Wolf Trap Opera's Emperor of Atlantis

The Wolf Trap Opera's performance of a double bill titled The World Upside Down on Saturday drove home what has long been at the back of my mind: that the company has developed into the area's most creative artistic organization, in some ways probably the best.  If there had been any lingering doubt about the WTO's excellence before, the production of Viktor Ullmann's The Emperor of Atlantis paired with Gluck's comic piece Merlin's Island removed it.
 
Created in the Theresienstadt Nazi concentration camp just a year before Ullman's death in a gas chamber in Auschwitz in 1944, The Emperor of Atlantis is an hour-long piece comprising four scenes and 20 musical sections.  The music combines several genres, ranging from Bach-style oratorio and German folk song to contemporary styles and the orchestration is for 14 instruments, including a banjo, probably representing what was available in the camp. The work is styled roughly after the Italian commedia dell'arte in that it opens with a character, called Loudspeaker, introducing the players: Harlekin, Death, Emperor Overall, Drummer, Soldier and Girl. Like in commedia dell'arte, the characters represent certain social types, but that's where the similarity ends. The latter part of the original German title, Der Keiser von Atlantis, oder die Tod-Verweigerung, translated in turn as The Refusal to Die, The Denial of Death or Death Goes on Strike, augurs a somber theme.

Emperor Overall and Death in Wolf Trap Opera's Emperor of Atlantis

Written in 1943, the one-act opera echoes the chaos of the world swept in a global war and the insanity of the final years of the Nazi era. A mad ruler declares a universal war in which no one is to survive. Death is offended because deciding who will die is his mission and he also feels that mass killing diminishes his glory. Therefore, he refuses to act on Overall's orders. As a result no one dies and the world turns upside down. Enemies embrace and dance together, people fall in love and stop obeying Emperor's commands, conveyed through the Drummer. Harlekin bemoans the loss of natural order with tears in his eyes. Death says he will resume work only on condition that Emperor dies first. The ruler relents and agrees to die so Death can restore order. The opera ends with a quartet singing, “Come, Death, our honored guest…Lift life’s burdens from us,” words especially poignant coming from Ullman and his librettist Petr Kien shortly before they were sent to their own gruesome deaths.

Nazi authorities banned the performance after a dress rehearsal and the work was not staged before 1975 in a Dutch theater. 

I first saw The Emperor of Atlantis when it premiered in Washington's Holocaust Museum in 1998 to mark the centenary of Ullmann's birth. The award-winning production by the Austrian group Arbos was suitably solemn for the occasion. The stage was dark and sparse, the costumes solid gray or  striped like the uniforms of camp prisoners. The impact was powerful and depressing. I didn't think I would ever see it again.

More than 20 years later, I could barely remember where and why I had seen The Emperor the first time. But I knew I had a recording of the production which was given to me by a visiting artist whom I had interviewed and that CD helped bring the memory back. I was impressed by the WTO's choice of such a rare and harrowing piece and curious what its creative team would make of it. As I should have expected, what it did make was outstanding. 

Unlike Arbos, the WTO highlighted the satirical side of the work, without turning it into a comic parody. The silliness went away with Gluck's little known introductory piece Merlin's Island, about two shipwrecked men stranded on an island where social mores differ from theirs. Men are thrown in jail if they are not faithful, all businesses are honest, court cases are decided on the basis of common sense, and wisdom is found in laughter. Yet the two short operas worked well together, each enhancing the other.

The glittering tinsel backdrop and a playground slide from Merlin's Island segued into in Ullman's piece, but were lit in dark hues. The emperor's office was superimposed above the black tinsel curtain and characters descended on the stage from the slide, then disappeared through the strips of tinsel as the situation required. While most were dressed in neutral colors, gray, khaki, beige and white, each also wore a red or a sparkling accessory, such as the red bullhorn on the Loudspeaker's head and a red ruff around Harlekin's neck.  The characters were generally energetic and rebellious as opposed to being sad or depressed. They conveyed the madness of the world they inhabited as well as resilience that enabled them to overcome it.

I have always felt that a good work of art must be uplifting even if it deals with a most tragic of topics. Instead of beating me down, the WTO's performance of The Emperor of Atlantis left me feeling energized and optimistic, most of all impressed. What a powerful and memorable production by a relatively small company! Kudos to the WTO's creative team! Details from the performance are still swirling in my mind: Death wailing that people used to  dress up for him, Loudspeaker telling the emperor of a strange disease befalling soldiers that prevents them from dying, Emperor Overall declaring the people should be grateful to him for sending them to eternity....

The first WTO opera I saw at the Barns at Wolf Trap was Rameau's Dardanus in 2003. Since then, I have gone back almost every summer to see at least one of the season's productions, whenever possible choosing operas I have not seen before, like Poulenc's Les Mamelles de Tirésias, Corigliano's Ghosts of Versailles and Britten's Rape of Lucrezia.  There is usually at least one element of craziness in Wolf Trap opera productions:  French-style soubrettes cleaning up Giulio Cesare's palace in Egypt, kids in green-striped pajamas frolicking in the woods of the Mid-summer Night's Dream, Il Viaggio a Reims set in the mid-20th century, an ensemble of most eclectic characters in Aridane auf Naxos, to name a few. 

WTO's Production of Merlin's Island, a little know short opera by Gluck

Most productions have offered perfect summer entertainment after a leisurely picnic on Wolf Trap's manicured lawn. Mellowed by a glass (or two) of chilled rosé, a person may be less engaged in the show and more inclined to snooze to a pleasant classical tune. But the WTO does not allow that. Their up-and-coming young singers are bursting with infectious energy and ready to engage in any and all shenanigans, silliness or real drama on the stage to wake you up just as you begin to nod off. You'll never look at an opera the same way after you've seen it at the Barns.

Exceptions are few and far in between. For me one of them was the 2016 production of Britten's Rape of Lucrezia. It was depressing, perhaps rightfully so, but not uplifting. Yet, what's that in comparison with some grand opera companies that surprise you when they do something extraordinary.

As an educational institution with a highly acclaimed opera residency program, Wolf Trap can afford to pick lesser known and short operatic works. It often chooses operas to match the singers who have come for a three-month-long intensive workshop. One thing to look forward to every summer are fresh new voices: agile, distinctive and clarion. The company also gives its set, light and costume designers freedom to be creative. The results are fascinating.