Quite many
people surely know Fritz Lang’s famous first sound film “M – A City Searches
for a Murderer” from 1931. Moritz Eggert has composed an opera with the same
name and inspired by the film. The opera had recently its first night in the
Komische Oper Berlin.
The story
of the opera is not 100 % the same as in the film, but in the opera also the
people in the city are getting hysterical when children start disappearing. The
police becomes more active and the criminals are being pressured by the
investigations. The murderer is agitated and the hunt to find the murderer
accelerates.
This
production by Barrie Kosky was a bit unusual, but not in a bad way. A big part
of the opera was actually spoken. Almost all the people (police, criminals,
John and Jane Does) on the stage (except the murderer) wore big puppet heads
and were in reality children. The only singer on the stage was the murder and
the rest of the singing came off stage.
In a way
you could say that the opera contained a medley of fragments borrowed from
different sources. The main story from Lang’s film, the libretto had several poems
by Walter Mehring and some children’s songs. And, of course, even in this opera
Edvard Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King” was the sing of the murderer.
As a whole,
the opera was quite nice, if you can use that world about a story where someone
is murdering children. However, I would say that at least I was a bit more
impressed by the story and the actual production than the music itself. The
most memorable pieces of the music where the children’s songs and the Grieg
bit.
The role of
the murderer was sung by Scott Hendricks and I think he did a good job. He
really was a compulsive, childish, distressed soul.
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