IN many senses, Mahler's heartbreaking song cycle, Kindertotenlieder - Songs on the Death of Children - is the complete expression of grief, of loss. Unremittingly poignant, even in its few lighter moments, the five-song settings of Friedrich Ruckert's poems is a heart-rending glimpse into the soul of a woman trying to deal with bereavement. Arguably, the cycle needs no theatrical enhancement, no underlining, no examination; it speaks, like the greatest cycles such as Schumann's Dichterliebe or Schubert's Winterreise, eloquently, painfully and comprehensively.
And in this sense you could argue that Robert Lepage's staging of
the song cycle, which more than doubles its length, adds no new or additional dimension to the piece; it simply extends it, turning over and over the syndrome of grief, examining it from every conceivable perspective, as though - like the cycle itself - seeking consolation.
On the other hand, what Lepage has done is quite extraordinary. Using three characters - a singer, a pianist and a child - he has interwoven fact and fantasy, reality and imagination, in an unwaveringly concentrated and timeless exploration of the premise that underlies the songs.
And, like the song cycle itself, it
is timeless. Images from the past, present, and future are interwoven in exactly the way it happens in your own mind: when you reflect on a traumatic experience, you don't go over things logically or chronologically in your head; you don't just re-run complete scenes; irrational and emotional simultaneities jumble together as you attempt to come to terms with a situation.
And that is what Lepage has done. Drawing on the essence of the songs, and weaving through them elements of Mahler's own life - a fatal boat journey, the composer's illness, the death of his own child - Lepage has created onstage exactly the sort of scenario that plays in your head at times of crisis.
It's not dramatic; in fact it's anti-dramatic. No conventions of time, place, momentum, or structure are observed. In one scene the singer is pregnant and full of foreboding at having to sing such songs - she cuts short a rehearsal as the child in the womb kicks; in another she urges the now-born and sickly daughter to take her medication; and in another she lays a shroud over the dead child. But these scenes don't necessarily occur in chronological order. Everything already has happened and the singer/mother is reflecting, trying to make sense out of the chaos of loss.
The pianist, who reads his score, listens to a recording of the songs, and turns over his melodies like exquisite leaves of pain, is Mahler himself, characterised by the period clothes and the famous hat seen in photographs of the composer.
It amounts to a very still, private, darkly lit and quietly intense theatrical experience, played by singer Rebecca Blankenship (whose alarmingly wobbly voice adds a jarring reality), pianist Paul Suits, and the child, played by Annabel Dickson.
You may well ask if such a microscopic examination adds anything to the piece; but, the morning after,
elements of it still haunt me. Scottish Opera will bring the performance to Glasgow early in the New Year, when you can judge for yourself.
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