The Art of Counterpoint
For Claus
Guth, the score is the basis of any dramaturgical reflection and what you see
on stage constantly interacts with what you hear, caressing the music, rubbing
against it and questioning it in turn. He directed his first opera in France in
2009 at Lorraine National Opera: a co-production with the Theater an der Wien
of Handel’s Messiah, an oratorio
reputedly arid in terms of its scenic potential. In this production particularly,
scenic invention flows directly from the director’s critical appreciation of
the music, forming a counterpoint to the musical text and enriching it with a
new layer of meaning. For example, the Alleluia Chorus, that glorious
celebration of “hope and faith in the world”, to quote Hannah Arendt, of which
birth is a symbol, is sung around a coffin. At the centre of this production is
the character of a failed businessman who, stripped of his virility by his
adulterous wife, commits suicide. The characters are banally attired in suits
but find themselves in a series of extreme situations in which intimate truths
and outward appearances collide with each other, situations ranging from the
funeral parlour, the office and the bedroom, successively brought to life by
means of a revolving stage. A constant factor in Claus Guth’s work is his
determination not to illustrate but to offer new insights into the works he
directs, distilling in them his own signs and symbols without subjugating
either the rhythms or the timbres. Here, the drama he weaves on stage lends
pertinence and immediacy to Handel’s lyricism and makes palpable the urgency
initially present in the work. This incarnation of the Messiah illuminates its fundamental themes: guilt, hope and our
relationship with death, thus rising to the challenge of turning this oratorio
into a theatrical exploration of the contemporary malaise in a world in the
grip of family, spiritual and economic crises.
A constant factor in Claus Guth’s work is his determination not to illustrate but to offer new insights into the works he directs, distilling in them his own signs and symbols without subjugating either the rhythms or the timbres.
Telling opera’s hidden stories
In a
co-production with the Zurich Opernhaus and the Teatro Liceu in Barcelona in
2011, Claus Guth stripped Parsifal of
its mysticism just as he stripped the Messiah
of its Christianity, transposing it to Germany during the First World War. The
decor takes us into different rooms in a run-down manor house-cum-sanatorium
serving as army hospital in which medieval knights have given way to wounded
soldiers. Set in a world in which the old order is collapsing, Wagner’s opera
is presented as the transformation of one of its young wounded soldiers into a
charismatic leader. This reading of the work highlights the powerful exaltation
of Wagner’s music and its potential dangers, its visceral toxicity. A daring
proposition and somewhat sensitive, this production recalls Europe’s darkest hours
and the emergence of Fascism. However, Claus Guth is not a director who seeks
to shock or who indulges in vain controversy. If strongly personal re-readings
of texts are characteristic of his work, then ostentation certainly is not.
Known for revealing the hidden stories within operas, Claus Guth brings out
their subversive undercurrents, touching but never suffocating the spectator.
Always elegantly staged, with a harmonious palette of colours, Claus Guth’s
productions combine cerebral and sensational elements with a quality of
execution that has made his work universally attractive. However, the finely
crafted surfaces of the sets merely “skin and film” the seething violence below
the surface and do nothing to mitigate the implacable destiny of the characters:
every element is directed towards a single objective: telling the story. Claus
Guth aims to free our vision and our auditory perception from the performance
traditions of great operas to help us discover them anew, from a fresh angle.
A Laboratory of human emotions
As a director, Claus Guth is particularly attracted to the dark or hidden facets of comedy. Humour in his work is disturbing rather than merely entertaining.
The monstrosity of inner compulsions and the lustre of outward appearances
Painstaking
character construction is one of Claus Guth’s favoured methods of shedding
light on a work’s psychological undercurrents. It is precisely this, perhaps,
that has allowed him to avoid the trap, into which many of his colleagues have
fallen, of courting popularity by avoiding controversy and therefore also
losing that spark of originality. Claus Guth is not afraid to explore the
imperfections of his characters: productions like Richard Strauss's Die Frau ohne Schatten, a Freudian
kaleidoscope of the mental projections of the main character, the Empress,
performed at La Scala Milan in 2012 and revived at Covent Garden the following
year, testify to a passion for the theatrical possibilities offered by the
unconscious mind. From the work of Claus Guth there emanates a fascination for
the tensions between the monstrosity of inner compulsions and the lustre of
outward appearances. Motives and wills, scrutinised by the sharp eyes of the
director, are stripped bare and the characters dissected. Dramatic intrigues
based on the train-crash of human existence that form the plots of most operas
acquire new and disturbing truthfulness. As is often the case with modern
productions of lasting impact – and Claus Guth has directed more than a few –
one feels that the protagonists of the drama have learnt little or nothing from
their experience. As spectators, it is up to us to become more responsible
through productions that mercilessly hold the mirror up to nature. Claus Guth’s
Rigoletto promises to be without hope
of redemption but will doubtless give the work an added and unsuspected
dimension.