The premiere forty years ago was a disaster, but musically, Otto Kettings Cultopera impresses

The opera was almost forty years ago Ithaka from Otto Ketting to see for the first timeat the opening of the Amsterdam music theater (nowadays National Opera & Ballet), and that was also the only time. The unprecedented opera obtained a cult status in a small circle, because the music would be great (and that’s right). Concertgoers could do that three years ago set asidethen composer and chain biographer Elmer Schönberger the great Ithaka Symphony compiled from the opera material. Now in the NTR Saturday Matinee the complete opera was finally reliving, in Concertante form.

It was not a success, in 1986. Schönberger, involved as a dramaturge in the show at the time, tells how chain never set foot in the music theater again after the deception of the premiere. He also never wrote an opera again, although his music – disrespectfully said a cross between Louis Andriessen and Alban Berg – has great dramatic tension. You can even ask yourself if Ithaka A real opera is: there is neither dialogue nor action, barely a story. The tone is also dark and melancholic. All reasons that the piece was not going well, on that festive opening evening thirty -nine years ago. But on just a Saturday afternoon it turned out Ithaka has enough to offer: vital and driven orchestra music, inspired lyrical singing lines, an autumnal glow.

The title refers to the poem of the same name of Kaváfis: Ithaka (home island of the notorious wanderer Odysseus) is the reason that you set off, but in the end the journey itself is the goal. « Goddamn, experience something, » was chain summary, says Schönberger. Although they quote a few verses, chain and librettist Kees Hin have made up a whole new story by Kaváfis, about three characters who wander through their memories in Hotelbar Ithaka. The opera is set in the memory that a shared Limbo turns out to be between dream and reality. An angel of death (the flaming soprano Johanni van Oostrum) moderates things, there is sex and murder, but generally avoids Ithaka the opera flichés; It is rather an experimental ‘Nouveau Roman’ to music.

The soloist cast is excellent. The journalist (Bas-Bariton Derek Welton) reflects on his research into Tango King Carlos Gardel, who died in his fourteen-year-old mistress. Photo model Star (Mezzo Iris van Wijnen), explicitly related to Bergs Lulu, craves true love. The poet (bariton James Newby) sings his dead lover. How their inner worlds react with each other and flow cannot be retelled, but the fermenting, driving, intelligent blissful and common music makes you feel. It is characteristic that the only action scene, in which rigidly strangled by her loved one, appears the most one -dimensional.

Antony Hermus also conducted the Ithaka Symphony And again displays his affinity with chaining electrically charged idiom. The Radio Philharmonic growls and biting and biting, with excellent brass players and many beautiful compact soli from, among others, Concertmeester Nadia Wijzeek. The Groot Omroepkoor almost acts as an orchestra group, with short comments and instrumental thoughts. Now I would like that strange dream world Ithaka Want to be sometimes, on an operapodium, for example at DNO.

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