After watching the first part of this I was not having madly positive thoughts; it seemed to me that the wildly extravagant and OTT production was both obscuring the music and was there as the musical and dramatic quality was not up to much and so the producer was trying to compensate for this with everything seemingly being performed at Level 9 on a 1 to 10 scale. Everyone seemed to be trying far too hard to show WHAT A FANTASTIC TIME THEY WERE HAVING.
However, watching the second part I felt much more warm towards it and actually thoroughly enjoyed the work, the production and the performance. There are some lovely numbers in it, particularly the duets – Silvius and Cleopatra and Silvius and Charmian in Act 1 – although there were some numbers which did just slow down the plot advancement, lovely though the music was – I think in particular of Cleopatra in her bath of milk – wittily represented by white balls. This was characteristic of the whole production which could best be described as MGM musicals meet Carry On…with more than a few nods to G & S – although this as much in the music as the production. The costumes were wildly crazy and OTT and made maximum impact as the set was essentially backdrops of geometric black and white stripes which allowed the mad multi-age/multi-coloured costumes to have their full impact. Much, extravagant use was made of singers in and around the audience at the start of the two sections and it must have been enormous fun to actually be there.
Performances were excellent – Cleopatra (apparently a well-known German actress who can also sing well) was outstanding as she needed to be delivering the witty dialogue (not all of which was translated in the English subtitles I think) and being ‘the serpent of the Nile’ in the best way possible. Her interactions with fellow singers were also marvelous, particularly the preening, hair-flipping Silvius.
So, after all, a thoroughly enjoyable romp that brought back to life a neglected work if not masterpiece. Seems this is something of an annual feature at Komische oper.
CLEOPATRA: Dagmar Manzel
PAMPYLOS: Stefan Sevenich
SILVIUS: Dominik Köninger
BELADONIS: Johannes Dunz
MARCUS ANTONIUS / KOPHRA: Peter Renz
CHARMIAN: Talya Lieberman
Conductor: Adam Benzwi