The Dutch National Opera closes 2018 with OEDIPE by George Enescu. An opera about a man who thinks he can escape his fate, who walks straight into it as a result, and eventually reconciles with it.
The Dutch National Opera brings Oedipe in a production by Fura dels Baus that could previously been seen in London and Brussels. A very justified attempt to keep this opera artistically alive. My introduction to it was anything but a punishment.
In the poisonous mud that caused an ecological disaster in Budapest in 2010, the theatre makers of Fura dels Baus found inspiration to provide Oedipe's stage image with clay. The poisonous clay in Budapest as an analogy to the plague epidemic that is ravaging Thebes. Clay as a depiction of the world of Greek antiquity. The world of Sophocles and the Oedipus myth.
The musical world of Oedipus is a symphonic one. A world that, with every listening, prints its musical splendour in your brain (I have, after last Friday's performance, listened to it several times and the voyage of discovery through the mythical-human world of Enescu's Oedipe is one where the musical richnes continue to reveal itself). It's a world with music that can be used as a film soundtrack, but in general Enescu keeps far from emphasizing what's already obvious. You get a taste of musical umami that has a strange hypnotic effect (for me comparable to the last half hour of Wagner's Götterdämmerung, where the music has both a very explicit and a strong suggestive effect). Next to the orchestra, the choir plays a leading role in this beautiful palette of sounds. At the premiere in 1936 some singers complained that the vocal parts seemed to be written more for violin than for the voice and - certainly in context with the excellent orchestra and choir - this performance of the Dutch National Opera brought some vague memories of that old complaint to mind. The demand on the vocal parts were considerable and listening to an otherwise excellent Johan Reuter in the title role, one might hear possible reasons why this opera has not become part of the standard repertoire yet.
Oedipe: Johan Reuter
Tirésias: Eric Halfvarson
Créon: Christopher Purves
Le Berger: Alan Oke
Le Grand-Prêtre: François Lis
Phorbas: James Creswell
Le Veilleur: Ante Jerkunica
Thésée: André Morsch
Laios: Mark Omvlee
Jocaste: Sophie Koch
La Sphinge: Violeta Urmana
Antigone: Heidi Stober
Mérope: Catherine Wyn-Rogers