This environmental sow is in the thick of it: the Babylonian despot Belshazzar has to believe in George Frideric Handel’s oratorio of the same name – after he doesn’t want to believe in Judaism. At the premiere in the Theater an der Wien (TaW) on Monday evening, however, it is the privatization of the water he initiated that costs the tyrant his head, as environmental activists finally penetrate Babylon to announce the international water rights declaration. Hm.
The French director Marie-Eve Signeyrole is responsible for the staging in the TaW. She transposes the naturally Christian-religious events of the oratorio into a world of environmental spiritualism and the rule of women. The Jewish seer Daniel, like his people in the captivity of the Babylonian tyrant, is in her case a blind Daniela who, as a microbiologist, is having an affair with the king’s mother, Nitocris. And the Persian prince Cyrus is not (only) a charitable conqueror of the Babylonian cesspool, but also an environmental activist who announced the international water rights declaration and thus rallied the masses around him – or is also a woman, as it turns out in the end. So the world should heal on the female being.
Some sequences, such as an orgy in Belshazzar’s house, are well resolved scenically, but the director’s concept often comes up against the overly concrete interpretation of the basic idea. In her debut in Vienna, Signeyrole clearly demonstrates her experience as a film director. The actors are filmed almost continuously, and what is happening on stage is doubled by projections. “Royal TV” broadcasts the events from the palace live. In some cases, separate actions are also set on the stage during arias, which in turn are projected onto the edge of the stage – a blast of impressions, which the music sometimes degrades to a soundtrack. Because such a common torture scene may distract from an aria here and there.
However, many a singer of the evening benefits from this, above all the British tenor Robert Murray in the title role, who delivers an impeccable acting performance as a decadent tyrant who ignores the suffering of his people, but quickly reaches his vocal limits. Sohnemann lacks the height, mother lacks the depth, Jeanine De Bique from Trinidad and Tobago offers a solid middle register as an elegant old ruler, but struggles with the coloraturas. And despite electronic amplification, even the great Vivicagenaux tries to develop a vocal radiance in the MQ that would raise her environmental activist to Thunberg’s charisma.
Christina Pluhar’s L’Arpeggiata im Graben also fails to command attention here, offering an engaging but rarely cheeky interpretation of the score. In the end, only the young French soprano Eva Zaïcik was able to really convince on this evening, who interpreted her part as the blind Daniel(a) full and carrying. Only the Arnold Schoenberg Choir joins it in this quality, as the formation is naturally required in the Handel oratorios. Those involved put up a good fight as an invading army, orgy party and Good Luck smashers. Nobody can hold a candle to them.
(SERVICE – “Belshazzar” by Georg Friedrich Handel in the Theater an der Wien in the MQ, Hall E, 1070 Vienna. Musical direction of L’Arpeggiata: Christina Pluhar, staging: Marie-Eve Signeyrole, set: Fabien Teigné, costumes: Yashi. With Belshazzar – Robert Murray, Nitocris – Jeanine De Bique, Cyrus – Vivicagenaux, Gobrias – Michael Nagl, Daniel – Eva Zaïcik Further performances on February 22nd, 24th, 26th and 28th and on March 2nd www. theater-wien.at/de/spielplan/62/Belshazzar)