For those of you who live in Berlin: rush over to the Berliner Philharmoniker website and buy a ticket for today’s (December 22) performance of John Adams’ newest opera “A flowering tree”. For those of you who cannot make it in time: read on …

To tell you the truth, I have never been a huge fan of John Adams’ music, but this composition is so captivating and special, it made me change my mind. The libretto of this opera, which was commissioned by the Berlin Philharmonic, Wiener Festwochen, Barbican Centre, San Francisco Symphony, and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, is based on a South-Indian tale about the love between a beautiful farm girl (Kumudha) and a rich prince. Kumudha has a special gift, for she can transform herself into a tree which carries the most beautiful and mysterious flowers. The prince while watching her secretly, finds out about her powers, falls in love with her, and marries her instantly. Since Kumundha is so beautiful, the prince’s sister gets very jealous and lures Kumundha into her garden, where she is supposed to reveal her secret to the friends of the prince’s sister. Being forced to demonstrate her powers, Kumundha’s transformation goes terribly wrong, because she is disturbed by the ill-meaning crowd. Half human, half tree, she …

is cheated of feature by dissembling nature,
Deformed, unfinish’d, sent before her time
Into this breathing world, scarce half made up,
And that so lamely and unfashionable
That dogs bark at her as they halt by her. [oh, I’m sorry, that’s the wrong story…]

… is mutilated and can no longer move. The prince who is desperately searching for her looses his mind. You can easily figure that there is a happy end waiting around the corner, but this is not a cheesy love story coming just in time for christmas sentiments, no, this is a great work for two reasons: firstly, there is a dense and rich score by John Adams, full of brilliant writing for the soloists, the orchestra and the choir. Secondly, there is a wonderfully suggestive staging and fantastic choreography by Peter Sellars that merges dancers and singers into multi-layered characters.

Adams’ music seems to emerge from the “still drone of the time past midnight” (Kumundha). Not audible nor recognizable at first, the music weaves its net tighter and tighter around the audience, hinting to a hidden meaning in the libretto at times, exposing suprizing colors and timbres here and there, but always supporting the drama with a keen sense of direction. Most memorable were the moments in which the orchestra had its short interludes. They did always occur in moments of great emotional intensity, for instance during the transformations of Kumundha. In fact Adams is not the first to compose short orchestral interludes reflecting on the plot of the opera. Alban Berg did this in his Wozzeck as well, and interestingly he called them Veränderungen (transformations) in his score, too. And just like Berg does, Adams alludes to past and future events by employing motives that were already heard before, and by gradually constructing those that are to become important in the course of the opera.

Tonight’s performance was always on a very level, at times even extraordinary. Especially the singers and dancers showed a great deal of precision. Amongst the singers I would like to single out Jessica Rivera whose voice has a dark timbre, exhibiting a sonorous and sensous lower range. Eko Supriyanto, Astri Kusuma Wardani, and Rusini Hendro Purnomo Sidi, the three fabulous dancers of the evening, enchanted the audience with their sensible and yet accurate movements. The orchestra was often playing a bit unconcentratedly tonight, sloppily you might even want to say, but – to be fair – some of the rhythmic layers in Adams’ score were awfully hard to coordinate. (It is, by the way, the first time I heard the Berlin Philharmonic under Rattle).

Other things worth noting: unlike in other concerts the audience tonight was not paying any attention when the orchestra came on stage, nor did the try to be quite while the musicians were tuning. I like this sort of relaxed attitude, after all, going to the Philharmonie should be fun! Also: could this be a new kind of audience? One that doesn’t care about the old concert rituals that much? I was really surprized to find hundreds of spectators at the introductory conversation with the composer. Usually these events are visited by some 40 or 50 people. In general people seem to be coming to the venue much earlier than before. Is that already the new kind of Philharmonie that Pamela Rosenberg, the new Intendantin is envisioning? One suggestion: leave the bars open after concerts, buy some comfortable chairs and sofas and turn the Foyer into a music lounge. That would be really cool, because we wouldn’t have to run around deserted Potsdamer Platz to find a nice place where we could discuss the performance and music.