LA Opera's 2008 production of Zemlinsky's "The Dwarf" -- Mary Dunleavy as the Infanta greets the Dwarf (Rodrick Dixon). |
Most of my readers know how my work is studded with perverse
subject matter. A year ago, I completed a long project on a peculiar obsession
of mine – people with dwarfism and their roles in high and low culture throughout
history (“Midget Wrestling: A Pilgrimage” can be linked to here).
I was finally able to conclude that my shameless interest
was motivated in part by my intense identification with the atypical,
stigmatized outsider, although I am pretty sure I seem normal, to the level of
unremarkability, to the casual observer. Whether there is truth in this or only
pathology I will leave to others to figure out, if they care to. What is
important are the many insights and personal understanding I felt I gained by
exploring the topic – a story no one would buy, but was essential for me to finish.
One of the key works I cited in “Midget Wrestling” was one I
had never had the chance to experience – the 1922 one-act opera by Austrian
composer Alexander (von) Zemlinsky, “Der Zwerg (The Dwarf).” Finally, thanks to
a number of artistic projects and concerns, I have heard and seen it. For me,
it’s key not only in relation to my previous subject, but in and of itself as a
great but generally unrecognized piece of music.
The recording in question is a DVD issued by ArkivMusic,
released in October of 2010. It is the second half of a two-opera presentation
by James Conlon and the Los Angeles Opera, part of Conlon’s lauded by recently
discontinued “Recovered Voices” series of stagings, highlighting works by
Jewish, modernist, or even broad-mindedly tolerant composers that were
condemned and destroyed by the Nazis – including Krenek, Goldschmidt, Mahler,
Korngold, Eisler and Hindemith.
The performance of Victor Ullman’s comic one-act “The Broken
Jug” precedes “Der Zwerg,” which is fully staged and lovingly filmed.
Conlon’s incredible conducting skill and Darko Tresnjak’s
spot-on direction bring this unjustly neglected and hard-to-find work to light.
It’s based on Oscar Wilde’s short story, “The Birthday of the Infanta,” In it,
a Spanish princess (of the era captured, complete with two court dwarves, Maria
Barbola and Nicolas Pertusato, by Velazquez in his masterful 1656 painting “Las
Meninas”) celebrates her 18th birthday. Among the “presents” she is
given is a gift from the Sultan, a dwarf who has never seen his reflection and
thinks himself to be a normal-looking man.
Velasquez's "Las Meninas." |
The laughter his figure provokes he thinks issues from the
peace and charm he radiates. When the Infanta’s chamberlain threatens to whip
him for not singing, he in turn offers to kill his would-be oppressor. When he
does sing, it inspires the princess to declare her love for him, to dance with
him first at the court ball, and give him a white rose from her garden.
Although she is insincere and shallow, these shows of favor cause him to fall for
her completely, declaring his love recklessly and demanding a kiss.
The Princess first attempts to order her servant Ghita to
tell the Dwarf the truth about his appearance, but out of compassion she
cannot. She asks him if he has ever seen himself. He admits that an arch-enemy,
a grotesque yet impotent ghost, taunts him sometimes from polished marble,
shining steel and watery surfaces, but that it is nothing. Stay away from the
throne, she warns, and leaves.
The Dwarf doesn’t heed this advice. As mirrors around the
throne room begin to enclose and surround him, he realizes that he is a monster,
an abomination. The Princess returns. He begs her to tell him that she loves
him, and that what he has realized is a lie. She, heedless of his intense
agony, refuses and leaves. He collapses, and in the arms of Ghita, dies, asking
for his white rose.
The ideas contained in “The Dwarf” sum up all the concerns
that art and artists have given to the idea of the different and society, and
its role within that society. The Dwarf has musical talent (the role here, sung
admirably by Rodrick Dixon, is a taxing heldentenor part – ironically heroic),
which, along with his lack of awareness, gives him value to those who “keep”
him.
As he does not know his “place,” thinking and behaving as
any well-adjusted individual would, the contrast between the court’s scorn and
his vain dreams of love is harsh, heart-breaking. Once his “true” nature is
revealed – that is, once he adopts and internalizes the consensual judgment of
his worth and status, he self-destructs.
Zemlinsky’s treatment is oddly biographical. He took over
and finished the libretto begun by Georg Klaren, and in many ways it reflects
his relationship with the beautiful and mercurial Alma Schindler, his
composition student who left him after only a few years partly due to her
friends’ objection to Zemlinsky’s . . . ugliness. (She went on to marry and/or
have affairs with numerous creative giants, including Mahler, Walter Gropius,
and Franz Werfel.)
Zemlinsky’s intense identification with the Dwarf
notwithstanding, the opera is powerfully compact, running at nearly 60 minutes
and unfolding in a series of beautifully set scenes.
Musically, the work is a revelation. It’s popularly thought
that Wagner, Mahler and the other late Romantics represented a dead-end in
melodic composition that could only be supplanted by the extreme,
audience-unfriendly experiments of twelve-tone, serialism, aleotorism, and
countless other harsh, dissonant, atonal, theory-based isms of 20th
century music (at least until the ebb of minimalism washed up Adams, Larsen, Part
and others).
Zemlinsky, as did a few other individualists such as
Britten, kept to a complex, densely layered sound that didn’t fear dissonance,
but didn’t court it for its own sake, either. In “The Dwarf,” his lush style
works hand-in-hand with the subject matter, expressive, dynamic and profoundly
beautiful.
This production reminds that the acid test for any opera performance, live or recorded, is the quickening feeling of snap and flexibility in the music. Zemlinsky has it in spades, and Conlon's frequent recordings and stagings of his work certainly lend the proceedings a compassionate musical director who has a unique ability to illustrate this composer's intentions. (If that compelling sensibility isn't present, the show usually blows. Verdi was the best at muscling the audience through some stretches of bad libretto.) Zemlinsky knows how to move briskly, without seeming to rush. The Dwarf's luxurious, legato fantasy about holding the Princess in the garden contains wonderful depths of emotion.
This production reminds that the acid test for any opera performance, live or recorded, is the quickening feeling of snap and flexibility in the music. Zemlinsky has it in spades, and Conlon's frequent recordings and stagings of his work certainly lend the proceedings a compassionate musical director who has a unique ability to illustrate this composer's intentions. (If that compelling sensibility isn't present, the show usually blows. Verdi was the best at muscling the audience through some stretches of bad libretto.) Zemlinsky knows how to move briskly, without seeming to rush. The Dwarf's luxurious, legato fantasy about holding the Princess in the garden contains wonderful depths of emotion.
As Zemlinsky’s protagonist is a three-dimensional, complex
character, his demise is keenly communicated. He is a hero who is destroyed
only because he can’t see beyond the scornful reflections shoved in his face by
a society that can’t conceive of a normal soul in an abnormal body.