Three silenced women: La Voix Humaine/Silencio/Erwartung at the Teatro Real.

Madrid, February 19, 2024.

The Teatro Real continues its successful winter cycle on 20th century great operas. After the Pierrot Lunaire last February, the Schoenberg year continues in the capital, now with a triple program, dedicated to the monodrama: François Poulenc's La Voix Humaine, Silencio (Silence), a spoken monologue by Christof Loy, who is also the director, and the famous Erwartung by Arnold Schoenberg. Loy's one being a work that will have its world premiere, the other two operas are well-known ones, established in the operatic main repertoire, although they are mostly known to be performed by great female singers who are in the final stage in their careers. But this is not the case.

Three great artists: the Albanian soprano Ermonela Jaho, in La Voix Humaine, the Spanish world famed actress Rossy de Palma in Silencio and the Swedish soprano Malin Byström in Erwartung, will play three women, as the Teatro Real advertising slogan says, marked by silence. Both works are perhaps the two most famous monodramas in operatic repertoire, although they are not usually performed outside symphonic halls, especially Erwartung. In Madrid, the last time Erwartung was seen, was in a concert version in 2011 at the Teatro Real, with the legendary American soprano Deborah Polaski and Sylvain Cambreling conducting, while the last time La Voix Humaine was seen  in a main venue in Madrid was in 2021, with Anna Caterina Antonacci with piano accompaniment at the Círculo de Bellas Artes, although the Retiro Park Library staged it in 2023.

Poulenc's La Voix Humaine sets music to the theatrical work of the same name  by Jean Cocteau, and the composer created it only a few years after his majestic opera "Dialogues of Carmelites". It is a work that, although it requires a large orchestra, the soprano most of the time sings without accompaniment, the orchestra being the one that replicates the singing, recreating  a somewhat dialogue between the woman and her husband. The xylophone recreates the telephone ringing. Despite its dimensions, the chamber music athmosphere is felt through the work, in contrast to the orchestral opulence of the following piece, and although there are moments close to the atonal, there are also others of great beauty.

With Erwartung, Schoenberg begins his atonal path. Already in Gurrelieder and the Six orchestral songs op.8, the lavish Wagnerian orchestration and its majestic melodies threatened to break. In this monodrama, Schönberg doesn't abandond orchestral richness. Despite not being easily listenable to traditional ears, the work can be descriptive, evocative, although the main emotion is the anguish, the desperation of the protagonist who has no news of her lover. With the libretto by medical student and poet Marie Pappenheim, Erwartung delves into the depths of the mind, the feeling of abandonment, of loss of rationality, of reproach, of pain.

Christof Loy's staging sets both works in a flat. In "The Human Voice", it appears empty, just with a few boxes. There's just a black phone and a huge cord. The protagonist walks around talking on the phone throughout the house. Next to her is her best friend Marthe, but not even she will stop her from ending her life, which she does by taking a bottle of pills and not by hanging herself with the telephone cord as in the original story. As an intermission between this and the next opera, there is an intermission called "Silencio" (Silence in English), in which with the curtain down, a woman debates about heartbreak, since she has been stood up on her wedding day, but she finally manages to overcome this obstacle, and reaffirming her self-love and self-esteem. However, Erwartung takes things to another dimension. It's the same flat as Poulenc's opera, with the black telephone placed on a chair. Now the house is fully furnished, and the terrace is covered with plants. It is night, and the action seems to take place after the dinner, since there are plates and glasses on a table. The protagonist waits for her lover, whom she finds dead in the kitchen. Then he gets up, wounded, and interacts with her. Finally it leaves, then it's dawn, and it's dusk again. In the end, the man appears, already dressed, and she greets him with a knife, about to attack him. Was the opera a reconstruction of what has happened before or is the whole work what is going to happen? The plastic beauty of this staging, the intense acting, means that Loy's staging not only rediscovers the work for us but also shows its scenic potential as we have never noticed before. Of everything I've seen from Loy at the Teatro Real, his version of this opera is the best staging I've ever seen from him.

Jérémie Rhorer leads the Teatro Real Orchestra. If the conducting in "La Voix Humaine" is remarkable, what he has achieved with "Erwartung" can be described as historic. Rhorer has achieved a remarkable rendition of Schoenberg's opera, making us to taste the orchestral possibilities that exist in the score, so full of evocative, intense moments, in a version in which the French maestro has alternated moments of spectacular sound with others in those that recreated the descriptive and chamber music nature of the work, but always making each section to shine intensely.

Ermonela Jaho, one of the most beloved sopranos of the Madrid audiences, sung  the protagonist with all her stage experience. Jaho lives his performances intensely, and creates a fragile and hurt character. Her vocal delivery is also known, and her fine and beautiful voice complements her stage work. In this case the voice sounded as  beautiful as usual, and although it was not very big, there was a moment when it shocked the room with a spectacular high note in "de marcher de long en large, je devenais folle!"

Rossy de Palma, the famous actress, was in charge of the monologue "Silencio" written by Loy. She recited said monologue partly in French and partly in Spanish. She even hummed somes songs. I have a lot of admiration for her as an actress, but even though she was funny, even appealing to our experiences with love and heartbreak in her speech, I thought it was totally out of place and in fact I came to wish it would end so I could enjoy Schönberg . The comedy did not serve as a relaxation, but rather it was a hindrance between two intense dramas, which are the real interest although the press used Mrs. De Palma's performance as the main attraction and that has been, sadly, the main hook for part of the public . I hope to see her again, in another more favorable context than this one, although she was highly applauded.

The success of this Erwartung cannot be thought without the memorable performance of Malin Byström as The Woman. This Swedish soprano has surprised with her impressive vocal power, her rich and dark dramatic tone, her remarkable low register and her resistance against the volume of the orchestra, not to mention her convincing performance, accompanied by the dancer Gorka Culebras as the man. What a difference when thirteen years ago, Deborah Polaski, a true legend, lose her battle to the orchestra behind her in that concert version! Without a doubt, Loy, Rhorer and Byström have achieved a historic night with their excellent performance of this opera.

The theater was not full, and of course in the applause after "Erwartung", many people quickly left the room. More generous were the ovations for Ermonela Jaho and Rossy de Palma in the previous works. But two things cannot be denied: the total devotion of these three enormous artists, and that the great winner was Arnold Schoenberg, with an Erwartung to remember.

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