Meeting between Civilizations? in Music and Vision 8 agosto

Meeting between Civilizations?

Wolfgang Rihm's 'Die Eroberung von Mexico',
reviewed by GIUSEPPE PENNISI

After ten days of Ouverture spirituelle (this year a confrontation between Christian and Hindu music) and Jederman ('Each of us') by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, the 'mystery play' that has inaugurated the Salzburg Summer Festival since 1920 (this year from 18 July to 30 August), the opera section started on 26 July with Die Eroberung von Mexico ('The Conquest of Mexico') by Wolfgang Rihm who incidentally as of October will be 'composer in residence' of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. I attended the 29 July 2015 performance.
The audience shouldn't expect a grand opera or an imperial opera such as Fernando Cortez, composed by Gaspare Spontini when he was employed by the King of Prussia, or a Hollywood style historical movie like a well known 1947 film on the subject, or a high political drama (against the Spaniards) similar to a 1999 film by Alexandro Jorodowsky.
Nonetheless, Die Eroberung von Mexico is a highly political work which fits well with the basic theme of the festival — the confrontation between different civilizations and genders. Based on a 1932 scenario by French author Antonin Artaud and interpolated with more recent poems by the Nobel Prize-winning Mexican poet Octavio Paz, the central subject is the relationship between two people from different cultures and genders. Stage direction (Peter Konwitschny), costumes and set (Johannes Leiacker) and video (Fettfilm) place the drama in an elegant Western style condominium (albeit near to a car junkyard) with a well-known Frida Kahlo painting on the wall. Cortez drives a red Ferrari.

Bo Skovhus as Cortez and Angela Denoke as Montezuma in Wolfgang Rihm's 'Die Eroberung von Mexico' at the Salzburg Summer Festival. Photo © 2015 Monika Rittershaus. Click on the image for higher resolution

Cortez is a baritone (Bo Skovhus), and King Montezuma a dramatic soprano (Angela Denoke). There is no real dialogue between them, but just alternating monologues. Nonetheless, at the end of the opera, they join in an ecstatic duet. But, by then, they are both dead: Montezuma having been killed by the Spanish army, and Cortez having committed suicide after the Aztec people, in revolt, have destroyed the would-be conquerors.
In fact, Cortez and Montezuma are the only characters in the opera. The former is supported by two actors amplifying his role, the latter by a mezzo and an alto. A small chorus forms the Spanish army; they are, of course, all men. A group of women (actresses and mimes) help Montezuma.

A scene from Wolfgang Rihm's 'Die Eroberung von Mexico' at the Salzburg Summer Festival. Photo © 2015 Monika Rittershaus. Click on the image for higher resolution

The orchestra (forty-eight instrumentalists of the Vienna ORF Radio Symphonieorchester) is located not only in the pit but also in five different parts of the theatre (the Felsenreitschule — a place originally conceived for training horse riders) and reinforced with live electronics. From a stool in the middle of the hall, Ingo Metzmacher handles the direction of the difficult score very well. The orchestration is excellent and basically tonal with a limited role for the strings, but major parts for the woodwind, brass and percussion, with some inclusion of ethnic Latin American instruments. Here the differences mould quite well. At the curtain calls, there were some ten minutes of acclamations.
The basic question remains unanswered: is a real and full meeting between such different civilizations possible? Rihm's answer seems to be in the final ecstatic duet: It is feasible only between souls.

Copyright © 8 August 2015 Giuseppe Pennisi,
Rome, Italy