Admeto

Handel Admeto opera to libretto by Nicola Haym or Paolo Antonio Rolli. Directed 2009 by Doris Dörrie as part of  the Internationale Handel-Festspiele at the Deutsches Theatre, Göttingen. Stars Tim Mead, Marie Arnet, William Berger, Andrew Radley, David Bates, Kirsten Blaise, and Wolf Matthias Friedrich. Nicholas McGegan conducts the Göttingen Festival Orchestra. Set and costume design by Bernd Lepel; lighting by Linus Fellbom; video direction by Agnes Méth; choreography by Tadashi Endo. Released in 2010, this disc has 5.1 dts-HD Master Audio surround sound. Grade: F

First let me praise several good things about the Göttingen Admeto. There are no videos of this obscure Handel opera other than subject title and the Halle Handel Festival version, both published in HDVD. Having viewed both of these titles several times, I'll testify that this opera is worthy of production today. If none of the major opera houses will stage it, we should be grateful to the folks at the festivals and smaller houses who will give it a spin. The folks at Göttingen came up with a lot of fantastic ideas to present in their tiny house. The audience seemed to love it, and it's possible that the production was enjoyable live, even if it wilts before HDVD cameras and high-fidelity microphones. Also, the FestspielOchester Göttingen sounded quite good for such a small number of musicians. Now to why this gets the "F."

Although the singing was good enough to be tolerated live by Handel fanatics, no singer in this show came up with a performance that most people would want to hear repeatedly. Tim Mead was acceptable as Trasimede in the Halle Handel Festival performance, but he doesn't have the horsepower to sing Admeto, the King. The two female leads were nice enough to look at, but their singing is marred by stumbling, harshness, and yelping. William Berger might be acceptable as Ercole, but his costume (more below) is a distraction that probably no singer could overcome. David Bates as Trasimede is pathetic (see chapter 32 for my candidate for the worst aria ever presented on HDVD). Based on the singing, I think a grade of D would be the outcome. It follows then that the further downgrade to "F" must come from design and direction.

The director decided to use Japanese design themes including: austere sets, Japanese inspired costumes from the Edo period, and samurai, sumo, and Butoh characters. Now you know that the samurai were medieval warriors and the sumo are the enormously fat Japanese wrestlers. But what the heck is Butoh?  Wikipedia which has pretty good coverage on it, I think. Butoh has nothing to do with the Edo period of Japanese history. It's a modern performance art form. It typically features characters who appear naked (except for genital patches) and who, after months of training and starvation, enact shocking scenes like hanging upside down in public spaces before tumbling painfully down flights of stone steps and grovelling in groups on sidewalks to the astonishment of innocent bystanders. Butoh can take as many forms as there are people to dream it up. But it's always done to make some point of social criticism and is always dead serious if not actually dangerous to perform. Now here's my point. When you bring Butoh into a production, I believe you shut the door on anything funny. By using Butoh preformers, Doris Dörrie committed herself, I think, to a serious Admeto that would have to be executed in a manner that would honor the Japanese code of elegant design in all things, exquisite fit and finish, and total artistic perfection.

This was a task hopelessly beyond the capabilities of the Göttingen festival budget. Consider the wigs. Many of the singers wear Japanese-style wigs. They all appear to be made of plastic filaments rather than some kind of hair. Many of the wigs are hugely lumpy. All are crudely put together and contrast sharply with the skin of the performers. This probably didn't look very good live, but it is startlingly shabby in HDVD. The make-up is just as bad. I get the impression that each signer got a little kit with printed instructions on how to make up himself. Now everyone knows that kimonos and samurai armour are among the most beautiful garments ever made. So the designers here didn't try to do anything authentic. The costumes were "inspired" by the real thing. Well even that goal is pretty daunting, and what the costume shop came up with looks sadly disheveled and trashly. The warrior gear given to Trasimede could only have been originally designed for comic effect. But the greatest design sin of all would have to be the Hercules sumo "fat suit." Now a lot of opera singers are too fat, but none of them are a big as a sumo wrestler. So they outfitted Wiliam Berger with a truly astonishing padded garment complete with painted nipples and stiched seams to simulate pectural musculature.

The Hercules fat suit is the star of Chapter 51, where 4 nude girls (with G-strings) laciviously climb all over Herc in an attemt to distact him from his heroic efforts. Well, poor William Berger in reality can't feel any of this through his fat suit. So it wasn't too hard for him to enact his rejection of temptation and unceremoniosly toss the girls aside to land on their bottoms in a beautiful star patten as Herc stalks off stage. Now if this production was a camp sendup of Classical mythology, this might be a funny scene. But in the present context, it's just strange.

I must admit that I could be wrong in my premise that Butoh is inconsistent with comedy or parody. Handel intended for Queen Alceste to be serious and Princess Antigona to be a lighter character. Perhaps Butoh as practiced today or as invented by Doris Dörrie can embrace tragicomedy. Perhaps the use of Butoh can co-exist with Western slovenliness and trashy execution. Perhaps chapter 51 with the fat suit and the girls is brilliant comedy. Then I would maybe have to revise my "F" grade. But considering the weak singing and general cheapness of the design, I don't see how the grade could be higher than a "D-." So for now, I'll stick with my "F."

Finally, the following thought crossed my mind: Even though the Göttingen Admeto deserves an F on this website, perhaps its badness will make it one day into a cult classic. Maybe HDVD fans will buy this title to show in their home theaters just as movie fans now buy the worst films ever made like Glen or Glenda or Plan 9 from Outer Space. And there's also the precedent of the Rocky Horrow Picture Show. Maybe later this Admeto will be shown in movie theaters where guys in fat suits will step into aisles and girls will strip to G-strings to slather them with temptations.