DIRECTED BY: Dziga Vertov

FEATURING: Mikhail Kaufman (cameraman)

PLOT: A plotless record of twenty four hours of life in the Soviet Union of 1929, exhibited

through series of experimental camera tricks.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Man with the Movie Camera is a visually inventive, historically important and formally deep movie that reveals more secrets with each viewing; but, the only quality in it that might be called “weird” are the surreal camera tricks it occasionally employs. It’s a movie that demands space on the shelf of anyone seriously interested in editing techniques or film theory, but as far as weirdness goes, it’s purely supplemental viewing.

COMMENTS: Reviews of Man with a Movie Camera often spend as much, if not more, time discussing the history and philosophy of the production and its influence on future films than they do describing what’s actually in the movie. That’s because the challenge the movie sets for itself—to create a “truly international absolute language of cinema based on its total separation from the language of theater and literature”—is more fascinating than the film’s subject matter (the daily lives of Soviet citizens in 1929). On a technical level, Movie Camera is a catalog of editing techniques and camera tricks, many of which were pioneered in this film but are commonplace or obsolete now. Be on the lookout for double exposures, tricks of perspective, slowing down or speeding up the camera speed, freeze-frames, reversed footage, split screens, and even crude stop-motion animation. One of the most interesting techniques is the amphetaminic editing of Movie Camera‘s climax, which moves almost too fast for the eye or mind to follow (a technique Guy Maddin would fall in love with and use to ultra-weird effect in the Constructivist/Surrealist hybrid The Heart of the World). Structurally, the film flows along as a series of counterpoints, alternating between two sets of scenes to create ironic contrasts (cross-cutting a funeral procession and the birth of a baby), metaphors (scenes of soot-covered workers in the mines followed by women being pampered in a beauty parlor to suggest the dignity of the worker compared to the frivolousness of the bourgeoisie), or other surprise connections (the cameraman getting dangerously close to the being hit by a speeding train is intercut with a sleeping woman tossing and turning as if having a nightmare). Other sequences interlace shots of the cameraman and film crew with the footage they’re shooting so the audience can see how the movie is made; for example, we see the cameraman filming horse drawn carriages, then watch the reaction of the bonneted women out on a Sunday ride trying to act nonchalant as if they don’t realize there’s a camera aimed at them from the car speeding along beside them. At several points the movie pauses and we focus on Vertov’s wife working in the editing studio splicing the footage together into a montage, as if we’re watching the movie being assembled before our very eyes.

Philosophically, Movie Camera advocates a pure Marxist agenda; thanks to the distance of time and circumstance, the preaching is not as heavy-handed and obvious to the modern viewer as it may have been to the film’s intended audience. The common worker, whether miner, factory worker or clerk, is spotlighted and glorified throughout. All that footage showing the cameraman and the physical process of making movies serves double duty here, reminding the audience that the propaganda artist is not a privileged class but is a fellow worker sweating away in the trenches. The film also advances temporary policies of the time: in 1927, Stalin had embarked on a policy of rapid industrialization to close the technological gap between the Soviet Union and the West. Movie Camera therefore fetishes the machine, taking a voyeuristic delight in glorifying belching smokestacks, pumping pistons, and particularly in the clicking shutters and winding cranks of its own favorite apparatus, the camera (I half-suspect director Vertov only shows the explicit birth of a baby because the vagina reminds him of a camera aperture).

At a more abstract level, the non-narrative, everyday subject matter of the film expresses the director’s ideological hostility to the fictional films of the West. Like Leon Trotsky, Vertov saw the spectacle and fantasy of fictional films as an opiate for the masses that needed to be reformed into something useful to the socialist state. This last position, turning the cinema away from escapism and towards practicality, was Vertov’s central concern in Movie Camera, but it resulted in two ironies. First, there is a paradox in that Vertov wants to limit himself to depicting reality, but so many of the images he chooses are fantastic and even surreal: a man with a movie camera standing on top of mountainous movie camera, a building collapsing on itself via split-screen manipulation, a plate of cooked prawns coming to life and slithering around. Presumably, Vertov resolves this apparent inconsistency between concern for reality and addiction to fantasy by constantly reminding the audience that they are watching a film and not a story, by emphasizing the role of the omnipresent unhidden cameraman and showing how he accomplishes his tricks, thereby unmasking the illusion and revealing the reality behind it. There remains, however, a (not unpleasant) tension between the director’s championing of reality over fiction and the way he continually undermines the reality of his motion picture.

The second irony is that, despite the fact that Movie Camera‘s foundation was doctrinaire Marxist theory, the movie was rejected and disavowed as avant-garde and decadent after Stalin adopted the official Soviet aesthetic of “social realism.” The Communist stance became that filmmakers should depict easy-to-digest, non-stylized narratives that could inspire the average theatergoer, showing him exemplary citizens and uplifting historical victories such as Alexander Nevsky‘s victory over the Teutonic Knights. Vertov stopped making his own films after 1934 and finished out his career as nothing more than an editor. Invented to celebrate the proletariat, Man with the Movie Camera ended up of interest entirely to the cultural elites; intended as a leftist manifesto, it proved too radical in its formalism for the Marxists.

Man with the Movie Camera is a recommended film, but with a qualification: you almost certainly must have an interest in film history or film theory to enjoy it. If anyone without such predilections were to call the movie insufferably tedious, I wouldn’t be able to refute them. Because the movie itself is in the public domain, but the various soundtracks are not, you have several options to watch the film. It can be streamed or downloaded from the Internet archive, but there is no musical accompaniment. The three main competing DVD versions currently available are distinguished by their unique soundtracks, each made in different styles but all following Vertov’s broad original scoring notes. Kino’s 2003 release (buy) features a minimalist score by Hollywood composer Michael Nyman. The record label Ninja Tune released a DVD (buy) with a hipper score from the electronic jazz outfit The Cinematic Orchestra. The version I watched to prepare this review was the 2002 Image disc (buy), with a very good soundtrack from the Alloy Orchestra that is hypnotically rhythmic and occasionally exotic; it plays as both period-appropriate and “futuristic” at the same time, and reminds me a little of the style of George Antheil. The Cinematic (digital version) and Alloy (digital version) versions of the movie are both available for online rental or purchase.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…[the] wiggiest effects would seem to violate the idea of verit. But that’s the intoxicating power of making movies–you start out trying to record realism, and you end up animating a plate full of prawns.”–Jim Ridley, Nashville Scene (DVD)

DIRECTED BY: Wim Wenders

FEATURING: Pina Bausch

PLOT: A selection of modern dances from avant-garde choreographer Pina Bausch, interspersed

with tributes from the dancers who worked with her and presented in 3D.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Pina Bausch invented weird dances, but filming them (even in 3D) doesn’t make a weird movie, just a movie about people performing weird dances.

COMMENTS: German choreographer Pina Bausch died unexpectedly just before Wim Wenders began principal photography on Pina; whatever profile of the working artist he might originally have planned, the film became instead a eulogy. Because Bausch believed that movement was itself a language that could express emotional truths impossible to say with language, it’s fitting that almost none of her words remain in the film but that her life is instead told through her abstract dances. (What quotes we do have are mostly platitudes for the comfort and inspiration of her dancers: “dance, dance, otherwise we are lost”). It begins with a semi-conventional staging of Stravinsky’s still-shocking “The Rites of Spring,” with pagan maidens anxiously swaying in nude-colored nightgowns until the high priest selects the unlucky gal destined to dance herself to death to ensure a good harvest. That’s as comfortably classical and representational as things get. When  we move into Bauch’s own imagination, we encounter a dreamlike café where blind women crash into the walls, a ballet performed in the pouring onstage rain beside a giant craggy rock, and a woman who walks onto a train cradling a pillow and silently connects with a passenger wearing donkey ears. Next to a muddy lake, a hunched woman bears a sleeping man on her back, while further in the background another lady marches along with a tree growing out of her spine. Limp dancers manipulated like puppets by others are a repeating theme; for example, there’s one sequence where a man carefully positions two comatose lovers, placing the woman’s arm around the man’s neck and then hoisting her into his arms, but she always slips off and he repeats his manipulations over and over, performing the futile ritual faster and faster each time until he’s almost a blur on the screen. Dances from four of Bausch’s major works are recreated; Wenders sometimes pours the action out of the theater and into the streets of Wuppertal. A few shorter pieces were created for the film by her disciples in Pina’s surreal style. The stagings and costumes are minimalist but always evocative and interesting; color schemes are intense and dramatic. The musical accompaniment is tasteful, eclectic and melodic, ranging from the expected classical chestnuts (Stravinsky and Tchaikovsky) through jazz (Louis Armstrong) and Portuguese fado to moody modern avant-rock and electronica. I didn’t go into Pina as a fan of modern dance, and I didn’t come out one; but, even though the non-narrative feature did become a bit repetitive at 100 minutes, I’m glad I spent the time getting to know the woman and her craft. I don’t think Pina will spark the same interest in its esoteric subject as Wenders’ The Buena Vista Social Club did in Cuban music, but it’s impossible to come away unimpressed by the grace, dedication and creativity of the dancers, or by the love and respect that went into composing this tribute to Pina’s life work.

Though sometimes promoted as the first 3D documentary, fellow German Werner Herzog beat Wenders to the punch (at least by release date) with his equally weighty Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010). When I watched Cave on a flat screen, I was convinced that, by not having seen it in 3D as intended, I was missing out on crucial visual textures. But (although I know I’ll be in the minority here), having caught Pina in a theater in all three of its intended dimensions, now I’m not convinced that 3D technology can ever add anything to a film’s visuals but a touch of novelty. The human brain automatically adds depth to a flat image, making 3D effects superfluous. Pina‘s dancers didn’t seem richer or more real to me simply because they were superficially curvier and stood out a bit from the background. In fact, they looked artificial and unnatural, in that peculiar way only modern computer-generated effects produce. The ersatz hyperreality of 3D may actually enhance the oddness of Pina’s otherworldly compositions, however.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Pina’s power comes from the way Wenders uses that illusion of living, flexing proximity to immerse you in Bausch’s dreamlike, emotionally vertiginous world. Watching Pina is like being inside one of Bausch’s surreal pieces.”–Jordan Levin, The Miami Herald (contemporaneous)

DIRECTED BY: Jean-Luc Godard

FEATURING: Marine Battaggia, Catherine Tanvier, Christian Sinniger, Gulliver Hecq, Eye Haidara, Élisabeth Vitali

PLOT: Snippets of scenes involving passengers on a cruise ship are followed by a long segment

exploring a rural French family who run a gas station; it’s topped off with impressionistic travelogues to Egypt, Palestine, and other locales.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  It’s weird—by way of being random and impenetrable—but it’s also boring.  Really boring.  Had Jean-Luc Goddard’s name not been attached, this movie would remain happily unseen by all but a handful of unlucky film festival attendees.

COMMENTS: Jean-Luc Goddard has been telling French magazines that “cinema is dead” (though he would say “le cinéma est mort” and translate it as “film    dead.”)  Film Socialisme is the work of an auteur who truly believes that sentiment: it’s a dispassionate, bloodless dissection of moving images.  It offers us actors but no characters, situations but no drama, incidents but no story, ideas but no argument, and challenges but no rewards.  Deliberately obtuse, Film Socialisme sets out to frustrate: the first thing English speakers will notice is that Godard chooses not to fully translate the French dialogue, opting instead to tell the story through what he calls “Navajo English.”  Large portions of the French dialogue are left untranslated, and when the viewer does see subtitles he reads only snatches like “watch    notell    time” and “itshim    wariswar.”  Sometimes the language will switch from French to English or German or Russian, sometimes in the middle of a conversation; one presumes that this provides brief  opportunities for Francophones to enjoy “Navajo French.”  Structurally, Film Socialisme is divided into three chapters.  The first, titled “Des choses comme ça,” takes place aboard a cruise liner and explores fragments of stories from various travelers that don’t appear to add up to anything: a woman is trying to learn to speak cat by watching kitties on her laptop, a couple have a conversation about the Allied landing in North Africa while ignoring an apparently drunk woman careening into the window behind them, Yank chanteuse Patti Smith plays a few lines of a new song and wanders around the poop deck with her guitar, and so on.  The “action” is frequently broken up by intertitles reading “Des choses” and/or “comme ça.”  There are also  (randomly inserted but) lovely images of choppy waves, schools of fish shot from below, and sunset seascapes.  Experimental photography is sometimes used for the ship’s interior; supersaturation and odd filters turn the casinos and bars into drunken, blurry riots of primary colors.  (Cinematography is the one area where Film Socialisme occasionally shines).  After forty-five minutes on this ship to nowhere we arrive at our next destination—”Quo vadis Europa”—and the pace slows as we observe the lives of a couple running a gas station in rural France.  A pesky film crew shows up to interview them.  They have a llama, a burro, a kid, and a pretty teenage daughter, and that’s as interesting as their lives get.  Wikipedia suggests this segment involves the kids “summoning their parents to appear before the ‘tribunal of their childhood,’ demanding serious answers on the themes of liberty, equality, and fraternity.”  With only a smattering of French and no assistance from the subtitles, it’s impossible for me to judge whether this is accurate or not (the reporters seem more focused on the upcoming elections).  I describe the segment by saying that nothing happens for thirty five minutes; possibly in an attempt by Godard to make us long to get aboard that cruise ship and sail from inconsequentiality into incomprehensibility.  We finally reach the last section, “Nos humanités,” which an impressionistic tour of Egypt, Palestine, Odessa, Hellas, Napoli, and Barcelona.  Most of these locales were mentioned in passing by people on the cruise ship; all of them are Mediterranean ports the vessel might have visited, with the exception of Odessa, which Godard threw in so he could insert his re-edit of Eisenstein’s famous “Odessa steps” montage.  Hellas is represented by some washed-out scenes from old sword and sandal features, and Barcelona by brief shots of a bullfight.  This segment is exciting only because we know we’re getting to the end of this massively self-indulgent cinematic essay on—well, Godard only knows what.  I’ve heard theories that it’s a depiction of the fragmented state of modern Europe, or a mediation on the fragility of film, or even that it’s about Godard’s feelings about copyright law (!)  The problem is that no insight we could glean from a close study of the film could compensate us for the frustration and boredom of watching it.  Postmodern past the point of self-parody, this is the kind of movie only Jacques Derrida could love.  You may be sick to death of the shallowness, predictability and bourgeois sensibilities of “film capitalisme,” but Film Socialisme should convince you that the situation could be much, much worse.

Godard was the leading light of the French New Wave, creating the experimental hits like Breathless (1960), Alphaville (1965), and Week End (1967).  His output sharply declined after the 1960s, and he focused on shorts and documentaries (including Histoire(s) du cinéma, a 266-minute free-associative survey of film history).  Film Socialisme was his first new feature in six years, but at 82 years old he is reported to have a new project in mind: titled A Farewell to Language, it would feature a talking dog.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…stubbornly obtuse, even by [Goddard's] gnomic standards… The cumulative effect of this plotless collage is bizarrely comforting…”–Jason Solomons, The Observer

DIRECTED BY: Kenneth Anger

FEATURING: Bruce Byron, Kenneth Anger, Bobby Beausoleil, Mick Jagger, André Soubeyran, Claude Revenant, Nadine Valence, Donald Cammell, Marianne Faithfull, Myriam Gibril

PLOT: The disc includes six short, experimental, largely non-narrative films by Kenneth Anger

completed between 1964 and 1972.

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST:  Compilations are ineligible for inclusion on the List of the 366 Best Weird Movies ever made.  Short films have an uphill battle to take a spot on the List that could be occupied by a feature, but either or both of Scorpio Rising and Lucifer Rising (each clocks in at just under 30 minutes long) are meaty and weird enough that they could hear their names called on the final roll.

COMMENTS: Kenneth Anger is one strange dude.  Author of the tabloid-style scandal tome Hollywood Babylon, devotee of Aleister Crowley, pal of rock stars Mick Jagger and Jimmy Page, notoriously unreliable self-mythologizer, and winner of a lifetime achievement award from the American Film Institute, Anger spends years working on films that only play for a few minutes (his most extensive work is only 35 minutes long).  He sometimes returns and reworks older movies a decade or more after they are released.  Even if you’ve never seen an Anger film, you’ve seen dozens of movies that have been influenced by his work; due to his innovation of scoring parades of surrealistic images to pop music, he’s sometimes considered the father of the music video (though he hates the form and has turned down offers to make videos).  The refracted images of films like Invocation of My Demon Brother also helped define the film style we now think of as “psychedelic.”  This collection contains Anger’s most important and influential works, from the 1960s and early 1970s—the era of sex, drugs, and rock and roll, when the formerly struggling underground academic filmmaker found himself embraced by the upcoming generation of hipsters. In order of presentation, the films covered in this collection are:

Scorpio Rising (1964): A young motorcyclist named Scorpio polishes his bike, gets dressed in leather, goes to a wild biker Halloween party, then participates in a race.  Scenes of James Dean, Marlon Brando in The Wild One, and a “life of Jesus” movie are intercut into the documentary-like footage, along with images of swastikas, comic books, and altered pop art canvases (the image of a death’s head smoking a cigarette labeled “youth” with Christ now appearing in its mirrored shades).  Motown music hits of 1963 play on the soundtrack, often with clever ironic juxtapositions (when “He’s a Rebel” begins, we are shown a quick shot of both Scorpio and Christ).  It includes scenes of a bikers holding down one of their own (an initiate?) and rubbing mustard on his crotch, the apparent desecration of a church as Scorpio urinates on an altar, and skulls popping up everywhere the eye can see.  It’s a eroticized, mythologized vision of the biker lifestyle, with astrological suggestion that Scorpio and his kind are fated to replace the old Christian guard.  Scorpio Rising is frequently cited as one of the most influential avant-garde films ever made, particularly for its innovative use of contemporary pop music and for its taboo-breaking homoeroticism.  Seen through today’s jaded eyes, it’s as much a curious relic of its time as anything; in many ways, it’s actually tamer and duller than Anger’s more abstract movies.

Kustom Kar Kommandos (1965): A fragment of an uncompleted project that looks like a retread of Scorpio Rising.  Shot in a pink color scheme to a girl group rendition of Bobby Darrin’s “Dream Lover,” it features a young man in tight jeans polishing his custom-built, gleaming-chrome vehicle with a giant powder puff.

Invocation of My Demon Brother (1969): Anger has claimed that his films are actually “magickal spells” that are capable of raising demons.  The ratio of literalism to metaphor in this belief is uncertain, but the trancelike, ritualistic Invocation could make you sense that there is a demon standing over your shoulder.  More likely, it will make you think someone secretly slipped magic mushroom elixir into your gin and tonic.  It’s a series of rapid fire psychedelic/occult images, often superimposed one on top of the other, set to an abrasive, repetitive Moog synthesizer figure (“composed” by Mick Jagger) that sounds like a malfunctioning paper shredder.  This is what most people imagine when they think of the term “avant-garde film”; it’s the archetypal hippie drug movie.   Among the jumbled flood of images are an albino blinking in the glare of kleig lights, male full frontal nudity, sped-up clips of Anger performing a magick ritual in Haight Ashbury, kaleidoscopic mirrored shots of a male torso sprouting multiple limbs like a faceless Hindu god, occult and Tarot images imprinted over the film, glimpses of the Rolling Stones, and Anton LaVey in front of a skull altar dressed as a silly-looking cartoon devil (horns and all).  There is, reportedly, a continuous loop of subliminal Vietnam war footage that plays throughout the film but doesn’t register to the naked eye.  Weird fans who can tolerate the soundtrack (there is an option to play a more melodic alternate score by Bobby Beausoleil) will find this short trip on a ten-minute mind-melting machine worth taking.

Rabbit’s Moon (filmed 1950/completed 1972.  The version shown here is the seven-minute, re-cut 1979 edition): Rabbit’s Moon, a re-working of an older film, is a refreshing change of pace showcasing a different, radically calmer Anger, and rates as one of the most interesting pieces in this collection.  Shot in glowing, moonlight-tinted black and white, it’s a commedia dell’arte pantomime wherein the clown Pierrot longs for the moon (where, unaccountably, a rabbit lives).  He is tormented by the sudden appearance of the bushy-eyebrowed Harlequin, who uses a magic lantern to conjures up the female Columbina to entrance him, then steals her for himself.  The classical, poetical influence of Jean Cocteau (an early Anger fan who invited the filmmaker to visit France in the late 1940s) is overwhelmingly evident here, and the movie proves that Anger’s depth of mythological reference goes much deeper than just Aleister Crowley.  The moonlit forest glade set is beautifully artificial, littered with silvery leaves.  The musical accompaniment is a catchy British Invasion styled piece called “It Came in the Night” by the otherwise unknown band A Raincoat.

Lucifer Rising (begun 1970/completed 1980): Mixing the astrological/mythological resonances of Scorpio Rising with the restless psychedelia of Demon Brother, Anger’s last major film is a synthesis of much of his previous work and a fitting cap to his career (he stopped making films for 20 years after Lucifer).  Molded this time around Egyptian mythology and Crowley’s notion of an approaching “Aeon of Horus,” it features appearances by Isis, Osiris (played by Donald Cammell), Lillith (heroin-addicted singer Marianne Faithfull) and the titular Lucifer (a “light-bringing” figure who bears little relationship to the Christian devil in Anger’s personal theology).  The ancient Egyptian gods summon the other deities amidst images of erupting volcanoes and magickal rituals.  A glowing orange flying saucer appears in Luxor over Ramses II’s shoulder.  The growling, apocalyptic rock guitar score was composed by Charles Manson associate and convicted murderer Bobby Beausoleil from prison! 

The Man We Want to Hang (2002):  Virtually a throwaway piece included as a DVD bonus, this 13-minute short is nothing but a series of shots of canvases painted by Aleister Crowley, scored to classical music.  The paintings themselves are competent, but only mildly interesting to those of us not in the cult.

Played end-to-end, the films occupy about 90 minutes of running time.  Fantoma’s DVD presentation of these pieces is exceptional.  Each entry contains a separate demonstration of each film’s restoration alongside commentary by Anger.  Anger’s discussions are curious, because the notoriously temperamental auteur—known for burning his own films in public, snapping at interviewers, and threatening to put a curse on Jimmy Page after a private spat—comes across as a mellow, erudite, retired professor type when discussing his movies.  Some of his commentary may be unreliable; for example, I found it difficult to swallow his insistence that all of the leather-bound motorcyclists in Scorpio Rising—the guys who dressed in drag, bared their buttocks, and rubbed condiments on each others’ crotches—were straight men who insisted their ever-present girlfriends not appear on camera.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…mystic and frequently inscrutable.”–Eric Henderson, Slant Magazine (contemporaneous)

Still, I was not prepared for his version of Handel’s perennial favorite, Messiah (2010).  Guth’s staging has been called agnostic, and that might be an apt description according to the traditional meaning (as opposed to contemporary interpretation) of the word.  Simultaneously, this may also be the most “Christian” filmed religious narrative since Michael Tolkin’s The Rapture (1991).  Guth’s Messiah makes an overly familiar yuletide narrative startling again.  This production was staged for the 250th anniversary of George Frideric Handel’s death.  I believe Handel would have approved.

The history of the composition is well known.  Handel was in ill health, destitute, and on the verge on being sent to debtor’s prison when he received a commission from librettist Charles Jennens to write an oratorio on Christ’ Nativity, Passion, Resurrection and Ascension.  The libretto was a pastiche, borrowing from the Bible and the Book of Common Prayers.  Handel composed it within three weeks and insisted on its being performed in secular theaters, as opposed to churches.  Handel’s decision was harshly criticized by the churches, but it was an enormous success.  Handel paid off his debts and used his extra earnings from “Messiah” to feed the poor, clothe the naked, and give comfort to those in prison.

Musically, this Messiah is not short-shifted.  Jean-Chrstophe Spinosi conducts the period instrument Ensemble Matheus with imagination, style, and lucid insight.  He is helped enormously by the artistically superior cast of Susan Gritton, Cornelia Horak, Martin Pollmann, Bejun Mehta, Richard Croft, and Floran Boesch, and the support of the Arnold Schoenberg Chorus (who are far from anonymous.With commendable personality, they actively participate in the performance).

As in many of his operatic productions, Guth brings additional characters into the drama.  Nadia Kichler is the angel Gabriel as a “sign language perfomer” (or so she is referred to).  Her expressive gestures, unseen by the other characters except when embarking on an existential plane, is, perhaps, a type of choreographed/ signed glossolalia as visual poetry (echoed by the sublime chorus) rather than actual sign language.  Either way, she is a bewitching phantom figure who appears throughout the story in various guises.  Guth tells the tale of three brothers, one of whom is the symbolic Christ (dancer Paul Lorenger).  Lorenger’s Christ is a suicide, a failed businessman, and a spouse deprived of all virility.  He is dressed in gray anonymity and his gaunt, saturnine presence is as captivating as Kichler’s Gabriel.

Messiah opens at the businessman’s funeral.  His two brothers round out a dysfunctional trinity.  The elder brother (bass Florian Boesch) is the iconoclastic addict, always on the verge of rage.  The younger, sensuous brother (alto Bejun Mehta) is riddled with guilt over having betrayed both his wife (soprano Susan Gritton) and his dead brother.  His recent affair with his late brother’s wife (soprano Cornelia Horak) looms large, a crackling whirlwind of guilt.

While iconoclastic in content, this Messiah is orthodox in context.  Much symbolism is at hand.  The funeral feast serves as the Eucharistic table.  The ghost of the despised and rejected of businessmen resurrects and dances through a flashback of suffering stations, even mimicking the beating and the falling of Christ on the way to Golgotha.  The businessman’s wife dries the feet of her lover with her hair, as Magdalene dried the feet of Christ.  Lighting designer Jurgen Hoffmann evokes the banality of a barren capitalist society with all the scorching frigidity of an Egyptian desert.

Richard Croft as the presiding minister/Pharisee wrings his hand and waxes frustration, giving an unflattering depth to what could have easily been a two-dimensional role.  Sopranos Gritton and Horak sing and act with clarity and dramatic conviction.  The three brothers are a fascinating, contrasting trinity.  There are even moments of humor (involving boy soprano Martin Pollmann) but, as usual with Guth, the humor is disconcerting.

Guth and his set designer Christian Schmidt have expertly created a surreal moment in time, after the long flashbacks, when the surviving participants are left wondering what to do, like earth-bound apostles after the ascension.  It is a relevant moment without a conclusion, and I suppose that could also be said about the season itself.

Wozzeck and his friend Andres are cutting sticks in a field as the sun sets.  Wozzeck tells Andres of horrifying visions and Andres unsuccessfully tries to offer Wozzeck reassurance.  Wozzeck visits The Doctor.  The Doctor scolds him for abandoning his diet. The Doctor, who is obviously insane, is delighted, however, when Wozzeck tells him of the violent visions he has been having.  Meanwhile, Marie notices the regiment’s Drum Major, and the two begin an affair.  The Drum Major gives Marie earrings as he parts.  Feeling remorse for her infidelity, Marie sings her child a lullaby.

Wozzeck returns him and tells Marie of his hallucinations.  Marie is disturbed and the tension between the two of them escalates when Wozzeck notices Marie’s new earrings and begins to question her about them.  Wozzeck’s jealousy engulfs him, and he becomes wild with visions of blood.

The Captain and the Doctor are are engaged in conversation on the street.  The Doctor is giving the Captain a terminal diagnosis when they encounter Wozzeck.  The Doctor and the Captain mock Wozzeck, telling him of the affair between Marie and the Drum Major.  Wozzeck flees to a tavern where he discovers Marie and the Drum Major dancing.  The tavern idiot confronts Wozzeck, telling him ‘I smell blood,” which, naturally, sends Wozzeck into a frenzy.  In the barracks, Wozzeck gets into a fight with the Drum Major, who knocks Wozzeck down.

Later, Marie reads of the gospel account of the woman taken in adultery.  Overwhelmed with feelings of guilt, Marie joins Wozzeck for a walk in the forest.  A blood red moon rises as they are walking, and Wozzeck slashes Marie’s throat.  Wozzeck throws the knife away, and heads

back to the tavern to escape his blood dreams.  In the tavern, patrons notice Wozzeck’s bloodied hands and question him.  In a panic, Wozzeck returns to the forest to search for the knife.  When he finds it he throws it into a pond, then discovers Marie’s body.  Wozzeck’s mental state deteriorates.  He becomes convinced that he did not throw the knife far enough, and fears that it will turn up on the shore.  Desperate to retrieve the waspon and wash off the incriminating blood, Wozzeck runs towards the pond.  The Captain and the Doctor pass by and hear Wozzeck’s anguished cries, but they are unconcerned.  Wozzeck jumps into the pond, but unable to swim, he drowns.

The next morning Wozzeck and Marie’s child plays on a hobby horse.  The neighborhood children mock him for his parentage when news arrives that Marie’s body has been found.  The children rush off to see the dead body, and Marie’s child eventually joins them.

“La Boheme” this isn’t.

Purists, who really should stay the hell away from anything written by the Second Viennese School, saw Bieito’s staging and immediately put the production’s necrophilia, Elton John impersonator, and excessive nudity on their epic lists of complaints.  Bieito was characterized as the quintessential Regie nightmare.  The purist hacks looked at their libretto/bible from a two inch distance and cried foul, failing to see past their paint-by-numbers preferences.  Bieito was predictably (and oh so boringly) accused of pulling juvenile antics.  To approach Berg’s nihilistic work as if it were a holy, chiseled museum piece is nothing short of  hypocrisy.

Bieito gets to the visceral spirit of Berg’s “Wozzeck” more than anyone before him and, I suspect, this production will be the reference version for many years to come.  Bieito sets his Wozzeck in a chemical plant, a post-industrial, apocalyptic wasteland.  Marie and Wozzeck abide in the plant’s lower level, wear tattered overalls,  and are stained with grime.  Pipes exude deadening pollution, and Marie’s home is an industrial container.  Her child frequently resorts to the fetal position to shield himself from his dreary existence.  He is covered in sores, wears a death-red jumpsuit and breathes through an oxygen mask.  Marie cleans herself off and slinks into a evening dress, ascending to the upper level for her affair with the upper class, the superficially exotic Drum Major (the Elton impersonator).  Marie, Wozzeck, and their child are anonymous to an apathetic world.  The Jeffrey Dahmer-like Doctor finds an appealing cadaver among the pile and simulates sexual push-ups with the corpse.  The sight sends the already fragile Wozzeck over the edge.  The harrowing finale has Wozzeck climbing into a drainage pipe as the nude, zombie-like chorus encircles Marie’s corpse.  The children throw industrial waste at Marie’s orphan.

Bavarian Franz Hawlata may possibly be the best Wozzeck on record.  Vocally, and in performance, his is a corpulent, rabid antihero.  Likewise, Angela Denoke’s Marie convincingly projects desperation and pathos.  Johann Tilli and Hubert Delamboye capture the banality of evil all too convincingly.  Amazingly, conductor Sebastian Weigle cuts through the staged refuse and delivers music of power and, yes, beauty.

The anticipated backlash spewed by hopelessly dull, bourgeoisie critics came fast and furious.  Would I want to watch this again anytime soon?  It nearly took me a year to revisit this film, and it will probably be another year before I brave it a third time.  Like all great art, this was not easy.  And this is great art which I recommend unreservedly to everyone but the operatic televangelists.

Be forewarned: After watching these two productions of Alban Berg’s operas “Lulu” and “Wozzeck,” showering may be advisable.

Alban Berg (1885-1934) may be the most notorious member of the Second Viennese School, even more so than leader Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951) and Anton Webern (1883-1945).  Schoenberg invented the twelve-tone language and is considered the boogeyman of the musical avant-garde.  Webern, who composed mainly in miniature, is, possibly, the most influential of the three.  Berg, on the hand, was the most romantic of the school, as influenced by Gustav Mahler as Schoenberg.  Berg died young and did not live long enough to compose a large a body of work.  However, he did compose what may very well be the two most repulsive operas ever written.  Even Schoenberg was aghast, and urged his younger colleague to discontinue writing such filth.  A premature death stopped Berg from finishing his final opera, “Lulu.”  He completed two of the three act,s and the final act was completed in the short particell format.  Some forty years later, Friedrich Cerha completed the orchestration for the third act, which premiered under the direction of Pierre Boulez.  Both “Wozzeck” and “Lulu” are extreme operas from an extreme composer.  One would think that this fact would make  opera fans receptive to interpretive stagings.

Olivier Py and Calixto Bieito are two of the most notorious enfant terrible stage directors working in European opera today.  In 2005, Py presented a pornographic actor on stage, in full erection, for a staging of Wagner’s “Tannhauser.”  Bieito’s staging of Mozart’s “Abduction from the Seraglio” incorporated S &M and drug addiction (the story is set in a bordello), and his “Don Giovanni” explored similar themes.  In 2007 Bieito turned to adapting Berg, first with his controversial “Wozzeck,” then with an equally provocative “Lulu” in 2009.

Excerpt from Py’s stage production of Lulu

In November of 2011, Py’s filmed version of Lulu was released on home video, and it too provoked outrage among the traditionalists.  American Opera fans are among the most fanatically puritanical in the world.  Py and Bieito, while creating mixed reactions in Europe, are among the most in-demand and successful stage directors working in the genre today.  Singers clamor to work for them, and their productions usually sell out within a matter of hours and are almost always considered newsworthy events.  The European climate for opera stems from a different mindset.  Most telling was a recent newscast covering the expressionist nightmare “Magic Flute” staged by Martin Kusej.  This “Flute” gleaned wildly mixed reactions. The audience was torn between passionate applause and equally passionate catcalls.  The newscaster shrugged, “it would not be an event if opera goers were not challenged.”  In the States, opera is seen, by and large, as an art form that has gone the way of the dinosaur.  American opera houses desperately beg for contributions and wait for the annual staging of “La Boheme” to (hopefully) pull them out of the red.  It has been nearly a half century since an American staged opera was living art and a newsworthy event.  In the early 1970s even Leonard Bernstein’s “Mass” was deemed sacrilegious and quickly shut down.  Contemporary America, spoon fed on banality, considers the antics of reality TV “stars” to be of higher interest.

Berg’s “take your dissonance and adult themes like a man” Lulu is not for sissies or the artistically challenged.  Berg wrote the libretto himself from Frank Wedekind’s play, “Pandora’s Box” (the same work on which G.W. Pabst’s 1929 film is based).  The opera is set at a circus, and among the ringmaster’s menagerie is the German pierrot Lulu. Her patron, a Dr. Schon, has hired the Painter to create a portrait of Lulu.  After Dr. Schon and his musician son, Alwa, leave the studio, the Painter makes passes at Lulu until they are interrupted by her husband. Upon stumbling onto the sight, he succumbs to a fatal heart attack.  Lulu realizes she is now a rich widow and marries the Painter.

The Painter becomes very successful, but unbeknownst to him, Lulu is receiving letters from her numerous lovers, one of which is the Countess Geschwitz.  The tramp Schigolch visits Lulu.  He is her father and long time lover, having first molested Lulu when she was a child.  News comes that Dr. Schon is now engaged, and Lulu is upset.  When Dr. Schon arrives at the studio he informs the Painter of Lulu’s many adulteries.  Schon also reveals that he has been having his way with Lulu since she was a mere twelve years old.  Devastated, the Painter slashes his own throat.

Widowed again, Lulu informs Alwa that an African prince wishes to marry her.  Alwa, (possibly representing Berg himself) contemplates writing an opera about Lulu.  Dr. Schon realizing that he loves Lulu, breaks off his engagement and marries Lulu instead.

In the second act, Schon becomes increasingly jealous over Lulu’s many affairs, including her relationship with the lesbian Countess.  Alwa announces that he too is in love with Lulu.  A schoolboy is another of Lulu’s lovers; he hides in Lulu’s apartment when Schon confronts his wife.  An argument breaks out, and the schoolboy shoots and kills Schon.

In a silent film interlude, Lulu is tried and convicted, catches cholera in prison, and is transferred to  hospital where she escapes with the help of the Countess, Schigolch, Alwa, and an acrobat.  First in Paris, then in London, Lulu supports herself and her entourage by becoming a prostitute, with Schigolch and Alwa acting as her pimps.

Several parties try to blackmail Lulu, and she is still wanted by the German police for Schon’s murder.  After much bad luck, including a scandalous financial investment, Alwa, Schigolch and Lulu are living together in poverty.  The Countess returns, having bought Lulu’s portrait in a gallery.  Lulu is clearly upset at the sight of the portrait by her dead painter husband.  A client, the Negro, arrives, and Alwa demands that he pay for Lulu’s services in advance.  A fight between Alwa and the Negro ends with Alwa shot dead.  Schigolch hides Alwa’s body.

The Countess, despondent over Lulu’s apparent rejection, contemplates suicide, but refrains and vows to return to Germany and work for women’s rights.  Lulu has a new client.  She is so intrigued with him that she offers him sexual services for free, but it turns out the John is Jack the Ripper!  The Countess hears Lulu screams and discovers The Ripper, knife in hand.  The slasher then kills the Countess and escapes.

Themes of Catholicism and homosexuality permeate Py’s stagings.  His Lulu begins with neon lights flashing “I Hate Sex.”  Py’s Lulu, as portrayed and sung by Patricia Petitbon, has no real control over her fate.  The only tool she has is in her sexual charisma, which she shrewdly uses to her advantage.  Clearly, Lulu was shaped by her treatment at the hands of her father, Schigolch, and patron, Schon.  Neither Py nor Petitbon, however, succumb to phony sentimentalism.  Py’s sets are adorned in violent, nauseating, kaleidoscope colors which call to mind something akin to the hues of Miles Davis “Live Evil” period.  These colors echo the femme fatale characterization of Lulu, for whom sexual predation is but a past time.

The opening begins like something out of Tod Browning‘s The Show (1927) with Lulu presented by the Ringmaster as the main attraction among his wild beasts.  A sprightly ape, a bobble head, and assorted animals appear before Lulu emerges, robed in man-eater red.  A mere few minutes into the film, Lulu disrobes and she will be nude off and on throughout the film.

Amidst the carnival milieu are sex shops, funeral homes, and pornographic cinemas.  Couples engage in simulated sexual acts in shop windows as the Painter fornicates with a bound Lulu.  A ferris wheel continually churns behind all.  When Schigolch arrives, he is dressed as an Emmett Kelly style tramp clown.  Lulu dons a pink bunny suit and gives daddy oral sex.  Conductor Michael Boder masterfully handles this extremely difficult score, alternating between jagged harmonies and free jazz, without skipping a beat.

As Schon reveals Lulu’s true nature to the Painter, death appears from above as a well-endowed topless woman in a black miniskirt and a death’s head mask.  A large portrait paints Lulu as the eternal scapegoat temptress of Genesis: Eve.

The mobile set shifts from a clutter of excessive wealth to Py’s silent staged interlude, where Lulu is roughly interrogated by the police on minimalistic, black and white, silent film-styled sets.  Much hubbub was made over the projection of a real hardcore film on the set, but the porn is blurred and witnessed by a jaded, anonymous crowd.  The Painter reappears, in black face, as the Negro.  The mobile set set shifts again for a finale doused in snow.  Schon reappears as the Ripper, attired in a Santa Claus suit, and does his dirty deed with abandoned glee.

Py’s Lulu was met with both standing ovations and attempts to ban the touring production in some areas.  “Lulu” has been filmed several times.  Christine Schafer made a superb Lulu in a 1996 production.  She was helped enormously there by Andrew Davis’ superb conducting, but Graham Vick’s production was a bit too minimalistic.  In a 2002 staging, Laura Aikin, while vocally no match for Schafer, likewise made a compelling Lulu, presenting the character as an unquestionable victim of Schon.  However, this beautiful and violent production utilized the now obsolete two-act version of the opera, and conductor Franz Wesler-Most could not seem to master the score to the degree Davis did.  Although all three of these versions have much going for them, Py’s Lulu is the most successfully filmed Lulu to date.  Like Berg, Py filters the hedonistic source material from Wedekind through artistic sophistication.  Despite the supposed “shock elements” of Py’s production, the director shows cerebral restraint in the depiction of violence and wisely concentrates on the terrifying sexual absurdity of the opera.

Unfortunately, we do not have a filmed version of Calixto Bieito’s production of “Lulu” for comparison, only tantalizing stills and YouTube clips of Bieito’s Lulu. However, we do have Bieito’s 2006 rendition of Berg’s “Wozzeck,” which we will cover next week.

Now what is an artist to do with such a ludicrous plot?  As he often did when tackling an absurd libretto, Mozart responded with inspired music.  In the true Mozartean spirit, director Doris Dorrie has just as much fun with Giardiniera as when she bounced through her 2003 staging of Cosi fan Tutte (set in the psychedelic 60′s flower children era).  Dorrie’s personality is stamped all over this charming production.  Primary colors abound.

The opening fight between Belfiore (John Mark Ainsley from Zaide) and Violante (Alexandra Reinprecht) is performed as a ballet in the opera’s overture (and done true to period—traditionalists, do not get your hopes up).  Dorrie and set designer Bernd Lepel replace the garden estate with a busy, 21st century superstore.  A black leather clad Ramiro (mezzo-soprano Ruxandra Donose) looks like an extra from Road Warrior (1981), while the two leads are still adorned in powdered wigs, making for whimsical contrast.  Veronique Gens’s Arminda could give Cruella de Ville competition and she delights in tormenting her poor Ramiro (Donose supplies meaty angst).  Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors (1986) shows up ( I kid you not), chomps down on both Belfiore and Violante, thus generating their “madness’—which takes place in a spider’s den with an arachnid that’s about as animated as Jack Arnold’s Tarantula (1955).  But, it’s all in good fun, even if a good thirty minutes of music has been excised, and if conductor Ivor Bolton and his orchestra don’t seem to have as much fun as Dorrie and company.

Dorrie wonderfully succeeds in elevating what could have been a lackluster event into a spirited Halloween-like Mozartean treat.

In 1769 the twelve year old Mozart composed his three-act opera buffa La finta semplice (The Pretend Simpleton) to a libretto by poet Marco Coltellini, which was in turn based off of Carlo Goldoni’s comedy.  It is one of the most appetizing of Mozart’s early operas.

Captain Fracasso and his sergeant Simone are stationed at the home of two wealthy, foolhardy brothers: Don Cassandro and Don Polidoro. Cassandro and Polidoro have a sister, Giacinta, with whom Fracasso is smitten.  Simone is chasing after the maid, Ninetta. Cassandro, a notorious misogynist, is continually at odds with his womanizing brother.  Fracasso’s sister, Rosina, arrives to help her brother and, with Ninetta’s assistance, Rosina attempts to seduce both Cassandro and Polidoro.  Rosina plays the part of a sexy simpleton, and she is quite successful with Cassandro.  After a night of much drinking, the brothers quarrel over Rosina (leading to a comic duel).  The quarreling is followed by dizzying amorous intrigue and romantic mix-ups.  The brothers are lead to believe that Giacanta has run off with Simone and taken the estate’s treasure with him.  Finally, Rosina, Giacanta and Ninetta end up with their chosen lovers. Only Polidoro walks away empty-handed, which leaves him happily single and unfettered.

Schlomer’s trilogy, beginning with La finta semplice, is not an odyssey for the simpleton, or the timid Mozartean opera goer.  Refreshingly, his is a richly complex, adult odyssey, which encompasses determination, crisis, confusion and eventually, possible liberation.  In La finta semplice, Schlomer replaces the recitatives with German narration (the original, Italian arias are retained).  The result here is an extraordinary tightening of the lyrical and farcical experience.  The new dialogue is delivered by an additional character named Auctoritas, hypnotically played by actress Marianne Hamre (in a bright yellow body suit, which the actress wittily referred to as her ’Kill Bill’ costume).  Hamre’s characterization embraces Brechtian concepts, acting out the narration and interacting with the opera’s characters.  With the exception of Hamre, the sets and costumes, designed by Jens Kilian, are minimalistic and devoid of color: bridal whites.  Malin Hartelius, as Rosina, commands the triangular stage.  Another addition, “Dark Rosina” (played by Anna Tenta), is a mute appendage who amusingly, and hauntingly, choreographs Rosina’s movements, until Rosina frees herself.  The Act II love duet between Rosina and Cassandro (Josef Wagner) is capped by an off-the-meter amorous dance.  Schlomer, a notable choreographer and dancer himself, intelligently directs Hartelius: she sings one thing, but dances another, acting out the Rosina underneath the simpleton facade.  The duel between the brothers becomes a battle of animated weapons.  It is so unexpected and surreal that you half expect Yosemite Sam and Bugs Bunny to show up.  Silvia Moi (Ninetta), Jeremy Ovanden (Fracasso), Matthisas Klink (Polidoro, who, in this version, does get a girl—the narrator Hamre), Marina Comparato and Mijenko Turk make up the rest of a cast with vibrant personality (how about red bras and body paint to off-set the virginal white?).  Michael Hofstetter conducts the Camerata Salzburg as if he and his orchestra get the joke.

Abendempfindung (Evening Sensation) is the second evening of Odysseys. This is not an opera at all, but a pasticcio of Mozart arias, music (including works for glass harmonica), and letters.  The legendary soprano Ann Murray plays “the Singer,” the first of three allegorical characters that represent the artist Mozart at a dissatisfied stage in his life (culled from depressing letters he wrote while in Salzburg).  More than that, the three symbolize the life struggles of artists in the world.  Marianne Hamre is the second representation (“the Actress”) and Graham Smith the third (“the Dancer”).

Murray’s delivery of the Abendempfindung aria is sensitive and blue.  Perched on a suitcase, she contemplates suicide as a way to change trajectory.  She is dependent on others and longs for complete freedom, which does not come with financial security.  This meditative theme is continued by the actress and dancer.  The three principals, each through their unique artistic expression, convey a wistful defiance in the onslaught of challenges.  Ethereal, digital imagery is hauntingly utilized to echo their fractured plight.  Hamre’s radiant dive in a pool strikes a gossamer note.  Rather than a concise narrative, Abendemfindung draws the viewer into strangely intimate visuals and emotive fragmentation.

The third evening, titled Rex tremendus, combines two unfinished Mozart operas–Lo Sposo deluso (The Disappointed Bridegroom) and L’ Oca del Cairo (The Cairo Goose)—together with movements from the unfinished “Requiem.”  Mozart scholar Erik Smith gave the first prepared performance of the unfinished operas several years ago.  In Bridegroom, Bocconio Papparelli plans to marry the considerably younger Eugenia, whom he has never met.  Boccino’s confidant is the misogynist Pulcherio.  Pulcherio realizes that Eugenia is actually in love with her former lover, the Tuscan officer, Don Asdrubale.  Pulcherio has sympathy for Eugenia, and he too falls in love with Bocconio.  Boccino’s vain niece, Bettina, is competing for the love of Asdrubale.  Metilda (a singer) and Gervasio (Eugenia’s tutor) are also thrown into the chaotic mix of confused romance.

The Cairo Goose tells the story of Celidora and Lavina.  The women have been imprisoned by Don Pippo.  Pippo has ambitions to marry Lavina, but she is in love with Calandrino.  Celidora is the chosen bride for Count Lionetto, but she is in love with Biondello.  Calandrino is flirting with the maid, Aureeta,which arouses the jealousy of Auretta’s lover, Chicchibio.  Biondello rescues Celidora and Lavina and, together, they escape to the garden.  At this point the opera ends without the appearance of a goose.

Schlomer and cast embrace the fragmentary nature of the works, and treat Rex tremendus as Mozartean performance art.  The cast from the first two evenings return. Again, Hamre is the M.C.  Murray dissipates as she is enclosed in the glass space of melancholic reflections.  Here, geese do briefly appear, like relics being taken to a faraway temple.  Aimlessness and confusion abound, but Hamre, having taken everything in, seems to be moving towards something.  The evening fades as Hamre emerges, dressed in a new, virtuous white.  Although she has, in part, come to symbolize the composer, it is she that we feel have come closest to knowing.  She lights a cigarette.  She is inexplicably moved in the sanctuary of the Requiem’s lacrimosa.  Of course,this sanctuary is temporary, but it will suffice.  This simple ending gives comforting flesh to the Requiem, far more than the plethora of edified iconography normally associated with the composer’s final work.  Thankfully, Schlomer and ensemble remove Mozart from his pedestal, and feel as if they are replacing the opera house with the intimacy of an concert performed in our own house, swimming pool, cafe, or a little art gallery.

Predictably, Schlomer’s vision has critics, one of who pointedly complained that Murray’s skirt was too short for opera.  The scope of Irrfahrten never gets in the way of personality. There is nothing so predictable as an obvious, pedestrian ”lesson” to be had here.  Rather, this is penetrating communion.  I wanted it to go on.  Joy in repetition.  That is something, I think.

Director Michael Sturminger, Blagoj Nacoski as Scipione, Louise Friba as Constancy and Bernarda Bobro as Fortune flesh out the composer’s conflicting priorities in a Buñuel-esque reverie. With Mozart’s later Giovanni, familiarity breeds contempt.  Scipione is Giovanni’s alter ego.  He finds refuge and passion within Constancy’s joy in repetition.  Constancy, coming off, at first, as a June Cleaver type, even has children here, yet she, like Buñuel’s suburban Severine, is also erotically unhinged.
Here, Friba sings Constancy’s amazingly difficult aria, “Biancheggia in mar scoglio,” while simulating a graphic sex act with Nacoski’s enchanted Scipione pinned to the bridal bed.  It is the kitten Constancy who wins Scipione.  Alas, Bobor’s voluptuous Fortune doesn’t stand a chance; she materializes as the living embodiment of “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.”

The opulent set designs of Renate Martin and Andreas Donhauser enhance Sturminger’s phantasmagoric cosmos where heaven is a swank hotel. Pubilius ‘aria sung from a casket and Aemillius’sage advices sung while playing golf with a miniature earth are among the quirky touches in this production.   The spirited conducting by the young Robin Ticciati compliments the actors and Sturminger’s direction.  Normally, at least on record, this dramatic serenade is a painfully dull affair (the Peter Schrier, Lucia Popp performance is a wonderful exception to the rule).  The M22 team makes what is normally dismissed as lesser, early Mozart into one of the zippier and stronger efforts of the Salzburg project.  As good as the rest of the cast and company are, however, it is the firebrand Fribo who leaves all the other good efforts in the dust.  She is a remarkably gifted singer and performer who convinces us that Scipione’s choice is an excellent one.  If only she had been sent Giovanni’s way.  She easily could have pacified that formidable beast behind her white picket fence.

Ascanio in Alba (libretto by the satirical poet Giuseppe Parini) is a classical celebration of marriage, set in pastoral, mythical Alba.  Ascanio, the son of Venus and Aenus, is engaged to the nymph Silvia and is destined to rule.  For the proceeding four years Cupid, in Ascanio’s form, has courted Silvia in her dreams.  The time has come for Ascanio to meet Silvia, but Venus has a condition: he cannot not reveal his true identity to the nymph.  This is Venus’ test of Silvia’s virtue.  Fauno, ruler of the Alban shepherds, acts as Silvia’s chaperon and implores Ascanio to honor Silvia’s modesty.  The priest Aceste attempts to assure Silvia that the man in her dreams is the very same Ascanio to whom she is engaged.  Silvia meets Ascanio and believes she recognizes him as the man of her dreams, but Fauno, under Venus’ instructions, convinces Silvia that she is mistaken.  Saddened, Silvia becomes listless and gravely ill in her distress.  She announces she will never love anyone other than the Ascanio of her dreams.  When Ascanio approaches her, she flees him.  Silvia’s virtue is confirmed ,and Aceste  assures her that her trials are at an end.  Venus, surrounded by clouds, descends by chariot and unites the two lovers.  As Aceste binds the lovers, and proclaims his own fidelity to Venus, the matriarchal goddess departs, leaving Ascanio and Silvia to prosper.

“Mozart is lucky he’s dead” wrote one critic when reviewing David Hermann’s M22 staging of Ascanio in Alba.  The reviews for this have been universally dreadful.  Ascanio in Alba is one of Mozart’s most richly inventive and sublime early operas.  Most disappointingly, however, Hermann’s production is neither, and the scathing reviews are dead on.

Although Adam Fischer’s conducting of Mozart’s music is lucid, the Italian secco recitatives are disconcertingly replaced by monotonously tepid narration (supplied by two narrators).  Christoff Hetzer’s set design required 3d glasses for the premiere audience, which is a telling sign for what comes off like a first year art school student production that reduces transcendental mythology to inept, adolescent science fiction.  The Star Trek-looking Alban shepherds appear as badly white-wigged robots who break into frenzied, epileptic seizures as they sing their chorus to Venus.  Ascanio (Sonia Prina in bald wig) appears hopping across the stage in a sleeping bag and then gets plopped onto a stack of green, rubber gym mats (those mats reappear time and again for Ascanio to sort of dance with, on, and around).  The Alban shepherds reappear, minus face paint but now with Groucho Marx mustaches, what looks like diapers on their heads, and potted plants in their arms.  Diana Damrau is an all too brief, charming high point as Fauno on a swing.  Silvia (Marie-Belle Sandis), adorned in an embarrassingly ill-fitting ballerina outfit, is thrown into a wheel-barrel, and wheeled onto stage by her chaperone, Aceste (Charles Reid), who wears a fur jacket over a golfing sweater.  In equal opportunity fair play, Silvia gets her time on the pile of green gym mats and her chance for a spotlighted slaying in the spirit while the narrators repeatedly fall, get up, fall, get up—like children playing in a cowboys and Indians game.  The gym mats become mobile Lego sets, and the narrator finally puts on 3d glasses himself (in order to let the audience know that they need to follow suit?) The meeting of Ascanio and Silvia finally takes place on, you guessed it; a green gym mat.

Prina, Damrau, and Sandis are in excellent voice, making this infantile travesty all the more a tragically wasted opportunity.