Press Reviews       IM SPIEGEL WOHNEN Press Reviews of the World Premiere on October 10, 2003     back    Heiner Müller’s fantastically dense text, which is full of shocking images and violent fantasies, and the musico-theatrical conception of space and representation call for challenging aesthetic means, and it goes without saying that these are hermetic. Müller’s Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture) of 1984 positively cries out for music, just as his Hamletmaschine (Hamlet Machine) cried out for Wolfgang Rihm’s opera. However, there can be no question of what used to be called a “musical setting”. The approach is that of an “experimental design”. (...) The play’s idea is close to the technique (and melody) used to adapt it: the superimposing of text, choreography, sparse scenery, and live and amplified three-dimensional sound. The many overlappings follow the rhythm of interlocking thoughts and events, a poetry of calmly developing processes. It is a crucial factor in the work’s success that Breitscheid and his dramatic advisors (Klaus Zehelein and Juliane Votteler) were fortunate in the selection of their team. Jean Jourdheuil (director; he recently directed Mozart’s Finta) and Mark Lammert (spatial and cinematic design) distributed Müller’s text among the various planes and instances. Musicality rather than semantics is also the driving force behind everything visual. Just as in music, sequences—of solo and choric speech and action (Jorge Silva Melo, Marc Barbé), singing (Lani Poulson, mezzo-soprano), and dancing (Tal Beit-Halachmi)—are shaped by the logic of tension and release, crescendo and diminuendo, acceleration and deceleration, violent eruptions that subside into immobility. A convoluted textuality leads to enigmatic images whose beauty is driven to brutality again and again: the trampled flowers, the rotating mirror, the light, physical and vocal eruptions. Four musicians provide the interactive and tightly drawn sonic horizon: Teodoro Anzellotti (accordion), Sascha Armbruster (saxophone), Stefano Scodanibbio (double bass), and Mike Svoboda (trombones). Their finely detailed instrumental “sound sketch” comes out of boundless aural intuition. There is nothing to comprehend or compare, but everything to hear, see, and observe with great concentration. Süddeutsche Zeitung The experiment is a convincing one. Andreas Breitscheid’s eighty-minute music theater piece based on Heiner Müller’s Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture) is an astonishingly rich and substantial work. This is also thanks to the research work of director Jean Jourdheuil and artist Mark Lammert (...), who distilled images and scenes from the monstrous text in the pitch-black hall. (...) In an abstract stage set, the actor Marc Barbé rotates an enormous mirrored surface like a mute wall of self-reflection. It also serves as an unsteady stage for the dancer Tal Beit-Halachmi. Then a video of a cloudy sky is projected onto the surface. “A landscape between steppe and savanna, the sky a Prussian blue, with two enormous clouds floating in it.” This is how Müller’s text begins, and Breitscheid uses the same words to end his project, instead of Müller’s own concluding words, “I the frozen storm.” Now the mirror turns quickly, Teodoro Anzellotti plays a concluding farewell with deep tonal clusters on the accordion, and the doors of the Forum’s hall are opened wide: not 'Prussian blue', but night. An easygoing poetry. In addition to Barbé there is a second actor, the Portuguese filmmaker Jorge Silva Melo, who appears as a director with a notebook. They process the Müller material in multiple languages. The dancer and four musicians also sometimes join in the conversation. In addition to Anzellotti, they are Sascha Armbruster (saxophone), Stefano Scodanibbio (double bass), and Mike Svoboda (trombone, tuba). The mezzo-soprano Lani Poulson sings the uppercase text from Müller’s Bildbeschreibung like the voice of a lyric “I”. “An alien in my own body”: the singing voice is electronically altered and alienated. Just as in general, Breitscheid, who is a student of Luigi Nono, manipulates the often highly reduced, finely spun, and radical instrumental playing to create an extremely naunced spatial and sonic image. Thrilling. Südwestpresse The “Forum Neues Musiktheater” sets itself these new tasks, and there can be no doubt that the general director of Stuttgart's opera, Klaus Zehelein, will guide the “Forum”, which he himself initiated and realized, into the future with a sure hand. (...) A first effort was on display at the opening of the “Forum”. Andreas Breitscheid, artistic collaborator of the Staatsoper Stuttgart and now also the director of the “Forum”, conceived a music theater piece based on Heiner Müller’s multilayered Bildbeschreibung (Description of a Picture), which the author himself describes as an “overpainting” of Alcestis, the description of a “landscape beyond death”. Breitscheid’s scenario for two actors, a dancer, a female singer, and four instrumentalists (accordion, saxophone, double bass, and trombone/tuba) seems in turn to be an 'overpainting' of Heiner Müller’s text. Musical structures, dramatic action, the spoken word, and the cinematic interpolation of images enter into an astonishingly close alliance. This complex “Musiktheater” captures a great deal of the enigmatic magic of Müller’s text. It is a remarkable start to the institution’s “research work”. From a larger perspective, the creation of Stuttgart’s “Forum” at a time when cultural and educational policy is in retreat may be viewed as an important sign pointing into the future. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung
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