Michael Boder / Rezensionen

The music begins with thunderous bass drum rolls from batteries of percussion in the boxes adjacent to the pit, but soon settles into an unbroken, gradually flowing and changing orchestral texture. Ligeti’s music of the early 60s is a clear ancestor, and when combined with the stark white visual images and low-angled lighting, Kubrick’s 2001 often comes to mind, especially when the monolithic door projects its long shadow across the stage. But, unlike Ligeti, Haas doesn’t work in continuous chromatic clusters, his textures are more open: octaves, tritones, even tonal triads. But most sounds grow from silence and swell in intensity before returning, subsumed by the next wave. Offstage choral effects are added into the mix, and Haas integrates the vocal timbre into the orchestral textures while deftly negotiating the more semantic and emotive dimension that voices always bring. Excellent musical performances throughout, with conductor Michael Broder, here making his house debut, bringing out all the textures and colours in a reading of impressive clarity and focus. A uniformly fine cast too, all of whom master the complex harmonic relationships – often very close harmonies or outright dissonances – between their simultaneous lines. Staging can’t match the scale of the score: but for the huge orchestra, this feels like a chamber opera. That imbalance aside, the results are impressive, the music always engaging, and the staging fulfilling all of its dramatic aims, however modest.