Dhe date of February 24, 2022 also represents a sharp turning point for culture. In retrospect, what came before appears in a new light, and what was right suddenly turns out to be wrong or at least debatable. This is particularly evident in the case of events from the temporal near range. Now the Munich Biennale for New Music Theater, which is always keen on political topicality, has been caught on the wrong foot.
The opening premiere, a world premiere by the Austrian composer Bernhard Gander in co-production with the Deutsche Oper Berlin, is about migrants who are rejected at the European borders and treated as a soulless number, and one can assume that the Ukrainian writer Serhij Zhadan, a harsh critic both the Russian invasion of his country and the initial obtuseness on the part of some Western European countries, which would have set the accents in his libretto for this work quite differently today.
The substance has simply been overtaken by reality. Even the title of the new work collides with it: “Songs of Expulsion and Never Returning”. The millions of Ukrainian women and children fleeing the war are now being welcomed with open arms, and most want to return. So you sit in the dark auditorium and, faced with the hopelessness that the play spreads, think to yourself: what a highly topical libretto on this subject, filled with tragedy and hope for the future, willingness to resist and human affection, would have been created if Zhadan had written it today! In his criticism of the insensitivity of the well-fed affluent citizen, however, he hits a sore point. It is the politically wide-awake East European’s view of the sleepy West.
Apart from that, this premiere definitely shows qualities. Gander, who has also looked into rap and rock music, strictly composed the music. Appropriately for the subject, he hardly leaves the listener a moment of peace. A monotonous, harshly chanted speaking and singing dominates for long stretches, which, especially with the use of a small choir, evokes associations with Greek theater and Carl Orff. The angular rhythms are doubled by a small, electrically amplified combo and condensed into a dark, aggressive sound.
The conductor Elda Laro, together with the five musicians of the Ensemble Modern, bravely fights through the undergrowth of time changes. Brightening up is rare, for example in the scene in which an “honest man” opens the gate to the border crossing. But why Gander comments on this sign of humanity by quoting Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” and not in his own musical language is not entirely clear.
The production by Alize Zandwijk (director), Theun Mosk (stage) and Anne Sophie Domenz (costumes) plays the misery card; the clearly differentiated plot locations in Zhadan’s libretto were sacrificed to a dreary uniform stage setting. The very broad scene, which is open towards the auditorium, shows a non-place somewhere between a deserted public square and a warehouse, in the middle a dim lantern, on which it sometimes rains, in a corner a pile of red life jackets. Key sentences of the libretto are projected onto the back wall.
The direction uses the empty space with some skill. The choir is integrated into the action, the four nameless refugees lead their dialogues in constantly changing places and occasionally accuse the audience. Inner coherence and professionalism cannot be denied. The impression of an unfortunate lack of topicality nevertheless remains.
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