La Montagne Noire by Augusta Holmès in Dortmund

LThere are also a lot of daring and clever women to talk about here, but that's precisely why we start with a man: Mirko. The quarrelsome tongues of heteronormative dinosaurs could call him “The Memme Mirko”, because Mirko is the hero with an apron, or better: the anti-hero in a state of progressive impoverishment. His legs were already covered in fur and hooves when the former victor of Montenegrin battles against the Ottomans got drunk with his Turkish lover Yamina.

At the Dortmund Opera, director Emily Hehl cleverly turns the hero into a donkey, because the donkey is the animal that prefers to shed loads rather than break its back. And so Mirko also sheds the burden of his traditional gender role as a hero with no inhibitions about killing. In addition, according to biblical tradition, the donkey is the animal that is particularly close to God. Balaam's donkey sees God earlier than her rider; The ox and donkey share the emergency camp with the newborn baby Jesus, and Christ rides into Jerusalem on a donkey on Palm Sunday.

Emily Hehl also quotes this scene in her production of “La Montagne Noire” when Mirko's blood and brother in arms Aslar, leading a donkey, is greeted with palm fronds in his Montenegrin village. But while the Montenegrins continually use the name of Christ in their mouths to kill Turks, Mirko practices the commandment of loving one's enemies. He who betrayed his family, country and faith and defected to the Mussulmans was actually fulfilling Christ's commandment. That's not in the libretto, but Hehl noticed it, just as she noticed that defecting to the enemy is also seen as becoming effeminate. Terms of honor are gender terms. Hence the apron.

Augusta Holmès, who wrote this opera about a tragic hero between the femme fatale Yamina and that fragile woman Héléna, Mirko's fiancé, composed in 1884, was neither one nor the other. She was one femme flamboyante the Belle Époque. Born in Paris in 1847 as the daughter of an Irishman and a Scottish woman, she always felt French, although she was only naturalized in 1879. She was so beautiful that many writers and musicians fell in love with her, Camille Saint-Saëns proposed marriage to her and her teacher César Franck was probably inspired by her to write his hot-blooded, fateful Piano Quintet in F minor. But she maintained her financial independence by refusing to marry. She had five children with the writer Catulle Mendès, who in turn was married to the poet Judith Gauthier, who in turn had a liaison with Richard Wagner, who in turn was greatly admired by Augusta Holmès, but little imitated.

Certainly, there is a vow motif in “La Montagne Noire” that is exposed right at the beginning with solid sheet metal and recurs several times, there is Yamina's motif of remembrance of her homeland – but these do not have to be leitmotifs in Wagner's sense. Jules Massenet also knows this technique. Holmès is at best based a little on Wagner in the orchestration, but not in the harmony and melody. She continues to depict the meter of her verses and the correspondences of her rhymes musically, instead of dissolving them into the prose of an “infinite melody”.

In 1895, she was the first woman since Louise Bertin to bring out “La Montagne Noire” at the Paris Opera, in the Palais Garnier. Nevertheless, it was a failure, canceled after 13 performances and thoroughly forgotten. The notes for the third and fourth acts were considered lost for a long time until the musicologist Nicole K. Strohmann rediscovered them in 2008. The Palazzetto Bru Zane, center for romantic French music, provided a complete sheet music edition in 2023, on the basis of which the first performance in 129 years has now taken place in Dortmund. The original finale was also premiered, in which an Orthodox priest turns the fratricide – Aslar kills Mirko to save his honor – into a heroic death and thus demonstrates the mechanisms of patriarchal historiography. That – unlike in “Carmen” or “Samson et Dalila” – the femme fatale not dying a sacrificial death, but being able to pass on a counter-story as a survivor, is just as much a feminist volte of Holmès as the portrait of Yamina as a free woman, which exposes male control as ridiculous.

The mezzo-soprano Aude Extrémo brings cooing sensuality, black-throated depth and dance skill to this role in Dortmund. Sergey Radchenko is a radiant and vulnerable hero tenor, Mandla Mndebele is a shiny chrome, real baritone knight. Alisa Kolosova's ready-to-fight mezzo-soprano as Dara proves how large a role mothers play in every hero's son, even postnatally. Anna Sohn's soprano sounds truly enchanting in its grace and lightness as Héléna. But the main role is played by the choir, splendidly trained by Fabio Mancini, who not only dominates the scene, but also drives it forward.

Motonori Kobayashi and the Dortmund Philharmonic Orchestra enjoy the arabesques of the score, which resemble the ornaments on the historical costumes that Emma Gaudiano designed as costumes. A little more lyrical intensity instead of loud development of power (a problem whose cause lies with the composer) would do the piece better. In the bunker-like stage design by Frank Philipp Schlößmann, Hehl repeatedly creates tableaux that resemble historical paintings, but they are broken by the Montenegrin gusla player and singer Bojana Peković. This careful production pays respect to the piece, which has no tradition of performance, relates it philologically to a folklore tradition and at the same time reflects the play of power and appropriation. Fine, clever work!