Not Only Opera

Zauberland
Royal Opera
Linbury Theatre
Upper Circle B6 standing, £6
16 October 2019
ROH page

I like Martin Crimp, on the whole, but a project to offer a counterpart to Dichterliebe is always going to have an uphill struggle. Zauberland interleaves Schumann’s song cycle with music by Bernard Foccroulle for the same forces. The juxtaposition is exciting to start with, disrupting the familiar original with moody interjections from a different sound world. But it gets old pretty quickly, long before the end of the work’s 90-minute duration. Would I rather have just listened to Dichterliebe three times? I’m afraid so; that’s not really an indictment of Foccroulle so much as an acknowledgement of the difficulty of dislodging the great, especially when it is so familiar.

Performers Julia Bullock and Cédric Tiberghien are excellent. Like everyone else I’ve long admired Tiberghien’s precision and cool musicality. Bullock is new to me and her sound is nice and meaty in the newly lovelified Linbury acoustic. Each assuredly moves between the stylistic spheres of Schumann and Foccroulle, and Bullock with wholehearted grace submits to whatever it is director Katie Mitchell asks of her. Around them swarm the usual Mitchell mopey troupe of actors, doing some slow walking here, some speedy walking there, all very well rehearsed but frustratingly familiar from, oh you know, every single thing Mitchell has done over the last few years.