\n<\/p>\n
In a program note, Pichon says that in Schubert\u2019s opera catalog, there is \u201cno forgotten masterpiece to revive.\u201d But while going through those works, he added, he came across moments of \u201calmost spiritual meditation,\u201d in which Schubert the composer of \u201cthe universal voice\u201d emerges. From those, he and the director Silvia Costa assembled \u201cL\u2019Autre Voyage.\u201d<\/p>\n
The show begins, though, not with opera but with song \u2014 projected text from \u201cGute Nacht,\u201d the opening of \u201cWinterreise\u201d that gives way to the spare chords of the cycle\u2019s ending, \u201cDer Leiermann.\u201d Hence the title: From the \u201cwinter journey\u201d of Schubert comes this \u201cother journey,\u201d one more expansive and lasting a lifetime.<\/p>\n
Yet, in Schubertian fashion, its expansiveness is contained within something quite small. \u201cDer Leiermann\u201d is sung by a woman (Siobhan Stagg) at a spinning wheel who lets out a red string that stretches across the stage. From it she cuts a fragment barely more than a foot long.<\/p>\n
That red string, the most heavy-handed metaphor in \u201cL\u2019Autre Voyage,\u201d represents one life in the continuum of human existence, that of a male protagonist sung by the elegant baritone St\u00e9phane Degout, who was also heavily featured on \u201cMein Traum.\u201d Costa is a director who builds images more than scenes, which suits the nonlinear nature of this show. Through those tableaux we see the man happy \u2014 at his wedding, or watching his child sing at the piano \u2014 but also in unbearable pain. His child dies; he gets older; he sometimes feels as though he, too, is dead.<\/p>\n
There can never be resolution to a story like this. But \u201cL\u2019Autre Voyage\u201d suggests there is serenity in realizing that whatever we live through, it is all part of the ever-changing human experience. Along the way, Schubert\u2019s music \u2014 arias and lieder, and other excerpts \u2014 is strung together with slight alterations, particularly in the arrangements by Robert Percival that, while occasionally anachronistic, maintain the show\u2019s dramatic heft and a sense of consistency.<\/p>\n
Works that Schubert wrote for just two musicians or forces as large as an entire orchestra and choir come out sounding nearly, neatly the same. But the moments that stand out most \u2014 for their poetry, their lyrical turns of phrase, their sensitive beauty \u2014 tend to come in the lieder. And that\u2019s not a bad thing. Schubert might have failed in opera, but he was<\/em> a master of the art song.<\/p>\n Few lieder composers have approached Schubert in his power to move listeners. And he nudged the form in new directions, especially on the dramatic, evening-length scale of his two song cycles. Those, among his most lasting contributions to music, have taken on a life beyond what he intended. It\u2019s now not unusual to see a staged \u201cWinterreise\u201d; you could call it the greatest opera that Schubert ever wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n