Die Frau Ohne Schatten at Lyric Opera, 2007-2008 Season

Die Frau Ohne Schatten, Lyric Opera of ChicagoLast night we heard Lyric’s brand-new production of Richard Strauss’s 1919 opera, Die Frau Ohne Schatten, “The Woman Without a Shadow”. Above, the Dyer’s wife beholds her imaginary love.

What can one say about Die Frau Ohne Schatten? It is the most complex and ambitious product of the tremendously fruitful Strauss-Von Hoffmansthal collaboration. It is, I think, their most Wagnerian conception, Strauss’s glorious music making extensive use of leitmotifs (at least 32 distinct motifs) and Von Hoffmansthal’s poetry showing glimmers of real sublimity. It covers much the same territory as the Mozart-Schikaneder The Magic Flute. It’s the story of three couple: a noble couple, the Emperor and Empress paralleling Tamino and Pamina in The Magic Flute; an earthly couple, the Dyer and his wife paralleling Papageno and Papagena; and a divine couple, Keikobad and the Empress’s mother paralleling Sarostro and the Queen of the Night. Where The Magic Flute draws freely from Masonic thought, Die Frau draws equally freely from the psychoanalytic thought of the early 20th century. Are the Empress, the Dyer’s wife, and the unseen Empress’s mother really different aspects of the same person?

But I find it a very highly intellectualized, distancing work. It is lacking in humor. The characters have titles not names—the Empress, the Dyer. Only the Empress’s father, Keikobad, has a name and he is so remote that we never see him. I think that it’s paradoxically its intimacy that makes The Magic Flute a really transcendent work while Die Frau Ohne Schatten is moored solidly to its time, in many ways and, but for Richard Strauss’s miraculously beautiful music, a curiosity.

I also think that most Americans today find the underlying concept of the work, that motherhood is the noblest aspiration of women, quaint at best, disturbing at worst. This aspect of the work was actually emphasized in this performance.

The Empress, the Nurse, and the Dyer's Wife from Die Frau Ohne Schatten

Lotte Lehman as the Dyer's Wife in Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne SchattenThe picture above is (from left to right) Deborah Voigt as the Empress, Jill Grove as the Nurse, and Christine Brewer as the Dyer’s Wife. At the right is the Dyer’s Wife as originated by Lotte Lehman in the very first production of Die Frau ohne Schatten. More vixen and temptress, less earth mother. More youthful longing for romance, less mature woman wondering whether sacrificing motherhood whether literally or figuratively is worth, well, whatever she sacrificed it for. And I think that Lotte Lehman probably represents Von Hoffmansthal’s original concept and it’s a more sophisticated one.

Christine Brewer’s performance, however, was one of the two standouts of last night’s performance. She negotiated the very difficult material with skill and strength. A beautiful, commanding performance. The other standout was the Nurse. Last night Jill Grove was unable to perform due to illness and her substitute was really wonderful. The Nurse probably sings as much as anyone in the opera, functioning almost as a sort of narrator, and her power, fluency, and artistry were really wonderful to enjoy. I didn’t catch her name; perhaps someone else can fill me in.

I think that those who’ve detected a change in Deborah Voigt’s vocal quality since her dramatic weight loss of a couple of years ago have a point. I absolutely do not believe that only fat people can sing opera but I do believe that it’s very important to train your voice with the equipment you have and such a rapid weight loss changes virtually everything in the physiology of voice production. I think that Deborah Voigt did the right thing and she’s very brave but it will probably take a while for her to retrain her voice for her new physique.

The new production is quite reminiscent of Lyric’s Ring Cycle in its set design, costumes, lighting and stage effects and that’s not a bad thing. Overall I thought the production was quite balanced: good voices with Christine Brewster and the mezzo who sang the Nurse several notches above good, good balance of instruments and voices, good sets, costumes, and lighting effects. Final verdict: good but not great. An enjoyable night at the opera despite its nearly four hour length.

Handicapping the season so far: Julius Caesar, Die Frau ohne Schatten, La Traviata, La bohème. Advantage Julius Caesar.

The Critics

John von Rhein is enthusiastic about the music and the voices:

Brewer and Voigt are two of today’s greatest dramatic sopranos and their voices complement each other beautifully, filling the house with plush Straussian sound.

Both sang like forces of nature — Voigt with her gleaming, womanly timbre, deeply affecting in her final monologue; Brewer soaring into the vocal stratosphere, flinging laserlike tones to the back of the theater with apparently limitless stamina.

but less enthralled with this new production:

If there’s any disappointment, it is the murky, sometimes downright ugly production by the Scottish director Paul Curran, in his Lyric debut. There are scattered flights of whimsy — characters fly through the air, and a golden Adonis rises from a cistern to tempt Barak’s wife to surrender her shadow (symbolizing fertility).

But there’s relatively little to delight eye or mind in a performance that lasts nearly four hours despite numerous cuts.

The London Times is very favorably impressed with the Scottish director and the English conductor:

For Chicago, Curran and his set and costume designer, Kevin Knight, have devised a grand but practical Frau ohne Schatten, with essentially two sets: a semicircular wall, which does double duty for the Emperor’s palace and Keikobad’s magical realm, and a wooden structure with a footbridge, suggesting oriental theatre, for the Dyer’s workshop. Descending luminous globes and neon strip lights suggest the other-worldliness of the milieu, in which the two principal women struggle with their consciences and seek to find reconciliation with their men without compromising their own personalities. Like many of Strauss’s operas, Die Frau is about female emancipation on a universal level and, closer to home, about his stormy relationship with his wife, Pauline. All three female characters, but especially the Dyer’s Wife, are portraits of facets of Frau Strauss’s complex personality, and this is perhaps his most moving declaration of love to her.

Curran’s direction of his singers sticks closely to Hofmannsthal’s libretto, and what a cast he has at his disposal. Deborah Voigt’s Empress is a well-known quantity, but this is her first since her dramatic weight-loss, and she looks even more sensational than she did in the Met’s Helen in Egypt, ear-lier this year. Her voice seems to have regained some of its former body and warmth of tone – it had sounded strident at the Met in April – and she now sings with renewed confidence and lustre. This bodes well for her return to London as Strauss’s Ariadne next summer. To have a Dyer’s Wife of equal vocal allure, and some more, was luxury indeed: Christine Brewer has an even more opulent figure than the preop Ms Voigt. She moves cautiously, but her voice soars with a refulgence I never expected to hear in this role. Brewer’s Färberin is unlikely to be seen at Covent Garden, because of her size, but she will sing in the Paris Opéra-Bastille revival in the new year. Frau fans should book their Eurostar tickets now. I have never heard the Nurse’s music, which requires the near impossible, a contralto-cum-dramatic soprano, better sung than by Jill Grove. Her thrilling debut should take the American mezzo far.

and

Conducting the opulent, bejewelled score for the first time, Davis is in his element, conjuring a Klimt-like canvas in sound from his excellent orchestra. It’s a musical triumph for the Lyric Opera of Chicago, and the rest of the world will rejoice that such a top-flight Frau cast is available once again.

Splash liked it, too, and includes a plot summary for the perplexed (most of us).

YouTube has a snippet from the first act:

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