It was very exciting to have the chance to see a staged performance of this work – although I will have some remarks about to what extent it was fully staged – and is characteristic of the fascinating performances that characterize the Eiffel Studios.
It’s a strange work – almost two hours of quivering sustained ecstasy which at times can get a little too much; how do you structure and develop that central emotion and effect with climax followed by climax by ANOTHER climax – but the music is magnificent. Roxana’s Song is deservedly an excerpt that has a life of its own outside of the complete work. It recalls other composers of the time – Zemlinsky/Richard Strauss/the early Schoenberg of Verklarte Nacht – with their almost monomaniacal focus on extreme passion and pushing traditional tonality to its limits.
Musically the performance was first-rate. A Slovak company, orchestra, chorus and soloists rose to the challenges with richly expressive and well-balanced playing from the orchestra and voices which were rich and powerful without sounding strained. Gabriela Hrzenjak (Roxana) was particularly fine.
But the production – such as it was…The orchestra was at the back of the stage and there was a, small, area at the front for the performers and steps that led down to the empty orchestra pit for entrances and exits. This meant that movement was limited and in many ways, it was more a semi-staged concert performance than a fully realized stage one.
But, on reflection, and having glanced and excerpts of some other stagings available online, the big flaw in this production for me was that it seemed to almost completely miss any sense of ecstatic, life-enhancing, possibly rather dangerous, emotional involvement. There was a rather ‘proper’ air about it as if it was afraid to go where it surely should have gone. The music clearly tells us where it is going. Importantly it is a piece of radical sexual politics where the effect of the Dionysian figure of the Shepherd on the lives and experiences of Roxana and Roger is transcendental and allows both of them, particularly Roger, to discover a new part of themselves – perhaps the real part. The production’s failure to do or acknowledge this was almost painfully apparent in the final moments when, having been reborn, Roger embraces his new self and, implicitly and explicitly, the boy/young man who accompanies the Shepherding. Here, the King merely rather nervously placed his hand on the shepherd’s shoulder – and curtain. Feeble and not at all true to the drama.
Nevertheless, in spite of this, good to have seen on stage.