The traditional Easter festival opened in Salzburg

The traditional Easter festival has opened in Salzburg. It differs from the festivals of previous years – the program features an opera with Anna Netrebko alongside contemporary dance and even a techno evening. Tells Alexey Mokrousov.

Opening the Easter Festival with a performance of Bach’s passions is not the most unexpected idea, but before, it seems, no one had yet thought of the St. John Passion (unlike the St. Matthew Passion, which received a choreographic embodiment thanks to John Neumeier back in the early 1980s). what to dance.

While the author of the program reflects on how close dance as such is to Bach, choreographer Sasha Waltz radicalizes the question: would the composer be interested in a naked body? The performance begins with eleven nude male and female dancers seated around sewing machines. They sew their own dance costumes, the whirring of sewing motors and the sounds of electronics from the speakers anticipate the music of Bach himself (sound interventions by Diego Noguera). During the course of the two-hour performance, the sound of hammers on wooden blocks, the roar of falling stakes and other sound signs of the last hours of Christ’s earthly life naturally flow into it. The sounds of wood disrupt the usual flow of the St. John Passion, but the chamber choir of Namur and the chorus of the Dijon Opera not only do not deviate from the score, but also get involved in the action – Waltz also came up with plastic tasks for the choristers that turn the stage into a real Gesamtkunstwerk. The orchestra members of Cappella Mediterranea, divided in two by a stage projection so that the conductor sometimes addresses them over the bodies of the dancers, are also included in the total theatricalization of the music – one of the dancers physically integrates into the orchestra, literally wrapping his arms around the violinist, sitting on his lap, driving him out of his chair, becoming a part of his body and his instrument: the visualization of sound in Sasha Waltz’s version also became better. The first introduction of the choir is also a test for the public – it begins to sound like multi-channel sound in a modern cinema, and you don’t immediately understand where the singing is coming from; Only after taking a closer look at the neighbors do you realize that the choir members are seated around the hall. Sometimes they stand up – and those who before the start of the performance looked like an unremarkable spectator, worthy of only a passing glance, in fact turn out to be one of the main characters of the performance.

This dissolution of art into everyday life, into the ordinariness of what is happening, is one of the wonderful moments of the evening. Waltz, as a director, achieves not only the effect of presence, but also the effect of complicity, emotional involvement in the sacred, but at the same time does not forget about her ultimate goal – “the abolition of hierarchy,” which she considers especially important today.

The dance version of “The Passion of St. John” is a co-production of the Dijon Opera with the troupe Sasha Waltz & Guests and the Parisian Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. This is not Waltz’s first turn to the genre of “choreographic opera” and not the first experience of collaboration with Cappella Mediterranea and its founder and conductor, Argentinean Leonardo Garcia Alarcón – the ensemble owes its origins to specializing not only in the music of Italian and Spanish, but also South American baroque. Previously, Waltz and Alarcon created Monteverdi’s Orpheus for the Berlin Opera. In the current work they have used excellent singers such as Georg Neigl (he sings Pilate) and Valerio Contaldo (Evangelist).

The current intendant of the Easter Festival, Nikolaus Bachler, who previously directed the Bavarian Opera, has radically updated its concept. At first he refused a permanent festival orchestra. Previously, dating back to Karajan’s times, the Easter Festival was a festival of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; From 2013 to 2022, the Saxon Staatskapelle under Christian Thielemann reigned supreme at the festival – its disappearance from the Salzburg spring playbill was perceived by many as a personal loss. Now Salzburg invites a new orchestra every time: last year it was the Gewandhausorchestra from Leipzig under the direction of Andris Nelsons, this year it is the Roman orchestra of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia under the direction of Antonio Pappano (the conductor led it for 18 years until his retirement last year).

Each of the conductors and each of the orchestras gives the festival its own face, at least geographically. Nelsons played Leipzig-born Wagner’s Tannhäuser, and Pappano filled the program with Italian rarities, which included Ottorino Respighi with two impressive frescoes from his Roman Trilogy, the symphonic poems The Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome, and even the classic of the post-war avant-garde Luciano Berio – with variations on a theme from “The Night Watch in Madrid” by Boccherini.

The program of the second concert is also connected with Italy – Jakub Grusha conducted Berlioz’s “Carnival of Rome” and “Harold in Italy” (and in “Harold” Pinchas Zuckerman was the soloist on viola), adding to them “The Frescoes of Piero della Francesca” by Boguslav Martinu. What can we say about the central point of the program – the opera? Of course, the opera is Italian: “La Gioconda” by Amilcare Ponchielli with Anna Netrebko and Jonas Kaufman (“Kommersant” will talk about the production separately). In the chamber program, Liz Davidson and tenor Freddie De Tommaso performed hit arias from operas by Verdi and Puccini, adding songs by Richard Strauss and Paolo Tosti. The only exception in the Italian landscape was Christian Gerhaer with the songs of Brahms, although he performed them in such a way that they also showed an Italian accent, melody and melancholy, making one remember not only Schubert. And at the finale of the festival, English DJ Max Cooper will offer “an immersive audiovisual journey through the aesthetics, music and creativity of Italy”: Karajan would be surprised.