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The New York Times, Sept. 24, 2023 |
By Anastasia Tsioulcas |
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Schubert: Der Doppelgänger, New York, Park Avenue Armory, ab 22.9.2023
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‘Doppelganger’ Review: A Soldier Confronts His Mortality |
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At the Park Avenue Armory, an imaginative and viscerally shocking
staging of Schubert songs from the director Claus Guth and the tenor Jonas
Kaufmann.
In the classical tradition, a song often evokes
intimacy and solitude: a poet baring vulnerability, a composer painting a
miniature. That sense of seclusion extends to the performance as well: a
singer and pianist alone onstage, a listener absorbing the work in an
intimate recital hall or immersed, alone, with headphones.
These
conventions surround the final group of songs written by Schubert, known as
“Schwanengesang” (Swan Song) and published after the composer’s death in
1828 at age 31. But those expectations were upended in “Doppelganger,” which
had its world premiere Friday at the cavernous Park Avenue Armory Drill
Hall. The director Claus Guth, the star tenor Jonas Kaufmann, the pianist
Helmut Deutsch and a raft of collaborators transformed “Schwanengesang” at
the Saturday night performance into an entire wartime narrative.
Kaufmann is a soldier who lies dying in a military hospital. Far from being
alone with Deutsch onstage, he is one of nearly two dozen injured and sick
soldiers being tended by a fleet of six nurses, the rest of the cast is made
up of dancers. Deutsch and the piano are dead center among more than 60
hospital beds that stretch across the hall’s immense floor. Kaufmann’s
soldier spends the last hour of his life revisiting his memories in a
cascade of Schubert’s songs, stitched together with ominous new music by the
German composer Mathis Nitschke.
Guth’s imaginative and powerful
staging for his New York debut recalls history. This drill hall has served
as a hospital and shelter; “Doppelganger,” which had originally been
intended for a fall 2020 premiere, also invokes the field hospitals hastily
erected at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Michael Levine’s
inventive and minimalistic set design is dominated by the blanched shades of
hospital whites and khaki uniforms. Growls of Nitschke’s sound and clever
lighting by Urs Schönebaum suggest thunderstorms and bombings.
Does
the theatrical conceit serve Schubert’s songs? In the hands of Kaufmann and
Deutsch, who have long worked together, yes — and it reignites the master’s
music in a fresh, intelligent setting without sacrificing the duo’s artistry
as classical performers.
At one point, the piano becomes a main
character in the drama, as Kaufmann and the dancers gather to listen in
respite to Deutsch perform the second movement of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in
B-flat Major, D. 960. It was a rare treat to hear Deutsch, who usually
performs an accompanist, take literal center stage.
In a concession
to the Armory’s sheer expanse, Kaufmann’s voice was lightly amplified. This
was occasionally distracting when he turned his head away from his
microphone, and his normally crisp articulation was slightly muddied. But
Kaufmann’s sweet tone transcended the limits of the technology, particularly
in Schubert’s yearning song of desire “Ständchen.”
In the evening’s
climactic song, “Der Doppelgänger,” Kaufmann’s soldier encounters his
ghostly twin at the moment of death. Although the audience knows this was
coming, having already seen the soldier being mortally wounded, the
theatrical ingenuity and visceral force of “Doppelganger” was so strong that
the audience let out an audible gasp of shock. When was the last time you
heard something like that in a classical concert hall?
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