Masturbation, gang rape and Booh!

Another [normal?] night at the Deutsche Oper Berlin. A night out for two young companions (one who had played in it in an orchestra, the other one a very visual person) and me, for something that is easy on the ear, and, in a promised staged performance, good on the eye, too.

Hmmm. This interpretation by Götz Friedrich has had me rushing to research the content of Carmina Burana. It's based on 12th and 13th century poems found in Bavaria. This is the same period of Chaucer's very bawdy Canterbury tales. According to this the poems are about the twists of fate (2), spring, nature and love awakening (7), drinking and gambling (4), love (10), and a repeat of the fate theme - I see one of the last lines in the love section refers to 'virgin most transcendent' - not in this interpretation, it wasn't. Also I never realised the Carmina had so many words! The spring theme also reminds of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, and this interpretation's treatment of the woman is not far off a sacrifice.

So the stage opens with a woman tied up; she then frees herself, rushes about, and at anything in trousers - even at the body builder who joins her on stage is rather underdressed in tiny green briefs and a green hood (the not very jolly green giant?). When a man is not available she uses a rope or anything else that comes to hand to pleasure herself. At one stage a person pops out from a giant pair of lips (oral, but displayed vertically...). During the pub scene another woman enters the stage with huge balloon breasts and buttocks which are then pierced by someone's [metal] pin. In passing our woman, now half-naked, is raped by a bunch of guys. The tenor takes off his clothes (not all of them, thankfully, he's a big guy) and at one stage sings from a steaming bath.....

I suppose that the interpretation might reflect the approach to women in the 13th century - who really knows? The verses are vastly more subtle and beautiful than this interpretation could ever dream to be - it's romance with a jackboot. Then again this refers to the [a?] woman as a 'medieval sex worker'. One of my companions wondered about the image of women as reflected in the show and whether the rape, nakedness and all that were a way of attracting attention? But in 1995 when the production was premiered that was already a bit old hat in Germany.

On the musical front it was a bit disappointing. Maybe we are too used to having bits of Carmina Burana blasted out at us in adverts and films, but the choir seemed weak, as if sung by thin elderly men well past their sell-by date. It was also felt that choir and the huge orchestra were not always entirely together.

This was the first show ever where I heard 'booh' from the audience. It seemed to be directed at the poor conductor, which was a bit odd, but perhaps it was because he was the only person in charge present in the theatre. But it seemed to be the same male who shouted a number of times; thankfully only during the applause, not like last week in Vilnius apparently, where a member of the audience, during Hamlet, shouted abuse during the whole first act, was ejected and taken away handcuffed, apparently turned loose outside the theatre, and returned for the third act with more of the same, to be again arrested...

Now if you go to see it, you know what to expect!