LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES (2016 MUNICH BOOTLEG)

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES (2016 MUNICH BOOTLEG)
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It is a rare occasion when an American-style musical has its world premiere on a continental European stage. This was, however, the case when Munich's Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz commissioned composer Marc Schubring and librettist Wolfgang Adenberg to make a musical out of Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 epistolary novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses. The story is well known these days thanks to its many adaptations for film and stage, including Christopher Hampton’s internationally successful 1985 play and the subsequent 1988 movie by Stephen Frears. Gefährliche Liebschaften (seen Feb. 22), as this musical was billed, is not the first time that the book has been set to music: the most notable have been Conrad Susa’s opera, The Dangerous Liaisons, which bowed at San Francisco Opera in 1984, and a Spanish-language musical version, Las Relaciones Peligrosas, which had its premiere in Buenos Aires in 2012. 

Laclos (1741–1803) painted a pointed, colorful, detailed (in every sense of the word) and not very flattering view of the French aristocracy before the French Revolution. How does one make a musical out of a story with so much debauchery and explicit sexuality as its central theme? Composer Marc Schubring, born in 1968 in Berlin, is not a newcomer to the field: he dedicated the score to Stephen Sondheim and it was clear from the very first scene that Schubring has learned much from the venerable dedicatee. The pace is breathtaking: there are often floods of words, with the small, immaculately trained chorus accompanying a number of scenes with sustained neutral vowels — almost always echoed at the end of each number by the amplification.

Librettist Wolfgang Adenberg, born in 1967 in Cologne, has worked with Schubring before — the list of their previous projects includes musical adaptations of Cyrano de Bergerac (1995), Emil and the Detectives (2001) and Undertaking Betty (2013) — and their artistic cooperation certainly bore fruit here. Adenberg has not only chosen the familiar passages from the source text but some unfamiliar ones that helped flesh the story out, allowing the main characters a depth that one does not always expect from a musical. The work is not free of cliché and, as rhythm trumps melody here, one does not exit the theatre humming any tunes. (In fact, a few more sections of tranquility might have been a blessing.)

Nevertheless, there are true highlights here, among them a touching duet for Vicomte de Valmont and Madame de Tourvel in Act II; an outstanding bravura Act I solo for the amoral Marquise de Merteuil; and a smashing Act I finale number for the cynical Valmont. These three roles were splendidly cast, sung and acted with fury and feeling by German musical-theater stars Armin Kahl (Valmont), Anna Montanaro (Merteuil) and Julia Klotz (Tourvel). It is always hard to determine true vocal quality when a singer is miked and amplified but this trio of artists seemed to be the real thing. 

Other standouts were the fresh-voiced soprano Anja Haeseli as the at-first naïve (and later highly adaptive) Cécile de Volanges and veteran singing actor Erwin Windegger, cast as Valmont's servant Azolan and — as ever — delivering a complete characterization. The rest of the cast, in a variety of roles and various states of dress and undress, were all superb, with a truly unbelievable performance contributed by Gisela Ehrensperger, celebrating nearly a half-century on the Gärtnerplatz stage and still in excellent voice, as a memorable Madame de Rosemonde.

Gärtnerplatz Intendant Josef E. Köpplinger showed once again that he not only understands how to pace a performance perfectly but also that he is capable of delving into each character's psyche and transmitting that information to the public. The exquisite eighteenth-century-style costumes designed by Alfred Mayerhofer fit the rococo interior of the Cuvilliés-Theater like a glove.  Set designer Rainer Sinell transformed the handicaps of the small Cuvilliés stage into a virtue, his revolving center platform suggesting changes of venue; the changing colors of the lighting design by Michael Heidinger and Köpplinger added a sense of depth and variety.  

Andreas Kowalewitz conducted with verve and precision, falling only at times into the amplification “trap” of assuming that the singers will always be heard and allowing the Gärtnerplatz Orchestra to play at full throttle. It took a while for the staid Gärtnerplatz public to adjust to the amoral, highly sexual nature of the work but as the evening progressed, the audience became increasingly caught up in both story and music. The long, sustained ovations at the work's conclusion were well deserved.