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We’ll take it from here
AB IN DEN RING! is where opera meets the independent theatre scene. Director Anna Weber and mezzosoprano Caroline Schnitzer on how a burlesque operetta morphs into the tale of a wrangle in the culture wars
Oscar Straus’s DIE LUSTIGEN NIBELUNGEN [The Merry Nibelungen] is a send-up of Richard Wagner, so from the get-go it was a fitting piece for our first production at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, it being known for its huge Wagner tradition. In the 1905 original Straus and his librettist, Redeamus, poke gentle fun at Wagnerian heroism and the patriotism of the period. We’ve re-worked the story and brought it into the present-day. As the tutti d*amore collective we’re always linking our stuff to current affairs. We want our works to comment on society as we see it and have a special relevance to the venue where they are being developed.
In our AB IN DEN RING! production the clan of wildly exaggerated Nibelungs symbolises opera as a cultural institution, with the family members representing an opera house’s key workers, its singers. So you’ve got people who are stuck fast in their respective functions, trapped in their costumes, as it were. The character of the dyed-in-the-wool Wagner soprano has fused with that of Kriemhild. Straus’s version is about the need for King Gunther to marry. We turn the arranged-marriage scenario into a forced take-over, with the Deutsche Oper Berlin under pressure to amalgamate with an underground collective called »The Wild Brünhilde«.
True to the original, Brünhilde is an outsider who proceeds to create a stir, and the work is among other things a play on clichés associated with both sides: on the one hand the crusty, conservative institution, on the other the independent progressive scene. In reality the two worlds, on the face of it so different from each other, have long since embraced, including in their modi operandi. A case in point is the Tischlerei of the Deutsche Oper Berlin, a venue for experimental theatre.
We don’t see the culture war as primarily one between institutions and the independent performance arts scene. It’s much more a fundamental struggle for or against culture per se. The AB IN DEN RING! series exists because the Deutsche Oper Berlin got a directive from the Berlin Senate telling them to buddy up with a woke collective or face huge cuts to their budget. Why? Because the state can’t or won’t cough up funding for all areas of culture anymore. No one would have thought a year ago that we’d be touching such a topical nerve.
With each production that we put on we’re looking for ways to make the operetta genre more relevant to people today. After all, operetta was conceived for consumption by ordinary folks, to be accessible to all social classes with its spoken dialogue, catchy tunes and adaptability for dance and burlesque elements. One of our tactics has been to go to places where young people hang out who know nothing about opera: clubs, public spaces and the like. We’ve performed at techno festivals where they’ve been riveted for an hour, staring at a piece of musical theatre complete with chamber orchestra and singing - because they were moved by it. Many of them were gobsmacked. It was like: »Why you doin’ that stuff? You look so normalo.«
At the end of the day operetta is a totally sensual experience, generating rave-level emotions. We’re daring to push the boundaries of the genre, interpreting it afresh, creating new arrangements. For AB IN DEN RING! we’ve got Felix Stachelhaus working on the orchestra material and rendering the idea of clashing worlds in musical form. Brünhilde stands for the new, the underground, and for her we’ve got solo instruments creating an electronic sound. We call her our dubstep Brünhilde. At the musical level, too, we’re not dealing with dichotomies like cool versus classical or modern versus out. Yes, there are times when opera singing can be funny, but by the same token a four-on-the-floor beat underlying a classic tune can come over as dull and not so hip. We’re doing AB IN DEN RING! with six singers - three from tutti d*amore, three from the Deutsche Oper Berlin –, the Apollo-Chor Berlin and a slimmed-down orchestra.
Not that the musicians are expected to remain glued to their chairs in front of their sheet music, as is their wont. That’s the nice thing about a little stage without an orchestra pit, like the Tischlerei: it gives us what we’re always looking for: maximum freedom.
