Der Zwerg show. Here’s the program from 2019 directed by Tobias Kratzer at the Deutsche Oper Berlin:
Short curtain-raiser. Arnold Schoenberg’s Begleitungsmusik zu Einer Lichtspielscene (Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene) for orchestra with pianists Adelle Eslinger-Runnicles and Evgeny Nikiforov.
Der Zwerg (The Dwarf) opera by Alexander von Zemlinsky to a libretto by Georg C. Klaren. Stars Elena Tsallagova (Donna Clara), Emily Magee (Ghita), David Butt Philip (Der Zwerg Singer), Mick Morris Mehnert (Der Zwerg Actor), Philipp Jekal (Don Estoban), Flurina Stucki (Maid 1), Amber Faquelle (Maid 2), Maiju Vaahtoluoto (Maid 3), So Young Park (1st Companion), and Kristina Häger (2nd Companion). Set and costume design by Rainer Sellmaier; lighting design by Stefan Woinke. Sung in German.
Donald Runnicles conducts the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin and the Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (Chorus Master Jeremy Bines). Directed for TV by Götz Filenius. Released 2020, disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio sound. Grade: NA
Der Zwerg is a 1-Act opera. The curtain-raiser beefs up the total timing on the disc to 95 minutes—still not a generous program for a Blu-ray disc. Der Zwerg would make more sense as one of 2 or 3 short operas on a double or triple bill.
According to Eric Myers, writing in the October 2020 Opera News at pages 42-43, director Kratzer staged a pantomine to Schoenberg’s music depicting the end of a relationship between Zemlinsky (the composer of Der Zwerg) and one Alma Schindler, who later became Alma Mahler, and later Alma Gropius, and still later Alma Werfel. The suggestion is that Alma, in addition to being famous for her many marriages to famous men, is now immortal as the personification of the selfish Infanta in Zemlinsky’s Der Zwerg, who receives a dwarf as a gift. H’m: getting this paragraph under control might be almost as stressful as listening to 15 minutes of Schoenberg.
Although Myers considers the libretto of the Zwerg to be pitifully thin, he states that the artistic team and “fine cast of singing actors” do everything possible to make the production “vivid.” The dwarf is played “poignantly” by both tenor David Butt Philip and actor Mick Morris Mehnert, a little person. Finally, the booklet has an interview with director Kratzer that Myers deems well worth reading.
This was also reviewed by Mike Ashman in the September 2020 Gramophone (pages 82-83). Ashman notes this production follows a fad current in German opera now to “set everything in modern concert dress in a featureless white room.” He goes on to praise a “tightly rehearsed” performance with excellent recording of sight and sound.
The double bill Der Zwerg and Der Zerbrochene Krug from the Los Angeles Opera will probably be a better value for most than subject title with just one opera.
Here’s a trailer from Naxos:
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