This is the way the season ends at Prague’s State Opera – not with a bang, but with an atonal riot that climaxes in a slew of dead bodies littering a stage overseen by a madman. Aribert Reimann’s Lear is more like an assault than an opera, especially in the aggressive staging by director Barbora Horáková. As a synthesis of sight, sound and artistic intent, it’s brilliant, though exhausting. Audience members can count themselves lucky to be among the survivors.
Reimann, a noted German composer who died last year, and librettist Claus Henneberg boiled Shakespeare’s play down to its bare essentials, then reworked the characters and structure to make Lear’s downfall one long, bloody scream. The political intrigue and most of the male characters are reduced to background for Lear and his three daughters, who are deliberate stereotypes: a pompous, delusional old man, two vicious daughters, Goneril and Regan, scheming against him and each other, and Cordelia, an angelic daughter lacking only a halo. Except for a few moments of tenderness between Lear and Cordelia, their world is unremittingly harsh, chaotic and cruel, an expressionist nightmare of self-destruction.
This portrayal is entirely in keeping with the music, though calling it “music” is a bit of a stretch. The score is straight out of the Second Viennese School, updated with modern sonics and no end of clanking mechanical tumult. An occasional snatch of melody sneaks through, and some of the percussion adds a modern pop flavor. Otherwise the music moves in jolts, flashes, repeated phrases of warped notes and outbursts of clashing metal, like someone threw forks in a blender. Remarkably, this all works very well, and on a very high level. Reimann’s score doesn’t just provide accompaniment for the singers or a reflection of what’s happening onstage. It is what’s happening onstage, a perfect aural representation of the raging emotions driving the characters and the ominous, amoral world they inhabit.
Horáková not only embraces this, but runs it to extremes. Her production is very physical; there’s hardly a moment when someone isn’t being throttled, beaten, tossed to the floor or otherwise abused. The women are particularly brutal. At one point, Goneril uses her knee-high boots to pin her father in a headlock and Goneril takes sadistic delight in poking out one of Gloucester’s eyes. Men are stripped of their clothing on a regular basis, so much so that one has to wonder if Horáková is having a private joke, putting men’s nearly naked bodies (and not very flattering ones at that) on display for a change.
Ultimately, it’s an overambitious and cluttered production. A live dog adds a realistic touch to the opening scene, but video projections of panting dogs’ heads in the second act add nothing but confusion. Throughout both acts, extraneous characters wander through scenes they have no part in, muddying the focus. And the overall style is a stew – semi-realistic to start, then by turns abstract, earthy, metaphorical, symbolic or combinations thereof. To be charitable, one could say the scattershot direction matches the mayhem in the music, or maybe even Lear’s madness. But by the time the stage is filled with dead bodies, it’s nearly impossible to tell who’s who. Or to care very much.
As Lear, Tómas Tómasson blew away everyone else onstage with a stentorian bass-baritone voice and unabashed acting, wearing nothing but underpants most of the evening. Outside of a ferocious rant by Andreas Conrad as a frustrated Edmund, the other male singers were mostly serviceable, which is all their roles call for. The singing spotlight is mainly on the three sisters, all of whom turned in striking performances. Victoria Khoroshunova was a fiery, murderous Goneril, Petra Alvarez Šimková a coquettishly depraved Regan, and Barbora Perná a tender Cordelia, the only soft, sane voice amid the madness.
Conductor Hermann Baümer worked miracles in the pit, eliciting a pinpoint performance from an expanded version of the State Opera Orchestra. Noises that do not exist in nature (or opera houses) were rendered with great clarity and impact. Special mentions as well to designer Rhea Eckstein for clever sets, and Dagmar Peckova for a smart turn in the half-spoken, half-sung role of the Fool.
Only the Fool and Lear are left alive in the final scene, surveying the wreckage of a classic play. Or maybe this is a perfectly appropriate Lear for our times. Power-mad rulers, senseless killing, refugees on the run. It certainly mirrors the contemporary world. Sometimes you can’t leave the chaos at the door.
