An opera gone wrong at Theater Basel

To mess something up stands for failure par excellence. As is well known, the term comes from playing something wrong on a violin and in everyday language means messing up, messing up, messing up, in short, making something a veritable failure. Under the title Screwed up The German theater director Herbert Fritsch, who became famous for his absurd slapstick productions - such as Ligeti's anti-opera Le Grande Macabre in Lucerne in 2017 - and the globally renowned Moldovan-Austrian-Swiss master violinist Patricia Kopatchinskaja, who increasingly relies on (heavily) exaggerated characters in her staged concerts, have teamed up for a joint project. At the director's request, they have attempted to translate "Nicht-Beherrschen" into a theatrical or "operatic" version for the main stage of Theater Basel.

The primary means for this was improvisation. According to the program sheet, the aim of this project was to playfully find out where music begins and how it ends. Perplexity is declared to be the scenic motor. Not only sounds and noises, but also gestures, grimaces, body movements and choreographies are to become music here. Kopatchinskaja's long-standing musical partner and clarinet virtuoso Reto Bieri and a top-class four-piece ensemble of renowned actors and actresses plus two singers will be taking part.

"Beautiful"

Everything is supposed to develop from what has gone before - "without any recognizable meaning or purpose", it is postulated. We then see some very minimalist basic gestures, but they come across like a punch in the eye: Kopatchinskaja begins alone on the dark stage with a wild improvisation in which the main sounds are squeaking and scratching.

Only gradually is the violinist illuminated by a red projector, her ever faster movements leading to a violently spinning dervish dance, which suddenly becomes just as visible as her overemphasized, abrupt string movements: Watch out, slapstick! After the end of the performance, sudden silence: watch out, this is music too! Silhouettes of various large, walking human bodies are then projected onto a gauze on the back wall of the stage. Suddenly, real actors emerge from the shadows and cross the entire space without ever bumping into each other. Their walking seems to become more and more rhythmic: Watch out, this is musical too! They all carry briefcases, which in time turn out to be metal sheets that can be used to produce theatrical thunder. Yes, noise is music too!

In between, the clarinettist makes various playing noises, later also with a constantly repeated tone. Unfortunately, nothing more was done with this sonorous, exciting source material. Apart from a short folk music duet between the two star performers and the performance of a Bach chaconne on a large turntable, instrumental music is in short supply in this production, as are vocals or spoken texts. Gratefully received exceptions are the Beatles song performed by the eight-member choir Because the world is round it turns me ona few bars from the hit song Oh Donna Clara, I have seen you dance or the repeatedly uttered exclamation "Schööööön", the trademark of Spanish clown legend Charlie Rivel.

Trimmed failure

Towards the end there are artistic interludes with falls from the ladder, here from a tennis judge's chair, and as a final punchline the rolling of the fallen man into a red carpet as a reference to Christoph Marthaler's theater, who reduced failure in his productions to human dimensions.

What Screwed up lacks wit and musicality, Marthaler's play, which premiered a week later Life department in excess. Billed as a theater in the disused Birsfelden municipal administration building just outside Basel, it turned out to be musical theater at its finest with music from Bach to Wagner, interspersed with hits by Schubert, as well as texts by Marthaler, Jürg Laederach and Gertrude Stein with absurd endless lists in the service of a subtle reckoning with bureaucracy.

Performances until June 16, 2023