Olga Neuwirth has no fear of knotty literary adaptations. Her opera Orlando was based on Virginia Woolf’s time- and gender-bending novel, whereas American Lulu adapted not only Frank Wedekind’s play but also the Alban Berg opera it inspired. But Neuwirth’s biggest literary inspiration has been Elfriede Jelinek, best known to English-speaking audiences for her brutal novel The Piano Teacher. Her last collaboration with Neuwirth, a 2003 adaptation of David Lynch’s Lost Highway, was supposed to be followed by another opera that ended up being cancelled by the Salzburg Festival. Jelinek declared to the Austrian press that she would slap anyone who mentioned the word “opera” near her.
But much has changed in the intervening decades. Jelinek’s writing has gotten more ambitious and unwieldy, while Neuwirth’s daunting, hyperkinetic sound world has mellowed. What both artists retain, though, is a fierce commitment to politics: Neuwirth shares her mentor Luigi Nono’s belief that music can serve a political purpose, while Jelinek has become increasingly vocal against Austria’s far-right populism.
All of this and more comes into play in Monster’s Paradise. Nominally based on Alfred Jarry’s pre-Dadaist play Ubu Roi, its depiction of an obscene, immature ruler carries obvious contemporary parallels. For good measure, Jelinek and Neuwirth throw in vampire avatars of themselves – Vampi and Bampi – a monster called Gorgonzilla, a duo of sycophantic countertenors and a chorus of zombies. There are also proliferating Kermits and Miss Piggys, videos of Charlotte Rampling resembling the Teletubbies sun, and a quartet of scantily-clad Disney princesses who pole-dance in Staatsoper Hamburg’s foyer during the interval.
If it all sounds incomprehensible, at least the plot itself is straightforward: Vampi and Bampi, weary of the infinite capacity of human stupidity on a finite planet, convince the eco-Marxist Gorgonzilla to defeat the autocratic King-President. But Gorgonzilla’s rule turns out every bit as dictatorial, and Vampi and Bampi appeal to Gorgonzilla to return to the ocean and let the burning planet flood as in Wagner’s Götterdämmerung. The allegorical nature of the plot is both a blessing and a curse; there’s little room to sympathize with the characters and the Trump impersonation gets tiring, but Jelinek’s ingenious libretto allows for a wide range of allusions and interpretations. Who is the titular monster, and does their paradise result in hell for everyone else? Do the monsters cause Earth’s population to become acquiescent zombies, or is it the complacency of the majority that allows for such monsters to gain power? References to climate change, AI and the divine feminine come hard and fast, but the text ultimately toes the line perfectly between cynicism and earnestness.
The final scene, with Elisabeth Leonskaja and Alexandra Stychkina playing Schubert’s F minor Fantasie on an out-of-tune piano as a wave of noise threatens to overtake Vampi and Bampi, is intensely affecting, a metaphor for the power and powerlessness of art in an increasingly out-of-control world. But it’s a problem when Neuwirth’s own music never approaches the same level of emotional or psychological heft. Part of the issue is that much of the opera doesn’t involve much actual operatic singing, with extensive Sprechstimme passages accompanied by blandly shimmering background music. The most interesting music comes in the orchestral passage that accompanies Gorgonzilla’s fight with the King-President, where the orchestral, rock band and electronic sound worlds coalesce into something that is peculiar, theatrical and haunting.
The battle sequence brings out the best in director Tobias Kratzer, who creates breathtaking images using two cameras, a scrim and a Halloween dinosaur costume. The juxtaposition between hi- and lo-tech gives his production a charmingly off-kilter feel. Visual and dramatic allusions are too numerous to recount, referencing everything from Jelinek’s signature Eero Aarnio chair to Weill and Brecht to the Wicked bubble, and it’s to Kratzer’s credit that it comes across coherently.
Credit is also due to Titus Engel, who has the unenviable task of coordinating orchestra, rock band, live electronics and a cast of actors who sing and singers who act. The highlight was frequent Neuwirth collaborator Georg Nigl as the King-President, who was completely at home in Neuwirth’s quirky vocalisms and did a remarkable job imitating Trump’s facial contortions. He was accompanied by two countertenors, Eric Jurenas with the coloratura lines and Andrew Watts the lyrical legato ones, who sounded gorgeous in harmony even when flying upwards into the wings dressed as Mickey Mouse.
Vampi and Bampi were cast with Sarah Defrise and Kristina Stanek in the singing roles, and while both got their moment in the spotlight they were upstaged by Sylvie Rohrer and Ruth Rosenfeld as their actor counterparts. Similarly, dancer Vanessa Konzok had the ungrateful task of jumping around the stage in an inflatable dinosaur outfit while singer Anna Clementi spent her time in a sparkly black jumpsuit in the shared role of Gorgonzilla. The offstage children’s choir got a classic Jelinek metaphor describing humans as “lumps of earth filled with black ink”.
If all this sounds maddeningly obtuse that’s because it is – but it’s also laugh-out-loud entertaining and strangely moving. At two and a half hours it could do with a few cuts, but it’s certainly a work that deserves to be seen and heard again.
