BERLIN / RADIALSYSTEM: PETITE MESSE SOLONNELLE

"Did you see the Pope, Benedict? Yeah. Did the Pope see you? …“ Radialsystem Berlin in Friedrichshain has brought back the staged translation of Rossini's coming-of-age work "Petite Messe solonnelle" as a co-production of Kunstfest Weimar and "Nico and the Navigators." In the hall of a historic sewage pumping station in Berlin, in the style of the brick Gothic of the Mark Brandenburg, the team around director Nicola Hümpel (stage Oliver Proske, costumes Frauke Ritter) has hoisted a kind of half-pipe onto the otherwise empty stage. In it, a bunch of fidgety city freaks cavort in search of their god, driven, compulsive, chattering nonsense, maneuvering themselves with their adolescent conditionality into the chaos between white roses and money tufts. But what these young people are really capable of and what brings them closer to the real thing is making music. Supported by the excellent pianists David Zobel, Alevtina Sagitullina and Jan Gerdes on the harmonium, we hear a "Petite Messe solonnelle" sung magnificently by all participants. In the case of the exceptional solo soprano Rebecca Gerdes even on an absolute world class level. How this artist in her blue shimmer dress cooed ornaments delicately, set Akuti column-like in the space, experimented with rhythms and words, projected her crystal-clear perfectly in the mask sitting noble instrument in this singing-acting action like light stars in the space, is eventful. But also the Croatian mezzo-soprano Kora Pavelić, the Serbian-born tenor Miloš Bulajić and the Belarusian baritone Nikolay Borchev are convincing not only vocally in this delicious farce about the ambivalence of human feelings. They all survey the plump life for a possible approach to faith, doubt along with tongue-in-cheek humorous irony. Rossini schau oba! They understood your grandiose mass between truthfulness and tastefulness, lucid spirituality and pompous opera tone. Together with a type-strong small choir, the performers Yui Kawaguchi, Martin Clausen, Charles Adrian Gillot and Patric Schott follow the path of the music deep into their souls. Sometimes heaven and hell, sometimes guilt and a guilty conscience, they pantomime with a sophisticated canon of movements the stylistic diversity of the church music premiered in 1864 in the private chapel of the Parisian nobleman Comte Michel-Frédéric Pillet-Will. However, there is too much speaking in the production. The English-speaking guru, dressed in a monkish brown robe and orange sunglasses, wants to give the snooty truth-seeker in the cream-colored suit and turtleneck some "clever" advice, but fails grandly in the most poetic scene of the play. There the two young people release curved steps from a sitting pyramid and perform swinging acrobatics. Here the student proves to be the master. The music under the knowing direction of the conductor Nicholas Jenkins, who is also wandering around the stage, is so strong and weighty (and surpasses in effect all CD recordings I know) that the scenic confusion often provokes laughter, but at times in the purely dialogic passages does not go beyond well-intentioned slapstick. The viewer does not even need to try to arrange the hippy hustle and bustle on stage in logical chains of associations. It does its job, but ultimately neglects the spiritual side, the delicately lyrical-poetic. I often wondered what theatrical images Ariane Mnouchkine would have distilled from Rossini's solidly life-affirming yet angelic music. Nevertheless, overall it turned out to be a stimulating, entertaining typical Berlin evening. In any case, the old philosophical principle "Prima la musica e poi le parole" was not undermined by this production. Long live the maestro of comic opera, gourmet, early retiree, thisFarceur and prankster in all alleys Rossini!

<< Back to press overview