Arias of the nightingale, monologues of the hoopoe and duets of pigeons filled the foyer of the Natalia Sats Theatre. The key event of the country’s musical theatre festival “Seeing Music” held in Moscow — the Russian premiere of the opera “Birds” by the half-forgotten German composer Walter Braunfels — can be called the restoration of historical injustice: an unusual and very worthy work, never performed in our country and extremely rarely heard abroad, has received a new life. But the significance of the event is not limited to this fact. The Izvestia observer joined the first spectators of the performance and assessed the relevance of the forgotten rarity.
Rarities and reconstruction
The Natalia Sats Theatre is undergoing major renovations, but the company itself actively participates in the See Music festival year after year and comes up with unconventional ways to demonstrate its achievements. An example of this is the RE-Construction project, conceived by artistic director Georgy Isaakyan as a conceptual response to difficult “housing” circumstances. The idea is to take little-known works and stage them in the rotunda or foyer of the building, combining elements of a concert performance and an experimental performance. Reconstruction of music in a reconstructed space. Two years ago, Hindemith’s opera Nush-Nushi was presented in this way, and now the Russian public has seen another rarity of the first quarter of the 20th century – Braunfels’ Birds.
The name of this composer is practically unknown to the Russian public. Moreover, even conservatory students are not told about him. Although in the 1920s his figure was quite noticeable on the European music scene. Suffice it to say that the premiere of “The Birds” was prepared under the direction of Bruno Walter – one of the greatest conductors of the era, the successor and the first performer of the late works of Gustav Mahler. And in Munich alone, the opera was performed 50 times a year. In addition, Braunfels actively gave concerts as a pianist.