep into her arsenal of forms and styles; she mixes madrigal with baroque bel canto, Rossinian fioriture with Sciarrino’s whimsical 'whisper-equilibriums', and even includes a viola. The live electronics (Carl Faia) is not only linked to the actual music being played, but also to a wall of lights that visualizes the sound. In dramatic terms as well there is no escape. Mühlen locks the listeners and actors into a space enclosed by curtains; a sofa covered with stuffed animals indicates that this is the room of the murderous woman-child. The surrealistic impromptu, which lasts three quarters of an hour and plays with the expectations of all involved, especially those of the audience . . . reaches . . . another musical and dramatic climax at the end in the mad comic solo of John the Baptist’s head, which smirks (and sings) from inside a box, and Herodias’s grotesque scene, both brilliantly performed by Daniel Gloger. All in all, this sample of the young Italian’s talent is the most compelling production to issue thus far from Klaus Zehelein’s new music theater laboratory. Opernwelt We are in the Forum Neues Musiktheater of the Staatsoper Stuttgart, at the premiere of Lucia Ronchetti’s approximately hour-long Salome chamber opera for boy’s voice, countertenor, bass, viola, and live electronics. And it may be the greatest achievement of this premiere that the composer and Michael von zur Mühlen, the director, avoid this question with much imagination. Ronchetti’s music, at any rate, is so idiosyncratic in its treatment of its subject that the awkward comparison with Richard Strauss does not arise even for a moment. Ronchetti—unmistakably a student of Salvatore Sciarrino in her handling of voices and language—has created an a cappella fabric that verges at times on the madrigal, with vocal sounds ranging from the most various spoken articulations all the way to Italian bel canto; with the viola as a fourth 'voice'; with deftly modified remnants of tradition (prelude, aria, duetto, lamento); and with a fascinatingly three-dimensional sonic 'aura' created by the electronic wizard Carl Faia. The performers display exquisite mastery, especially the countertenor Daniel Gloger and the violist Luca Sanzò, who plays with an instinctive sureness of intonation, but also the bass Andreas Fischer and the boy soprano David Dörner. Michael von zur Mühlen is astute enough not to fall into the trap of theatrical platitudes. He succeeds in demonstrating formidable talent and also in proving that even a somewhat faded dramatic subject is a suitable model for a lively evening of theater if one has ideas and dramatic imagination. And the Forum Neues Musiktheater has continued to mature; the presentation—with introduction, public rehearsals, and post-performance discussion—has become more open. Last but not least: sustained applause after the sold-out premiere. Die Deutsche Bühne
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