It was a strange match: Richard Strauss's hugest, most difficult opera - with one of the largest orchestras in all opera and five insanely demanding lead roles - given in a provincial 830-seat house (approximately one orchestral player for every seven audience members). The result? An evening of miracles and revelations.
The conductor Dietfried Bernet achieved something I have never heard in 33 years' experience with this opera: the singers were never overwhelmed. Not once.
Bernet maintained strong dramatic tension without sacrificing the work's lyrical moments. The score was performed uncut (not even the Vienna State Opera does this), with bridges erected over the sides of the pit to accommodate the huge percussion battery. The orchestra outdid itself.
The opera was cast with five miracles, each making a role debut and not one showing any fear of Strauss's superhuman demands (Clarry Bartha, a big-voiced, lusty Dyer's Wife, learnt her role in less than four weeks). For the first time, I heard and understood every word.
The role of the Empress is largely about top notes (starting with a high D in the first minute of the role) and Susanna von der Burg has them to burn. Voluptuous in voice and figure, von der Burg has a slight vibrato that serves only to make to make her secure, crystalline high notes even more exciting.
Joachim Seipp made a sweet-voiced, sensitive Barak, luxuriant in his phrasing. Robert Künzli's velvety tenor sailed effortlessly and heroically over the Emperor's treacherous monologues.
Janina Baechle, a true contralto with a dramatic soprano's high notes, virtually combusted as the evil Nurse. I have never heard the role sung so magnificently: secure, blazing, and exactly as Strauss wrote it.
The director, former mezzo-soprano Brigitte Fassbaender, found simple moments of great poignancy and unexpected humour, proving that you do not need technical mumbo-jumbo with such committed, gifted artists.
When Barak stood before his selfish, uninterested wife and stripped to his boxer shorts, an ordinary man hoping to start a family, his vulnerability cut straight to the heart of human nature.
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