Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung/Kevin Rodgers’ The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K: A Double Bill, Grimeborn Opera Festival, Dalston, London E8 3DL ⭐⭐⭐ Review by Clare Colvin
Photo credit: Charlie Flint
Arnold Schoenberg’s Erwartung/Kevin Rodgers’ The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K: A Double Bill
Grimeborn Opera Festival, Dalston, London E8 3DL
⭐⭐⭐ Review by Clare Colvin
“Plenty to debate in tales of nightmare and delusion.”
Tearworks Productions are the presenting company of this powerful double bill that brings together two works exploring violence and sanity. Erwartung was Arnold Schoenberg’s first opera, premiered in Prague in1924, and had a profound effect on the direction of music in the years leading up to the second world war. The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K was composed by Kevin Rodgers, adapting libretto by Marie Pappenheim, and was premiered in London last year. Pappenheim had also been the librettist for Schoenberg’s opera.
Schoenberg wrote Erwartung as a monodrama, and I think so it should have stayed, rather than to saddle the cast with a dumb show depicting violence, including a masked man tearing strips of netting off a body-stockinged actor, to denote the fears and apprehensions of The Woman as she enters a dark wood in search of her lover, and eventually stumbles on what proves to be his still bleeding, murdered body. All praise to former RCS Opera Studio soprano Anna Marmion in this taxing and rarely performed gem of Schoenberg.
The Murderous Delusions of Gavrilo K opened to a billowing grey smog of dry ice that was to my mind an unnecessary affliction on the audience, as well as the actors. The glaring white light, during the interrogation of Gavrilo K, after he had murdered the President, was a further unkindness. Videos included headline phrases in the argument as to whether Gavrilo K was sane or mad in killing the President, and thus, in his opinion, saving a billion. Tremendous performances from deluded assassin Quito Clothier claiming a death sentence as proof of sanity, in debate with Elizabeth Marshall as top psychiatrist Dr Sunderland, and strong supporting performances from Anna Loveday, Olekseii Zasiasko, and Jaymes Aaron.
Director: Valeria Perboni
Set designer Erwartung: Fabia Martin
Set designer Murderous delusions of Gavrilo K: Thomas Buggs;
Lighting designer: James Levy