To the many of us who still hold resentment towards that one past landlord who never really got round to repairing the leaking pipe in the kitchen, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s new production will surely be of some comfort. The Berlin theatre’s March premiere is a relatively unknown opera, Janáček’s The Excursions of Mr Brouček. This fine, quirky piece of music theatre on the outskirts of the repertoire was taken in and fostered by two major names in the world of opera – lifelong friends and partners in art, Sir Simon Rattle and Robert Carsen.
The long and strenuous genesis of Mr Brouček – spanning decades and involving more than seven librettists – reflects its eccentric nature, inherited from the source material. Adapted from two Svatopluk Čech novels, the opera follows the spectacular adventures of a not-so-spectacular individual, a petty and unpleasant landlord who, on two different nights, finds himself teleported first to the Moon, then to 15th-century Prague. The satirical frame, which pokes fun at the moral scarcity of the Czech middle class, has at its core a genuine commentary on the misery of people who live for nothing other than their immediate material gain.
In order to give the audience a more familiar context, Carsen transposes events to the late 1960s, when forays to the Moon and political unrest were the talk of most Western cities – Prague included. The main setting is the tavern where Brouček gets regularly and vexingly drunk, which throughout the opera is repurposed as a piece of lunar surface, a Woodstock-inspired art festival (‘Moonstock’) and the hiding place of the Czech resistance. The spatial quality of Carsen’s staging – reminiscent of his Eugene Onegin – is emphasised through lighting and deft crowd movements, particularly during the scenes on the Moon. The result was beautiful to look at, yet retained its grotesque potential.
Additionally, both characters and audience are informed of the latest news via frequent broadcasts, either on an old television set placed in the background or through projections on a large curtain falling on the proscenium. The images merge with the action on stage, mixing fiction and historical footage as if one was zapping between a documentary and a George Méliès film. Missing perhaps was the sense of estrangement of the second act, as Carsen’s Brouček remains in his own century and gets caught up in the contemporary Prague Spring uproar rather than travelling back to the Middle Ages. Still, Carsen’s idea to reinvent the flower-smelling lunar artists into a group of hippies in the middle of their own Summer of Love was a delightful trick.
Dating back to his teens, Rattle’s affinity with Janáček’s works has been proved time and again, particularly at the Staatsoper. Mr Brouček comes as the fifth instalment of a long-lasting dedication to the composer’s operas, including productions of Jenůfa, Kátya Kabanová, The Makropoulos Affair and From the House of the Dead. In the case of Mr Brouček, however, things get more complicated: both score and libretto underwent constant reworking across decades, resulting in a work split in two very distinct parts.
Such duality was respected by Rattle, whose interpretation highlighted the continuity as much as the contrast between the acts. The conductor singled out the key element of the score – its ever-creative rhythm – and brought it alive, showing how in Janáček it is impossible to separate rhythm from timbre. Every motivic utterance, no matter how brief, acquired importance in the orchestra. Rather than being a redundant sum of its parts, this approach was channelled into a full symphonic sound that is not often achieved in opera houses. On the other hand, Rattle embraced the satirical nature of the piece, leading the audience into the frequent waltzes that tread a fine line between catchy and kitsch. In this jagged context, scattered moments of lyricism – mostly associated with the two lovers – stood out all the more, accompanied by lulling high strings, woodwinds and the harp.
Much was also required of the vocal cast. Not only are most parts written in a high tessitura, but the same singers usually have to cover several roles, reappearing in each of Brouček’s adventures as new characters. In the title role, Peter Hoare broke through the orchestra with a firm, intentionally piercing tenor that easily adapted to Janáček’s speech melodies. Curated mannerisms and body language completed his (very convincing!) characterisation. Seemingly following him across time and space, Lucy Crowe and Aleš Briscein sang Málinka and Mazal (among others) with a shared proclivity towards the lyrical, both displaying ease in the high register, clean phrasing and good projection. The Staatsopernchor, prominent in the second act, also gave a solid performance.
