“I’m just having too much fun!” declares Giuseppe Pellingra’s Lord Ruthven, the title character in Heinrich Marschner’s Der Vampyr. He’s not alone. In Julia Mintzer’s 2019 production for Gothic Opera, given a buff and a polish to open the Grimeborn festival in Dalston, the cast are clearly having a ball. And so is the audience. Can we take vampires and Gothic horror seriously in opera today? Mintzer doesn’t and sends up the genre in a fang-tastic, feminist retelling packed with chuckles, outrageous cape-twirling and a gory denouement.
Sinking one’s teeth into the world of German Romantic opera, Der Vampyr is arguably the missing link between Der Freischütz and Der fliegende Holländer. Marschner draws on the spookiness of the chilling Wolf’s Glen scene in Weber’s 1821 Singspiel – cue eerie whistles and a cackling chorus of witches and spirits in the opening scene – and in Emmy’s song about a vampire, there are pre-echoes of Senta’s ballad about the ghostly Flying Dutchman.
Wagner was a paid-up fan. As a 15-year old, he had attended the 1828 premiere of Der Vampyr in Leipzig. Five years later, he conducted it in Würzburg and even composed a new ending for Aubry’s aria (sung by Wagner’s brother, Albert). Since then, the work has lain pretty dormant in the operatic coffin, although it was produced for television by Janet Street-Porter in 1992, serialised as a soap opera, and later there was a recording with a young Jonas Kaufmann as Aubry.
The original plot sees Ruthven condemned to death by the Vampire Master at a witches’ sabbath unless he can sacrifice three virgin brides within the next 24 hours. On discovering the first victim, Aubry learns Ruthven’s dark secret but, owing a debt of gratitude to Ruthven who once saved his life, he is honour-bound not to reveal it… which is a pain in the neck when the vampire’s third target turns out to be Aubry’s own true love, Malwina.
In Mintzer’s feminist twist on Marschner, still sung in the original German but with new English dialogue, Gráinne Gillis becomes a female Vampire Master. Ruthven’s first two victims are both happily consenting – cue orgasmic screams from behind Ruthven’s coffin when kiss turns to bite. Malwina, dressed as a schoolgirl, is chained to a giant teddy bear by her overpowering father, who warns she needs to “quell her feminine urges”. Emancipation arrives and the women have the last laugh when, at her wedding to Ruthven, Malwina rebels against her father and kills him – not so much “fuck the patriarchy!” as ripping its bowels out and gorging on the entrails. No really, she does.