Germany Benjamin, Written on Pores and skin: Soloists, Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper / Marc Albrecht (conductor). Deutsche Oper, Berlin, 1.2.2024. (MB)
Manufacturing:
Director – Katie Mitchell
Revival director – Dan Ayling
Designs – Vicki Mortimer
Lighting – Jon Clark
Dramaturgy – Sebastian Hanusa
Forged:
Protector – Mark Stone
Agnès – Georgia Jarman
First Angel / The Boy – Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen
Second Angel / Marie – Anna Werle
Third Angel, / John – Likelihood Jonas-O’Toole
Angel archivists – Leander Gaul, Yasmina Giebeler, Milli Keil, Maximilian Reisinger
Greater than a decade has handed since I first noticed George Benjamin’s second opera, Written on Pores and skin, at Covent Backyard. The premiere, each of the work and Katie Mitchell’s well-travelled manufacturing, befell at Aix in 2012. Now it reaches, for the primary time, Berlin in an extra revival of Mitchell’s staging for the Deutsche Oper. It’s my fourth listening to, since I attended each the Royal Opera’s 2017 revival and, the 12 months earlier than, a live performance efficiency on the Barbican with Aix’s unique Mahler Chamber Orchestra. Higher acquaintance leaves my admiration undimmed; if something, it glows all of the brighter. For while the casts of my earlier encounters had a lot, although not all the things, in widespread, and Benjamin performed all of them, right here we’ve got one thing new in all however the staging, ably revived by Dan Ayling.
I shall not try a broad overview, whether or not musical or dramatic, of the work, as I did in 2013. (My assessment will be learn right here, for these .) Quite, I shall level to some points of labor, manufacturing, and efficiency that struck me on this event. First, I can’t now perceive my lukewarmness regarding Mitchell’s staging. Possibly I’ve grown extra accustomed not solely to her work however to up to date theatre extra typically. If something, the hazard for me is probably the other, that I now affiliate the work with this explicit manufacturing. There have, astonishingly for a brand new work, particularly a brand new work that isn’t, let’s consider, of the US ‘straightforward listening selection’, been quite a few productions already; for now, although, that is the one one I’ve seen. Vicki Mortimer’s split-level set permits us to see the world of angels and that of males (particularly, the Protector, Agnès, her sister and brother-in-law, and The Boy) and, crucially, their transformative interplay, as, for, occasion one of many angels is apprised of the scenario – narratives already constructing upon each other – and assumes, because it had been, the position of the Boy who will chronicle his patron’s life in phrases and pictures. That features the liberating sexual relationship that arises between him and the brutalised Agnès, the Protector’s ‘property’, really coming to life in an authentically musicodramatic marriage of phrases, music, and staging. Certainly, the eroticism right here of Benjamin’s rating struck me extra strongly than ever earlier than, maybe a trademark of conductor Marc Albrecht’s method to the work.
So does what might sound a commonplace of drama, but right here appears explicit, distinctive, partly as a result of one is led to really feel, not solely observe, it in its very explicit character: inexorability of destiny. As tightly organised a rating as The Flip of the Screw, but much less clearly so, holds us captive, nearly like Agnès herself. It beguiles, even perhaps breaths a bit of of the Occitan air, medieval and now, however by no means through an try to breed and even to signify. Illumination, in no matter sense we care, is each extra complicated and extra rapid than that. There’s definitely commentary; it’s inscribed, because it had been, upon the very pores and skin of the work. But nevertheless a lot the angels may classify, file away, their actual work is in transformation: of individuals and maybe finally of souls.
Senses of time passing, of claustrophobia, of destiny closing in – although by no means merely mirroring – the work – and certainly of an uncontrollable, harmful pleasure that have to be managed, but in that act of controlling requires new life are conveyed scenically in new layers of an exercise that conspires each to be explicit and quotidian. It’s nearly a non secular ritual, bringing additional to life a quasi-Ardour of ardour to hitch works similar to Così fan tutte and Tristan und Isolde, in addition to the extra clearly (and musically) associated Pelléas et Mélisande. In work and efficiency, this intriguing, nearly legendary mixture of easy motion and elusive allusion which will or will not be symbolism suggests a temporal palimpsest. (Not for nothing, maybe, is considered one of Benjamin’s main orchestral works, really titled Palimpsests, an exploration of that concept.)
By the identical token, although, there isn’t any doubting the rawness and immediacy of acts, of issues additionally being very a lot what they appear. In Agnès’s phrases not solely of liberation, but in addition of the Boy’s instruction: ‘Love’s not an image; love is an act.’ This and so many different moments confirmed and furthered my admiration for Martin Crimp’s libretto. Not like so many makes an attempt at writing for opera, Crimp’s work for Benjamin right here and elsewhere permits loads of area for music. Certainly, if one didn’t know, one may battle to guess which got here first; it will be fascinating to learn any correspondence they could have had about this.
Efficiency is itself a obligatory act. We aren’t right here talking merely of one thing written or drawn on the web page. Albrecht and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper gave a commanding efficiency, with all of the freshness of discovery but additionally an understanding and conviction that may have been born of repertoire standing. (It’s, arguably, a repertoire opera now, but not but on this home, for this was solely its second efficiency.) Georgia Jarman made the position of Agnès very a lot her personal, totally inhabiting a personality come to life by way of the alchemy of music in addition to phrases and staging. One felt her predicament strongly, shared her battle and supreme revenge, with out the drama being diminished merely to them. Mark Stone’s Protector was merciless and, in his personal manner, righteous, torn himself between two loves, the query of his emotions for The Boy opened up relatively than ‘handled’. Pleasure and vulnerability had been each current. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen’s efficiency as The Boy may nearly have stolen the present in its uncannily angelic mixture of the worldly and otherworldly; that’s, it may need completed, had the forged not labored so carefully collectively. Anna Werle and Likelihood Jonas-O’Toole, doubling as Angels and, respectively, Marie and John provided equally high quality performances in smaller roles. For in richness of layering and sureness of deadly route, this was a efficiency in addition to a piece created and recreated by way of its writing on pores and skin.
Mark Berry
