Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Jonas Kaufmann gives a haunted performance in DOPPELGANGER, Claus Guth’s immersive staging of Schubert’s “Schwanengesang”

• By drediman
• September 24, 2023
• No Comments

This weekend at the massive drill hall at the Park Avenue Armory, I was able to attend the opening night performance of Doppelganger, Claus Guth’s staged presentation of Schubert’s “Schwanengesang”, a collection of the composer’s final songs (the show’s title is culled from one of those songs, “Der Doppelgänger”). The large scale production – which is only scheduled to play New York for five performances – lies squarely on the shoulders of superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann, who solely performs the song cycle alongside longtime collaborator, excellent pianist Helmut Deutsch (unifying additional original music and atmospheric “sound composition” is provided by Mathis Nitschke).

Aside from the rare opportunity to catch Kaufmann in live performance, the main draw of the Park Avenue Armory-commissioned production is Guth’s immersive staging, which provides visual and historical context to Schubert’s intensely emotive and personal songs. By setting the show in an army hospital – complete with a slew of bedridden soldiers (of which Kaufmann is one) and the nurses at their aid, played by dancers – Guth not only provides welcome specificity to the songs, but also pays homage to the armory itself, which in its varied history has had to double as a makeshift space to house wounded soldiers. Indeed, after a string of traditionally-staged “proscenium” productions, it’s refreshing to see the Park Avenue Armory back doing what it does best – that is, utilizing its cavernous drill hall in creative and exciting ways. Upon entering the space, you’ll encounter a jaw-dropping sight by way of set designer Michael Levine’s sea of hospital beds laid out starkly across the expanse of the floor of the drill hall (a particularly devastating stage picture given the recent pandemic).

In terms of Kaufmann, he delivers a committed, haunted performance as a wounded soldier whose life passes before his eyes before succumbing to the great unknown. As the work’s “everyman”, he gives a dramatic performance that’s both intimate and expansive as befits the scale of the venue he’s performing in. In terms of his singing, he’s in fine shape (he was lightly and elegantly miked throughout the evening), with the darker baritonal hues of his voice providing Schubert’s largely melancholic songs a burnished texture. But there’s also an intangible purity and sweetness to his sound that gives Doppelganger a particularly heartbreaking quality.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

DOPPELGANGER
Classical Music
Park Avenue Armory
1 hour, 20 minutes (without an intermission)
Through September 28