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Jane Archibald – Mein Seelenort: Mein Haus in Halifax - Deutsche Oper Berlin

Jane Archibald – My private place of peace: my home in Halifax

Jane Archibald loves her home in Canada but is also happy to make the journey to Berlin – as the Empress in Strauss’s THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW

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Die Frau ohne Schatten (The Woman without a Shadow)

The seat of my contentment is my house in Halifax. It’s only an hour by car from where I grew up and where my mother still lives. My husband, the tenor Kurt Streit, is from a military family, so they moved house every three years and he’s not used to putting down roots, whereas I’m very attached to Nova Scotia and all the places associated with my childhood. Halifax is the capital of Nova Scotia, a peninsular on the Canadian east coast.

Ten years ago we moved back here from Austria and found this house. The second we stepped through the door we knew this was the place. Some things you can just sense are right. The house was built in 1890, of wood, like many of the houses in the area. It gives onto a reasonably busy road diagonally across from a large park with baseball facilities and cricket pitches, »The Halifax Commons«. People ice skate there in the winter, jog or cycle in the summer. We call the park our front garden, which we don’t have to mow.

When I think about the things that differentiate a house from a home, a heap of things occur to me. Things like creaking floorboards, the smell, the cat creeping onto your lap while you’re sipping a cup of coffee. The way the light slants through the window at different times of the year. And then there are the people. My daughter reading her book upstairs, my husband tinkering away at something in the garage, a neighbour coming round for a chat and asking how my last trip was.

There was a time when I was a bit obsessed about keeping my work segregated from the rest of my life. I’m over that now, but at home I still act like I have a »normal« job. I keep evenings and weekends free for family and try to get all the stuff associated with my work done between 9am and 5pm, meaning the things outside of rehearsals and performances: the admin, the mails, the memorising. Which is why we have a room for music in the house, complete with an amazing Steinway that my husband inherited from his university singing teacher. We had to have it shipped from Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Archibald at her cherished Steinway. Her husband, the Austrian tenor Kurt Streit, inherited the piano from his singing teacher © Darren Calabrese

 

When I have time, I start preparing for an upcoming role very early. I’ve been preparing for the role of the Empress in Strauss’s THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW, which I’m singing at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, since last winter. I adore Strauss! He has a unique way of composing for a soprano. Early in my career I built up a reputation of sorts as a coloratura soprano singing Zerbinetta from ARIADNE ON NAXOS. Now that I’m getting the chance to expand my repertoire with the dramatic soprano of the Empress, I’m kind of under pressure – in a positive way – and I’m drawing energy from the experience. Even on days when my voice feels weary or I’m ill, I use the down time to go through the text over a cup of tea in the kitchen.

I’m intrigued to know how the director, Tobias Kratzer, is going to approach the story, which can be interpreted in so many different ways. The Empress’s dilemma is that she »has no shadow«, which is shorthand for her inability to have children, so then her nurse gets it into her head to cut a deal with a dyer’s wife: money in return for fecundity. Well, I’m a mother and always wanted to be one – but if my cards had been dealt differently, I would still have had a happy life. What I and each one of us have in common with her is the struggle to take the right decisions and do the right, humane thing. If we’re not careful, we can find ourselves losing our moral compass as we obsess about achieving some goal. The Empress’s story teachers us that it’s never too late to take a step back and say: Whoa, stop! This is not the way.

I’ve now reached a point in my career where I’m comfortable turning down roles – especially if I’ve sung them so many times before. There’s a reason why my home is the place I feel most contented. I don’t like being away from my family for weeks on end. If I have to travel, then preferably for something challenging and enriching. Like the Empress in THE WOMAN WITHOUT A SHADOW.

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22
DEC

Advents-Verlosung: Das 22. Fensterchen

On 7 March 2025, the first part of Tobias Kratzer's Strauss trilogy, ARABELLA, celebrates its revival as part of our ‘Richard Strauss in March’ weeks, with Jennifer Davis as Arabella , Heidi Stober as Zdenka/Zdenko, Thomas Johannes Mayer as Mandryka, Daniel O'Hearn as Matteo and, as in the premiere series, Doris Soffel and Albert Pesendorfer as the Waldner couple. Today we are giving away our DVD, which will not be available in shops until 14 February 2025. We would like to express our heartfelt thanks to NAXOS for giving us the very special opportunity to put ARABELLA in our lottery pot for you almost eight weeks before the official sales launch.

In today's Advent Calendar window, we are giving away two DVDs of ARABELLA – a lyrical comedy in three acts by Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal. If you would like to win one of the two DVDs, please write an e-mail with the subject ‘The 22nd window’ to advent@deutscheoperberlin.de.

Vienna, circa 1860. The financially strapped Count Waldner is lodging with his family in a Viennese hotel. His only path to solvency is for him to secure an advantageous marriage for one of his two daughters – and the family can only afford to present Arabella, the eldest, in the upper circles of society. To conceal the family’s indigence, the parents have raised Zdenka as a boy, dressing her accordingly. Arabella is not short of suitors but has resolved to wait for ‘Mr Right’. When Mandryka, an aristocrat from a distant region, arrives, he and Arabella are instantly smitten. Arabella only asks to be able to bid farewell to her friends and suitors at the Fasching ball that evening. At the ball, Arabella says goodbye to her admirers. There is also the young officer Matteo, with whom Zdenka is secretly in love and with whom she has formed a friendship under the guise of her disguise as a boy. Matteo, however, desires Arabella and is distraught when he realises the hopelessness of his love. Zdenka devises a plan: she fakes a letter from Arabella in which she promises Matteo a night of love together. But instead she wants to wait for him herself in the darkness of the hotel room. Mandryka learns of Arabella's alleged infidelity and goes to the hotel with the ball guests to surprise Arabella in flagrante delicto. Arabella, innocent of this, is initially shocked and saddened by Mandryka’s suspicions but forgives him when the mix-up is revealed for what it is. The two agree to marry, as do Zdenka and Matteo.

Richard Strauss’s orchestral richness and opulence coupled with the period Viennese setting of the work led to ARABELLA being falsely pigeonholed as a light-hearted comedy of errors from its 1933 premiere onwards. In the estimation of Tobias Kratzer, however, who triumphed at the Deutsche Oper with his production of Alexander von Zemlinsky’s THE DWARF, this final collaboration between Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal marks a collision of two world views: the traditional roles of men and women on the one hand – as expressed in Arabella’s famous solo “Und du sollst mein Gebieter sein” – and a modern idea of social interaction on the other – as illustrated by Zdenka with her questioning of gender-based identities. Here, Kratzer turns the spotlight on this disunity between the various character portrayals in ARABELLA and explores these role-specific tensions on a continuum stretching from 19th-century Vienna to the present day. In the category of stage design, Manuel Braun, Jonas Dahl and Rainer Sellmaier were honoured with the renowned German Theatre Award DER FAUST 2023 for this production.

In this recording, under the baton of Sir Donald Runnicles, you will experience Albert Pesendorfer, Doris Soffel, Sara Jakubiak, Elena Tsallagova, Russell Braun, Robert Watson, Thomas Blondelle, Kyle Miller, Tyler Zimmerman, Hye-Young Moon, Lexi Hutton, Jörg Schörner and others, as well as the chorus and orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin. The performances on 18 and 23 March 2023 were recorded by rbb Kultur and Naxos for this DVD.

We would like to thank the Naxos label for the great collaboration over the past few years, which documents recordings of DER ZWERG, DAS WUNDER DER HELIANE, FRANCESCA DA RIMINI, DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN, DER SCHATZGRÄBER, DIE MEISTERSINGER VON NÜRNBERG and ANTIKRIST. Richard Strauss' ARABELLA and INTERMEZZO will be released in the course of 2025.


Closing date: 22 December 2024. The winners will be informed by email on 23 December 2024. The DVDs will then be sent by post. There is no right of appeal.