Set Storm: Warm Grave in the Snow

Daphne can’t do anything with the stupid human world; she experiences nature as the greatest happiness. This self-sufficiency is unbearable for the so-called male world. Shepherd and childhood friend Leucippus woos her, but is turned down. God Apollo, a party guest at the festival in honor of Dionysus, seduces Daphne to kiss her. Unbearable for Leucippus: He demands a fight and finds death. Finally Apollo feels sorry and asks his fellow gods to accept the shepherd into Olympus and to turn poor Daphne, who is only now realizing her affection for Leucippus, into a tree.

Powerful lords of the gods with a bad conscience who can think of nothing better than to immortalize posthumous honor and a woman in a mute nature? A naive chaste who recognized her love and life’s goal of devotion to one man too late? Richard Strauss’ opera “Daphne”, which was first performed in Dresden in 1938, really doesn’t have a great plot. There was a libretto problem: the poets otherwise responsible for it were either dead (Hugo von Hofmannsthal) or had had to flee into exile (Stephan Zweig). The third choice was Joseph Gregor, director of the Austrian National Library, who was unable to produce a dramatic text. The language babbles along like that. And Strauss’ music is no longer up to par: symphonic and lyrical, lots of ideas for the main character, and all in all quite decorative. Compared to the famous, active, complex female characters Salome and Elektra, to whom Strauss previously dedicated operas, “Daphne” falls short.

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The Italian director Romeo Castelucci, famous for his optical equipment, tried his hand at a production of “Daphne” at the Berlin State Opera. He places Strauss’ bucolic tragedy, which takes place in warm Greece, in a snowy wasteland. Flakes fall relentlessly onto the stage: a white abstract surface that repeatedly obscures history and society. An afterlife? In the background the horizon is a dark forest as the only contour. Everyone wears thick coats, down jackets, anoraks, they are hard to distinguish and keep warm. Castelucci himself is also responsible for the costumes.

Only Daphne disrobes right at the beginning when she dances around the tree, throwing off the comforts of civilization. Soprano Vera-Lotte Boecker succeeds in grasping the complex character and, thanks in part to Evelin Fachhini’s choreography, she creates an intense physicality between suffering and lightness. Johan Krogius, who plays Leucippus, can’t usually compete with the orchestra vocally. This doesn’t make his love very plausible. And David Butt Philip as Apollo also struggles to convey the impression of divine violence.

Only after Leucippo’s death, when he soaks himself in fake blood from the canister – one would actually expect oil for spontaneous combustion in this vessel – does the action pick up speed. As Daphne, Boecker urgently laments her missed worldly love and languishes at her best. Then comes the big cultural-historical allusion: the title page of TS Eliot’s epoch-making poem “The Waste Land” from 1922 is drawn down in large format. The famous lines at the beginning, where winter keeps a “we” warm, the snow is forgetful, memory and desire mix before the cruel spring sets in, are probably clues to how Castelucci understands his stage. The gesture of simply throwing this reference at the audience at the end is simply conceit.

In any case, Daphne ends up smearing mud on herself and burying herself in the snow. She becomes a tree that dangles from the ceiling upside down, attached to the roots, from the stage. Castelucci creates an image that stays in the audience’s memory. But that can’t hide the fact that, despite the metaphorical efforts, the evening remains quite boring for long stretches. Castelucci’s world of images offers projection surfaces, but there is no precise criticism of the original.

Next performances: January 25th, January 28th, January 31st, February 7th.

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