We play the end of the world

“I wish you an interesting evening, because I can’t wish you a pleasant evening,” my dear lady at the checkout, giving me a ticket, advanced me. However, in the light of those going around and walking around the opera for the “pleasant” somehow, it seems somehow inconvenient ...

The new production of Salome Richard Strauss in one of the best theaters in Germany, the opera of Stuttgart, which has been headed by the active co -producer Yossi Wiler since 2011, would not have been ignored by German criticism. But here, on the eve of the premiere, the DPA news agency reported that "the Russian director Serebrennikov transferred the terror of the IG to the stage." Since it was soon after the terrorist attacks in Paris, everyone had to go and write literally.

Indeed, the production of Kirill Serebrennikov to the maximum packed in the “phndesec This horror of Wilde and Strauss of the horror story of today. Even before the exclamation of the Valentine's Page "How beautiful Princess Salome is tonight!" On a giant screen, shots of refugee stream, marching along the Balkan “Road of Life” in the direction of the coveted Alemania, appeared on the giant screen, where the mistress of the country seemed to promise everyone shelter and house. The announcers with a serious expression of television faces were silently broadcasting about something clearly unpleasant, shooting of battles and desert landscapes flickered. The reality is not so distant, but such someone else’s and hostile world burst into a rich European villa, as it bursts into tens and hundreds of thousands of German houses: through the TV screen.

At the villa in the interior from the “Beautiful Life” catalog (scenography - Pierre Horge Gonzales), the Herod family lives: the owner of the house, Tetrarch Herod, a nervous businessman in a gray suit (brilliant Matthias Klink), his wife, loving Madame Herodiad (Actual Bayroitsky Frick of Klaucia Manka), and her daughter from her first marriage) Salome, a complex teenager-ghoth (star of the evening of Simon Schneider).

Herods were fenced off from the world as best they could: a whole state of security (almost the rest of the staff of the performance is occupied in this area), total observation cameras and even a small private “Abu-Graib” in the basement. There is a certain Iokanaan, which was supplying this clan for the mafia patriarch. The role of the Prophet of Serebrennikov was divided between Bas Bariton Ian Paterson, the Scottish red-haired hero, and the German actor Yasin El Harruk, who was born in the family of Moroccan migrant workers and endowed with a smart appearance. Paterson actually only voices the party, standing from the edge of the scene or behind the backstage (the benefit and the libretto provides for the known static role), while El Harrooke is subjected to various mockery of the guard.

But no, the Salome of the beautiful young man fell in love with the torment, but for his chubby lips: “I want to kiss your mouth, Iocanaan!” Even if for this you have to separate the indicated head from the rebellious body. And no persuasion of the stepfather, which, they say, is unpleasant, the head was severed from the torso, and the sense of it does not act on the stubborn teenager: give your head on a silver dish, and that's it! In principle, you can understand the desire to clearly get used to Herod’s hard showdowns to float this pitch ( “ Man t ö te Dieses Weib ! " - "Kill this woman!" - His reaction).

Salome was twice created by the authors with the calculation of the scandal: and Oscar Wilde, masterfully redid the story of the “thousand and one night” into an insult to the social taste of the Victorian era (obsessed with the princess in Paris was played by Sarah Bernard), and Richard Strauss, who carefully chose the sophisticated plot for her first "Real" opera. The calculation worked both times: so, after the Dresden premiere in 1905, Strauss, before that known as the author of symphonic poems, was into the public consciousness of Wilhelminsky Germany as the most fashionable opera composer of the young century, a master of emphasis.

Serebrennikov is right, believing that the scandalous effect should be “set up” with the party, and “sexual pathologies” (the expression of the censor that banned the production in Vienna in 1906) and the abuse of the biblical plot today is hardly shocked by anyone, the pain points of society have shifted.

In fact, the only claim that can be presented to this production is to look at the stage, despite the harmony of the concept and all the special effects described above. In about the first ten minutes, “everything is clear” about the directorial concept, and then nothing happens, because it cannot happen: the music and stage action of each other ignore. But the music rushes forward (albeit, abandoned by the director “to the mercy of fate”, as one German colleague put it), and the action is stomping on the spot, remaining a collection of “gags”: the main character turned on the telly to look at some kind of tidy “manga” multic, here is a little actor who had nothing to do with a charismatic prophet. The scene in the orange overalls of the Prisoner of Guantanamo, here the guard with the gun went to shoot Salome ...

The conductor Roland Kluttig, a strong master of the German repertoire, slightly thickened symphonic paints to the final, all participants in the performance demonstrated, as they say, “high ensemble culture”.

... In line in front of the wardrobe, a clearly Russian -speaking lady enthusiastically told her German friend about Baba Wang, "the end of the world predicted for 2016." The Germans around with interest listened to her words.