Krzysztof Penderecki has the ability to build fascinating worlds in his operas. His third work for the stage, The Black Mask, transports the audience into the future, to a Lower Silesian town of Bolkenhain (now: Bolków).
The year is 1662 and although it has been more than a decade since the end of the Thirty Years’ War, times are still troubled. The events take place during a snowy winter in the midst of Carnival festivities that allow the characters to forget about the lurking dangers, in particular the new onset of plague in the town. We find ourselves in the house of the mayor of Bolkenhain, although the central character in the opera is his wife. The woman has a dark secret which is revealed during a party given by the couple to representatives of different denominations, social classes and nationalities. The function is also attended by unwelcome guests, one of which – a man in a black mask – causes the most unease. Who is the mysterious stranger? An erstwhile oppressor returning to harass the female lead? A Carnival partygoer in fancy dress? A figment of imagination? A symbol of the Black Death looming round the corner? The celebration turns into a trap that almost no-one will escape with their lives.
The libretto is based on a one-act play by Silesian-born German Nobel laureate, Gerhart Hauptmann. Written in 1928, the piece went almost unnoticed, but it caught the fancy of Penderecki, when he came across it, looking for material for a new opera commissioned by the Salzburg Festival. The composer was fascinated by the unity of place and action in Hauptmann’s play, which reflects the whole array of attitudes towards the world observed in humans. Working with Harry Kupfer, the director of the opera’s first production, Penderecki kept the text mostly intact: he simply introduced some necessary cuts and changed the story’s ending. The play’s finale is rather open-ended, while the opera paints a claustrophobic vision of a world heading towards imminent destruction.
Penderecki uses expressionist musical idiom which perfectly conveys the gloomy atmosphere of the tragic plot. It is clear from the first bars of the score that the peace of the mayor’s house is illusory. The composer clearly defines the characters, even though the opera relies mostly on chorus scenes, while employing an elaborate orchestral apparatus. Because of the condensed action, combination of extreme emotional states, and stark contrasts, The Black Mask has been compared to Richard Stauss’s early 20th century masterpieces: Salome and Elektra. Despite these similarities, Penderecki’s opera is a thoroughly original work: a 100-minute long, potentially dizzy-making, baroque Dance of Death.
While Hauptmann’s play was set within the broader context of religious wars of the modern period, the director of this production, David Pountney, proves that the piece is not just an exegesis of long gone past events but reflection of present-day social concerns. Isn’t the world we have created built on fragile foundations, too?
