Strindberg became increasingly interested in the idea of using musical structures underlying the dramatic form, seeing the Kammerspiele theatre, established by the revolutionary German director Max Reinhardt in Berlin, as a point of reference for what he wished to achieve in his own Intimate Theatre. He wrote to the members of this company about the idea of ‘chamber music transferred to the drama’, employing the qualities of chamber music where three or more distinct voices blend into a whole from which the theme of the work emerges.

This was a dramatic break with the dominant star system that characterised the German and Scandinavian theatre at the turn of the century. Strindberg was tapping into the Zeitgeist that saw the emergence of luminaries such as Rheinhardt, Stanislavsky, and Mahler, all committed to the importance of the ensemble as opposed to the individual. From this cultural ferment emerged Strindberg’s concept of the chamber play that he gave the equivalent of opus numbers, as in a musical work. His open letter to the members of the ensemble articulates his manifesto:

If one asks what an Intimate Theatre is all about and what is indicated by a Chamber-play, then I can answer like this: In the drama we look for the strong, significant motif, but within limitations. In our treatment we avoid all pride, all calculated effects, places for applause, star roles, solo numbers. No determined form is to bind the author because the motif determines the form. Accordingly, freedom in our treatment, bound only by the unity of the conception and the feeling for style.

The title of The Ghost Sonata draws on Beethoven’s D minor Piano Sonata, and the Piano Trio in D major to which was attached the title Geister (Ghost) Trio. Strindberg doesn’t refer anywhere to this music in the play, but Beethoven’s work was certainly in his mind; he advised his German translator to listen to the trio if he wished to capture the full meaning of the play. In broad terms, the play has three sections: an introductory exterior environment; a development consisting of a series of revelations; and, finally, the restatement in the ‘hyacinth room’. Strindberg’s austere plays have appealed to several opera composers: there are two versions of The Ghost Sonata, and three of Miss Julie.

Aribert Reimann at the Foyer Talk of the Frankfurt Opera (photograph via Wikimedia Commons)

Aribert Reimann (born in Berlin in 1936), is one of Germany’s most celebrated and respected composers with an output encompassing many genres, but his eight operas constitute his most significant musical contribution. Lear (1978), based on Shakespeare, is regarded as one of the most important contemporary operas of the postwar period; the work was composed at the instigation of the great baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, who sang the title role in the première. Reimann has composed operas based on Kafka, Euripides, and Maeterlinck. The Ghost Sonata (1984) is his second work based on Strindberg (A Dream Play was premièred in 1965).

Reimann’s musical style is uncompromisingly modernist but flexible enough to suit a range of subject matter. Lear captures the elemental, cosmic forces of the play in large-scale music of visceral power and sonic force, whereas the music for The Ghost Sonata is more introspective and reflective, suited to the chamber-play format. Reimann uses particular instruments to delineate the various figures, shaping their vocal lines according to their individual characteristics, but blending all into a distinctive sound world with some ravishingly beautiful lyrical moments.

Reimann’s opera follows the trajectory of the play closely, shortening dialogue as necessary for an effective libretto. The three scenes of the opera commence with Director Hummel (The Old Man) engaging with Arkenholz (The Student). Both reveal aspects of their background, and gradually the full range of characters are introduced, including the ‘Mummy’, a bizarre old woman who lives in a cupboard, who sometimes thinks she is a parrot, and who is gradually revealed to be the Old Man’s bride of sixty years before. All the characters are not what they seem to be, and many skeletons begin to emerge from the closet; only the Student, a ‘Sunday child’, is not part of this guilt-ridden group: he is able to see what others cannot, including the dead.

The second scene is the silent ‘Ghost Supper’, where a variety of guests regularly gather; described by the servants as ‘mice nibbling in the attic’. Gradually, a series of confronting revelations unfold, including the fact that the Young Woman (the ‘Hyacinth Girl’), daughter of the Colonel who is hosting the dinner, is revealed to be the daughter of the Mummy and the Old Man. All culminates in the final scene where the Young Woman and the Student attempt to establish a relationship, but she dies calling for salvation.

While not a staple of the repertoire, The Ghost Sonata has enjoyed several productions over the years, including a fascinating theatrical exercise by Australian David Freeman’s Opera Factory in London in 1989, with alternating performances of the play and the opera, the same performers in both. Opera Australia continues an experiment begun last year with the production of Brian Howard’s Metamorphosis in the Sydney Opera Scenery Workshop, the same venue for Reimann’s work. The venue worked extremely well for Howard’s opera, and functions equally effectively for Greg Eldridge’s production of The Ghost Sonata, which is fluid and coherent.

Designer Emma Kingsbury and Lighting Designer John Rayment have both utilised the flexible but also limited space available to provide a kaleidoscopic and colourful playing area. Perhaps the most striking image occurs in the first scene, which has a stage-wide backdrop of a large mirror at an angle of forty-five degrees to the stage floor reflecting what appear to be windows with characters appearing in them but that are actually stage trap doors. There are moments when figures appear to be suspended above the stage; the visual effect is purposefully disorienting, the use of a mirror is a metaphor for deception – perhaps the dominant thematic element of the opera. The line ‘what does it all mean’, which ends this first scene, captures the essence of the opera.

The performance is conducted by Warwick Stengards, who elicits a wide range of colours and textures from the Opera Australia ensemble consisting of twelve players. Reimann’s score is characterised by a consistent use of solo instruments that gradually meld into the overall orchestral texture, calling on virtuosity by each of the players to which they respond with flair.

Richard Anderson as The Old Man, Dominica Matthews as The Mummy, and John Longmuir as The Colonel in The Ghost Sonata (photograph by Prudence Upton)

The central figures are the Old Man, played by Richard Anderson, who embodies the changing range of emotions very effectively in a voice of power and incisiveness, with occasional strain at the top of the range, while Shanul Sharma’s Student copes with the vocally murderous angularity of his tenor vocal line with aplomb, revealing a very effective head voice; the vocal line rises at times to a stratospheric high E-flat.

Dominica Matthews as the Mummy is the third figure in this bizarre triangle. She slips effortlessly from the seventy-nine-year-old of the ‘present’, with a blood-chilling monologue accompanied by a double bass at the beginning, into her much younger self, revealing a voice of stentorian power when required, as well as yearning vocal warmth as she remembers her youth. John Longmuir’s powerfully incisive tenor as the Colonel conveys the arrogance but ultimate fragility of this character, whose whole life is built on deception.

The servants, Bengtsson and Johansson, are Alexander Hargreaves and Virgilio Marino, both embodying an unsettling combination of servility and arrogance with voices of substance and excellent projection – they are the custodians of many of the secrets. Ruth Strutt plays both the Dark Lady and the Cook, her rich mezzo conveying the blood-sucking malignancy of the Cook who exerts a mysterious power over the inhabitants of the house.

Virgillio Marino as Johansson in OA's production of The Ghost Sonata (photograph by Prudence Upton)

Danita Weatherstone is appealing as the Young Woman, a small but crucial role. Weatherstone provides a moment of lyricism and the fleeting hope of redemption with her lovely, gleaming soprano; however, the sense of family guilt prevents her from accepting the Student’s marriage proposal as she dies to the sound of his final lullaby. All the singers must be complimented on their consistently excellent diction in the English translation from the German, rendering the surtitles almost redundant.

The Ghost Sonata is a disturbing, thought-provoking work, embodying many of the most theatrically effective musical qualities of postwar modernist opera, and it is to Opera Australia’s credit in bringing this challenging work to the public with such care and integrity. Might one hope to see Reimann’s mighty version of King Lear in the future?

The Ghost Sonata is produced by Opera Australia and continues at the IA Scenery Workshop until 14 September 2019. It then proceeds to The Coopers Malthouse, Merlyn Theatre, from September 25 to 28. Performance attended: September 11.