Zimmerman - Die Soldaten / Kontarsky, Staatstheater Stuttgart
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Zimmerman - Die Soldaten / Kontarsky, Staatstheater Stuttgart Customer Reviews
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♥♥♥♥♥
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easily inherits a revered place of German contemporary opera
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| Bernd Alois Zimmermann took his own life at Grosskoenigsdorf near Cologne, having suffered from bouts of manic-depressive and failing eyesight a condition of photopsis, of flashing sensation. Creativily he was a late bloomer having dabbled in most styles including jazz and extreme dodecaphonic language,collage,aleatoric gesturings. Yet the element of the extreme of expression, Neo-expressionism was always in the forefront of his aesthetic concerns. No matter what genre he touched, he threw his creativity into it with great passion and abandon. This opera is a profound example of that passion, a work the dramatic and music dimensions of which actually cannot see a practical way to produce it.It was commissioned by the Cologne Opera in 1958 with Wolfgang Sawallisch the designated conductor. The conductor on this VHS is Bernhard Kontarsky. The array of percussion instruments alone would inhabit an entire orchestral pit, some 100 players total,also six high tenors, ten speaking parts and a dancer corps. For Zimmermann the eternal soldier came to represent man and his destruction through debasement,domination,greed and prostitution, where good turns quickly into its opposite.The plot here is fairly simple a woman is seduced ultimatly raped by a soldier having had loved through normal exchange. Zimmermann's intensity is non-stop here with a musical score densily packed with extraneous machine sounds,cries, prayers shouted through megaphones and military commands. This with an orchestral accompaniment similar to the density one might find in Alban Berg.The vocal writing as well touches on sprechgesang, specch-singing, to atonal anxiety-ridden like melodies. The setting is French-speaking Flanders. The soldiers who inhabit the stage throughout this opera convey this dangerous message of domination and eath It is a menacing present.The soldiers are clothed in dress of the day,ugly embroidered uniforms with powdered wigs,mismatched colours,the Captian in stretched red and black leather with sharp penetrating buttons on his jacket. The music traverses many styles to lead one toward the ultimate demise here of humanity perhaps. There was no possible way to mount this work maintaining any kind of production standards, so from the start, Zimmermann began revising and curtailing the extremes of his score. It was in 1963-1964 that Zimmermann began such work containing the spectacle in one single scene, as opposed to a multi-tiered stage where the audience surrounds(360 degrees) the dramatic proceedings. This is what this VHS portrays, and it is fairly representational of Zimmermann's concept of "tempus loquendi" or fluid time which at least is suggested with the plot unfolding in a Yesterday Today and Tomorrow durational frame. Simultaneous conversations and places are suggested, the soldiers at drink, the Captain alone, the two women knitting and speaking, Marie and Madame Stolzius,also toward the end modern soldiers are projected onto the back walls. This work easily extends the profound dimensions of German opera began with Berg's Wozzeck. |
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Zimmerman - Die Soldaten / Kontarsky, Staatstheater Stuttgart movies, videos.