Concert review: Die tote Stadt at the Auckland Town Hall

The Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra at the Auckland Town Hall. Photo / Adrian Malloch

The Trusts Community Foundation Opera in Concert, a guaranteed highlight of the musical year, excelled itself on Saturday night with the New Zealand premiere of Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s 1920 Die tote Stadt.

Set in a dark world of psychological obsession and dreams, The Dead City is a remarkable achievement for a composer in his early 20s. Its music, heavily indebted to Wagner and Strauss, and occasionally hinting at Korngold’s later Hollywood career, was brilliantly unfurled by Giordano Bellincampi and his 94-strong Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra, along with a handpicked cast of singers, and a full-voiced New Zealand Opera Chorus.

Die Tote Stadt by Wolfgang Korngold Trusts Community Opera concert performed by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra. Photo / Adrian Malloch

The conductor was in visible raptures throughout, exploring the limitless array of Korngold’s orchestral wizardry, by turns lush and grotesque, tender and savage, whether carried away by the dizzying swirl of two harps or spectacular and stentorian brass.

The night’s singers coped bravely with the unenviable task of sharing a stage with such mighty forces. However, from the moment Deborah Humble’s Brigitta was swept up on an orchestral surge to glorious and thrilling heights, excellence was assured.

Ales Briscein and Manuela Uhl played Korngold’s hero and heroine in Dresden in 2019. On Saturday night, as their characters moved through ever-shifting moods and situations, one felt a strong dramatic engagement, heightened, no doubt, by Frances Moore’s sensitive direction. Their extended arias, including Uhl’s celebrated Marietta’s Lied, were spellbinding.

Moore showed great imagination within concert hall restrictions. Uhl’s appearance as Marie, singing from the circle, was a musical and theatrical coup. And the zesty theatrical troupe, dancing its way to the stage from the back of the hall, captivated. The tuneful swagger of Oliver Sewell’s Serenade certainly caught the ear, as part of an excellent and energetic ensemble that included three New Zealanders in its ranks.

It was here that Richard Sveda, a finely observed Frank in the first act, took on the new character of Fritz. His heartfelt aria, longing for a lost homeland to the slowest of Viennese waltzes, was a timely reminder of unsettled times in contemporary Europe.