The Road (back)

Wiederaufnahme CAN be fun. D'oh!

Having arrived in Stuttgart on Friday and only rehearsing 2 and a half hours, I was worried if I would remember all the zaniness that is the Bieito Parsifal. There is constant movement, untied to normal convention. The method to Calixto's madness is to engage his audience to the point of exhaustion and so you'll understand when people say of his Parsifal "it's 5 hours that seem like 2. I never know where to look!"

As previously mentioned, we were taunted to never stand still. (Whereas the Castellucci was quite the opposite.) Normal "collegial & respectful" stage deportment (e.g. don't draw focus during your fellow singers "aria") was never a consideration. In Stuttgart, stillness of any kind was to be avoided. We are Mad Max's cohorts beyond Thunderdome surviving the Holocaust afterall. And as I re-lived the production last night I realized dear Hartmut Haenchen would have had a cow working in this context. The treadmill in Brussels emitted a low rumble thruout much of the quietest music in Act 3. A very low rumble.

And then there's the audible moans, slamming branches, clanging icons and of course, the bloody zombie blumenmädchen of Calixto's.

Hartmut would have not been amused.

Realizing I could not recreate the regie left only one viable option. Play. I remembered it was what Calixto wanted all along. I walked out onstage at the beginning and his style all came flooding back, thanks in large part to (now very svelte) Christiane Iven. I was tempted to think "at what point did I step over this fallen tree? What was the musical cue for jumping on that platform?" And then a broken twig went whizzing past my head and woke me up. I wasn't supposed to plot and plan it all. I was just supposed to make big choices. She had chosen to shake me out of my trance by throwing sticks at me. I threw rocks back. It's not very often you get to try to out-do pure insanity.

I spent the rest of Act One chasing her around the stage like an lively "kitty." (One of the more humorous moments in Die Singende Stadt is during a musical rehearsal with Honneck and he says I should play a phrase very calmly and detached. To which Milling and I let out a laugh and said: "But maestro. Calixto says he wants me here to be a crazy animal." Without missing a beat, Manfred says: "ok. Make him a kitty cat.")

And so the freedom all came back. And so did the ovations. I believe there were 7 complete curtain calls that evening. Only singing with Grubarova have I ever seen such a prolonged public response. It all felt blissfully endless.

After the show, got a chance to mingle with über-blogger, James Jordan, introducing him to castmembers and talk a bit about the experience. He enjoyed himself and is writing up his regie experiences for The New York Post. I imagine he'll have an interesting take on the evening. 

I'll be lucky if the worst I'm criticized for is looking like a gay Jesus in my sandals during the curtain call as some said later. I suppose I shouldn't have worn Nike water sandals onstage for the curtain calls with my bronze breastplate.

Where's a GGF when you need one?