Death, interrupted: KaiserRequiem moves at the Volksoper in Vienna

With populism and authoritarianism making impressive comebacks the world over, what could be more timely than a premiere focused on their bedfellows: suffering and death. In a massive, dance-led production which pulls together forces from the entire house, the Volksoper’s blend of Viktor Ullmann and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart offers an utterly compelling premiere, launched two days before both International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 269th anniversary of Mozart’s birth. 

Victor Ullmann’s one-act opera Der Kaiser von Atlantis oder Die Tod-Verweigerung (The Emperor of Atlantis or The Disobedience of Death), his best-known work, was composed and rehearsed during his internment in Theresienstadt in 1943 and 1944. It famously would not see the light of day for over three decades; the planned 1944 premiere was cancelled following the dress rehearsal. The plot, featuring the tyrannical Kaiser Overall who declares war on the world, was too thinly-veiled a parable for current events to go unnoticed. Almost everyone involved in the production, including both Ullmann and his librettist, Peter Kien, were shipped to Auschwitz a few months thereafter, and murdered. 

It is another character, however, Death, who truly leads. Mozart’s Requiem in D minor, which conductor Omer Meir Wellber has seamlessly woven throughout Ullmann’s opera, is not only a Requiem, and thereby dedicated to death, but remained unfinished when Mozart died aged 35 in 1791. It is Death, in Ullmann’s work, who ultimately holds power. Although Kaiser Overall claims to have gifted his subjects eternal life, in reality Death has grown weary of being appropriated, and has broken his sword, abdicating his duties. Soldiers and citizens are executed, only to rise up again to the horrors of life. 

The production, intricately architected by Andreas Heise, is a brilliant mish-mash, well-executed. Dancers double all of Ullmann’s key characters, including Death and Overall, but also Harlekin, a Soldier, the Drummer and Bubikopf, who themselves perform dual functions as Requiem soloists. The lead singers and dancers are choreographed as a whole, and the Volksoper Chorus and Wiener Staatsballett corps are likewise intermixed; without looking too closely, it is sometimes easy to forget exactly where one ends and the next begins. 

While not everything will be perfect with singers performing intricate choreography, as a whole everyone performed admirably, especially considering the paper-thin margin for error in unison movement. In terms of dance language, the mélange between classical ballet and contemporary dance was similarly effective. The rapid tapping en pointe of ballerinas (and ballerinos)  paired with hyper-angular, deconstructed arm movements is just one example of Heise’s surprising, yet unequivocal vocabulary; it somehow perfectly conveyed jackbooted NS soldiers. 

Surprising juxtapositions that landed aesthetically extended to both costumes and music. While Sasha Thomsen's grey tones paired with neon green accents initially felt jarring as the basis for both costume and stage design, it also universalized the allegory, actively decoupling it from any specific time or place. Similarly, Wellber’s Mozart-Ullmann mash-up sounds like a terrible idea, but absolutely hits the mark, with whispered sound-art in stereo-effect thrown in for spice. Ullmann’s style is already a bit pastiche, blending atonality, musical citations and popular music elements, including jazz, and after the first surprising shift from German to Latin text, I settled in. Musically, the Volksoper's former musical director showed the house orchestra in fine form. A blistering Kyrie eleison and the final Lacrimosa were highlights. The latter, which opened in haunting pianissimo, then swelled mightily, truly demanding their eternal rest from derelict Death [dona eis requiem!], was a chilling closer.

While individual solo performances could certainly be named — with featured dancers Gabriele Aime and Martin Winter topping my list — and one can always split hairs about vocal preferences, KaiserRequiem is in its soul an ensemble effort, and an overwhelmingly strong production as a whole. Hats off all around, it is a treat to see what can happen when so many talented artistic forces align.