The Stage

Actus Tragicus

Published Monday 7 September 2009 at 10:45 by Thom Dibdin

There’s no holding back in Herbert Wernicke’s staged interpretation of six Bach Cantatas, first performed in Basle in 2000 and revived in 2006 in this Stuttgart Staatsoper production - which is receiving its UK premier at the Edinburgh International Festival.

Wernicke’s stage-filling set is a 19 room cutaway section of a tenement block, complete with stairs and basement. The singers - chorus and soloists alike - play out their actions in repeating loops. All the while, the libretto concentrates on the transience of life and the closeness of death.

It’s impossible to take everything in. The vignettes might loop, but seem to be iterations, each containing a slight twist, not exact repeats. The woman hanging a painting in the room above the basement chooses a different one each time. The soprano, Simone Schneider, tries on a different couture dress in each cantata.

Yet full understanding is not important, more the feeling given by the hubbub of actions. They are mundane - lovers disturbed, presents exchanged, exercises performed, letters delivered, a child born, a meal eaten, a coffin delivered. Among them stalks the figure of death, constantly enquiring. Below them, in a forgotten space in the basement, the figure of Christ is entombed.

Against this action, conductor Michael Hofstetter has to be strong to keep the singers and musicians on course. There are points where the music is muffled by the staging, but mostly the compartmentalised structure enhances the timbre. And in a questioning twist, the work finishes not with the final amen of the title cantata, but in the interrogative resolution of its chorus “man though must perish” brought back in at the end.