"...because power corrupts"
Interview |
Director Kasper Holten celebrated his debut at the Vienna State Opera with the new production of Idomeneo in 2014. His staging focuses on the trauma caused by the Trojan War and the burden of the events he experienced. This interview was conducted during the premiere - the full version can be found in the production program.
As soon as you accept an engagement, does a basic staging idea for the work in question immediately pop into your head?
That is very different. Sometimes a work inspires me directly, so that an idea literally jumps out at me. Other operas take a long time to work through; with Die Frau ohne Schatten, for example, I sat with my set designer and the dramaturge for two years and only gradually found my way.
What was it like with Idomeneo?
It was clear from the start how great the material was. First of all, of course, the music, in which you can already experience the mature Mozart. Then the work offers many points of reference: the father-son relationship, the war and above all its consequences, the Romeo and Juliet story and the relationship between winners and losers.
But from a dramaturgical point of view, Idomeneo is not an easy work. And the formal language of opera seria must be particularly challenging for the director?
Idomeneo is not a psychological-realistic piece like Le nozze di Figaro. The opera seria form means that - to put it bluntly - the main events take place very quickly backstage and the protagonists then sing about their feelings. This harbors the danger of static and, in particular, the temptation for the audience to sit back and enjoy the music without thinking about the specific action on stage and - above all - about what the music is saying about relationships, pain and loss. If you as a director think: "Oh God, here comes a seven-minute aria - what am I going to do?", and you also send two dancing clowns on stage to make us forget that we are singing, then that is wrong and stupid, because it shows that you don't trust the music. But we're here for the music! So as a director you have to find ways to show what the text means, what the music says, what the drama is about.
So it's about bringing the work to life.
Yes, what is Idomeneo about? It's about people who come home after a long, terrible war with many consequences - the Trojan War, which we still talk about today - but who still carry the burden of the events with them. To a certain extent, they all have baggage that they cannot shed. Ilia, for example, has lost her country, she has seen her people and her family murdered. Or Elettra, whose tragic story we also know from other operas. And Idomeneo himself, who already sings in his first aria: "I am haunted by shadows." He carries many murders with him, is infected by death. This is exactly what we want to bring to the stage: how everyone struggles and strives to get rid of what has been, to find a new beginning. Only one person carries no burden, that is Idamante. And that's why everyone needs him so much.
Between all these stage heroes and anti-heroes, is there one in particular close to your heart? Do you see a sympathetic character?
As a director, I'm not a fan of putting labels on characters. It's easy to say: this one is a villain, that one is a hero. Life isn't quite that simple. So for me, there is no such thing as a sympathetic character. For example, people keep saying that Elettra is "evil". But in my opinion, that's not true. I believe that she is a woman who has been through a lot and now hopes to start a new life with Idamante, whom she is supposed to marry. When she sees him flirting with Ilia, she senses that she is also losing this hope. Idomeneo, on the other hand, does a lot of evil, but he is not evil in himself. He comes out of the war as a corrupted king and cannot let go of the power he has held for so long. He does not understand that it is time for him to step down. This is a problem that many powerful people have, because power corrupts.