Die Soldaten belongs to the DNA of the Gürzenich orchestra, conductor François-Xavier Roth believes. He may safely say so, not only because the work was created here in 1965 under Michael Gielen but also because of the successful performance of the Cologne Opera under his direction in the staging of La Fura dels Baus at the Staatenhaus, for me personally the most immersive experience of 2018. If the strong point of that performance was the proximity of orchestra and audience, the strong point of this semi-staged performance in the much more spacious Cologne Philharmonic is the completeness of the deployment of the lavish orchestral arsenal that can now be experienced with all its colors and with all its violence in the acoustically advantageous space of a concert hall. That, it seemed to me, was the main objective of this "Special concert". The fact that Calixto Bieito's colorless direction was completely reduced to an afterthought is the only (predictable) shortcoming of this exciting opera evening.
When Bernd Alois Zimmermann decided to turn Jacob Lenz's Die Soldaten into an opera in 1957, he did so not so much because of the class morality in the play but because of the observation of how, essentially totally innocent people, fall helplessly into destruction as a result of exceptionally fateful circumstances. Jacob Lenz was far ahead of his time. In his own words, he wanted to express the "stinking breath of the people." His sketch of the immoral soldier's environment in which the neat bourgeois girl Marie becomes entangled, was frank and crude in language for the time. Significant is the composer's time-situation of the piece: "yesterday, today, tomorrow". In other words : violence is of all times. Zimmermann knew what he was talking about. As a 20-year-old, he experienced World War II at the front and suffered severe lead poisoning. No doubt his war trauma lies at the heart of the piece and possibly also his suicide, 5 years after its successful premiere in Cologne. The fact is that his work develops an obsession with themes of social injustice, racism and militarism.
I know of no opera more deserving of a live experience than Die Soldaten. That has everything to do with the sheer sensuousness of sound to which the gigantic orchestra that Zimmerman is calling for is capable of. Any opera house that tries to accommodate Zimmermann's prescribed set of instruments into its orchestra pit is bound to compromise. The prescribed orchestral instrumentation can rather be understood as a kind of wish list from the composer, and each opera house fills it in its own way. Even more than Der Ring des Nibelungen, Die Soldaten has therefore become the de facto litmus test for the "capability" of an opera house.
The laborious genesis of the work is well known. Before the finally widely acclaimed premiere of Die Soldaten was a fact, a lot of water had to flow through the Rhine. Zimmermann's enormous versatility and erudition rather embarrassed many of his contemporaries. Conductor Günter Wand, for whom serialism led to hell, turned against the composer by declaring Die Soldaten unworkable, something in which Wand was joined by Wolfgang Sawallisch. Zimmermann himself never doubted the technical feasibility of the complex work.
The chaotic orchestral introduction, in counterpoint to the tight martial rhythm in the timpani, is one of the most exciting overtures you can experience in an opera house. Here the timpani are as important as the obscenely blaring brass and you often hear them drowning in the mass of sound. That was not the case here but I still felt they should be more prominent in the sound image. Two things that will continually fascinate are the details in the orchestra that enter into dialogue with the soloists and the bursts of razor-sharp brass that are blocked off by the violently resonant low strings. The score is so rich that you have to allow your mental focus as a listener to constantly switch between orchestra and soloists. Atmospheric contributors such as tubular bells, the organ (a 1986 Klais organ), a piano and a harpsichord also demand much attention in this nightmarish requiem. The leading role is given to the percussion. The entire back wall of the orchestra stage is occupied by the entire family of percussion instruments. The audience is further surrounded by extensive percussion groups (gongs, drums, tubular bells, timpani, etc.) that operate from the rafters of the music temple and are used to great effect during the second and fourth acts. The result is that the spectator is no longer outside the stage but is, as it were, absorbed into it. This concert turned into an immersive experience as well but in a very different way than in the Staatenhaus.
The scenic action is limited to a few rows of seats in the first balcony. Scenically, this is all very harmless compared to Calixto Bieito's theater production for Zurich/Berlin/Madrid. In the coffee house, the soldiers beat their waistbands. The dance of the Andalousian is taken over by Marie, the soldiers indulge in a rave. The jazz combo plays from a lodge in the first balcony. In Berlin, Bieito had staged Marie as a female Christ figure, half-naked, arms spread and, in the finale, showered with a bucket of theatrical blood - an obvious cinematic reference to Brian De Palma's "Carrie." Marie as a symbol of an unhinged, raped world, as a victim also of the relentless destructive power of all war violence, is an image Bieito will use in greatly toned-down form for the finale.
The poisoning of Desportes turned into a treat for the percussionists. The tape recording for the final scene of the fourth act was not due to sounds of the battlefield, nor marching soldiers but consisted of purely bruitage sounds. The minute-long drum orgy of the finale was itself powerful enough in evoking the image of soldiers' boots. The scorching heat of the atomic cloud during the ultimate diminuendo enveloped the auditorium in orange light from the dome of the hall . You have been warned !
Typical of the work's vocal requirements is what Michael Gielen said at the time: “The dynamics are very complicated and varied - and can hardly be realized by the singers. They already have huge problems managing all the intervals and singing in these extreme registers. The whole opera is a fourth too high for all the singers anyway. This is certainly intentional, because it creates this violent expression”.
Tomas Tomasson was superbly cast as Wesener with his wonderfully fatherlike timbre and commanding tone. Emily Hindrichs, already the Marie on duty in 2018, was able to convince again. She possesses a beautiful timbre and masters the breakneck intervals without fear of heights. She turned the hilarious tickling duet into a delightful highlight. Does that make her a "high-dramatic coloratura soprano," as the composer prescribed ? It remains a strange contradiction in terms. Martin Koch as Desportes was also back with his high, clear tenor. For me it could be a little more virile given the nature of the character. Laura Aikin as Gräfin de la Roche, herself once a celebrated Marie in Salzburg (2012), lets the vibrato flare out too much. But the glowing floating lines with which she led the ladies trio at the end of the third act, mirroring the famous terzet from Der Rosenkavalier, were very good. Nikolay Borchev sang a beautifully articulate Stolzius. Oliver Zwarg was also adequate as Eisenhardt.