What a strange form of theater opera is is perhaps best illustrated by what Richard Strauss called the “contemplative ensemble” in a letter to Hugo von Hofmannsthal: when “at the moment when perhaps a dramatic bombshell has just burst, the action stands still and everything is lost in contemplation”.
Suddenly the dramatic time is overridden by the musical one, in which those present express their innermost feelings in song, unconcerned about ear witnesses or the pressure to act.
What is often laughed at as a lack of realism is another dramatic truth: that of the spirit of the music.
Gioachino Rossini's opera "Bianca e Falliero" knows some such ensembles.
In the finale of the first act, for example, a “dramatic bombshell” bursts: the Venetian patrician's daughter Bianca refuses the marriage contract with Capellio;
then, to the surprise of her father Contareno, her true love storms out of hiding: young Falliero.
The light turns blood red, all four freeze on the stage of the Frankfurt Opera in a tableau vivant.
And in a moment seemingly stretched out into infinity, as Rossini's contemporary Wilhelm Heinse once put it, "all the inner feelings of the highly passionate person are audibly conjured up into the air".
While the audience holds its breath: Theo Lebow, for example, begins his “Importuno!
In agony,"
The director Tilmann Köhler trusts the music completely, the four suffering and passionate people seem to move in slow motion, as if in shock, the mass of the choir, which usually hangs its cloak to the wind, is speechless, and behind it appears as a discreet projection the lips of the actress who plays Bianca, which are eerily and yet sensually disfigured with a bright red lipstick like a ghost bride – a make-up video of a completely different kind. At the end of the ensemble, the four return to the posture of the beginning – then the paternal violence breaks out again .
These few minutes would suffice to convey an impression of the musico-dramatic power of this production, with which the Frankfurt Opera has added a climax to its intensive efforts for Rossini.
It is not an easily consumable “bel canto opera”, but a touching, frightening family drama that the actors and directors have developed together, in which each of the numerous coloraturas does not come from the usual throat, but from the exuberant affect.
This applies to Lebow, who always acts nervously and masters the absurd challenges of his tenor role with ease.
The bass Kihwan Sim considers it a noble and compassionate Capellio, who is certainly mindful of his own advantage and crackles magnificently in his coloraturas.