OEDIPE'S TRIUMPHANT RETURN TO BERLIN PROF.DR. MIHAI COSMA, PHD NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF MUSIC BUCHAREST ABSTRACT: The following text share impressions and details from the most recent staging of the opera Oedipe by George Enescu – Berlin, August 2021. The author presents, for a start, a review of all the stagings of Enescu’s masterpiece from its world premiere in 1936 until today. Some details of Komische Oper’s production are provided below, so that readers can make an impression on the novelties and director’s ideas. The conclusion is that it was an original, interesting show, characteristic to the current specific to Germany that promotes "Regietheater", but at the same time well sung and, most importantly in this context, very well received by the public.
KET WORDS: OEDIPE, REGIE, KOMISCHE OPER, BERLIN THERE ARE some famous cases in the history of music when a composer wrote a single opera, that proved in time to be a supreme success, which has established itself and which has become a reference in the landscape of the genre. It is also the case of George Enescu, whose lyrical masterpiece represented (first only for himself) his fundamental work, "the dearest of all"1 his compositions. Well, this own assessment (coming, let's not forget, from a man extremely demanding of himself and his scores) began, little by little, to be confirmed by the public route of the opera Oedipe, which now sums up most European countries, crossing even the Atlantic. Just as the composer was preoccupied with this creation for almost a quarter of a century, the tempo of recognizing the Oedipe as a masterpiece of the 20th century was not at all alert. In the first 40 years of its existence, the work has benefited from only 4 theatrical productions (in France, Belgium, Romania and Germany, the last two of them translated into the national languages of the respective countries)... City
Venue
Director
Year
1.
Paris
l’Opéra
Pierre Chéreau
1936
2.
Bruxelles
Théâtre Royal de La Monnaie
Roger Lefévre
1956
3.
București
Opera Română
Jean Rânzescu
1958
4.
Saarbrücken
Landestheater
Jean Rânzescu
1971
Fig. no. 1
The next 45 years, however, multiplied this number by 8, now being harder to find countries that are significant in terms of musical life that Oedipe did not reach. This year alone, two major European theatres chose Enescu’s opera for the launch of the season, thus the total theatrical representations of the score reaching 32 cities in 11 countrie, from Europe, North America and South America.
”It is not for me to say if Oedipe is the best of my works. But I can certainly state that it is my dearest one of all. First because it cost me months of work, years of torments. Next because there I put my entire soul, up to identifying, in some moments, with my hero. If I would say in what state of exaltation I was while mediting at Oedipe, then when I wrote note by note this large work, nobody would believe me!” (Gavoty, 1982). 1