Tempelhof Airport: Handel’s “Messiah” at the Komische Oper: Scenic Accident

If you want to see the greatest nonsense that has been performed on Berlin’s stages in a long time, you have to make a pilgrimage to Hangar 4 of the former Tempelhof Airport, where the Komische Oper is performing Handel’s oratorio “Messiah” in an unsuccessful production. The audience is compensated by wonderful music played at the highest level.

Handel’s oratorio, composed in just 24 days in the summer of 1741 (although, as was usual at the time, with the help of earlier pieces, including his Italian duet cantatas), was written at a crossroads in the work of the composer, who was born in Halle/Saale and had lived in London for decades and since 1727 an English citizen due to a law drafted especially for him. The decades of great operatic success were coming to an end; Baroque opera was in crisis, which also had painful consequences for Handel. In 1737 the opera company Covent Garden Theater, which he ran under his own direction and under his own financial responsibility, went bankrupt; At the same time, Handel suffered a severe stroke.

Although Handel made further attempts to succeed in opera, he increasingly turned to oratorio from 1739 onwards. This is how “Messiah” was created based on a libretto by the large landowner, patron and librettist Charles Jennens, essentially a compilation of selected Bible passages.

Stefan Zweig dedicated a chapter of his “Magnificent Hours of Humanity” to the emergence of the “Messiah” and called it “George Friedrich Handel’s Resurrection.” Zweig describes two things with a bit of pathos: not only Handel’s recovery from his stroke and the composition of one of his most lasting works as if in a frenzy, but also the composer’s late turn from the star author of the Italian opera, the Opera seria, to the English oratorio. Today one would rather say that Handel “reinvented” himself and was not “resurrected.”

The “Messiah” consists of three parts, presented here based on the analysis of Nikolaus Harnoncourt:

1. Announcement and plan of redemption by the Messiah: from the promise of Isaiah to the vision of the shepherds and Christ’s life on earth.

2nd Passion: Rejection of the Messiah/defeat of the rebels: The composed cross symbol, a resounding “Ecce Homo” along with the disappointing reactions of the people; the tormentors and the mob; the loneliness and hopelessness; finally, the spread of the gospel, the crushing of the resistance and the triumph.

3. Hymn of thanksgiving for overcoming death, which follows the Anglican funeral liturgy: death and sin versus resurrection and life; Effect of the Savior on the Individual – God Protects All; Final anthem.

Now the text and music of the “Messiah” contain no stories, no plot is told. Rather, it is about a series of contemplations on the Christian idea of ​​redemption, which can also be understood more broadly and without resorting to Christianity as a universal message, for example as a comprehensive message of peace to humanity.

So the soloist asks in the bass aria in the second part: “Why do the nations so furiously rage together, and why do the people imagine a vain thing?” ?”), and the chorus answers: “Let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yokes from us” – “Let us break their bonds and cast away their yoke from us”! This is almost a revolutionary statement, finally getting rid of the shackles and the yoke. And it is this request that Handel’s smash hit “Hallelujah” follows. A hit that we may owe to Handel’s laxity when it comes to questions of intellectual property, to put it with Brecht with a smile, since Henry Purcell had already written a very similar “For ever, for ever” in an incidental music for Shakespeare’s “The Tempest” forty years earlier. -Chorus written.

Handel, for whom the move from Germany to England was, according to Ulrich Schreiber, “something like the leap from the Middle Ages into modern times,” saw the English oratorio as an opportunity to “spread a progressive, humanistic and democratic message.” as a vehicle for folk art that is understandable to the broadest possible audience. Karl Marx wrote of Handel’s “expressly revolutionary” music for reasons.

It’s generally about a good future and comfort, a sense of community and human spirituality. “Comfort ye, comfort ye My People” it says, or “Ev’ry valley shall be exalted, and ev’ry mountain and hill made low” (“Every valley shall be exalted, and make every mountain and hill flat.” Handel is the protagonist of the Enlightenment, which is so beautifully referred to in English as “Enlightenment”.

Unfortunately, however, none of this can be seen or felt in the production by the Italian director Damiano Michieletto. Michieletto read in a newspaper the tragic story of Brittany Maynard, who, at the age of 29, learned that she had six months to live due to a brain tumor and decided on a doctor-assisted suicide and endured massive attacks, for example from pro-life activists had to. A sad story on many levels – which not only “at first glance has nothing to do with the psalms of the libretto”, as Michieletto himself rightly admits in the program booklet, but also not at the second, third, fifth or twentieth glance. The director simply imposed this story on Handel’s “Messiah” and, to a certain extent, forced it on the oratorio. This doesn’t make any sense, on the contrary, it leads to all sorts of absurd scenes. The soprano, for example, who, contrary to the score, has to play a doctor in a white coat, hands the actress, who Michieletto invented and who has to play the woman with the brain tumor, the CT X-ray with the death sentence and sings the cheerful aria » Rejoice greatly,” which says: “Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion, rejoice, O daughter of Jerusalem.” For this scene, a CT machine is rolled onto the stage, the actress lies down in it, and the doctor closes a ring over it Head, which, depending on the mood of those watching, can be interpreted as an anticipated crown of thorns of the coming Passion story or as a halo.

In other places too, this production is neither immune to hollow pathos nor banal kitsch. It remains unclear whether the small bottle, which is brought to a table in the middle of the stage like a candle in a solemn procession, contains pain-relieving morphine or the redemptive euthanasia poison before which the cancer patient lies down in worship. But does this have to be accompanied by jubilant D major singing?

Or the somewhat banal motif of the small reddish flying kite (perhaps even a subtle product placement of the kite festival taking place opposite the Tempelhofer Feld at the same time as the premiere?), which in the first part the singers jump up in vain to catch – while the actress is watching this kite third part, suddenly swinging happily like an Olympic torch relay at high speed around the choir, i.e. the “people”. Finally the gate becomes – a bright, white light that leads to the afterlife; Clearly, the director really doesn’t avoid any motif, no matter how cheesy – open, the choir sings “Worthy is the lamb that was slain,” and the cancer patient, reduced to a lamb, runs out. So we all – you, the choir, the audience – are finally redeemed. Then suddenly it rains from above as the choir sings to the “honor, glory and strength” of “the one who sits on the throne” and carries pieces of grass in and places them on the stage. So even heaven must cry over this failed production.

However, musically this “Messiah” is a largely happy triumph. This is primarily thanks to the accomplished conductor George Petrow, who likes to lead the Komische Oper orchestra through the score at brisk tempos in the best “historically informed” playing practice. But also the choir director David Cavelius, who impressively managed to combine the opera’s choir soloists (for whom the more virtuoso numbers are of course reserved) with the approximately 300 singers of the “Project Choir”, which consists of various church and amateur choirs as well as singers * from Berlin, to form a strong singing and playing ensemble that also masters the contrapuntal depths of the choral numbers excellently. How wonderful to be able to experience this music-making together by professionals and amateur musicians!

Sometimes, of course, one wishes for the small cast of the premiere, with just 32 singers at the time (intentionally not gendered, because at the time it was actually all boys, 16 each for the soprano and for the three other voice ranges). The “Hallelujah” in particular becomes unnecessarily broad and pathetic with so many singers, and the fundamental problem with so many singers is that the alto and bass are somewhat lost in favor of the higher vocal ranges. For comparison, listen to the less muscular and yet (or perhaps because of that?) captivating and brilliant version of Harnoncourt.

But the choir’s movements in particular are well choreographed, for example when the hands go up together and turn towards the actors or when the singers gather around the podium – which is also a bit like the choreo for celebrating a Champions League -winner works. The only thing missing is the confetti. But these are probably compromises that have to be made if anyone wants to perform an oratorio like “Messiah” in the large hangar at Tempelhof Airport. Even a better director could hardly avoid the event character of such an event.

Outstanding Julia Grüter with her wonderfully bright soprano. The tenor Julian Behr started strong with the impressive “Comfort ye”, but then lost a little of its impact. Bassist Tijl Faveyts mastered his part without shining. The contralto Rachael Wilson was allowed to sing the most beautiful aria: “He was despised and rejected of men”, one of Handel’s most wonderful pieces, which lasts ten minutes about a desperate “man of pain, “filled with grief”.

This showed what a production that would actually believe in the beautiful English text and Handel’s wonderful music would have been able to do: a huge, 840 kilogram LED ellipse is lowered from the ceiling, and at its edge the alto singer, who has been abandoned by everyone, sings dreamily “one of the most intimate and emotional pieces that vocal music has produced,” as musical director George Petrow rightly says. An impressive picture. It’s all contained in the music, it’s about love, peace, hope and redemption. There is no reason to invent a story for the sake of banal effect.

Next performances September 25th, 27th and 28th
www.komische-oper-berlin.de