Ancient Greeks, too, wanted their fun
Offenbach's La Belle Hélène at the Festival in the year 2000
The next Salzburg Festival will be dominated by Spartans and Trojans: serious, dramatic and tragic as in Hector Berlioz' grand opera, Les Troyens; merry, grotesque and foolish as in Jacques Offenbach's operetta, La Belle Hélène. In the theatre of antiquity, too, tragedy performances were followed by satyric drama, and in presenting these two works together, Salzburg is only following in the footsteps of classical dramaturgy. Producer of both works is Herbert Wernicke. Audiences became acquainted with his version of Belle Hélène at the Music Festival in Aix-en-Provence in summer 1999. Thus the wave of Salzburg co-productions has now spread to the "Salzburg of France", as the Aix Festival is often referred to because of the predominance of works by Mozart in its programmes.
Burlesque on Napoleon's empire
Like almost all his works, Offenbach's La Belle Hélène is difficult to produce. Who can understand today the exaggerated grotesquerie parading the Empire of Napoleon III in the mythical costumes of antiquity? But we should not forget that this seeming foolery also has a serious side. Helen's desire for the fullness of love has less the effect of being a flat parody than of constituting a contrast to a parasitic, hedonistic society whose moral and emotional values are as sterile and bankrupt as the exploitative businesses they engage in. Helen's yearning for love in the midst of a loveless society makes her dream of being seduced into happiness, carried on the wings of an "erotic immorality" whose power to socially disrupt is amply demonstrated in Mozart's Don Giovanni or Monteverdi's Poppea.
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Herbert Wernicke's staging of Offenbach's La Belle Hélène presents a dissipated political society. (Photo: Festival International d'Art Lyrique d'Aix-en-Provence ) |
Dramaturgy of observation
When La Belle Hélène appeared in the Theatre des Variétés in Paris in 1864 not a few members of Paris' pleasure-seeking society felt themselves exposed and ridiculed. The librettist Henri Meilhac (with Ludovic Halévy) was, as civil servant with the Corps législativ, in possession of an abundance of insider information about what was going on behind the gilded scenes.
Wernicke is aware, of course, that all that cannot be got across to audiences today. His production concentrates on a precise "dramaturgy of observation". He looks at the characters in the original work, then takes a look at the world about him today and, behold, the result is that nothing seems to have changed much! People nowadays behave like those in 1864 and probably like the old Greeks, Cretans and Spartans. Agamemnon is a gibberish-talking GI making empty boasts of strength; Menelaos is a pompous, sanguine ass who does not notice when he is being cuckolded; Paris is a sloppy ladies' man; and Calchas is the eminence grise of the Cabinet. These characters have always existed; they continue on, never growing old. What Wernicke displays on the stage - in the White-House-style Oval Office with four-poster bed and a pool where gaga politicians romp and splash about - is the pure reality of today's world. Politics and sex have always formed an indissoluble unity. Further, Offenbach's music is reduced to that of a chamber orchestra, which affords it an additional satirical edge. The Perner Insel in Hallein is just the right location for the performance of Offenbach's musical theatre.
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