Dalbavie’s ‘Melancholy of Resistance’ to premiere in Berlin
By Ronald Blum, The Associated Press on March 29, 2023.
Marc-André Dalbavie’s opera based on Laszlo Krasznahorkai’s surrealistic novel “The Melancholy of Resistance” will premiere next summer in Berlin. Titled “Melancholie des Widerstands,” the opera will be conducted by Marie Jacquot and directed by David Marton, the Staatsoper unter den Linden company said Wednesday. It will star countertenor Philippe Jaroussky and mezzo-soprano Tanja Ariane Baumgartner and will be given five performances beginning June 30, 2024, through July 12. “There’s a circus coming into a town and there’s a populist leader, and he puts a lot of problematic situations for the society there,” Staatsoper director Mattias Schulz said. “You will see a film set and at the same time you will see the singers who do a movie and on the top of the stage is the movie.” This will be the company’s third commission for the main stage since Schulz became sole director in 2018 following Beat Furrer’s “Violetter Schnee (Purple Snow),” a 2019 work about five people trapped in snow drifts, and Péter Eötvös’ “Sleepless,” which opened in 2021 and deals with violence over a large stranded salmon in a Norwegian village. “Sleepless” will be revived starting Nov. 3 and “Violetter Schnee” beginning April 20, 2024. “Everything is quite depressive, quite dystopic. It’s a trilogy of depression,” Schulz said. “A lot of neurotic moments.” The season will be the first for the company since Daniel Barenboim, the music director since 1992, resigned in January because of poor health. Schulz starts work with the Zurich Opera in August 2024 and succeeds Andreas Homoki as director general of the Zurich Opera for the 2025-26 season. The Staatskapelle Berlin has an eight-concert tour of Brahms symphonies under Barenboim to Toronto, Philadelphia, Chicago, Miami and New York. “It might be the last thing with Daniel Barenboim,” Schulz said. “I do hope he will be healthy enough to do that.” 9-8
