Like in a particle accelerator

The evening starts from zero to one hundred. While Lucas Niggli drums a continuous beat with intricate accents on the drums, the homophonic choir of Theater Basel (conductor: Michael Clark) sings rhythmically concise lines. Hammond organ (Dominik Blum), bass (Marino Pliakas) and electric guitar (Yaron Deutsch) throw in chords that act like wildfires and further fuel the boundary-breaking music. Michael Wertmüller has already written many pieces for the Swiss trio Steamboat Switzerland, blurring the boundaries between new music, jazz and rock. In his Opera Diodati. Unendlich (libretto: Dea Loher), which was commissioned by Theater Basel, he adds an electric guitar to the formation and places it in the orchestra pit so that, together with the extremely agile Basel Symphony Orchestra, they send this rhythmic energy onto the stage and into the auditorium. The music almost always has a high pulse. It is constantly excited, works with the layering of different meters and rhythms and takes the musicians involved to the limits of what is technically possible. This makes it all the more astonishing how confidently conductor Titus Engel, who has already conducted Karlheinz Stockhausen's Thursday from Light and the unflustered way in which the conductor moves through this highly complex score. And the precision with which all the players bring these wild, rhythmically interlaced eruptions to life.

Dea Loher's libretto recounts the legendary visit of English literary figures to the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva in 1816. The illustrious circle around Lord Byron becomes intoxicated with opium and conversation. Due to the bad weather, they stay indoors, debating artificial life and telling each other horror stories. In this idyllic Swiss setting, Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein or the modern Prometheus and the short story The Vampyrwritten by Byron's personal physician John Polidori. In her text, Loher intertwines this historical setting with Cern in the canton of Geneva, where basic research in physics is carried out in the 27-kilometer-long particle accelerator. In her production, director Lydia Steier makes both levels visible. Flurin Borg Madsen brings a laboratory to the stage at Theater Basel, in the middle of which a room from the historic Villa Diodati has been recreated. Here, scientists in protective suits drive the lifeless literati in on handcarts to the first drumbeats and reanimate them (costumes: Ursula Kudrna).

However, the characters are actually brought to life by Wertmüller's music. The composer works with fast cuts that are often sharpened by the percussion. The pauses are short, the stimulus density is high, everything happens at the same time! However, the Swiss composer does not build up a larger arc of suspense. He relies on individual building blocks, which stand on their own and are designed quite differently. Kristina Stanek sings of her deceased child as the still unmarried Mary Godwin in operatically drawn lines; Claire Clairmont, pregnant by Lord Byron (crystal clear up to stratospheric heights: Sara Hershkowitz) licks his crotch to the high-pitched music before Byron has a flashing device strapped around his waist by the scientists to give him additional stimulation. At times, Michael Wertmüller uses loops to add density, at other times he slows down the tempo for a moment, only to create a new musical mix shortly afterwards. Scene follows scene at breathtaking speed. Rolf Romei as Mary Godwin's friend Percy Bysshe-Shelley with a middle parting and nickel glasses sings brilliant top notes. With his powerful bass-baritone, Seth Carico is a striking personal physician Polidori, who declares his love for Lord Byron in fishnet stockings and high heels in the second part.

Holger Falk is the powerhouse of the exquisite ensemble of soloists as the anarchistic bon vivant George Gordon Noel Lord Byron. "The great aim of life is to feel. To feel that we exist," he formulates his credo in chanting in the second part, in one of the few quieter scenes. This Byron celebrates his sexual relationship with his half-sister Augusta Leigh (coloratura sharpened: Samantha Gaul) just as naturally as he rubs oranges on his naked chest and in his crotch. Intoxication and ecstasy as the core of life? Individual pieces of the puzzle unfold great theatricality in this ultra-hot Basel performance, for example when drummer Lucas Niggli and Sara Hershkowitz as the heavily pregnant Claire Clairmont, twitching in labor, engage in a spectacular percussion coloratura battle or when the resuscitated child rises from Mary Godwin's operating table with great pathos as an angel with dark wings. A connection between all the elements that shoot around as if in a particle accelerator does not succeed on this evening. But perhaps that is too conservative an idea for this challenging, at times even overwhelming evening of musical theater.