This Week: Marble City Opera Offers A Staged Version of Schubert’s ‘Winterreise’

As the winter of 2020 begins to show its hand and taunt us mercilessly—a winter undeniably capable of dashing both our physical and socio-political hopes—we can perhaps identify with, and take consolation in, an equally arduous journey of a character in poetic fiction. Marble City Opera is offering just such a journey this week—a staged performance of Franz Schubert’s Winterreise, a song cycle of 24 songs based on poems by Wilhelm Müller. The vocalist will be tenor Blayne Ziegenfuss, with staging by MCO artistic director Kathryn Frady. Two performances are scheduled for Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 PM at the Trentham Hall space of First Baptist Church in Downtown Knoxville, 1006 Locust Street. With pandemic safety as a priority, audiences may choose either in-person attendance or a streamed virtual performance.

Transporting listeners on a journey through a cold, dark landscape, the text of Winterreise is the story of a lonely traveler besieged by the emotional despair of a lost love, tortured by regrets, and haunted by memories. Completed in 1827, one year before the composer’s early death at age 31, Schubert was himself a lonely traveler besieged, but, in his case, by the physical and mental angst resulting from the syphilis that would ultimately cause his death.

Although Marble City Opera has gravitated toward novel stagings of both operatic classics and contemporary chamber works, this will be one of their first ventures into presenting a traditional non-opera vocal work in a staged environment.

“I had been talking to Blayne about just doing a recital as part of the season,” MCO artistic director Frady explained, “but when the pandemic happened, I decided it was the perfect opportunity to just go ahead and stage it with video projection. Since it is one singer, one piano, it just made a lot of sense to add it to the season in that way.”

Ziegenfuss, speaking with Frady on MCO’s “Behind the Scenes,” talked about the efforts to translate a song cycle, such as Winterreise, into an operatic experience.

“A song cycle is a group of songs,” offers Ziegenfuss, “that are individually composed and completed, designed to be performed sequentially…[the songs] are usually connected by thematic material—either poetically, musically, or both—and they are usually performed in a concert setting.”

As Frady explains, it is that dramatic thematic quality that makes a song cycle a candidate for staging. “I think there are a lot similarities between a song cycle, like Winterreise, and an opera…it is a little over an hour, the theme is there, but like a monodrama opera for one person would be. There’s a lot of material there that’s worth staging and developing.”

“We’re going to be using video projection to create the mood of the piece…I came up with a concept of ‘what is this person’s path?’ How can I represent the journey in the staging…I’ve placed him going on a journey through the space emotionally. Schubert is very dramatic, a lot like Mozart in fact.”