On the face of it, Viktor Ullmann's The Fall of the Antichrist is straightforward enough. The Regent – a proxy for Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini or your favourite tyrant of today – deals with three subjects: the Priest, the Technician and the Artist: the Priest and the Technician succumb to his threats and inducements; only the Artist resists them, inspired by an elderly gaoler, and survives to see the Regent fall from power.
At the next level down, however, Jan Antonín Pitínský's production of the opera, for Moravian Theatre Olomouc, has to go down as one of the most confusing couple of hours of opera I've ever seen. I'm not all that great at obscure, allusive poetry, and the libretto of The Fall of the Antichrist is about as obscure and allusive as they come. Despite serviceable surtitles, I spent far too much of the evening not really being sure what the characters meant, what they were singing about or, in some cases, who the character singing actually was, amongst the mass of symbolism for at least three different cults, created by angelic/demonic figures and a variety of acolytes in a series of uniforms. There was some interesting staging going on – lighting and video effects, striking costumes, and a lot of movement, some of it obviously ritualised. I just didn't understand what most of it meant.
If you're a prima la musica type, as opposed to prima le parole like me, this might not have bothered you, because Ullmann's score is sensational. There's plenty in the way of echoes of Schoenberg, there are occasions of Wagner-like rapture, there are moments which rival Bartók for ratcheting up the orchestral tension. The woodwind and horn writing is the most noticeable: Ullmann finds dozens of different ways to distribute the music among his wind players in a way that builds the emotional impact he wants, which is mainly one of ever-increasing angst (with only occasional moments of rapture or calm).