On his latest album ”Illusions” interpreters Håkan Hellström Joni Mitchell’s classic ”Both sides now” with a voice that seems to come from all parts of his body. A voice that must sound contradictory and incoherent, in order to express the text’s insight – that from which way we look at ourselves, each other and the world, so are the illusions that we see.
When David Radok for the third time, put together two odd one-shots at the göteborg opera (previously there have been Béla Principles ”Knight Blåskäggs borg” with Arnold Schoenberg’s ”Erwartung” and Kurt Weill’s ”The seven deadly sins” with Giacomo Puccini’s ”Gianni Wagner”) is the unifying theme of just illusions.
”the Key to dreams,” from 1939, we meet a woman and a man, Juliette and Michel, who loved each other but where the former can not remember any of this because she lives in a surreal now-state. In Francis Poulencs more realistic monodrama ”Vox humana” from 1957, we see and hear a woman’s last conversation with the man who walked away from her.
Both kvinnorollerna made by Kerstin Avemo, a stroke of luck not only because she is incomparable to the scenically and vocally to portray the mental gränssituationer, but also that this behavior embodies other links between Martinu and Poulenc than the illusory. Both works are sung in French language with its nuanced sounds that play with and against orkesterklangerna. And both works have a strong underlying logic to the seemingly oförankrade and fragmented.
this time is Radok himself also a scenographer and has, with inspiration from the artist William Hammershöis throbbing quiet interiors, created a set design that is a passage between the outer and the inner. We see a curtain for a window, a telephone on a table and a skuggestalt at a wall. In general an empty floor for the Radoks precise direction to switch between a restrained stillness, small movements and briserande outbreak. A lot of musical venues, you might say.
dreams,” we see Avemos Juliette and Joachim Bäckström, Michel in a singular partner dance between memory and amnesia, dream and reality, and between the cool embrace and the icy distance. A groping game between the happiness and the sadness that is very sensitive and beautifully done. This is also a stage, only accompanied by piano, between an old couple, sensitively played by Marianne Schell and Torgny Sporsén, that is memorable.
”Vox humana” is Kerstin Avemo alone on stage during a phone call with the man that left her and caused her a kärlekslidande for which she does not put any limits. Poulencs flowing music, conducted by Claire Levacher, carry her in wave after wave against the outermost limit, where the illusory and the real crashing against each other like waves against rocks.
This is a last call, and its only condition is that it not get interrupted. A desperate and painful expression from a loving as Avemo completely comprehensive, and with a crushing sense of vulnerability.
Read more of DN’s scenrecensioner here.
