Inner Space
Patrick Kinmonth probes deep beneath the surface of ancient and modern myths with new
productions of Richard Strauss’s Daphne in Toulouse and Detlev Glanert’s Solaris in Cologne
Complex modes of consciousness and conflicting relationships are set to course through Patrick Kinmonth’s opera
productions in 2014. The director, acclaimed for his staging of Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten in Cologne last
year, has created bold new readings of Richard Strauss’s Daphne and Detlev Glanert’s strikingly ambitious Solaris.
Both works address questions of myth and metaphor and mankind’s quest for eternal truths about the human
condition. Following the critical success of Die Gezeichneten in Cologne in 2014, Kinmonth again serves as
director and designer. Daphne opens at the Théâtre du Capitole in Toulouse on 15 June 2014 for the first of five
performances conducted by Hartmut Haenchen. Solaris will be presented by Cologne Opera in the German city’s
Oper am Dom with its premiere on 2 November.
“There is something about the ancient tragic tale of Daphne and the modern neo-Gothic qualities of Solaris that
appeals equally to my imagination,” the director notes. “Glanert’s Solaris, which embraces Stanisław Lem’s novel
and Andrei Tarkovsky’s film masterpiece, is effectively a modern ghost story. As such, it’s ideally suited to opera,
which can develop visually and musically onstage ideas otherwise only communicable in film. Both Daphne and
Solaris are challenging to stage. But the greater the challenge, the more satisfying it is to try and solve these
conundrums.” Kinmonth’s approach to Strauss’s one-act opera has been informed by his desire to explore the
character of Daphne and her suitors. He has chosen to counterbalance the work’s famous transformation scene,
during which Zeus turns Daphne into one of the laurel trees she so adores, by highlighting the fatal rivalry between
her childhood friend Leukippos and the sun-god Apollo, who comes to earth disguised as a shepherd.
“I believe we have found a good solution to the ‘problem’ of Daphne’s transformation,” comments Kinmonth. “The
work’s dramatic heart is in the sequence of scenes in which Apollo kills Leukippos and Daphne realises the awful
truth of what has happened. It’s where the worlds of the gods, the shepherds and of Daphne collide. For me that is
at least as important as her transformation into a tree.”
Solaris was written for and first performed at the 2012 Bregenz Festival. Lothar Zagrosek, will conduct Cologne
Opera’s production. Patrick Kinmonth intends to use the wide scope of the Oper am Dom stage to draw audiences
deep into a psychodrama set on a space station orbiting the mind-affecting planet Solaris. “The inspiration for how
to present this work on stage came quickly and allowed me to draw from my own reservoir of images,” he
observes. Water will play a prominent part in the staging, referencing the element’s importance both in the works of
Tarkovsky and Kinmonth’s own opera designs. “The presence of water onstage has been a leitmotif of my work in
opera and could not be better suited to Solaris, an opera about planet covered by a sea of plasma. Glanert’s
soundworld brilliantly reflects the space occupied in Tarkovsky’s movie by multiple layers of meaning. Reinhard
Palm’s libretto, which follows Lem’s novel, has a narrative that works together with the music to hook you into the
piece. The music is approachable, the libretto very clear. I want my staging of Solaris to complement those
qualities.”
In addition to his opera commitments this year, Patrick Kinmonth has designed the sets for Simon Dormandy’s new
staging of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at London’s Arcola Theatre (7 May – 14 June). “I’m fascinated by the play
and the way Beckett works with the dust of our lives past, this sense of constantly exploring the drama of myth and
of history, and of pointing out the fracture between desire and fulfilment,” he observes. Kinmonth’s fruitful
collaboration with choreographer Fernando Melo, meanwhile, continues after their highly acclaimed creation for
Norrdans: Middle of Nowhere,( now touring Scandinavia), with designs for Dance 16: Don Juan, a full-length ballet
based on the Don Juan legend, to be staged by Luzerner Theater in Lucerne in October 2014. He has also
designed a new production of Glazunov’s Raymonda and contributed to choreographer Pontus Lindberg’s
reworking of the original ballet for Swedish Royal Ballet, to be premiered in November 2014.
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Sunday 15 June – Sunday 29 June 2014
Théâtre du Capitole, Toulouse
NEW PRODUCTION
Claudia Barainsky Daphne | Franz-Josef Selig Peneios | Anna Larsson Gaea | Maximilian Schmitt Leukippos |
Alfred Kim Apollo | Hartmut Haenchen conductor
R.Strauss Daphne
Sunday 2 November 2014
Oper am Dom, Cologne Opera
NEW PRODUCTION
Nikolay Borchev Kris Kelvin | Aoife Miskelly Harey | Martin Koch Snaut | Bjarni Thor Kristinsson Sartorius |
TBC Negerin | Dalia Schaechter Alte Frau | Hanna Herfurtner Zwerg | Lothar Zagrosek conductor
Detlev Glanert Solaris