A Camp in Silesia in the Bonn Opera, the 15th of May, 2022

My last opera on this trip to Germany was a real rarity in the Bonn Opera: Giacomo Meyerbeer’s German language opera “A Camp in Silesia” (Ein Feldlager in Schlesien). The first night of this original opera was in 1844, but Meyerbeer also did a later version of it with a different libretto in 1847 and that opera is called Vielka. In addition to that, he used some of the opera’s music in his opera “North Star” (L’étoile du Nord), which got its first night in 1854 and was, by the way, shown in the Helsinki Music Centre in 2017.

This opera takes place during the reign of Frederick II and the Seven-year war. King Frederick runs from the Hungarian soldiers, but the flute player Conrad, a retired soldier Saldorf, his daughter Therese and his adopted daughter Vielka (Conrad’s fiancée) save him. Conrad and the king switch places and the Hungarians imprison Conrad when they think he is the king. Later Saldorf is thought to be a traitor, but Frederick reveals the truth and after that Saldorf is praised as a hero. When Conrad (now freed) is asked by the king, what he wishes as a reward, he asks amnesty for Saldorf’s son, who is also Therese’s fiancé. Since the king had anyway intended to free Saldorf’s son, he also grants Conrad a position in the royal orchestra, and everybody lives happily ever after.

“A Camp in Silesia” is perhaps not Meyerbeer’s best opera, but it has its moments. The director Jakob Peters-Messer had made an interesting solution to build a second stage in the middle of the audience for the second act, which meant that some of the parterre seats were moved to the main stage for the second act. I had the pleasure to sit next to the temporary second stage, so I really cannot claim that I didn’t hear the choir properly! The director actually moved the performers a lot all over the theatre during the second act and since some of the singers or musicians were almost all the time behind some group of spectators, the video feed of the performers was shown on big screen to two directions. The minus of the two stages was that even though the conductor was shown in several monitors, some of the musicians and singers did not see the conductor and therefore they weren’t in sync all the time.

My favourites of the singers were this time the bass Tobias Schabel, who sang the role of Saldorf and the soprano Barbara Senator, who sang the role of Therese. And by the way, the role of Conrad was sung by the Finnish tenor Jussi Myllys!