Leikin loppu luokkahuoneessa

Peter Konwitschnyn Lohengrin-ohjauksen viitteistä kaunokirjallisuuteen

• Jukka von Boehm Helsingin yliopisto

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30665/av.74792

Abstract

Endgame in the Classroom. Literary Allusions in Peter Konwitschny’s Lohengrin Staging

Peter Konwitschny’s interpretation of Richard Wagner’s romantic opera Lohengrin (premiere in Hamburg 1998) is a good example of an innovative way of staging a well-known opera. Konwitschny set Lohengrin in a classroom of the Wilhelminian era, on the eve of the outbreak of the First World War. All singers play schoolchildren in uniform, armored with wooden swords, except Lohengrin, who is the only adult among children. Konwitschny interpreted Wagner’s pseudo Middle Age legend of the mythical knight Lohengrin as a realistic encounter between the spheres of childhood and adulthood. One aspect for wider consideration of this staging is its references to three literary works: Heinrich Mann’s Der Untertan, Thoman Mann’s Die Buddenbrooks, and William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.

Heinrich Mann’s novel is famous for its parody of Lohengrin. The archetypical ultra-nationalist of the Wilhelminian era, Diederich Heβling, is able to experience performance of Lohengrin only through the lens of his nationalism. Wagner finished his score just before the outbreak of the May Revolution in 1849. Wagner intended the patriotic tones in the opera as a cry for help for the weak German Confederation. The message turned, however, into imperialist-chauvinistic after the establishment of the German Reich in 1871. Lohengrin became one of the most performed operas of the Wilhelminian era. In his parody, Heinrich Mann identifies a tasteless Lohengrin performance with the new German Reich. The performance and its reception reflected many hateful features of the Wilhelminian Germany: chauvinism, imperialism, anti-Semitism, and anti-democratic worldview. In Konwitschny’s interpretation, schoolchildren with wooden swords on stage present this extreme nationalist behavior.

Thomas Mann’s Hanno Buddenbrook does not wish to grow up in the coarse, cynical and anti-idealistic society of the German Reich. He tries to escape the reality of the school day by turning into the world of Lohengrin, the opera he had heard one evening before. Neither Hanno nor innocent Elsa von Brabant in Konwitschny’s staging belong to the same world of their robust classmates. Both Hanno and Elsa know that the utopia of a better life symbolized by the spiritual music of Lohengrin’s Grail sphere is possible outside the classroom. On the contrary, their schoolmates have already been influenced by the militarist worldview of the adults.

The island in which the shipwrecked schoolboys in Lord of Flies must live alone beyond the control of adults is reminiscent of Konwitschny’s school class. Like British schoolboys in Golding’s novel, also the behavior of the young German nationalists reflects the values of the surrounding society. For Golding’s and Konwitschy’s school children the adult is a God-like figure, superhuman, whose presence would solve all their problems. Both childrens’ societies are primitive.

Konwitschny’s Lohengrin is a good example of how allusions to great novels can have a constitutive meaning in dramaturgy. The school class of Wilhelminian era is also a successful commentary on the Wirkungsgeschichte of this opera.