The music is magnificent, lush, exciting, accessible, typical of that golden period when late Romanticism met 20th century harmonic adventure. There are echoes of the 4th Symphony The Inextinguishable by Langgaard’s fellow Dane Carl Nielsen, as well as Wagner, Richard Strauss and the cinematic overtones of Korngold.
So why is this, his only opera, rejected by the Royal Danish Theatre in 1923 and in 1930 after he rewrote score and libretto, and not performed until 1980, 28 years after the composer’s death, still almost unknown?
The reason is that libretto, which has no linear plot and little dialogue, but with abstruse comments based upon Biblical quotation about the state of the world.
First conceived amid a period of disillusionment in the aftermath of the First World War, the piece, at one time subtitled, like some modern-day horror film, "The Beast from the Abyss", comprises a prologue and six scenes in which Lucifer unleashes the Antichrist on the world, producing confusion, greed, pessimism, depravity and anarchy before God intervenes to restore harmony.
Faced with this challenging non-story, director Ersan Mondtag takes the sensible decision to base the staging on artistic styles of the 1920s, a mixture of Dada and expressionism, with grotesque costumes jointly designed with Annika Lu, to represent Langgaard’s fierce denunciation of Western degeneracy and loss of spiritual values. I cannot imagine that, fine though her vocal performance was, Flurina Stucki will be sticking into the family album a photograph of her gross bisexual outfit as the Whore of Babylon.
Langgaard is better known as the composer of 16 symphonies, and each of the scenes is preceded by a sweeping prelude—which collectively might make a fine orchestral suite. The first, a contrapuntal introduction with prominent cellos and double basses, introduces dancers in hooped corsets, spinning like tops, as if driven by external forces. Delicate woodwind signal the arrival of the Antichrist, naked, bloody like a newborn animal with the natal caul still attached.
In what may be a departure from the libretto, but in accordance with the deist view of the composer, the voice of God is given to the frail figure of the Antichrist, and it is this representative of humanity, not some supreme being, who eventually delivers mankind from the evil influence of Lucifer. God himself remains silent, represented by the huge male figure, with female genitalia, who appears from the sky.
Any metaphysical speculation is briefly interrupted, however, when what looks like a yellow New York taxi also plunges from the heavens, apparently killing all in the vicinity. In the context of everything else, it seemed almost a normal happening.
The structure of the piece makes it almost as much a ballet as an opera, and a brilliant company of dancers in oily black and white slither and gyrate around the singers, who appear as allegories of weakness and sin, an Air of Mystery and her Echo, ‘The Mouth Speaking Great Words’, The Lie, Hate, Deception, the Scarlet Beast and the Whore.
Stucki deservedly earns pride of place in the curtain call—not simply for bravery in wearing that outfit—but a fine cast including Thomas Lehman as Lucifer and Andrew Dickinson as The Lie are as effective in their supporting roles as their extreme costumes and masks allow.