Die Soldaten

Although this 2012 Salzburg Festival mounting of Die Soldaten is not entirely faithful to the performance instructions of composer Bernd Zimmermann (1918–70)—who intended the stark opera to be a timeless parable about man's brutality and self-destructiveness—it is still a fine production. Zimmermann wrote the work—about a naïve woman seduced and then abandoned by a noble army officer, only to become the barracks whore—as a “pluralist” piece, with scenes set in various periods (past, present, and future) performed simultaneously on different stage levels, culminating (like Dr. Strangelove) with a projection of an atomic bomb blast. Here, director Alvis Hermanis simplifies matters, situating the action fairly specifically after World War I (and omitting the nuclear explosion), but he also uses the huge stage to compartmentalize events into temporally parallel episodes. None of this would matter if the complicated score—written in an advanced 12-tone idiom that makes it a natural successor to Berg's Wozzeck—weren't expertly realized. Fortunately, conductor Ingo Metzmacher marshals the substantially expanded Vienna Philharmonic (170 musicians) and massive vocal forces (50 soloists) with unerring precision, while Laura Aikin, as the unfortunate Marie, and Daniel Brenna, as the cruel Desportes, are excellent. Many viewers will find Die Soldaten's libretto distasteful and difficult music unpleasant, but it is one of the most significant modern German operas, and this staging does it justice. Presented in DTS 5.0, Dolby Digital 5.0, and PCM stereo on DVD, and DTS-HD 5.0 and PCM stereo on Blu-ray, this is highly recommended. (F. Swietek)