Low on laughs: Die schweigsame Frau in Berlin

Imagine that you’re seated for the opening night of a new production in a major opera theatre. The lights dim, the orchestra tunes up, music begins to play, when something is projected on the curtain: the homepage of a fantasy – but realistic – real-estate marketplace, showing increasingly expensive listings for dismayingly small flats. Now picture that the theatre is the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, located in a city where the average newcomer – you included – nowadays spends months or years scouting for not even a flat, but an affordable single room in a flat-share with a regular contract. Such was the bleak start, albeit perhaps removed from the reality of some, of the Staatsoper’s first ever staging of Die schweigsame Frau, Richard Strauss’ eccentric, anachronistic opera buffa. The production marks the first new production of Christian Thielemann’s tenure as General Music Director and the Berlin debut of director Jan Philipp Gloger, unfortunately making for an unconvincing end of the season. 

Die schweigsame Frau is a peculiar, somewhat flawed specimen among Strauss’ operas. After the death of Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the composer turned to Stefan Zweig to work on an adaptation of Ben Jonson’s play Epicoene. The result is a pastiche of ancient Roman comedy filtered through English Renaissance theatre, plus a few spoonfuls of Mozart and Rossini. Musically omnivorous, almost cannibalising in its reuse of Strauss’ own past idiom, Die schweigsame Frau remains a curiosity with some potential, a variably amusing ‘potpourri’, as promised in the overture. 

Gloger’s approach to the opera is equally miscellaneous but hardly blessed by humour or clarity of intent. The plot is simple: alone in a big apartment, misophonic, misanthropic and misogynistic Sir Morosus is disgruntled by the noise that surrounds him. His state of mind is further aggravated by the arrival of his nephew Henry with a troupe of actors, but after a drawn-out prank devised by his barber to trick him into marrying Henry’s own girlfriend Aminta, Morosus softens up and makes peace with the world. 

Attention to detail in the decor is possibly the only positive quality of Gloger’s staging that seems to throw ideas at the audience only to abandon them shortly afterwards. Initially framed as a commentary on Germany’s housing crisis, the production proceeds with a series of attempts at parody lacking any real edge. Henry and his troupe are now supposed to be Berlin-style hipsters, featuring the cliché of people in black beanies and gaudy prints. After the fake marriage, a swarm of feminists with signs reading “Cancel Morosus” storms in, never to be seen again – at once a criticism of the man’s misogyny and a caricature of feminist movements? This type of middle-ground satire, difficult to find pungent when the public has had a century to appreciate the caustic social critique of The Threepenny Opera and Mahagonny, seems to exhaust the scope of Gloger’s staging.  

On the podium, Thielemann indulged Morosus’ misophonia by favouring hushed dynamics and soft contours. Indeed, Strauss’ score includes many a scene where the farce is so well-played it almost convinces us of its sincerity – like the end of the second act, where Henry and Aminta’s night of love is punctuated by Morosus’ words, mockingly reminiscent of Tristan and Isolde’s duet counterpointed by Brangäne. 

Thielemann lingered on these spacious moments, taking time to let the strings breathe, bringing out beautiful lyricism. Even in the Rossini-esque concertatos, a good balance was maintained between orchestra and singers, despite the occasional drowning out of soloists in other less busy sections. However, for three hours of music whose defining traits are irony and self-awareness, Thielemann’s interpretation could have pressed the accelerator on the humour of the more extravagant sections of the score, whose late Romanticism is mostly a façade for Strauss and Zweig’s entertainment. 

Most of the shenanigans were thus deferred to the soloists, who compensated with a brisk, comedic stage presence. Peter Rose sang Morosus with a pleasantly bright bass, sometimes thin in the high register but solid and ample when plunging to the low notes (including the sustained below-staff D flat at the end of Act 2). As Henry, Siyabonga Maqungo displayed an easy, full tenor that soared above the orchestra – and other soloists. At the head of the group of actors, Maqungo had the most fun on stage, changing costume and personality in a wink. 

Brenda Rae traced Aminta’s metamorphosis from timid and hesitant to veritable fireball, starting off with placid pianos and opening up to vocal pyrotechnics in the last act. Finally, Samuel Hasselhorn was a great match for the Schneidebart the barber’s mischievous inclinations, his baritone articulating recitatives at the crossroads of opera buffa and late-Romantic ariosos.