Hamburg Ballet
Hamburg State Opera
Hamburg, Germany
December 6 and 8, 2009
by Horst Koegler
copyright 2009 by Horst Koegler
June 24,1962 proved a Red Letter Day for the German ballet scene. That was the day of the Hamburg Stravinsky Festival in honor of the composer’s 80th birthday. Stravinsky had been invited by Rolf Liebermann, General Manager of the Hamburg Opera House, to present an all-Stravinsky ballet-programme, consisting of “Apollon musagète”, “Orpheus” and “Agon”, performed by soloists of the New York City Ballet and members of the Hamburg State Opera Ballet. It was a glorious event that set the barre for the further development of ballet in Germany, just recovering from the wounds the country had suffered during the Second World. Such was the success, that the New York City Ballet on its first tour to the Soviet Union was invited back to Hamburg for the autumn, performing six Balanchine ballets: “Raymonda Variations”, “Liebeslieder Walzer”, “La Valse”, “Episodes”, “Four Temperaments” and “Symphony in C”. By that time, German ballet was inflected with the Balanchine virus, which spread from Hamburg to the many opera-ballet companies operating in Germany, with Stuttgart just emerging as its number one address, after John Cranko had been appointed artistic director of the Stuttgart State Opera Ballet the year before. At that time Liebermann, a personal friend of Stravinsky, was still hoping that he might accept a commission to compose a third ballet to complete a trilogy, based upon classical Greek myths.
Alas, that came to nothing – as had happened before when Lincoln Kirstein had nourished similar hopes at the 1948 premiere of “Orpheus”. Stravinsky died in April 1971, 89 years old. By that time the Stuttgart Ballet had already conquered New York, a young and fledgling company, with a teen from Wisconsin among its dancers, John Neumeier, who had joined it on his first professional engagement in 1963, when he was 21 years old. Neumeier branched out as a costume-designer and junior choreographer, was snapped up by the Frankfurt opera and appointed artistic director of its ailing ballet-company in 1969, at 27 the youngest ever ballet-chief in Germany. Among the many works he created for the company was the production of Gluck´s opera “Orpheus and Eurydike” in 1971. Two years later he was catapulted to the top position of artistic director of the Hamburg State Opera Ballet, where he has stayed ever since, in between appointed Intendant (General Manager) of the Hamburg Ballet, in which position he has built the company, its affiliated school, as well as his private museum with several links to the university and other local institutions into a vast ballet-empire, which cultivates friendly relationships with similar organizations in St. Petersburg, London, Paris and New York.
Among the almost 100 different works Neumeier has created in the past 36 years, two stand out as milestones produced in connection with the Salzburg Festival: Bach´s “Matthew Passion” in 1981 and “Requiem” by Mozart in 1991. Now, 18 years later, a new “Orpheus” by Stravinsky was announced as a co-production of the Hamburg Ballet and the Salzburg Festival. I wondered how he would manage to turn the half hour ballet into a full-evening production. But then, hadn´t he faced a similar problem with the “Requiem”, which Mozart hadn´t finished at the time of his death? The solution was to stage it as an initiation ritual for young Gregorian monks, who filled the numbers that Mozart had left as fragments with their Gregorian chants. It worked perfectly, especially as it was spread over the vast space of the Felsenreitschule.
As an additional challenge Hamburg had the opportunity to engage Roberto Bolle for the role of Orpheus – the star-dancer from La Scala di Milano, who has so far never created a role with a prominent choreographer, but only dancing the leads in the classics of the bread and butter repertory, from “Giselle” via Petipa through Balanchine and Petit.
During the many discussions that followed they discovered that Orpheus, the pre-Homeric poet, is described by several antique scholars as the son of Apollo and the muse Kalliope. From this point on they decided to couple the two ballets of “Apollon musagète” and “Orpheus” into one ballet in two parts – a likely marriage as Stravinsky´s “Apollo” is scored for string-orchestra only, and thus introduces Orpheus as the violin-soloist.
Anyway, Orpheus, son of Apollo and Kalliope, becomes here a violin-virtuoso who woos Eurydike (a marvelous pas de deux for Otto Bubenicek and Hélène Bouchet), and is admired by a flock of teenagers (like the young Nigel Kennedy), but then fate strikes and she becomes the victim of an auto crash (this is the moment when the sound collage of Blegvad & Partridge sets in). In his grief he intones one of the Biber pieces – a Passacaglia of iridescent beauty – through which he moves trees and rivers, while accompanied by Hermes (Yohan Stegli) on his way to the Hades.
Alas, in 2008 Salzburg cancelled the planned co-production for rather obscure reasons. It must have been a shock for Neumeier who was envisioning it as the crowning event of the by then almost thirty years of his Salzburg connection. Instead he went ahead, preparing it now for Hamburg only. During the rehearsals, however, Bolle, whom Neumeier considers in many respects the ideal protagonist, hurt his back and had to have an operation. So the role fell to Otto Bubenicek, popular principal of the Hamburg company and the much admired Nijinsky of Neumeier´s Hamburg production of “le pavillon d´Armide”, who was scheduled to take the part at a later date. Stepping in he thus created Orpheus at the Hamburg first night on December 6 (I caught the second and third performance on December 8 and 9). And he did it so heart-rendingly that I cannot really image a more moving performance by Bolle (who is expected to be back for the performance on June 25 during the Hamburg Ballet Days, after which the company embarks for a guest season at the Spoleto Festival, with “Orpheus” of course).
The stage is just empty, with a huge gate, designed by Ferdinand Wögerbauer, which later can be lifted , revealing behind its milky glass panes the shadow realm of the Hades. All is very sparse – as is the choreography for Apollo, Orpheus, Hermes and Kalliope, with some striking moments of perfect rest, when isolated gestures speak eloquently of the inner moves of the figures. There’s only a rare direct quotation of Balanchine, as in the stretching of the arm, with the index finger extended, borrowed from Michelangelo´s creation of the world. Neumeier calls the scene ´The Place of Destination´. It is really sort of a prologue, from which we move to ´On Earth´ where we meet Orpheus as a street-musician, playing his fiddle. Certainly not in the way we are accustomed to from the various ballets on Paganini (with Lavrovsky pere as a specially caricatured example). Here instead the melodies pouring from his instrument are all controlled, disciplined and restrained, perfect examples of pure beauty and tranquility, and it is with this very quality that he wins Eurydike´s affection; Eurydike, in Hélène Bouchet´s interpretation, is a vulnerable girl of touching naturalness. Their pas de deux, so touching in its innocent tenderness, communicates the wonderful harmony of their heart-beats. And it is this balmy serenity of his music with which he impresses trees and rivers to share his sorrow after he has lost her through the car-accident (though I must admit that I found it difficult to define them as such, and in this they were not really helped by the costumes Neumeier had designed for them). It is a marvellous groupe dance which he has arranged for the trees and rivers, performed to Biber´s glorious Passacaglia, but it goes on too long.
Though I cannot say that Neumeier´s amalgamation of the two Stravinsky- ballets “Apollon musagète” and “Orpheus” matches the sublime beauty of Balanchine´s choreography, I left the Hamburg opera-house on these two nights deeply moved, hardly finding the words to express how deeply the performance had touched my innermost emotions – not at last through the total involvement and engagement of all the artists participating in this tour de force of theatrical magic.
Photos (all by Holger Badekow:)
First: Otto Bubenicek and ensemble.
Second: Bubenicek and Hélène Bouchet.
Third: Bubenicek.
Fourth: Bubinecek and Edvin Revazov.
Fifth: Bubenicek and Hélène Bouchet.