Jarrett Porter (Punch) in the Frankfurt premiere of Birwistle’s Punch and Judy Picture © Monika Rittershaus
The sheer range of Oper Frankfurt’s repertoire never ceases to surprise. Under the long Intendanz of Bernd Loebe the company has been named ‘Opera House of the Year’ at the International Opera Awards (2013) and won the same accolade no fewer than six times by the German magazine Opernwelt. The company’s chorus and orchestra have been showered with prizes. In short, Oper Frankfurt has no rivals as an ‘ensemble company’ in Western Europe or North America.
Loebe consistently challenges his artists and audiences with unfamiliar, uncompromising pieces alongside the classics. Just before the New Year I attended a remarkable juxtaposition of the 14-year old Mozart’s Mitridate, rè di Ponto with Harrison Birtwistle’s 1968 chamber opera Punch and Judy, commissioned by the Aldeburgh Festival, whose audiences were shocked by its graphic portrayals of infanticide, wife-beating and public execution.
Oper Frankfurt’s studio staging of Punch and Judy at the Bockenheimer Depot (a disused tram shed) proved that Birtwistle’s music drama still makes for gripping music-theatre. In the hands of American conductor Alden Gatt and German director Wolfgang Nägele (a former assistant of the late Hans Neuenfels, high priest of German Regietheater), the modernity of Birtwistle’s score and Stephen Pruslin’s in-your-face libretto came across with tremendous impact. As for the cast, you could only marvel at how they had learnt such tonally rebarbative and far from singer-friendly music.