The brilliant prodigy Erich Korngold (1897-1957) completed his third opera, Die tote Stadt in 1920 and with it gained his greatest success to date. Richard Strauss attended its first performance and sent little notes to twenty-three year old composer warning him against mischief. Also present, at least at the dress rehearsals, was Alban Berg who was very impressed by the work. The presence of these two great colleagues, for such they were despite ages, helps to locate the score and character of this magnificent opera. Musically a good deal of the opera seems broadly Straussian with its dependence on key-centres and a richly chromatic language. But Korngold is not a Strauss follower; the work has its own musical style and language, and in places its complex chromaticism veers towards the more challenging world of Alban Berg's whose Wozzeck was in progress and which was to be premiered in Berlin five years later.
      Part of the phantasmagorical character of the music is due to Korngold's choice of novel on which to base the opera, the symbolist novel Bruges-la-Morte by the Belgian Georges Rodenbach. Though Rodenbach made the city of Bruges more apparent than Korngold does in his opera, Korngold adopted much of the obsessive, almost paranoid, state of the central character Paul into his opera. Paul has been overwhelmed by the death of his beloved Marie to the extent that he stays indoors gazing at a picture of her. As all psychiatrists will recognize he is in so vulnerable a condition that he is open to negative transference, which duly happens with the arrival of Marietta. She seems to Paul to look like a resurrected Maria, but it becomes clear she is no Marie, at least in Paul's imagination. But typically with psycho-symbolic works it is not entirely who the real Marietta is and how much she is a creation of Paul's disturbed imagination.
       This is a very fin-de-siécle novel and thus ripe for the shifting chromatic treatment Korngold lavishes upon it. Nowadays people sometimes score Korngold for his move to Los Angeles and the opulent scores he composed for Hollywood movies such as Sea Hawk and Robin Hood. But closer inspection of these movie scores not only reveals how brilliantly composed they are, even if one thinks them misplaced, and how much they are the heirs of his brilliant Viennese years. Ardent modernists used to dismiss Korngold as one of the many composers who could not cope with the modernisms of dodecaphony that surrounded them in Vienna. Nowadays a more sympathetic view is more prevalent which values the renewal and mutation of traditions as well the use of modernisms. It also acknowledges that there is much common ground between Schönberg and Korngold as the presence at, and approval of, Alban Berg at Die tote Stadt shows.
      For these reasons it was a great delight to see that the Royal Opera House had eventually staged Die tote Stadt after nearly ninety years, though some of my more despondent friends commented that some of the audience had left after the first act! Some people have great difficulty in absorbing something which is not what they were expecting.
The performance and production were full of excellent things. The production originated from Salzburg, of which it seemed a typical product: thoughtful and provocative. The set designs of Wolfgang Gussmann and the lighting of Wolfgang Göbbel frequently recalled Robert Wiene's Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari of 1919. The doors to Paul's room sloped, and the ceiling was often at a strange angle. Reality seemed permanently fluid and dream-like. Dreams and reality often seemed to merge. This was superbly caught in everything one saw, and made the production match the music. The direction of Willy Decker was equally sensitive to the nature of the music and the text of the opera.
      For the most part the same could be said of the music. The ROH orchestra responded excellently to the sensitive direction of Ingo Metzhmacher, making his ROH debut. The orchestral colour, as in so many works by Korngold, is at the heart of the work and Metzmacher shaded the sounds and phrasing of the orchestra with skill and perception. This provided both a character and a backdrop for the singers.
Outstanding amongst the singers was Gerard Finley in the role of Paul's friend, Frank and the Pierrot character Fritz. Combining the two roles makes dramatic sense even though there is no indication that it was intended by Korngold. What is helps to emphasize is the mirror-like correspondence between the real and dream world. Luckily for the audience this allowed us to hear Finley sing the second most famous number from the opera "Mein sehnen, mein Wähnen". Finley is a consummately convincing actor as well as superb singer and he brought both roles to life vocally and dramatically. The reality based, elegant Frank was the perfect for the moody introspective Paul.
         Similarly well cast and sung was Kathleen Wilkinson as the faithful maid Brigitta. But neither of the other two main characters matched them. Theatrically both Nadja Michael as Marietta and Torsten Kerl (the night I attended) as Paul were well cast. Torsten Kerl seemed suitably tortured and Marietta suitably flirtatious and elusive. But neither was really good vocally. While Nadja Michael's voice seemed right she was too often uncomfortably out of tune, which affected her performance of the celebrated lute-song. Torsten Kerl on the other hand was vocally more secure but lacked the subtle vocal range displayed by Finley. While he was right theatrically his tortured character seemed too often revealed with vocal clichés.
         But overall the performance had so many good things for it that the vocal blemishes were considerably outweighed. This was a memorable and convincing production and performance of a work that should not have to wait another ninety years before being stated at the Royal Opera house again.
Roderick Swanston