{"id":746,"date":"2014-09-10T14:22:39","date_gmt":"2014-09-10T21:22:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/?p=746"},"modified":"2014-09-10T14:22:39","modified_gmt":"2014-09-10T21:22:39","slug":"opera-in-a-small-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/2014\/09\/opera-in-a-small-house.html","title":{"rendered":"OPERA IN A SMALL HOUSE"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Landestheater<\/a>

Landestheater Detmold<\/p><\/div>\n

Americans on the constant search in Europe not to see other Americans need only go to Detmold, a city of around 70,000 in upper northern Germany about an hour from Hannover and three hours from Berlin. As the major city in a small pre-World War I principality, it is a charming German city, never bombed as it was not strategically important and little changed from times gone by. Traffic is light, and there are more than a few walking only streets in the town\u2019s center. The silence on weekend nights and mornings cannot be found in my experience in other European or American cities. No one is there; the town is literally asleep.<\/p>\n

Yet opera flourishes. The theater seats appropriately 650, has excellent acoustics, and was built in the late 1890s. The stage is only 8 cm wide, about a third of the width of the Seattle Opera\u2019s or the Met\u2019s stage, and doesn\u2019t have great depth, but the orchestra pit is both largely under the stage and looks big enough to hold a Wagner-sized orchestra. In German terms it is called C house, which of course relates to the budget and other considerations about which I know nothing. Yet in 2009 under its Intendant, Kay Metzger, it mounted what in photographs appears to have been a very interesting Ring<\/em> production, sold it well, repeated it in the next season, and won very good reviews. There is apparently a version of the Ring<\/em> with reduced orchestra that was used. Hearing only two or three minutes of the sound, it sounded light, but the basic Ring<\/em> could clearly be heard.<\/p>\n

\"Detmold<\/a><\/p>\n

I had never before seen opera in a Class C house, and I went to the opening of the season L\u2019elisir d\u2019Amore<\/em> with great curiosity. It was an excellent performance, much more lively, satisfying, and even echt than recent performances I have attended of this opera in Vienna or at the Metropolitan. The feeling of freshness, good rehearsal, and a desire to produce something worthy of Donizetti pervaded every moment.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Christian Poewe\u2019s production, new last June, placed the opera in a circus locale with Nemorino seeking Adina in the midst of lots of clowns and other circus performers. The two principals, plus Belcore and his two soldiers (!) were the only non-circus members. My favorite was what appeared to be an old vaudeville trick that still works: two women in a double dress, appearing to be Siamese twins. When one drank, the other became furious. Each reacted to what the other did in different ways. All sorts of unexpected events happened, including Adina\u2019s reading about Isolde\u2019s love potion on a chair that descended from the flies. Dulcamara had only one woman in his retinue, a very pretty sort of belly dancer, and wore a magician\u2019s cape. The action of the opera followed the libretto. The experience of watching the artists almost as though one was in a rehearsal room, because of the stage\u2019s proximity to the seats in the orchestra, made me think of what it must have been felt like when this opera and many others were first performed.<\/p>\n

The big news of the performance to me came from the major character, Nemorino. A young Chilean tenor, Carlos Moreno Pelizari, created as believable a Nemorino as I can remember. A full-voiced lyric tenor, Pelizari sang the whole role with ease, offering an \u201cUna furtiva lagrima\u201d that couldn\u2019t be bettered anywhere. His ample voice, even throughout the range, and his grasp of the fioritura very much impressed me. I know the theater is small, but I have been hearing auditions in many small spaces for many years. This man has a voice and a real career ahead of him. I was delighted to have such an experience.<\/p>\n

\"Carlos<\/a>

Carlos Moreno Pelizari<\/p><\/div>\n

Others in the cast were good, with the best singing coming from the Belcore, Beoung Kyu Jeon, still a student at the Hochschuele fuer Musik in Detmold. Katharina Ajyba was Adina, and Michael MacKinnon, Dr. Dulcamara.<\/p>\n

Matthias Wegele conducted with lively precision and a very good Italianate feel. It was spirited and exciting Donizetti.<\/p>\n

Also in Detmold I had a chance to visit the Hoechschuele for Musik, originally a Palace. The rooms are large and bright with lots of windows looking out on great natural beauty\u2014grass and trees. I went through a large number of practice rooms in the main building set up for pianists and wind instruments as well as some large rooms that would be good for voices. There are apparently other buildings for string, brass, and percussion students. Unfortunately it was summer vacation, but from what I heard of the students at the Elisir<\/em>, it\u2019s a place that lives up to its reputation in Germany. Students come to if from all over the world, with many presently there from Asia.<\/p>\n

\"Detmold\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

One other very operatic aspect of Detmold is the opportunity to visit group of rock formations formed some seventy million years ago. They are tall and rugged. What is most surprising to me about them is how much they don\u2019t fit into the terrain around them. In Utah they would be spectacular but expected. When one climbs the largest the view of the German forest, an anomalous mass of greenery on all sides makes the rocks even more interesting.<\/p>\n

Detmold is also known as possibly the place where in 9 AD the Roman invasion of Germany was stopped. A German whose name was Latinate but who was renamed Hermann the German went to Rome and learned how the Roman army worked. He served bravely there, left the army and went back home. When the Romans arrived, he was ready. He knew their method of fighting, turned it on them, and defeated them. Thus was the German language prevented from being one of the Latin languages. No one had paid any attention to this man or the battle until the late nineteenth century, when Otto von Bismarck, the German prime minister, wanted to inspire his countrymen with their early military exploits. He renamed the man Hermann, and commissioned a huge statue honoring him a bit out of Detmold.<\/p>\n

\"Herman\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The only other item to mention is that in Detmold and in neighboring towns there are an incredible number of houses built and decorated in the 15 and 1600\u2019s. It\u2019s probably the way Nuernberg, for instance, looked prior to World War II. I can\u2019t say the spirit of Hans Sachs is here, but there did occasionally come a hammering sound.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Americans on the constant search in Europe not to see other Americans need only go to Detmold, a city of around 70,000 in upper northern Germany about an hour from Hannover and three hours from Berlin. As the major city in a small pre-World War I principality, it is a charming German city, never bombed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-746","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry","8":"has-post-thumbnail"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=746"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":752,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/746\/revisions\/752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/operasleuth\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}