One Morning...an Eternity, Aug 2025

[Note: this review was extracted from a full travelogue. You can find it under the Travel Etc tab on the homepage.]

The opera was *One Morning Turns Into an Eternity,* a triple bill of Viennese pieces from the early 20th century: Schoenberg’s one-woman opera *Erwartung,* Webern’s *Five Pieces for Orchestra,* and the final movement from Mahler’s *Das Lied von der Erde,* “Der Abschied.”

We’d never heard of either of the singers (Ausrine Stundtye for the Schoenberg, Fleur Barron for the Mahler) but were drawn to the director (Peter Sellars), the conductor (Esa-Pekka Salonen), and the orchestra (the Vienna Phil). Here's a picture of the set:

The Schoenberg is a portrait of a woman unhinged. Typically she wanders around a forest, calling out to her lover, looking for him, and then stumbles upon his dead body at the end. Eek! Sellars upended things by starting (before the music started) by having two men deliver a body bag to the woman. And to add insult to injury, they asked her to sign off on a form, confirming she had received it. The body bag was dumped unceremoniously on the floor. So in the moments when she’s calling out to her lover and asking where he is, you know she’s coo coo for Cocoa Puffs.

Maybe Stundtye doesn’t have the most beautiful voice but she was great for this. She leaned into the expressionism but also did a gorgeous job with the many lyric moments. Best of all, she, Salonen, and the Vienna Phil performed it so it made sense. It’s a highly fragmented piece but their performance made it all hang together.

The short Webern pieces were a perfect choice to transition between the sound worlds of the Schoenberg and the Mahler. The Webern is more chilly in its approach, it felt like a piquant rhubarb sorbet between the two other courses. Again with the rhubarb.

I was less familiar with the Mahler than with the Schoenberg, I think I’d only heard it once before (I’d heard the Schoenberg three or four times). At first blush you might not think it would be a good pairing with the Schoenberg - - that piece is relentlessly unhinged and the Mahler is warm and melancholy. It has a profound sadness but the music is somehow imbued with an undercurrent of humanity and hope. The woman is suffering but you know she’s going to get through it.

Barron sang it like a dream, she has just the glowing yet dark sound you want in a Mahler mezzo. It was interesting seeing how much textual overlap there was between the two pieces, both dealing with loss and death and trying to find a way to move on. Sellars wove these connections into the staging: both women addressed the same body bag, both moved about the stage in similar patterns, both wore black dresses. I found a possible deeper connection that might not have been intended: the Schoenberg woman makes a few references to her lover having been with another woman. I thought maybe the woman in the Mahler was the other woman…? I’d like to ask Sellars if that was his concept. Anyone know how I can get ahold of him?