Successful opera can be so uncomplicated. All that is needed is the director's trust in his audience and their ability to transfer independently. In bark-brown doublets, the male actors step onto the stage of the newly renovated palace theater in the New Palais in Sanssouci, while the women in wide, meadow-green dresses. They are harmoniously embedded in the colors of the scenery and the prospectus (equipment: Johannes Ritter). A forest can be seen here, which opens into a lovely, Central German-looking landscape: the course of the river, castles and mountains in the background. The fact that the sky of the stage prospect turns red in the third part of this “Pastorelle en musique” by Georg Philipp Telemann is the only change in the set design during the two-hour season.
It doesn't get boring because director Nils Niemann unfolds a gently moving game against a still background.
The repertoire of facial and gestural vocabulary is so differentiated that the smallest deviations from the usual, such as a sloping position of the head, sideways twisting of the eyeballs, a nuance in the way of walking or moving the arms, the events on the stage into one be able to steer a completely new direction.
All of this happens lightly, elegantly and gracefully.
They are aesthetic caresses for the viewer.
Rediscovered only a few years ago
Right at the beginning, after the festive overture, which looks like a concerto, all performers appear on stage as a choir and invite the audience to participate spiritually with gestures of smiling commitment. Pedagogical hints are those that do not fail to have an effect: The themes of the piece, which Telemann probably wrote for a wedding during his time as city music director in Frankfurt am Main and which was only rediscovered at the beginning of the 2000s, emerge as if by themselves Kiev outsourced archive of the Berlin Sing-Akademie.
It is about people who do not yet know anything about the destruction of nature that threatens their existence and who have not yet forgotten how to listen; it is about love, the course of which strong women determine here. "Freedom should be the motto", Caliste (Lydia Teuscher) sings right at the beginning of the piece, accompanied by spirited coloratura, and thus sets the contrast between freedom and form that drives the action of this shepherd's game. The form stands for the formality of the staging with its gestures from historical practice and with the concentrated body tension of the actors. If such a form is in danger, there is a hard fight to regain it: "I can't force myself," sings Damon, who is initially rejected by Caliste. "You have to take your heart",replies his friend Amyntas in an appeal to life-sustaining elasticity. The ultimate loss of form here means nothing other than death. Meanwhile, freedom and form bring Dorothee Oberlinger and her “Ensemble 1700” to a successful balance.
Dorothee Oberlinger as a conductor
This ensemble plays with agility and quick reactions and is able to stage subtle color changes under the direction of its conductor.
Nothing sounds dogmatic here, in the sense of a zealous historical performance practice, but it enlivens and inspires almost everything.
The nonchalant French tone that Telemann picks up time and again (a model by Molière was incorporated into the piece), Oberlinger and her ensemble take for granted and just as effortlessly do justice to the far-reaching melodies that Telemann received from Italy .
There are strong singers on the stage: the soprano Lydia Teuscher as Caliste between snappy temperament and mature inwardness, Marie Lys 'Iris has inner glow, the Amyntas of the countertenor Alois Mühlbacher shimmering brilliance, Florian Götz' Damon vulnerable power, Virgil Hartinger sings the comical figure of Knirfix with an engaging soft tenor.
At the Potsdam Music Festival, Telemann's opera is one of the highlights this year. A slightly reduced version of the program that the artistic director Dorothee Oberlinger had actually put together for the past year under the name “Flower with Power” is being presented there. However, the imponderables of the pandemic did not discourage them. The events are broadcast on the Internet as a free live stream, meals can be ordered from a local caterer and delivered to your home, and in a virtual artist's pub, personal exchange between the audience and the artists is even possible after the concert. The palace theater, which was renovated for 2.8 million euros, has room for eighty visitors under pandemic conditions.who step into the evening air of Prussian Arcadia after the shepherd's play: The moon is in the sky, the crickets are chirping, the Sanssouci Park exhales the heat of the summer day. It is such connections between art and place that make the Potsdam Music Festival so special, even in the third year of Oberlinger's directorship.