\n<\/p>\n
He first submitted his designs in early 2020, just as he was reading about how Wuhan, China \u2014 a city of roughly 8.5 million people \u2014 was shutting down because of Covid-19. He couldn\u2019t imagine that; it would be like New York City doing the same. Once that happened too, he began to see pop-up hospitals similar to the one he had conceived for \u201cDoppelganger.\u201d<\/p>\n
Now it has taken on an eerie resonance. Set vaguely in the first half of the 20th century, the production, with its rows and rows of beds, seems like a darkly familiar sight, especially to New Yorkers. And, Levine said, the isolation of a temporary hospital \u2014 whether during a war, as in \u201cDoppelganger,\u201d or somewhere like the Javits Center in the early days of the pandemic \u2014 is supported, even amplified, by Schubert\u2019s music.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s something lonely about these songs,\u201d Levine said, \u201cand there\u2019s something quite lonely about this space.\u201d<\/p>\n
Kaufmann will be lightly amplified, but the concept of \u201cDoppelganger\u201d still relies on a performer with his immense presence, Audi said. \u201cYou need a personality like this,\u201d he added, \u201cbecause he\u2019s alone onstage, and this is all taking place inside his head.\u201d<\/p>\n
He won\u2019t be entirely alone. Among the beds will be dancers, who play the parts of fellow soldiers, as well as actors playing hospital workers. And Schubert\u2019s score will be joined by Mathis Nitschke\u2019s original music \u2014 which joins the songs together, picking up the harmonic thread of one and transitioning to that of the next. (Deutsch also has a showcase in the form of an interlude pulled from a late Schubert piano sonata.)<\/p>\n
All this is possible, Kaufmann said, because \u201cSchwanengesang\u201d isn\u2019t really a cycle. \u201cWe\u2019re allowed to do something different with it,\u201d he added, in a collaborative process among friends. \u201cThat\u2019s our privilege, that we can present our ideas in a new package.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n