Program booklet »Die Entführung aus dem Serail«

WOLFGANG A M ADEUS MOZART

DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL

CONTENTS

P.

4

SYNOPSIS P.

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A COMPLEX WEB OF TRAPS, HOPES AND IRRITATIONS HANS NEUENFELS TALKS TO KLAUS ZEHELEIN P.

13

THE EGO IS NOT IMMUTABLE HANS NEUENFELS AND ANTONELLO MANACORDA IN AN INTERVIEW WITH HENRY ARNOLD

P.

16

MOZART DOES NOT NEED OUR PATHOS BAROMETER ANTONELLO MANACORDA P.

22

TALKING TO PIGS! ANN-CHRISTINE MECKE P.

26

DECONSTRUCTING SINGSPIEL DAVID J. LEVIN P.

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IMPRINT

WOLFGANG A M ADEUS MOZART

DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL THE ABDUCTION FROM THE SERAGLIO DEUTSCHES SINGSPIEL in three acts Text by CHRISTOPH FRIEDRICH BRETZNER adapted by JOHANN GOTTLIEB STEPHANIE D.J. Dialogue by HANS NEUENFELS

ORCHESTRA

Piccolo / 2 flutes 2 oboes / 2 clarinets 2 basset horns / 2 bassoons 2 horns / 2 trumpets / timpani percussion / pianoforte 2 flutes / 2 clarinets 2 bassoons / 2 horns 2 trumpets / percussion

STAGE MUSIC

AUTOGRAPHS ACTS 1 & 3 Jagiellonian Library, Kraków ACT 2 Berlin State Library, Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation

PREMIÈRE

16 JULY 1782 Altes Burgtheater, Vienna PREMIÈRE AT THE HOUSE ON THE RING 17 JAN 1872 Vienna Court Opera DURATION

3H

(INCL. 1 INTERMISSION)

DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL

SYNOPSIS PART ONE The Spanish nobleman Belmonte arrives at the estate of Pasha Selim searching for his lost fiancée Konstanze. She was kidnapped by sea pirates together with her servant, the English maid Blonde and his own servant Pedrillo. He meets Osmin the supervisor of the estate who hostilely refuses him any helpful information. Only after reuniting with his servant Pedrillo does Belmonte learn that Konstanze, as well as the pair Blonde and Pedrillo, were bought as slaves by Pasha Selim. The Pasha loves Konstanze but she never reacted to any of his advances. As a European converted to Islam, he “still has enough sensitivity, that none of his wives were ever forced into love”. Belmonte is shortly convinced of this as he secretly watches the Pasha and his entourage with Konstanze’s appearance. The Pasha again succumbs to Konstanze’s wish to postpone her decision. Pedrillo is able to present Belmonte to Pasha Selim as an architect and builder, whereby making it possible for him to gain entrance to the palace, against the resistance and opposition of Osmin.

Although given as a slave to Osmin as a gift, Blonde is very self-assured and knows exactly how to defend herself from the romantic approaches of the infatuated Turk. Again, Pasha Selim tries to gain Konstanze’s favour despite her obligation to Belmonte. She would rather suffer the offended Pashaʼs tortures than be unfaithful to Belmonte.

Previous pages: The couple Konstanze – Belmonte in two combinations: EMANUELA VON FRANKENBERG with DANIEL BEHLE LISETTE OROPESA with CHRISTIAN NATTER

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SYNOPSIS

PART TWO The desired reunion is fast approaching and Belmonte is waiting for his beloved. As the two European couples finally face each other, their joy becomes severely troubled: Belmonte and Pedrillo suddenly doubt the faithfulness of their women. Konstanze and Blonde are deeply hurt.

The planned midnight abduction of the women fails, because Osmin wakes up from his drunken stupor arranged by Pedrillo too soon. Osmin realizes his hour of revenge has come at last. As Belmonte begs for mercy, the Pasha recognizes him as the son of his archrival, the man who once stole his beloved from him and forced him to flee his homeland.

Both couples await their deaths. However, the Pasha gives them their freedom: “If one cannot gain your favour even by good deeds, then one should get rid of you.” Everyone joins in a song of praise of Pasha’s generosity, except Osmin who does not conduct himself correctly, boiling in an impotent, helpless rage.

The Pasha is left alone.

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HANS NEUENFELS TALKS TO KLAUS ZEHELEIN

A COMPLEX WEB OF TRAPS, HOPES AND IRRITATIONS Reflections on the 1998 production in Stuttgart: Hans Neuenfels talks to thea­tre director and dramaturge Klaus Zehelein. ze It is a strange work, somewhere between melancholy, comedy, grief, death and will to live, a piece about love, separation, disdain, distance and closeness – a work that really does not offer you just one clear perspective. ne It is important to mention the self-evident: that it is a Singspiel and not an opera. By Singspiel we mean the astonishing idea that people communicate with each other while singing and speaking, and in a human sense.

To me the astounding factor is not that the work evolves towards a human conclusion, but what is exceptional is that it is generally, from beginning to end, human. We see people who can sing, who permit themselves to sing, people who keep expressing what it means to experience music, and people who speak. ze In opera, it is inconceivable to sepa­rate the role from the character. In this Singspiel, this happens with a minor remark when Pedrillo asks his master to “sing a song in the meantime!”

The request to sing in an opera is absurd, but here it is quite normal. If you

want to talk about normal at all in this piece, one might say that it is the separation of the role from the character. We know that the character expresses him/ herself accordingly, namely in accordance with the singer, because that is his/ her art. By giving expression to the music, the character expresses him/herself and at the same time can hear and see him/herself sing. That prompted you to cast the roles with singers and also, in a kind of doubling, with actors. The listening and watching – by whomsoever – become a part of the tableau. ne The scene evolves through contemplation of listening to singing. The singing is as it were reflected in the perception of the other person and is then mirrored out to the audience. At the same time a kind of sensitization process is portrayed, namely what singing means in its effect on one’s counterpart in reflective comparison. Particularly in the second part there are many passages that deal with this, for example the socalled death duet when Konstanze and Belmonte sing about and even wish for death as the only way out, working up this longing through several repetitions. The other characters react with horror. They hear the magnificence of the idealization of death, but they relate

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A COMPLEX WEB OF TRAPS, HOPES AND IRRITATIONS

it to their reality. They understand the singing and its content and extend this receptive process to their own situation; they wonder if they would walk singing into death. We learn how fragile the demands of singing are as compared to acting. ze This is the opportunity to escape ideologization. The opposite of having to perform and represent what is being sung. It is the chance of attaining freedom, which naturally also has its pitfalls. In literature, the Romantic period burdened the motif of the doppelgänger.

After Mozart’s death, literature such as in E.T.A. Hoffmann aimed to develop psychological factors. With you, we might talk about a baroque mirror concept. This kind of reflection reminds me of Molière’s L’impromptu de Versailles.

A ruler sees himself on the stage, played by an actor who is playing a ruler and addresses him; in other words, a kind of concrete reflection of situations instead of psychology or development of psychological situations through gestures.

For me, the exciting thing about performance is the chance to deideologize one’s own approach in the context of the play. How can criticism of the exoticism of this work have any effect when the lead role, who does not sing but only speaks, Pasha Selim, is a renegade, in other words someone who is not on any side? And on the other hand, how do you avoid the risk associated with a certain randomness? ne By allowing the audience to follow the entire process of song development, i.e., we see how a coloratura adds significance, we feel a fermata, we sense an accelerando or a modulation with the singer and their double. We become familiar with the process of music, we wander through the clarity and entan-

glements of an aria and participate in it.

That is the impact of genius, other­wise there would be no mystery to it. You also have to be taken unawares, sur­prised, delighted – but in every case constantly involved. This Singspiel calls upon us to be exceptionally alert. ze We are dealing with something extremely fragile, something – as Hildes­heimer states – broken: patchwork, disjointed. From the perspective of the 19th century by which we are influenced, we expect an abundance, an uninterrupted continuum. We expect a progressive momentum of steadily increased understanding, ever more precise articulation of characters, a richness of emotions and their exchange, a wealth of wholeness. Naturally that is different in this case. When we talk about it, we notice that the distance to this “patchwork” is defined through the medium of singing, of speaking, of acting. ne It is a return to singing rather than conflation in a dazzling wrapper.

Mozart does not want to dazzle, rather he is remembering a secret and makes this transparent in the music. He re­veals nothing and he does not give himself away. For me, all the constellations in this piece are nothing but mini-dramas filled with his brilliance. What does brilliant mean? Brilliance to me is reversion to the origin of the ques­tions: How does one sing? When do you express yourself in song and how does that even happen? For me it is brilliant when on the one hand I see an emotion developing and empathize with it and on the other hand can also watch it.

Emergence and reflection on emergence are identical. ze I think that the mirroring of the singer by the actor and vice versa the

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A COMPLEX WEB OF TRAPS, HOPES AND IRRITATIONS

mirroring of the actor by the singer are not a means of clarifying situations; on the contrary this permanent mirroring is a labyrinth in which nothing psychological is fashioned, but appears in the psyche as a loss and a gain at the same time. ne It does have something to do with a very exaggerated daydream, in other words a very complex web of traps, hopes and irritations that are described in the music. When for example the monster Osmin, repeatedly conjured up and who ends up with the short end of the stick, is also “the foreigner” in an almost touching and private way. That is the funny thing, that the foreigners are really the locals, and the Pasha and Osmin are ostracized in their own country. The Pasha adapts to an ever more clearly defined society, which causes him, as it were, to shed his skin.

The “moultings” are also important, indicating disposing of incrustation. The Pasha makes the assertion that if an actor cannot sing in his lifetime, he must necessarily be cruel or mad. If one cannot find any other depth in oneself than thinking and speaking, if a tone – even if only a shout – is no longer possible, then one has nothing left. I understand this as a great tribute to singing, to the singer and to music-making. The Pasha is a very clever man full of pain, who would also like to sing, but who cannot.

He acknowledges this loss. ze When you know what your deficits are, you can perhaps live well and appropriately. ne Yes, and then you can also become artistic again. The Pasha gives expression to his deficits and does not portray them resignedly or aggressively, but rather as a process of understanding, of clarification. From this clarification

something new emerges, only from this and not out of retreat or the feeling of being diminished. That is the courageous side of him. He comes up with a poem to deal with the situation, he calls into play his reality of speaking, a form of styled speech, the use of language in a poetic sense. ze On the other hand, there is a point in this production where singing be­ comes part of the action: in the Act 2 quartet, the singers suddenly find themselves in the orchestra. There is some­ thing oblivious about it, the performers leave the location of the action, and all that is left is the location of the music.

What transpires there is something that can no longer be the action. ne In the complete fusion of music and character, person and individuality, where there is only an identity, the action must be suspended. Location and space are simply the time of the music in that moment. ze The personal difficulty of an actor in this kind of production is that you are dealing with co-workers who have a completely different art. Then speak­ ing is reflected even more on what one might describe as strategy of the plot. ne But that’s not all there is to it. The speakers also long to be able to sing, and know that speaking in this place cannot have the same meaning as sing­ing.

This struggle and the willingness to undertake this struggle are a tense moment. It is exciting when often the singers leave speaking to the actors.

Not because they cannot speak; indeed, they do, but they discuss the question of singing and speaking amongst themselves. They give the speakers an opportunity to blossom in speech. The other level of the Singspiel, that of speaking, is only truly permitted with this switch.

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A COMPLEX WEB OF TRAPS, HOPES AND IRRITATIONS

It has something to do with kindness and making a gift, but also with judi­ ciousness. And with a certain concept of time. Because singing, and indeed music in general, has its own time, whereas language requires different breath. Further­more, action also takes place during musical passages. There is inner action and another that is outward, such as when Osmin does battle with his serpents during his aria “O, wie will ich triumphieren”. Only he can do that, it is a device that comes from the music that the actor Osmin would never have. Because the level of perfidy and the enormous mobilization of hatred expressed in the music can only be rendered with music. You cannot achieve this with speech. But naturally that also affects Osmin’s second aria. Portraying cruelty by contemplating the decapitated would be dull and flat in a play, but in Mozart the idolization of body parts acquires an almost addictive treatment that reaches beyond any morals. It is not commentary or genre depiction; it extends beyond these terms. ze The piece is often categorized as naive. And people say: “It simply can’t be true that a genius like Mozart wrote this libretto.” With the apparent sim-

plicity of the action and the characters, you can only read the work if you have a psychologizing viewpoint or approach it in terms of a critique of its ideology.

Both are more than questionable. You go one step further: By giving the character the chance of reflection in one and the same and yet the other character, strategy becomes iridescent, a shimmer, with the result that in the end it forgets itself. ne It too increasingly “sheds its skin”, and somewhere the point is reached where you wonder as in Ibsen’s Peer Gynt: where is the essence of it in fact?

It has something to do with this de-­ ideologization. Everything is so unrestrained that a mesh of relationships is left for the listener and viewer. The decisive factor in Mozart’s music is that as a listener I can be alone with it and yet am bound into a perspective in which I do not have the feeling that my solitude will be compromised by something either close by or far off. I have to agree to that with myself. I consider it a great comfort that I am confirmed in my solitude – not in an unsettling or depressed state but cheerfully, because someone is there telling me about this state not as an outsider, but as an actuality that is just as real as its communication.

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Following pages: CHRISTIAN NATTER and DANIEL BEHLE as BELMONTE MICHAEL LAURENZ and LUDWIG BLOCHBERGER as PEDRILLO

HANS NEUENFELS AND ANTONELLO MANACORDA IN AN INTERVIEW WITH HENRY ARNOLD

THE EGO IS NOT IMMUTABLE Further thoughts on the 2020 new production in Vienna: Hans Neuenfels and Antonello Manacorda talk to Henry Arnold. ar What does this experiment of reviving a production after 22 years feel like after three weeks of rehearsal, considering your initial scepticism? ne For me, the amazing validity of this brilliant work is confirmed by the fact that every time I hear it, it is as if I am hearing it for the first time. I never tire of it. With new singers and some new actors, we have a fresh approach and a new interpretation of the details. This causes memory of past performances to fade. Even if there is no fundamental new development or innovation, the very individual portrayal by the performers offers a new and very vivid interpretation based on the analysis that we conducted back then. ar For you, coming new into the company, how does this interpretation influence your view of the work? And of Mozart, who has without doubt attracted new CHRISTIAN NICKEL as PASHA SELIM LISETTE OROPESA as KONSTANZE

fashions and insights over the last two decades? ma I was familiar with the production from the recording of a performance made back then. What this interpretation makes clear is the fact that as a composer Mozart included theatrical elements in the score, and in a truly inspired fashion. With him, theatre and music are already linked in a way that requires some effort with others.

You have to construct that link, whereas with Mozart it is already there. If the Singspiel is generally classified as entertainment, in Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the opposite is the case. You will hear echoes of opera seria or Gluck, and for me there is a direct line from here to Die Zauberflöte. We find an astonishing insight into human nature that was already evident in Lucia Silla, which Mozart wrote when he was just sixteen. Furthermore, today we know more – or believe we do – about how it would have sounded back then. In all that, we have a wonderful opportunity to present this work at a new level and with new significance, especially here

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at the Wiener Staatsoper, after a break of nearly twenty years. ar This complexity and the essential human aspects of Die Entführung that you have mentioned several times take precedence over the “Turkish opera” genre and the associated placative description of foreigners that many interpretations toil away at? ne With the outward plot Mozart touches upon something that is for him at most cause for something else. And this something else is consideration of concepts. It is astonishing how this music, parts of which are described as naive, repeatedly addresses concepts, and examines concepts, such as the concept of humanness or the cliché of foreignness. Or the problem of identity: who am I? Incidentally, Mozart destroyed clichés such as the foreigner, the savage, or the brute. The fact that as a stranger the other person is not predictable and therefore represents a threat is another issue Mozart touches on lightly in Die Entführung and arrives at realizations and insights that could not be clearer. ar Although the level of sensibility and the intensity of this ego search are shared out very unevenly and are far more explicitly formulated in the music for Konstanze and Belmonte. ma But not just those two. For example, Pedrillo sings – and no other composer could have done this – an aria in D major that we would generally have expected from Idomeneo or later Titus.

This enhances this character significantly. ar But Mozart does not sustain this heroic tone, there are gaps in it.

Is that irony? ma Possibly. In any case, there is this other view of the characters. For me, Mozart is the only composer – and this is also not the case with Verdi or Strauss – with whom a note or a phrase or an aria can be viewed from a 360° perspective. A chord can indicate sadness and happiness at once. That challenges the listener. There is not a single musical cliché. And it challenges the performer. You always have to reveal yourself; you are always naked. ne Take one false step and it’s all over. For me, the implacability of the observation reveals a direct relationship to Shakespeare. And at the same time it is a huge challenge for the performers. Each of them must consistently be experiencing extreme emotion – of sorrow, elation, or passion – if for no other reason than to justify the reaction of the others. Especially of the other “I”, the second personification. ma I think this doubling of the characters offers incredible possibilities. As a viewer, I have the chance of seeing myself twice in what I am seeing on the stage, hearing, and experiencing. ne The different levels of perception, of feeling, or being can happen simultaneously through dividing the characters. We are several people at once, and this is evident in this interpretation, but not in the sense of schizophrenia.

Identity is not a fixed variable. The ego is not immutable.

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GORAN JURIĆ as OSMIN MICHAEL LAURENZ as PEDRILLO

ANTONELLO MANACORDA

MOZART DOES NOT NEED OUR PATHOS BAROMETER Mozart’s music has a claim to eternity, both in its entirety and in the minutest detail. Every one of his compositions, every movement of his symphonies, every aria he wrote, every phrase, indeed every individual note, extends in its interpretability into infinity and, without suffering the slightest detriment, can be surveyed from the most varied, contradictory perspectives – provided you stay within the classical intellectual world of Mozart. This is what makes his music so great; in his operas this also allows music and staging to work together in a way that we do not find with any other composer.

Put differently: with Mozart, the musical interpretation can be influenced by the staging in a way that does not happen with other composers. It has to be inspired by it. If he were still alive today, he would rework sections of the music to fit the stage directions. Naturally today’s conductors cannot do this, but will use agogics, dynamics, and the art of taking time at certain points to match what is happening on the stage. This was confirmed time and again during rehearsals for the current production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail. At one point we dispensed with an ornamentation to allow us to stress

a moment that the stage direction required; at that point, the doubling of the characters suggested new interpretation nuances for the singers in the aside passages. In short, especially with Mozart, as a conductor you are working in the trenches.

With Entführung – as Carl Maria von Weber noted – Mozart’s growth very clearly took a major step forward, as can also be seen from his Gran Partita, written in the same period. It is astounding how many different nuances, how much subtlety and complexity was packed into this piece, which was intended not least as entertainment for the general populace. How intelligently and sensitively Mozart handles the orchestration, for example! We need only think of the basset horn accompaniment to Konstanze’s Act 2 aria “Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose.” Mozart came across this instrument shortly before composing Die Entführung and grew to love it. With his delight in and curiosity for experimentation, in this case he evidently saw an excellent opportunity to use the distinctive sound of the basset horn for characterization: Konstanze has fallen in love with Belmonte, but once she is freed she may well also yearn for Pasha

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Selim, a sentiment that will never leave her. Instead of hearing the instrument we expect to accompany this shift from imagined love to real love – the clarinet or even the horn or bassoon – Mozart intentionally opted for the basset horn, which as Brahms later enthused comes closest to the human voice. Nothing would reflect Konstanze’s predicament and strength of feeling better than this particular sound.

But also the way in which Mozart handled the “alla turca” moments shows the degree of maturity he had already reached. These were ubiquitous in the age when Entführung was composed, a temporary fashion that Mozart happily adopted. But what he did with it, how he recast it into a humanist statement gives us food for thought even today, and this will probably be the case in the future as well.

Another dramatic stroke of genius is to be found in the sophisticated terraced dynamics that give Entführung a unique place among Mozart’s operas.

In none of his other stage works are the forte/piano contrasts greater, the acoustic sense of black-and-white clearer. This is naturally very evident in the overture, but is also true of one or the other aria or ensemble throughout the work. It is true of Belmonte’s “Hier soll ich dich denn sehen” and his “O wie ängstlich”, Konstanze’s aforementioned aria “Traurigkeit ward mir zum Lose”, Osmin’s “Solche hergelauf’ne Laffen”, Blonde’s “Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln” and the final quartet of Act 2.

With this device, Mozart very concisely conveys the disquiet and tension pulsating through his actors! There is no question that with Entführung Mozart was asking too much of many of his

contemporaries – not least Joseph II, who famously remarked that there were “too many notes”.

In Entführung we find another of Mozart’s special gifts: his ability not only to retain music, once heard, for future use, but to integrate it in his own work, recharged and expanded with his own genius. In the score of Entführung many different features are wonderfully fused, as if in a puzzle: the comic, the serious, the humanistic, the sad, and then also the influence of folk music, and not least elements from the opera seria of Christoph Willibald Gluck (such as in Belmonte’s two last arias) – all this bundled together in the performance culture typical of the day (and wonderfully explained in his father’s violin treatise). For the conductor who sets out to make Mozart’s musical language comprehensible, to purge it of the ballast of Romantic tradition, knowledge of this culture is critical.

This background must be observed for one thing when choosing the individual tempi and their relationship to each other. In Mozart, an alla breve marking has much greater significance than merely indicating a tempo. Look for example at Belmonte’s “builder aria”: in the past this andante has led many conductors to set an extremely theatrically slow tempo. But when the beat is given in two – as the score indicates – instead of four beats, things look very different, and the aria immediately has a more natural flow. In other words: analogous to William Shakespeare, in his music Mozart took care to convey the necessary emotional accentuation, he does not need our additional pathos barometer! Quite the contrary. We would be violating his subtle composition. We need only

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think for example of the inexplicable mystery of the melancholy conveyed by a major key in Mozart. In Mozart (and also in Gluck) minor is always a colour nuance, but it never extends as far into the truly tragic as his melancholic major key. The duet for Konstanze and Belmonte “Meinetwegen sollst du sterben” in Act 3 is written in B major. But how unbelievably distraught this B major is, depicting two young people who are willing to go to their death together!

So I repeat: Mozart’s music has a claim to eternity, his operas have a claim to eternity. And they always have.

Following pages:

MICHAEL LAURENZ and DANIEL BEHLE LUDWIG BLOCHBERGER and CHRISTIAN NATTER as PEDRILLO and BELMONTE ANDREAS GRÖTZINGER and GORAN JURIĆ as OSMIN

How wrong are all those who believe that Mozart’s music is beautiful and sweet, but nothing more! Even as a teenager, he had a gift for portraying the human in the individual characters of his dramatic works, for delving into the hidden depths of their souls. And how much greater is this gift in the adult Mozart. Would his pronounced psychoanalytical capabilities have stressed him at times? Geniuses with this great a burden of material and talent need an outlet somewhere. Perhaps he found this in his operas? At least his characters, which can be interpreted in so many ways, lead us to believe so.

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JOHN CAGE

Music withOut horiZon soundscApe that neveR sTops

ANN-CHRISTINE MECKE

TALKING TO PIGS! ON “TINKERING”

WITH THE SINGSPIEL TEXT Pedrillo’s fearfulness is a running gag in Act 2. During the laborious preparations to free the ladies, he hesitates and is undecided, until it all becomes too much for him. “Courage is the most foolish thing there is. If you have none, no amount of trying will earn it for you! How my heart is beating! My father must have been an arch-coward” he says as he reaches for his mandolin, and we can imagine how his hand trembles as he does so. When he is holding the ladder for Belmonte, he plucks up his courage again and says: “It is getting worse and worse because now it’s getting serious.”

And naturally Pedrillo is also the one who after being taken prisoner describes the impending punishment in glowing colours: “They are preparing to dispose of us. It is ghastly what they want to do with us! As I heard in passing, I am to be boiled in oil and then eaten.” His girlfriend Blonde answers bravely: “Since we must all die sometime, it’s all fine with me,” whereupon Pedrillo responds: “What courage! I come from good early Christian lineage from Spain, but I cannot be that indifferent in the face of death!”

This running gag was certainly well received at the première. Only one person would not have laughed at it, but

he was not present anyway: Christoph Friedrich Bretzner, the author of the source text Belmont und Constanze, oder Die Entführung aus dem Serail, because Pedrillo’s extreme timidity is an addition made by Johann Gottlieb Stephanie and Mozart. Bretzner was outraged at the edits made to the libretto, and even more so to the added song texts. In April 1783, he had the following protest printed in the Berliner Literatur- und Theaterzeitung: “An unnamed individual in Vienna has had my opera Belmont und Constanze oder die Entführung aus dem Serail revised for the National Theatre and had it printed in this revised form. Since the changes to the dialogue are not significant, I shall overlook these entirely.

But the said individual has also added a fair amount of singing in which heart-breaking and uplifting verses occur.” By way of an example of the bad “little verses”, Bretzner cites an excerpt from the quartet, the passage where the men express their concerns about the faithfulness of their girlfriends, and ends with the exclamation “I call that a correction!” The fact that of the many awkward verses Bretzner chose this passage of all things indicates that he was bothered not just by the back of elegant language, but also

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the comparatively explicit treatment of a touchy subject. But there was little he could do. In view of the historic importance of Mozart’s Singspiel, his impotent protest just makes us laugh today.

The fact that for Mozart the libretto was a working document and not sacrosanct literature is clear from his letter to his father dated 26 September 1781: “I changed the offending exclamation about pigs to: But how quickly my joy faded, etc. I don’t know what our German poets are thinking. If they don’t understand theatre, when it comes to opera, they should at least not allow people to talk as if they are talking to pigs.” For Mozart, his librettist Stephani [sic] was clearly an artisan who had to comply with his wishes.

“Everyone is sulking about Stephani [sic]. It may be that he is only so friendly to my face, but he is writing the libretto for me, namely exactly as I want it – to a hair – and that is all I ask of him!”

There is no question that without the music of Mozart this libretto would have fallen into oblivion long ago. And so with every production the question arises of what one should do with the spoken dialogue which is not beautified with music. (Although even Blonde’s sung line “Just look upon that beast there...” has often been made less offensive.) Performances have been given where the dialogue was omitted completely, and others that have replaced it with completely new text. In general people are content with more or less rigorous cuts and adaptations.

The libretto for the Wiener Staats­ oper’s 1991 version contained no trace of Pedrillo’s chicken-heartedness, and the same thing applied to the corresponding passages in the 2006 production at the National Theatre. Both

productions also omitted other comedic scenes, such as where the guard initially detains the still slightly drunk Osmin before thwarting the Europeans’ attempted flight. The 1991 version tried to keep the dialogue as short as possible while changing the language as little as possible. The 2006 version made far more extensive changes to the text in order to make it as intelligible as possible, turning the sentence “Villain, do you think you can daze me?” into simply: “How stupid do you think I am?” Yet this version has more dialogue overall and therefore more details from the source story.

The strategies followed when preparing a libretto differ, but it is rare for Die Entführung aus dem Serail to be performed with the complete dialogue from the critical edition. And on the one hand that is entirely understand­ able, because the spoken texts often deal with same information as later occurs in the sung texts, many formulations are clumsy, and can we still really laugh today at the fearful Pedrillo who lacks the courage of his girlfriend?

Or at his clichéd comparison of alcohol and women which comes down in favour of alcohol? “Whenever I am grumpy, morose, moody: I quickly take refuge in the bottle; and no sooner do I see the bottom of the glass than my grumpiness vanishes! – My bottle never pulls a wry face at me like my girlfriend when her heart is not in the right place; and you can talk all you like about the sweetness of love and marriage: The taste of wine on my tongue is the best thing of all!”

But on the other hand Mozart composed music for precisely this text, and Pedrillo’s words for the closing vaudeville “If I could ever forget how close I

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TALKING TO PIGS!

came to being strangled and all the other dangers, I would run as if my head was on fire” can be more readily understood if we have already seen how cowardly Pedrillo is. And would the piano accompaniment to the song “In a Moorish land was taken captive...” seem better motivated if we first heard Pedrillo lamenting his lack of courage?

Every change to the text is a decision that affects the entire performance – but also everything that is not

changed. If Stephanie and Mozart had had the boatman Klaas speak Low German as in Bretzner’s original, Viennese audiences would not have understood what was going on. If the spoken text is performed uncut, the story becomes unintelligible, repetitive and full of expressions that are hard to understand.

There is no easy solution to this problem. The only option can be a creative approach that takes account of the synergy of music, text and staging.

24

CHRISTIAN NATTER as BELMONTE CHRISTIAN NICKEL as PASHA SELIM

DAV I D J . L E V I N

DECON STRUCTING SINGSPIEL BETWEEN PLAY-ACTING

AND SINGING Hans Neuenfels’ production of Die Entführung aus dem Serail is as astonishing as it is confusing. Some of the reasons for this are self-evident. Neuenfels made radical cuts to the dialogue and added his own text. Furthermore, with the exception of Pasha Selim, every role is doubled, such that a singer and an actor share each role. This creates profusion where the opera libretto otherwise reveals a deficiency: whereas the Pasha is normally understood and cast as an actor without a vocal line, in this production every other lead role is doubled by an actor. However, it is not the doub­ling of the lead roles or the changes to the libretto that are the most striking aspects of this production, but the breathtaking theatrical innovations that Neuenfels has developed from the work.

Several can be attributed to the libretto and its dramaturgy, but this does not make them any the less surpris­ ing. For example, when we first meet Osmin in the second scene of Act 1, he sings the song “Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden” and as he does so, he takes from an Ottoman chest the body parts of an apparently recently slaughtered woman and caresses them. This offers a gruesome commentary on the song

text which says that one should “reward one’s love with thousands of kisses”.

Here Osmin appears as a kind of evil guest from Roland Barthes’ The World of Wrestling – which is naturally linked to his fantasies of the beheadings, hang­ings, skewering, burning, shack­ l­ing, drowning and skinning that he recounts in aria form.

Neuenfels does not focus on possible points of contact between 18th century Turkey and the current day.

Forty years after Edward Said’s Orientalism, the ideological features of the “Turkish opera” are familiar enough.

Neuenfels’ production examines less well-known terrain. Instead of fixat­ ing on the politics of Orientalism (e.g., what it means to portray Osmin and Selim as “Turks”), the work looks at what we might call the politics of Orientalist form (e.g., what it means to reimagine Selim as a spoken role).

This lets us devote attention to the formal aspects of the work, to the differences and connections between acting and singing. Neuenfels places Die Entführung, which often comes across as very lightweight, in a concep­ tual (and sometimes thematic) relationship with far more unwieldy pieces, such as Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron.

26

DECONSTRUCTING SINGSPIEL

In Moses und Aron, Schoenberg presents the difference between Moses’ holy, transcendental aspiration, and Aron’s profane, mundane aspiration as a breach between dialogues. Whereas Moses pronounces his holy message in an extremely mannered style that is more or less incomprehensible, oracular and unpopular (i.e. Schoenbergish), populist Aron sings with and to the masses easily, smoothly, under­ standably (meaning in a style that makes aesthetic compromises and is politically effective). Even though the differences to Mozart’s work could not be greater in many regards, Neuenfels’ production shows that the themes of the Singspiel and those of Schoenberg’s opera are definitely related.

In Neuenfels’ production, Mozart’s work does not seem fragmented as in Schoenberg’s opera, but rather splin­ tered. This impression is the result of the logic of the work in general and of the character or Pasha Selim in particular. As a spoken role, Selim embodies the separation of the spoken word from the music. It embodies not only the voice of a “foreigner” who has come to power, but also the power of a foreign voice – namely the power of a speaking voice on the opera stage. One might say (or perhaps repeat the truism) that Selim assumes the role of the narrator of enlightenment. But what does it mean for enlightenment when it is characterized by speech in an opera and its aspiration is therefore also abbreviated? And when Selim is the narrator of enlightenment: what function does singing then have in this work?

The cultural connotation of different ways of using the voice has a long history. The singing voice tends to be associated with transcendence and

rapture, the speaking voice with more functional, rational tasks and a tendency towards analysis. While the musical voice is generally placed in opposition to word and law, the philosopher Mladen Dolar directs our attention to another voice with the same qualities, a voice that fulfils the opposite function.

“But there is also another kind of voice: the voice of the Father, the voice that inherently sticks to logos itself, the voice that commands and binds, the voice of God. ... The law itself, in its pure form, before commanding any­thing specific, is epitomized by the voice, the voice that commands total compliance, although it is senseless in itself.” And so it happens that we have the conflict of the voice (as the senseless bearer of enjoyment) against the voice (of the Father).

I would like to suggest that the Neuen­ fels production takes up this model of “the voice against the voice” and makes it the “dramatic engine” of the production. In the process, the production examines the status of Selim’s speaking voice and also that of the various other voices, in other words the speaking and singing voices of the individual characters, the voice of the orchestra as compared to the speaking voice or in unison with the singing voice.

The Neuenfels Entführung exposes the problems of the components of the Singspiel by questioning the differen­ces between singing and acting and be­ tween a seductive singing voice and the voice of the Father; it draws our atten­ tion to the breaks, to the tension and the exchange between these voices.

When the curtain goes up in Act 1, we recognize a male figure in the dark, in front of a large, three-dimensional blue illuminated butterfly. The butterfly

27

DAV I D J . L E V I N

is presumably the metaphor, now in scenery form, from Osmin’s song “Wer ein Liebchen hat gefunden” in which it says: “He had better lock up his sweetheart with care; Since the mischievous young things try to capture every pass­ ing butterfly, and are all too fond of eating stolen fruit.” In Osmin’s (watchful) gaze, Pedrillo and Belmonte are of course “butterflies” that Blonde and Konstanze want to capture. At the same time the caterpillar indicates the theme of metamorphosis that occurs several times in the production, of Pasha Selim’s metamorphosis from a terrorist to an enlightened ruler through to the division of roles into actor and singer.

The male figure in the dark turns out to be not Belmonte, but two Belmontes: the singer and, standing directly behind him, the actor who mirrors the singer’s gestures in the first aria.

The fact that the actor and singer of the same character mirror the gestures of the other is the exception and not the rule. The two of them are very distinct individuals – they interact with each other, but act and sing autonomously as well. Only seldom so do their actions and behaviour match. The two Belmontes may look similar – they are of approximately the same height and stature, wear the same moustache and the same black Spanish suit and hat – but they have very different roles. The two Osmins are very different in stature, and one Konstanze is blonde, the other brunette. The two Pedrillos are the most clearly self-aware: when they first enter, they are arguing as to who should be the first to speak.

Neuenfels cuts around half the spoken text (although of course the text that Mozart set to music remains untouched). Instead Neuenfels adds sum-

marized information that is important to the action, but he also inserts additional material that addresses the difference between singing and acting (and between the role of the singer and that of the actor). By taking a theatrical approach to these differences and making them obvious, the production draws our attention to a number of problems contained only implicitly in the work and that are therefore generally overlooked. The result makes it clear that singers and actors inhabit the same territory in Mozart’s opera, but do so in different ways. I would argue as follows: even though the changes to the spoken text, some of which are drastic, were made by Neuenfels, they focus on structural and dramatic items that are essential to Mozart’s work. In this case for example what we are deal­ ing with is an example of what you might call radical faithfulness to the original. This means faithfulness to the structure of the work in which changes to the text that appear to disrupt the coherence of the libretto but in fact crystallize its immanent logic.

In the excerpt that I suggest for consideration, the fracture between actors and singers is once again duplicated in the scenery. Around eight metres behind the proscenium of the main stage is a second, raised stage; in other words, a theatre in the theatre: While the main stage is used equally for singing and acting (and their competition with each other), the second stage has an altogether different function. This space is removed from this competition both spatially and conceptually.

The rear stage section, which looks and functions like an opera seria stage, gives the division of the work a physical, indeed truly theatrical form.

28

DECONSTRUCTING SINGSPIEL

Accordingly, the singing is heightened in the truest sense of the word (and doubly theatricalized by the stage on the stage), while the acting – the material of the drama, its narrative telos and its action – take place on the lower section.

Both entrances of the chorus of Janissaries are moved to the rear stage, as are Konstanze’s entrances – although for different dramatic reasons – on “Welcher Wechsel herrscht in meiner Seele” and “Welche Wonne, welche Lust”. In both cases the rear stage functions as a place above and beyond the everyday competition between playing and singing that takes place on the main stage. The rear stage serves as an elevated and uncontested place of musi­cal portrayal.

I would like to demonstrate this using Belmonte and Konstanze’s recitative and farewell duet “Welch ein Geschick! O Qual der Seele!”. This scene illustrates Neuenfels’ distinction between speaking and singing and the implications this has for the drama­ turgy of the work. The desire expressed here by the (singer) couple of dying together shocks the gathered com­ pany of actors and singers, who remain on the main stage – not just Belmonte and Konstanze’s doubles, but also their companions (both Pedrillos and Blondes). The production materializes the genre-specific origins of this moment, its foundation through – or rather: its stratospheric flight into – a challenging, anti-rational musicality.

The topography created here of sing­ing and acting is more than a clever idea, because it draws our attention to the dramatic construction of the work, to the architecture of decisive moments and in particular of the decisive breaks.

Breaks in the structure of the work (be­ tween words and music) and its logic, for example not just between Belmonte and Pedrillo but also between Belmonte and Belmonte, with one Belmonte as actor who embodies the principle of sensible restraint and a Belmonte as singer who portrays an uncompro­ mising anti-rational musicality.

By staging individual musical numbers on the rear stage, Neuenfels pro­ vides a space for their accentuation.

Here we experience a lyric recitation that is spatially and dramatically separated from the acting. In this way, the Neuenfels production uses its archi­ tecture to show us the uniqueness of Kons­ tanze and Belmonte’s ecstatic death wish, and even more impor­tantly portray it in music. With the second stage, the switch from acting to singing and from functional drama to pure musicality can assume material form.

The production also implicitly draws our attention to the politics of this zone, in other words to the ques­ tions of who has access to it and who is denied this access. By positioning the singer Belmonte on the rear stage leaving him there, the production makes it clear that singing is linked to the suspension of acting.

The last verse of the quartet at the end of Act 2 is characterized by suspension of the drama. The space is relinquished to a celebration of love in an Italian finale, with the acting as it were set aside in favour of the musical presentation. Neuenfels stages this by carrying it out quite literally: as the voices of the orchestra and the singers join together, the singers move for a short concert presentation into the orchestra. The resolution of the drama and the accompanying outburst in the

29

MOZA RT TO HIS FAT HER, SEP T EMBER 26, 1781

THE JANISSARY CHOIR IS EVERY­THING ONE COULD ASK FOR IN A JANISSARY CHOIR. SHORT AND HUMOUROUS, AND WRITTEN ESPECIALLY FOR THE VIENNESE.

DECONSTRUCTING SINGSPIEL

musical presentation is staged here: the stage is expanded to the front and repurposed as a concert podium by gradually merging it with the orchestra pit.

While Neuenfels places most of the action on the main stage, he does not surrender division between the different zones, he merely articulates them differently. As already indicated, the same kind of division exists within the main stage: an internal division that we might describe as a characteristic division of Singspiel. Just as the rear stage (and at least temporarily the front or concert stage at the end of Act 2) serves as a place-holder for one space before or after the narration, we can describe the main stage as a space where the problems of the genre are worked out.

The main stage is therefore a place where not only the Singspiel is negotiated, but where this negotiation also takes place as a Singspiel. By contrast, the rear stage is comparable to the aisle into the orchestra at the end of Act 2, namely a place of undisputed – and often unmotivated – musical expression.

DRAMATURGY OF ENLIGHTENMENT As already explained, the Neuenfels production connects to a number of differences in Mozart’s work – for example between Europeans and Turks, enlightenment, and barbarism – through the contrasts between speaking and singing. Several of these links are simply implicit. One example: When the rear stage and the orchestra space are reserved for Europeans, the ten­ sions are displayed on the main stage – between East and West, but also be­ tween man and woman, between for-

eign and familiar – which symbolically represent the struggle for control of norms and indicators of enlightenment. Accordingly, without proclaim­ ing it loudly the production shows that the substance of musical reflection is reserved for Europeans.

It is well known that Die Entfüh­ rung aus dem Serail offers a lesson in matters of civilization. The Neuenfels production sharpens the topics of this lesson by portraying their violent impact under the mantle of European civilization. When the stage and actors are separated, it makes us aware in an interesting way that the resources within the work are divided: Who gets what and how do they get it? The rear stage makes the impact of this division visible, as it were; the main stage indicates the conditions. What happens on the main stage suggests time and again that a control of forms – whether the forms are of enlightened civilization or the forms of Singspiel – is translated to command.

Before Selim renounces the indicators of barbarism and appears at the end of the work as a complete rationalist of enlightenment, the Europeans make use of the indicators of their civilization to outsmart and humiliate those who do know the exact cultural demands. It turns out that they do this to transfer the doubts that are expressed repeatedly in their music to the “Turks”.

For example, at the beginning of Act 2, when Blonde’s instructive aria “Durch Zärtlichkeit und Schmeicheln” teaches Osmin how a “European lady” should be treated.

In Neuenfels’ presentation of this aria, Osmin (singer) is invited to observe the two Pedrillos as they assist Blonde (singer) with the complicated

31

DAV I D J . L E V I N

toilette of a 19th century lady. Osmin’s introduction to the world of refinement is clearly a lesson about his own ignorance. The portrayal therefore becomes an echo of the pedagogy of the aria: The difference between those who can and those who cannot (or between civilized people and barbarians, Euro­ peans and Turks) is created by manners and showcased through music.

Another scene works with a similar logic. At the end of the first act Pedrillo and Belmonte try to force their way into the palace past Osmin. But even when Pedrillo and Belmonte involve Osmin musically, the latter remains un­ touched and unshakeable. This deadend street is expressed by Belmonte and Pedrillo answering Osmin’s musical materials without changing it. In the course of this confrontation, Osmin, Belmont and Pedrillo essentially share the same textual and musical material. A short look at the text and music reveals that this is not the most highly cultivated exchange of opinions.

BELMONTE AND PEDRILLO We’re going in!

OSMIN You’ll feel my fist.

BELMONTE AND PEDRILLO We’re going in!

OSMIN You’ll feel my fist.

BELMONTE AND PEDRILLO We’re going in!

OSMIN You’ll feel my fist.

In the Neuenfels production, this tex­ tual and musical dead-end street is not ended by Belmonte and Pedrillo simply shoving Osmin to one side, as the stage directions suggest, but by their

bring­ing in indicators of European civilization. The Pedrillos and Belmontes succeed in distracting the two Osmins with a telescope and a Warhol-like picture of a buxom redhead; the Osmins are first confused and then fascinated by these items.

By producing these props, the Euro­ peans differentiate themselves both literally and symbolically from their “more primitive”, “ignorant” Otto­man obstacle. In this conflict at the end of the first act (as indeed in the entire production), the inclusion of music changes the terms of the altercation, while the later inclusion of cultural artefacts from the “civilized world” breaks through the dead-end street.

This scene offers a rare moment of “Sing-spielen” or “sing-acting” in that dramatic and musical invention serves European purposes.

The Europeans, who can sing and act, differ significantly from Selim, whose spoken reflections are reasoned but without the support of the music they are inferior. However, the opposite also occurs: the means of musical expression available to Osmin differ greatly in form and content from “Euro­ pean” music. Osmin has a considerable amount of musical material which is characterized by his exceptional vocal range – but both musical material and vocal range represent categories of quantity, not quality. As a psycholo­gical character Osmin is and remains raw and uncultivated. One example is: In the course of his duet with Blonde “Ich gehe, doch rate ich dir” (Act 2, Scene 1) Osmin’s andante “O Engländer, seid ihr nicht Toren” is uncharacteristically gentle, almost introverted.

But it remains melodically and harmonically elementary and forms the

32

DECONSTRUCTING SINGSPIEL

simple bass underpinning to Blonde’s sophisticated, provocative, and compa­ ratively cultivated melodic orna­ mentation. Osmin’s passage is a new psychological (and therefore dramatic) colour, a degree of introspection that we cannot otherwise detect in Osmin’s words and music. But even this subjectivity and reflection serves merely as an expression of his dismay at the fact that Blonde is not willing to follow his directives. It is not that Osmin has no emotional life, but the expression of his introspection and his intentions is tagged as awkward.

The production makes it clear that those who carry the indicator of enlightenment like a weapon before themselves also suffer under its require­ ments. While the Turks are presented in various ways in this piece as unmusical or non-musical, the Europeans prove to be filled with doubts in their approach to music. As a result, the production shows that while the Europeans wield power with their culture, this culture also wields power over them. Belmonte’s arrival triggers a string of doubts that revolve above all around fidelity. The music gives doubt a voice, e.g., in Belmonte’s recitative and aria no. 4 “O wie ängstlich” (Act 1, Scene 7) and in the final quartet of Act 2, no. 16 “Ach Belmonte, ach mein Leben!”

Selim may be the mouthpiece of enlightenment, but by not singing he is far removed from their existential fears. One might say that his formal situation (as ‘other’ compared to sing­ing) correlates with his political situation (as ‘other’ compared to European power), and furthermore can be regarded as a production of his psychological situation (as ‘other’ compared to Eu-

ropean doubts). In the Neuenfels production, Selim – but not Selim alone – wears these differences quasi as a costume.

STAGES PITFALLS OF ENLIGHTENMENT As is so often the case with comedies (and always in Neuenfels’ productions) the identity of the characters is elevated in costume (Bettina Merz) and the affect staged. This is most obviously the case with Osmin, the evil Ottoman counterpart to the enlightened nobi­lity of the Pasha. As already indicated, both Osmins seem to come straight from the villain’s changing room of World Wrestling Entertainment. They wear a red Ottoman abdominal truss and under it a skin-tight beige bodysuit printed with exotic Ottoman-looking tattoos.

The first entrance of the chorus of Janissaries in Act 1 is set at the same level of sensational fantasy. They carry skewered heads and babies on stakes, and their costumes look like comic illus­ trations of Ottoman barbarians.

At the end of the work, they come back in dinner jackets and evening gowns, signalling their conformation with the new regime of enlightenment.

The costumes are not just strong visual statements, but also very recognizable in terms of the dramatic logic of the production. Apart from the fore­ seeable comic appearance of the two Blondes as personification of an English maidservant, the costumes of the other performers turn them into comic figures, with the possible exception of Selim and Konstanze. Both Pedrillos appear as boy wonders from the 18th century infected with frou-frou and with ample blond hair and pink ruffles,

33

DAV I D J . L E V I N

in contrast to the macho and Spanish charm of the two Belmonte-Zorros.

Konstanze on the other hand is the least distorted character in the group. She appears as the incarnation of sweetness in her contemporary European form. Like the chorus, Pasha Selim also performs in a divided body, as occurs through doubling of the roles. He appears on the stage initially as a charismatic terrorist à la Abu Nidal or Carlos the Jackal, who lurks around surrounded by his entourage, wears a black ski mask and a black trench-coat, holding the unconscious Konstanze actor on one arm.

In the last scene, Selim’s outfit illus­ trates his change of identity. He appears in tails. In this scene one might say that Selim embodies the development of terrorism to paternal law. He shows up initially as an outlaw, and ulti­mately appears not only in the name of the father but as the name of the father.

A LYRIC VOICE OF THE FATHER? Something strange takes place at the end of the opera. The opposites that are cultivated in the performance – e.g., between the Turkish despots and the European nobility, or between singing as a medium of lyric transcendence and acting as a medium of representing action – are resolved, dropped, or even inverted. This is how the Singspiel is deconstructed. Its components are examined, but only so that they can be reassembled at the end.

Selim’s closing – and naturally spoken – lines come close to a musical statement. In the most conspicuous of Neuenfels’ new changes to the text, Selim’s abandonment of Ottoman des-

potism in favour of enlightened reason is redoubled by a stylistic change from functional spoken text to poetic recitation.

After the finale, Neuenfels has Selim recite a poem by Eduard Mörike as a kind of epilogue. After being celebrated by the assembled company (strangely enough also by Osmin, whom Mozart allows to join in the refrain of the finale), Selim holds up his hand to stop the applause both on stage and in the auditorium and recites Mörike’s remorseless poem “Denk’ es, o Seele”. The poem was written some 70 years after the première of Mozart’s Singspiel and appeared in Mörike’s homage to the composer, Mozart’s Journey to Prague. This poem, Selim declares, is in its way as beautiful as the music.

It is not just thanks to this new stage direction that Mozart’s work loses most of its well-known and intended comic quality. It is replaced by obvious despair, for which there are several reasons. The Europeans were abducted and held prisoner and they are plagued by doubts about the faithfulness of each other; Selim and Osmin are each in their own way unhappy to have been rejected by the object of their desire.

The production spells out that the lead roles in the opera – Belmonte and Konstanze, but not only they – are not prisoners just of their rather flimsily constructed roles. In fact, captivity seems rather to be an inappro­ priate description for the state of the lead roles, when one considers that the production divides the roles. But the characters are not freed by this division. Instead, it serves to shed light on the conditions of their restriction.

This brings us to the second effect pro-

34

DECONSTRUCTING SINGSPIEL

duced by Mörike’s poem, in this case a dramatic effect within the characters.

When Selim recites his poem, and above all when he mentions that it is by Mörike, the actor doubles of the Euro­ peans – Pedrillo, Belmonte and Blonde – perk up noticeably. For a moment, the end creates an – at least approximately – discursive balance, thanks to a spoken piece of which one can assert that it is on an equal footing with Mozart’s creativity. After Selim’s recita­ tion Konstanze (singer) goes over to him emotionally and thanks him.

Parallel to the political change, a change in genre occurs here. Beyond the well-known coups de théâtre in which the despot proves to be more enlightened than the Europeans, here the spoken word approaches the status of singing. One single time the singers are

moved by text instead of conversely the actors being ousted by singing or simply made superfluous. In the end, the opera is raised to a kind of discur­sive intermediate space between singing and speaking, between enlightenment and barbarism, between Turkey and Europe.

Can poetry constitute a lyrical voice of the father? Can music – separated from, elevated above and beyond the space of the drama – nevertheless serve the purpose of a logophile if not logocentric drama? These are the questions that Neuenfels’ Entführung poses in a compelling manner. At the same time, the production challenges us in a more general sense. There is not only much that must be heard anew, but also much that must be reconsidered.

35

Following pages:

ANDREAS GRÖTZINGER as OSMIN LUDWIG BLOCHBERGER as PEDRILLO

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DIE ENTFÜHRUNG AUS DEM SERAIL SEASON 2023/24 PREMIÈRE OF THE PRODUCTION 12.10.2020 Publisher WIENER STAATSOPER GMBH, Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna General Director DR. BOGDAN ROŠČIĆ Music Director PHILIPPE JORDAN Administrative Director DR. PETRA BOHUSLAV General editors SERGIO MORABITO & ANN-CHRISTINE MECKE Design & concept EXEX Layout & typesetting MIWA MEUSBURGER Image concept: MARTIN CONRADS, BERLIN (Cover) All performance photos MICHAEL PÖHN Printed by PRINT ALLIANCE HAV PRODUKTIONS GMBH, BAD VÖSLAU ARTICLE ORIGINATION Antonello Manacorda: Mozart does not need our pathos barometer – The ego is not immutable: Interview with Henry Arnold – Ann-Christine Mecke: Talking to Pigs! BORROWINGS AND TRANSLATIONS Juliane Votteler, Synopsis, from: Staatsoper Stuttgart programme booklet 1997/98, English translation by Steven Scheschareg – John Cage, Mozart Mix, 1991 – A complex web of traps, hopes and irritations, from: Staatsoper Stuttgart programme booklet 1997/98 – David J. Levin, Deconstructing Singspiel, in: ibid., Unsettling Opera. Staging Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, and Zemlinsky, Chicago/ London 2007, p. 99–136, abridged and adapted for this programme booklet by David. J. Levin. English translations (except Synopsis): Andrew Smith. IMAGES: Cover image: Wolfgang Oelze Reproduction only with approval of Wiener Staatsoper GmbH / Dramaturgy. Abbreviations are not marked.

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