State theater Cottbus – rejection to the idyll

A foxin as an opera heroine? This is not the only unusual thing about Leoš Janáček’s opera. A continuous action is missing. In the first act, the young foxin is captured by the forester, but cannot be kept as a pet. She flees to get to know and love a young fox in the second act. In the third act there are already many small foxes. But once the Füchsin is not smart, provokes a poacher and is promptly killed.

Milan Kundera referred to the opera as a “heartbreaking idyll”, and that hits many of her features. The community of forest animals is idyllic, musical are their ballet performances; Touching the Foxian love story. But there are opposing scenes of the human world, with the forester and his buddy. They show a coexistence in the province, where you know each other, attach more or less good -natured taunts without being very bad. These people age reasonably dignified; Children are missing at the human level. Nature, on the other hand, keeps coming back. In the end, the forester hits a daughter of the foxin, whom he wants to educate better; However, he is distracted by a frog who, like one in the first scene, jumps on his nose and stems that the big dad was then.

The eternal nature as a consolation of the finite person – you could already put this under ideology at the premiere in 1924 and a good century later has become problematic. The Cottbus staging also refuses the idyllic forest. In the center of the event (stage design: Natascha von Steiger), a beveled wooden surface rises, limited by a slatted fence, which is nailed as I improvised. It seems ugly as they are intended. Nature is broken right from the start, and at this beginning a act of violence occurs: the kidnapping of the fox.

On the one hand, this is correct, and the staging of Armin Petras emphasizes this on the one hand. Förster, forester, landlady, schoolmaster – with him they are all malignant. For some reasons, the host is still around as a body for some reasons, and a infringed policeman shines the forester dog. Is social criticism? In any case, the idyll also eliminates the heartbreaking that the customer has attributed the opera. And with that, everyone is feeling with these brutalless; May they agree and – hopefully soon – die: all the better!

The music is not easy. Janáček made a lot of trouble to reproduce the finest emotional shades with his language melodies. The director leaves little space. The protagonists of the human world sound accordingly. Andreas Jäpel as a forester has an impressive vocal power, sings extremely comprehensively, but cannot reproduce the many aspects of his figure. Yes, the forester by force stolen the foxin; But no, he remains fascinated by the freedom -loving animal. In the final scene in which the forester confronts with his aging, Jäpel finds finer gradations; But the figure was previously too defined by the direction to take a change from it. In addition, part of the scene is again overloaded with video projections (Maria Tomoiagǎ), as they previously reduced the extensive orchestral passages for accompanying music.

In general, the orchestra does not have an easy stand. The Philharmonic Orchestra of the State Theater Cottbus works under the direction of Johannes Zurl quite beauties of the score, including wonderful sound blends reminiscent of impressionism. But in contrast to the direction, which emphasizes and likes to add crasses, avoids orchestral exaggerations. Even the love of Füchsin and Fuchs sounds quite subtle.

The sound also includes that sung in German in Cottbus. This is a problem, because Janáček has found his language melodies by carefully listening to the Czech and can reproduce the finest turns of feelings. You can also hear the old transmission of Max Brod, which changes content, and not to smarter. Brod’s version makes the human world appear platter when it is in the original.

And is the opposite of rigid human cards here, free animal life there? The young füchsin rushes to free herself in the tumult, the hens on the Försterhof for the revolution. But she bites the hens shortly before her escape, good Foxian. In the second act, your beloved rabbit meat delivers as a giveaway. And the murderer of the Füchsin has recently become a litterer and poacher – obviously an enemy of the fees with which the forester dries up.

As always, the situation is contradictory, an anarchic revolt is not a revolution, violence also takes place between the oppressed – the work is politically wiser than its politically committed interpreters. The question remains what you do with it today.

Clara Weydes Magdeburg staging from 2024, where the forest is also broken from the start, and you understand the forester well from the start when it ends up with the ball. At the other end, Katharina Thackach has been found at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, successful version for many years, which offers many imaginatively designed forest animals and is in danger that the audience is only enjoying the pretty. But the positive may also have become suspicious: without this it doesn’t work, especially with this work. Otherwise, the emotional shades with which Janáček musically also equipped people will find no scenic equivalent. And how can the impending and already widely advanced destruction of nature be illustrated when you see it broken right from the start? Doesn’t Janáček’s assertion of the eternity of nature – as questionable as it appears – do not also include a picture of a possible future that is politically necessary?

This final apotheosis belongs to the orchestra in Cottbus, which finds a powerful access here and is not disturbed by the director. The performance is also carried by Anna Martha Schuitemaker as a foxin, who embodies the possibility of better life in the middle of malice and decline. Accordingly, the direction leaves more freedom, and Schuitemaker uses it to profile the diverse shades of this character. It is supported by the ensemble members of the Cottbus State Theater, which can fill the numerous small and medium -sized roles.

Next performance: July 11th, resumption in the coming season
www.staatstheater-cottbus.de