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Austin360 blogs > Austin Arts: Seeing Things > Archives > 2008 > July > 24 > Entry
Review: ‘Winterreise/Werther’
We’ve run out of superlatives when it comes to complementing artistic director Michelle Schumann’s smart programming for Austin Chamber Music Center.
Well, almost.
Saturday night Schumann added savvy new meaning to what a chamber music festival can offer in the 21st century with the presentation of the Long Beach Opera’s affecting staged version of Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’ song cycle at the Rollins Studio Theatre as part of the 2008 Austin Chamber Music Festival.
Long Beach Opera artistic director Andreas Mitisek made a bold move when he combined Schubert’s song cycle for solo voice and piano, based on poems by Wilhelm Mueller, and wove them together with spoken passages from Goethe’s novel about unrequited love, “The Sorrows of Young Werther.”
But it was a bold move that worked, garnering Long Beach Opera critical praise when it premiered there in 2005.
Schumann, who performed in the original Long Beach production, smartly brought the show to Austin for this summer’s festival. (For last year’s festival, she presented Long Beach Opera’s “Diary of Anne Frank” production — also a much-welcome addition to the festival’s offerings.)
Rollins Studio Theatre’s dark warehouse-like look and intimate setting made for a perfect fit for the moody set, a simple bedroom in disarray with an eery mirrored floor.
Tenor Erik N. Werner was already on stage and in character as the audience took their seats. A charismatic actor with a clear musicality to his voice and perfect German diction, Werner brought a refreshing everyman quality to the role of Werther. An edgy, obsessed everyman that is — Werner kept the dramatic tension suspenseful. You never knew when he might fly into a rage (which he did on several occasions smashing a mirror and tearing a bed apart) or crack under the heartbreak of his unrequited love for Lotte.
Schumann gave a nuanced and passionate performance from the piano that was set behind a scrim, the shimmering dressing gown she wore echoing the one worn by Jennifer Hart Jackson who played the Lotte character in a silent role.
A highly original and creative approach to a classic, “Winterreise/Werther” was superbly and movingly performed by Werner and Schumann and offered a welcome new avenue to experience a treasured jewel of 19th-century music.
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