State theater Kassel – patriotism! Fetishism! Cretinism!

Europe? Is also just a shabby yurt, keeping them together with branches on the roof. A blue -eyed tiger on the side. A inflatable fair in the wind blows back and forth over the yurt. And when the rotary stage gives a view of the yurt, we sometimes see a peasant dance in the Hungarian Puszta, sometimes Auerbach’s basement in Leipzig, then margaret’s room or a prison. Most of it is not nice when you take a closer look at the “European House”.

Director Sebastian Baumgarten has the dramaturgical problem of “La Damnation de Faust” (ie “Faust’s damnation”) by Hector Berlioz, which is more of a kind of choir symphony, a music collage, because an opera is elegantly solved. His “music theater after the opera” integrates text fragments by Nikolaus Lenau, Wolfgang Borchert and Alexander Kluge, who is repeatedly recited into the play by actress Annett Kruschke-particularly impressively in a long anti-war scene by Borchert, with which it is reacted to happy-grown soldiers’ songs.

The arranger Felix Linsmeier has in a common creative process with conductor Kiril Stankow, who manages the State Orchestra Kassel, the Berlioz’sche sound material that skeletonized the march, dances and songs on their archaic core, and passages mostly dark electronic music from Stefan Schneider complement the musical and emotional tableau of the performance. This staging of “Faust’s damnation” at the Kassel State Theater blends into an impressive two -hour performance, in which the vague -working twenty scenes of the Berlioz composition are formulated into a multi -layered reality.

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One of the great misunderstandings that this opera has accompanied since its creation is its supposed Goethe. Sure, Goethe’s “Faust” was a great literary experience for Berlioz, according to his own statement “he could not resist” to “put in music” some rhymed fragments, songs, songs. The young Berlioz had these pieces printed at his own expense and received Goethe in Weimar in 1829. He is said to have been brushed, but presented the score to his musical advisor Zelter in Berlin, who saw it only “loud cough, snort, croak and outdoor” and thought the whole thing for an “abbreviation … out of grayish incest”. Unfortunately, Goethe was rather poorly advised musically.

In any case, Berlioz withdrew the original composition and only dealt with the fabric again in 1845. Now the world had changed drastically. Goethe’s “Urfaust” (1785), in which the focus is on the love tragedy and Mephisto is still a secondary figure, yes, even “the tragedy’s first part” (1808) no longer made any sense in the mid -19th century. The French Revolution had taken place, industrialization began, the railway was there and with it the dissolution of any space-time unit.

Industrial modernity and with it the scientific and technical submission (and disenchantment) determine the life and time relationships; Goethe also reacts to this with “Faust II” (1832) and now represents Faust as an incarnation of European power man, as a homo oeconomicus, as a global player too. However, despite all the troubleshooting and troubles, the ethics, which was soaked in the spirit of capitalism, that Max Weber formulated in the spirit of capitalism, which Max Weber formulated. Because: “Whoever strives for, / we can redeem it,” as the angels announce the amazed audience at the end of the drama.

There can be no question of this at Berlioz. Pust cake, nobody comes to heaven here. Berlioz writes his own fist, both in the libretto and even more in music. His fist is a Larmoyante individual, a social illiterate that wadet deeply in the black romance of French stripes. “As if there was no other fist than Goethe’s. Patriotism! Fetishism! Crete! «, Berlioz replied to allegations of German critics.

The dramaturge of the Kassel performance, Kornelius Paede, consequently understands the “substance as a European parabola, not an exclusive German national sanctuary” in his brilliant program. In Baumgarten’s staging, Faust appears to us as a predecessor of Flauber’s Frédéric Moreau from “L’éducation Sentimental” or as a “man without properties”. He is a romantic meaning seeker, a social, which is more social, only to the center of all feelings or insights committed to his own belly button. He is “unable, isolated, impotent: This is the diagnosis that the Berliozsche Text Faust exhibits Freudian,” as the Romanist and musicologist Hermann Hofer attests to the supposed hero.

Of course, such a fist is an authoritarian character. Berlioz ‘Faust’ Faust reacts weakly and lethargically, “mindful”, as one says today, primarily towards yourself and otherwise full of romantic desires, but in doubt, to the most authoritarian followers. “Banality of evil,” says Hannah Arendt expressly: “There is no depth – this is not demonic! This is simply the unwillingness to imagine what is actually with the other. “

As far as the intellectual superstructure of this staging. But we would not be at the Kassel State Theater if all of this was not brought to the stage extremely sensually and in some cases. Just as Berlioz repeatedly plays with “polymetric overlays, with which the composer layers on top of each other” (Ulrich Schreiber), Sebastian Baumgarten also succeeds in overstructing and sometimes confused panoptics of different scenes, moods and actions that are shaped around the yurt.

Faust wakes up deeply in Europe, he hangs around in the first scene in Hungary, pours in a hymn over the spring -like nature: “O bliss, to enjoy the rest ‘peaceful corridors, / far from all people and far from all people and far away from their rows!” Nature as a counterpoint to industrial society, to the people in front of which he basically disgusted – far from him is the “mass”, far. He observes without participation, but also a little jealous a rural wedding party with her lively dance – “I have to avoid her lust”.

Soldiers pass by, the famous Hungarian Rákóczy march sounds, a brilliant piece with which Berlioz caused a sensation at a concert tour in 1845/46 in Budapest. Berlioz – who had been refused to enter Austria by Metternich’s police state in 1831 – deliberately composed as a political statement in favor of the Hungarian revolution for the detachment from the Habsburg Empire. But Faust is left out; It is clear to him that the insurgents “sons of the Danube (…) for homeland, for freedom, are quite arguing”, but he does not join the revolutionary movement, his “heart remains cold, even the glory”. Ulrich Schreiber declares this Faust as the “ancestor of Johannes Faust with Hanns Eisler, who reveals the peasantry as a whole with the betrayal to Thomas Müntzer and becomes the leader of a murderous reaction” (which the GDR leadership in 1954 demonized as a desecration of Goethe’s cultural heritage, Mephisto was sued).

Just this Méphistophélès is just right, he offers Faust, who has just dealt with suicidal thoughts, to fulfill all his wishes. And already the two fly to Leipzig, in Auerbach’s basement, where they encounter dull sailors with the roares of dubious songs. The blasphemy “Amen” joint, which the choir flashes drunk, is a musical highlight of the evening. But Faust wants to go quickly from “this place where every word insults, humans are cheering and wit.” Does the devil really have “no clever cookies” for Faust, not a cozy song? He has!

Méphistophélès takes Faust to the Elbau and sings a slumber song, accompanied by sweet wooden blower sounds, mixed with trombone tones, Mephisto’s guiding instrument. Dreaming lullen fist, the violins indicate a waltz melody, he sees a woman’s fantasma: Marguerite. She too is involved in the dream of the Méphistophélès and saw Faust in a dream. When she appears for the first time, sensibly with the excessive Teufels-Quart, she sings the archaic old German song from the king in Thule, an assertion.

The first encounter of the two there is a mutual confession of love, but the love night fails (we remember Hofer’s dictum: Faust is “unable” and “impotent”). For the Faust, Marguerite is only the dream of an “ideal woman”, far from any realization of a love affair. Instead, the eternal Zauderer is in Lebenskel, self -pity and natural delimitation. Faust has been less in love for Marguerite than in his own feeling of “love”.

It was only when he learns that Marguerite was captured because she had given Faust’s expectation of her mother’s evening after evening, which she finally died – only then Faust finally becomes a desperate actor that a contract with Méphistophélès finally signs to save Marguerite. The two want to rush to Marguerite after the conclusion of the contract, but their ride leads directly to hell. No redemption, nowhere.

The singers are excellent: Eric Laporte as a lamoyant, wonderfully characterized fist, the wonderful Ilseyar Khayrullova as a loving, then desperate, then arrested by the police, tragic marguerite, and Last but not least Filippo Bettoschi as a fascinating Méphistophélès, sometimes in a great bench scenes in purple-violet silk coat and black robber hat on the double bass, but also as a businessman in the dubious devil business.

Above all, however, the huge choir, almost in the Greek style, not only has the plot forward, but also always commenting: The over eighty singers of the opera and extra-axle of the State Theater Kassel are not only a musical power, but also an immensely enthusiastic gang that is watched to watch at the farmer’s wedding or in Auerbach Choir of the flaws or as a cardinal red, Easter anthymnic association dipped in, whether as an increasingly threatening, ultimately in black and finally appearing police officer or sometimes as a bad soldier choir, which coordinates hideous male chants (to which Berlioz wrote a geniishly gruesome music): “When the trumpets sounded, the brave (…) girls and boys, so Very much of them, we will soon (…) castle with high walls and battlements, girls with proud, sneering senses (…) girls and castles have to give themselves. «Male fantasies. Fascism, when it comes, is basically misogynia.

The ride into hell is a fascinating ride of hell, very Berlioz’sche effect magic: the grand finale of an adorable staging. The devils and the damn sing in a strange gibberish »Diff! Diff! Merondor, Merondor Aysko! «, And» Has! Has! Satan! Has! Has! Belphégor! «, The threatening word hatred is increasingly crystallizing:“ Hate! Hate! Méphisto! «The yurt is wrapped in smoke. Europe is hell.

Next performances: March 9th, 21st and 29th March
www.staatstheater-kassel.de