From the House of the Mad: Klangforum puts on a "concertante-performative Meta-Opera"
AMOPERA - a dystopian ballad
In a dead-serious context, even the dumbest joke is funny. Klangforum Wien combined high-concept avant-garde with a staging that makes the Hangover-films look like Schiller tragedies.
On Sunday evening, Klangforum lured audiences into the Great Hall for an ambitious season finale. A “concertante-performative meta-opera” was on the program. Already the descriptor “Amoper” (opera for the evening) came with a warning: words like “meta” and “performative” are often codes—either promising an audience something detached from the subject and physically involving in its own peculiar way, or, to the less inclined, something pseudo-intellectual and embarrassing. One must decide for oneself which camp one belongs to when exposed to the Belgian Needcompany.
A musician enters. He stands at the front of the stage. Silence. He dies—loudly, like Hamlet in provincial theater. No, he lives; puts on a clown nose. The rest of the musicians and two “performers” join him. They start running around the stage in circles, all of them oozing significance and wearing colorful socks. It reeks of amateur improv class at the local community center. Still no music. This goes on for what feels like five minutes, until some musicians finally dare touch their instruments and begin to intone Salvatore Sciarrino: “I begin to breathe again” from Luci mie traditrici—delicate, breathy, skewed whistling. Sciarrino in purified avant-garde form. The rest of the group keeps jogging. Theatrical garnish: musicians occasionally stand up, pull faces, and sit down again. The “performers” gradually shed their upper garments. In the background, two musicians do jumping jacks. When the musicians just pretend to play their instruments for a while, or exchange instruments among each other (to predictably modest effect), much laughter ensues. Because this is funny.
Beat Furrer’s soundscapes from die helle nacht rise from the central group of ridiculously, admirably dedicated musicians. More facial contortions. Holger Falk sounds stunning—whether miked, half-naked, or wrapped in a purple cloak. No matter how difficult or abstract the music, he delivers. A velvet brushstroke amid all the sonic thorns. Then: loosening-up exercises. Barefoot. Heavy breathing. Screaming. Percussion outbursts. The music comes from the ash-heap of the avant-garde (Xenakis) and its modern epigones (Sara Glojnarić, Michael Wertmüller, Rebecca Saunders, Bernhard Lang). At least Berio is enjoyable—because he mocks himself (For Cathy). A bass flute comes running. But only breathes through the thing. Wait, it is turning into Saunders' "O Yes & I". One of the pieces sounds like Sepultura-goes-Bohemian-Rhapsodie.
Soprano Sarah Maria Sun is no less impressive than Falk and hurls herself admirably into every role. Around her: more group contortions. Buttocks rubbing against one another. Finally, a cut: Zemlinsky—glorious. Lulu fragments—brilliant. Sciarrino (via Gesualdo)—touching. Britten—tender. A telling contrast.
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