Erlkönig - Inspirations
So ... I know I have long promised to post some more about Erlkönig ... so, I'll start with the germ of the fic, in my head.
The Goethe poem and Schubert song I hope I referenced clearly enough in the author's notes. But I had known those for many years. What then, was the catalyst?
I'll tell you what:
Matthias Rexroth, countertenor, in Britten's setting of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Darmstadt, 2002.
In other words ...
Yep - that sure does look like the good old, GK, doesn't it? But it's not. As noted, it's Matthias Rexroth, performing in Britten's operatic version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The costume designer had better have contacted the folks at Henson, Ltd. (or whomever owns the "Labyrinth" copyright), because that's a rip-off if I've ever seen one. As are all of these:
At least Herr Rexroth looks as though he's having a blast!
Good times, my man. But please, next time, wax your chest? For me? And ditch the wings; they're lame.
.............
OK. In my initial glee at finding the above photos on the 'net, I realized that people would hardly believe me if I said that I found them this afternoon, when I was trolling with Google Image. But it's the truth - all of the images in this entry were found today. None influenced the writing of Erlkönig - well, technically, one did. The one that is a memory, for me, of the time I saw Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream. Because a certain character from Britten's opera influenced Erlkönig very heavily indeed.
A bit about Britten. Awesome composer, very prolific, given to writing soaring tenor parts for his lifelong companion and muse, Peter Pears. "A Midsummer Night's Dream," premiered in 1960, is unique amongst Britten's operas for *not* having a lead role for Pears. (Thanks, wikipedia!) It also occupies an interesting place in the canon because of the requirement for one of the lead roles. Oberon, the fairy king (King of Shadows, as Puck calls him) is sung by a countertenor.
A bit about countertenors: the very highest male voice - basically, a man singing in the alto range. Often incorrectly called "falsettists", because people think they use falsetto. It's a bit different, and a bit more complicated than that. The countertenor voice occurs when a man "flips" his voice into a higher range, shortening off the vocal cord length used in singing. So, often, a perfectly run-of-the-mill bass or baritone will have a dazzling countertenor. The only thing he will lack, perhaps, is a bunch of operatic roles to sing.
'Cause (face it) people hear a vibrantly *high* voice coming out of a man's mouth, and they freak just a bit. Maybe. :) Handel wrote some coloratura roles for altos - but he used castrati (exactly what it sounds like - and a bit of baggage to increase the freaked-out-ness.) But Handel has made a serious comeback of late, with female altos and male countertenors singing roles such as Julius Caesar (to name but one.) Purcell is also big in countertenor circles.
And this role ... this creation of Britten's ... well ...
Let me explain a bit more about why this role is significant to me - and why it influenced Erlkönig. I heard the Dream performed a few years ago, when I was abroad. The strange, strange string opening and the faerie's march were like nothing I had ever heard; I listened with great attention. And then a faery queen swept onstage, blazing away in a coloratura (Tytania requires a ridiculously outstanding voice) and - wait a second, I thought - there was this guy in a black robe, snarling back at her - in an alto voice? A coloratura alto voice? What the hell?
Yeah, it was a countertenor. And the guy singing that role was so unbelievably awesome that I was hooked. Absolutely hooked, for the rest of the opera.
This isn't the production I saw - instead, it's Michael Chance, singing Oberon, in Strasbourg, 1998. With him is Helene le Corre, as Tytania.
.............
It's the voice - I told myself, mesmerized - the voice ... And the way Britten composed for it. Oberon's part is very chromatic, accompanied by a celeste (a pimped-out xylophone), strings, and harps. The tonal tricks in the part make it difficult to sing; Deller (the gent for whom Britten composed the role) actually did not care for it that much. Britten wed the text to the music so well, though, that the overall effect is spine-tingling. For example, take this text:
.............
Oberon (Act I)
Welcome, wanderer! Hast thou the flower there?
...
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:
A sweet Athenian lady is in love
With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;
But do it when the next thing he espies
May be the lady: thou shalt know the man
By the Athenian garments he hath on.
.........
I broke up the text into its separate musical chunks. Now go - fly to this link. There you will find a dude I knew when I lived out East, who sang this role as well, back when I was an innocent undergrad. (I missed seeing him though; heard it was good.) He has this aria available for your listening pleasure. Click on "I know a bank", and listen!! I'll wait ...
Yeah, it's supposed to sound that high. Don't worry.
Listen especially for the sinister emphasis on hateful, when the main motif comes back beneath the vocal line. Also, for the gorgeously weird chromatic chords.
Anyhoo - this is the point, at the opera, where I realized, shivery and startled, that Oberon was Not a Nice Guy. Yeah, he's got a bone to pick with his queen (he wants one of her little changelings for his own henchman) - but he enchants her into falling in love with a dumbass (literally), and laughs and sneers at her the whole while. All in a beautiful voice. He thwacks Puck about the ears for applying the magic flower to the wrong Athenian youth (in another plotline.)Then he lifts the spell and all's hunky-dory between the King and Queen ... "Now thou and I are new in amity," right?
I guess. If you see him as having a benevolent side. But many reviewers of Britten's Dream pick up on the fact that the countertenor's voice is charged with "other"-ness; that there's a strange, potent eroticism to it that can simultaneously chill and arouse. See Tim Ashley's review of a 2006 production in The Guardian - he lauds Bejun Mehta as Oberon, saying that the singer's "voice [was] unearthly, sensual and hinting throughout at deep depravity beneath the surface beauty ..." Depravity, people. Depravity.
So, Oberon is "other" - that's been done:
To the left is Graham Pushee, as Oberon, from Baz Luhrmann's popular staging for the Australian Opera Company. To the right is a design for a production at Indiana University, drawn by a guy named Higgins.
So, some stage Oberon as completely Faerie "other" - some incorporate dark elements from modernity, like this:
I mean, dude. David Brondel, in the Eastman Opera Theatre's 2003 production, workin' the ginormous flower. Top-hat, kilt - he looks like Tim Burton chewed him up and spit him out. And speaking of that tasty simile ... what is Puck doing, lying there so submissively? Oh, wait ...
Here's Martin Oro, playing Oberon as a bit of a leather-daddy biker. (And yes, Puck is wearing roller skates. Whatevs.) Much is made of Puck's willingness to do Oberon's bidding throughout the opera - and there's that scene in Act II, in which Oberon "comes forward in a rage, dragging Puck" - and then he shakes him around ... yeah, that can be played as comedic, or it can be straight-up S&M. (The one I saw had more shades of the latter, really - nothing outright naughty, but a lot of glowering.)
So, yeah. Here's Michael Chance again ...
See what I mean? *slurps*
The "other"-ness, the eerie sensuality of the voice, and the threatening sexual overtones really made the Oberon I saw stick in my mind. As did the sheer beauty of the production. It wasn't as classically beautiful as the one in 1998, with Chance ...
... isn't that lovely? ... No, the production I saw had rather an austere setting, in fact. But the Oberon I heard was so strangely chilling, so stark and seductive, that the image stayed with me and morphed into the Elven King one day at work, when I was a bit bored and thinking over Goblin Kings and magical things, and all things Schubert and Goethe.
Here's the man - the one I was looking for, when I began the trek through Google - the one that I remembered:
Bernhard Landauer - 2003. Not as much hair as Jareth, certainly - but there - there's the cloak made of night. There's Oberon, who became the Erlkönig, who latched onto the Goblin King and gave that fic its dark heart.
That's all, for now. I hope to post more soon ...
The Goethe poem and Schubert song I hope I referenced clearly enough in the author's notes. But I had known those for many years. What then, was the catalyst?
I'll tell you what:
Matthias Rexroth, countertenor, in Britten's setting of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Darmstadt, 2002.
In other words ...
Yep - that sure does look like the good old, GK, doesn't it? But it's not. As noted, it's Matthias Rexroth, performing in Britten's operatic version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream." The costume designer had better have contacted the folks at Henson, Ltd. (or whomever owns the "Labyrinth" copyright), because that's a rip-off if I've ever seen one. As are all of these:
At least Herr Rexroth looks as though he's having a blast!
Good times, my man. But please, next time, wax your chest? For me? And ditch the wings; they're lame.
.............
OK. In my initial glee at finding the above photos on the 'net, I realized that people would hardly believe me if I said that I found them this afternoon, when I was trolling with Google Image. But it's the truth - all of the images in this entry were found today. None influenced the writing of Erlkönig - well, technically, one did. The one that is a memory, for me, of the time I saw Britten's Midsummer Night's Dream. Because a certain character from Britten's opera influenced Erlkönig very heavily indeed.
A bit about Britten. Awesome composer, very prolific, given to writing soaring tenor parts for his lifelong companion and muse, Peter Pears. "A Midsummer Night's Dream," premiered in 1960, is unique amongst Britten's operas for *not* having a lead role for Pears. (Thanks, wikipedia!) It also occupies an interesting place in the canon because of the requirement for one of the lead roles. Oberon, the fairy king (King of Shadows, as Puck calls him) is sung by a countertenor.
A bit about countertenors: the very highest male voice - basically, a man singing in the alto range. Often incorrectly called "falsettists", because people think they use falsetto. It's a bit different, and a bit more complicated than that. The countertenor voice occurs when a man "flips" his voice into a higher range, shortening off the vocal cord length used in singing. So, often, a perfectly run-of-the-mill bass or baritone will have a dazzling countertenor. The only thing he will lack, perhaps, is a bunch of operatic roles to sing.
'Cause (face it) people hear a vibrantly *high* voice coming out of a man's mouth, and they freak just a bit. Maybe. :) Handel wrote some coloratura roles for altos - but he used castrati (exactly what it sounds like - and a bit of baggage to increase the freaked-out-ness.) But Handel has made a serious comeback of late, with female altos and male countertenors singing roles such as Julius Caesar (to name but one.) Purcell is also big in countertenor circles.
And this role ... this creation of Britten's ... well ...
Let me explain a bit more about why this role is significant to me - and why it influenced Erlkönig. I heard the Dream performed a few years ago, when I was abroad. The strange, strange string opening and the faerie's march were like nothing I had ever heard; I listened with great attention. And then a faery queen swept onstage, blazing away in a coloratura (Tytania requires a ridiculously outstanding voice) and - wait a second, I thought - there was this guy in a black robe, snarling back at her - in an alto voice? A coloratura alto voice? What the hell?
Yeah, it was a countertenor. And the guy singing that role was so unbelievably awesome that I was hooked. Absolutely hooked, for the rest of the opera.
This isn't the production I saw - instead, it's Michael Chance, singing Oberon, in Strasbourg, 1998. With him is Helene le Corre, as Tytania.
.............
It's the voice - I told myself, mesmerized - the voice ... And the way Britten composed for it. Oberon's part is very chromatic, accompanied by a celeste (a pimped-out xylophone), strings, and harps. The tonal tricks in the part make it difficult to sing; Deller (the gent for whom Britten composed the role) actually did not care for it that much. Britten wed the text to the music so well, though, that the overall effect is spine-tingling. For example, take this text:
.............
Oberon (Act I)
Welcome, wanderer! Hast thou the flower there?
...
I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull'd in these flowers with dances and delight;
And there the snake throws her enamell'd skin,
Weed wide enough to wrap a fairy in:
And with the juice of this I'll streak her eyes,
And make her full of hateful fantasies.
Take thou some of it, and seek through this grove:
A sweet Athenian lady is in love
With a disdainful youth: anoint his eyes;
But do it when the next thing he espies
May be the lady: thou shalt know the man
By the Athenian garments he hath on.
.........
I broke up the text into its separate musical chunks. Now go - fly to this link. There you will find a dude I knew when I lived out East, who sang this role as well, back when I was an innocent undergrad. (I missed seeing him though; heard it was good.) He has this aria available for your listening pleasure. Click on "I know a bank", and listen!! I'll wait ...
Yeah, it's supposed to sound that high. Don't worry.
Listen especially for the sinister emphasis on hateful, when the main motif comes back beneath the vocal line. Also, for the gorgeously weird chromatic chords.
Anyhoo - this is the point, at the opera, where I realized, shivery and startled, that Oberon was Not a Nice Guy. Yeah, he's got a bone to pick with his queen (he wants one of her little changelings for his own henchman) - but he enchants her into falling in love with a dumbass (literally), and laughs and sneers at her the whole while. All in a beautiful voice. He thwacks Puck about the ears for applying the magic flower to the wrong Athenian youth (in another plotline.)Then he lifts the spell and all's hunky-dory between the King and Queen ... "Now thou and I are new in amity," right?
I guess. If you see him as having a benevolent side. But many reviewers of Britten's Dream pick up on the fact that the countertenor's voice is charged with "other"-ness; that there's a strange, potent eroticism to it that can simultaneously chill and arouse. See Tim Ashley's review of a 2006 production in The Guardian - he lauds Bejun Mehta as Oberon, saying that the singer's "voice [was] unearthly, sensual and hinting throughout at deep depravity beneath the surface beauty ..." Depravity, people. Depravity.
So, Oberon is "other" - that's been done:
To the left is Graham Pushee, as Oberon, from Baz Luhrmann's popular staging for the Australian Opera Company. To the right is a design for a production at Indiana University, drawn by a guy named Higgins.
So, some stage Oberon as completely Faerie "other" - some incorporate dark elements from modernity, like this:
I mean, dude. David Brondel, in the Eastman Opera Theatre's 2003 production, workin' the ginormous flower. Top-hat, kilt - he looks like Tim Burton chewed him up and spit him out. And speaking of that tasty simile ... what is Puck doing, lying there so submissively? Oh, wait ...
Here's Martin Oro, playing Oberon as a bit of a leather-daddy biker. (And yes, Puck is wearing roller skates. Whatevs.) Much is made of Puck's willingness to do Oberon's bidding throughout the opera - and there's that scene in Act II, in which Oberon "comes forward in a rage, dragging Puck" - and then he shakes him around ... yeah, that can be played as comedic, or it can be straight-up S&M. (The one I saw had more shades of the latter, really - nothing outright naughty, but a lot of glowering.)
So, yeah. Here's Michael Chance again ...
See what I mean? *slurps*
The "other"-ness, the eerie sensuality of the voice, and the threatening sexual overtones really made the Oberon I saw stick in my mind. As did the sheer beauty of the production. It wasn't as classically beautiful as the one in 1998, with Chance ...
... isn't that lovely? ... No, the production I saw had rather an austere setting, in fact. But the Oberon I heard was so strangely chilling, so stark and seductive, that the image stayed with me and morphed into the Elven King one day at work, when I was a bit bored and thinking over Goblin Kings and magical things, and all things Schubert and Goethe.
Here's the man - the one I was looking for, when I began the trek through Google - the one that I remembered:
Bernhard Landauer - 2003. Not as much hair as Jareth, certainly - but there - there's the cloak made of night. There's Oberon, who became the Erlkönig, who latched onto the Goblin King and gave that fic its dark heart.
That's all, for now. I hope to post more soon ...