Wexford Festival: The Dwarf

National Opera House (Jerome Hines Theatre), Wexford 25/10/25

Christopher Knopp (music director, piano); Charne Rochford (tenor), Eleri Gwilym (soprano); Charlotte Baker (soprano); Ross Cumming (baritone); Victoria Harley (soprano); Olivia Carrell (soprano); Erin Fflur (mezzo-soprano); Cerys Macallister (soprano); Heather sammon (mezzo-soprano); Eleanor O'Driscoll (mezzo-soprano); Camilla Seale (mezzo-soprano)

The seventh report from this year’s Wexford Festival Opera is the last to cover an operatic production – the remaining three will cover concerts of selected operatic and choral repertoire, but not full operas.  I caught Zemlinsky’s 1922 ‘The Dwarf’ (‘Der Zwerg’ in an English translation) on the afternoon of 25th October, in the Jerome Hynes Theatre of the National Opera House.  The ‘Pocket Opera’ one-acter is based on an Oscar Wilde story, ‘The Birthday of the Infanta’, in which the Spanish princess receives a gift from a Sultan, in the form of a ‘dwarf, a person not merely of diminutive stature, but of deformed physique and physiognomy, who has never seen his own reflection in a mirror.  We know from the paintings of Velázquez that such people were kept at the Spanish court, in a strange combination of grotesque entertainment and grace-and-favour.  After an initial shock, the Princess is intrigued by the novelty and curiosity-value of the gift.  She and the Dwarf walk together in the gardens, share confidences and become close.  She gives him a white rose from the garden.  For him, this is love.  For her, though, it is no more than the affection she would feel for a favourite toy  and rather less than she might feel for a puppy.  When he declares his love, the novelty wears off and she orders that he be shown a mirror.  The experience of ‘discovering that he is deemed not merely unloved, but unlovable, kills him.  The contradictions and arbitrariness of the perception and experience of beauty is a major theme, but so is the savage cruelty which can be cloaked as aesthetic judgement (a salutary lesson for music critics, perhaps?).  It may be safely assumed that the fact that Zemlinsky had just been dumped by Alma Schindler in favour of Gustav Mahler had some bearing on the choice of subject matter, not that he was a gargoyle, but he was no oil painting.  A sub-theme therefore, is a rather baleful and misogynistic perspective on the power and agency of women and the vulnerability of men where sexual selection is concerned.  Bringing these elements into focus fell to Director Chris Moran, a native of Arklow, Designer Lisa Krugel who grew up in West Cork, and Lighting Designer Maksym Diedov  (with whose work in ‘La tragédie de Carmen’ this year and ‘Puccini, Man of Theatre’ last year I was already familiar).  Music Director Christopher Knopp played Zemlinsky’s substantial score (the original has triple winds, full brass, a battalion of percussion and full strings) in piano reduction.  His troll-like entrance boded well for the theatre of the grotesque that was to follow.

As well as Donna Clara the Infanta (Welsh soprano Eleri Gwilym) and The Dwarf (English tenor Charne Rochford, remembered from a very fine Verdi Requiem in Glasgow, November 2023), there are 4 ladies-in-waiting (or the Infanta’s ‘friends’- Irish soprano Cerys MacAllister, Irish mezzos Heather Sammon and Eleanor O'Driscoll, and British mezzo Camilla Seale) and 3 housemaids in uniform (English sopranos Victoria Harle and, Olivia Carrell, and Welsh mezzo Erin Fflur – a super eponymous ‘Lady Gregory in America’ last year).  A fourth character in the same maid’s uniform is named: Ghita, the Infanta’s attendant (English soprano Charlotte Baker).  Finally, Don Estoban, the Chamberlain, was sung by Scottish baritone Ross Cumming, whose career I have been following for the last three years, from RCS MMus productions until recently premiering the role of Roger Penistone in Scottish Opera’s production of Toby Hession’s ‘A Matter of Misconduct’.

So much is conveyed by the ingenious visuals in this production, that they merit detailed description.  Makeup, costumes and lighting are all employed to devastating and rather misogynistic effect.  The maids’ costumes make them look rotund and lumpen, while the movement direction accentuates this with a pantomime vibe.  They have a dance with brooms which is as brilliantly funny as it is unforgettable, but hardly the picture of elegance.  Their dialogue betrays their silliness, rudeness and greed.  When the Infanta makes her entrance, a projected silhouette of an elegant lady sets up an expectation.  A fan covers her face as she enters.  When the fan is moved aside, her facial makeup emulates white lead, very dark (almost black) lipstick and eye-shadow and contouring that accentuates an aquiline profile, endowing her with a macabre aspect with the pallor of the grave.  The ladies-in-waiting are similarly made-up, with dialogue that shows them to be materialistic, vain, contemptuous and inconsiderate.  The Infanta’s court is, in a word, ugly.  It is also rather chaotic.  Don Estoban, the Chamberlain, clings to the illusion that he is in charge of making the Court run smoothly, but in reality he isn’t and it doesn’t – he is powerless, ineffectual and incompetent.  When the dwarf makes his entrance, a projected silhouette of a hideous goblin sets its own prejudiced expectation, but in fact The Dwarf is urbane, polite, considerate, obliging and erudite.  There is no un-awkward way of making the following back-handed compliment: Charne Rochford is not hideous.  The projected silhouettes are an ingenious way of throwing the dichotomy of prejudiced perception versus objective observation into sharp relief, one of many touches that make this production a triumph of stagecraft.

One character in the ugly Court is not ‘of’ the Court.  Ghita sees her mistress’ callousness, the disdainful mockery of the ladies-in-waiting, the idle frivolity of the maids and the naïve innocent gentleness of The Dwarf.  She sees the cruelty.  It is she who is told to show The Dwarf a mirror and who must bear the guilt.  Ghita is our conscience, there on the stage, even as we watch.

Zemlinsky’s music is on the cusp between Late Romanticism and Modernism (he was the teacher of both Schoenberg and Korngold, after all).  Christopher Knopp’s playing delivered a quasi-orchestral soundscape that was quite remarkable in its support for vocal excellence.  And we had plenty of that, most notably Charne’s portrayal of the collapse of The Dwarf’s sense of self and his world, Eleri’s portrayal of a nonchalant disconnect between the Infanta’s lack of empathy and the destruction that it wreaks, and Charlotte’s poignant realisation of Ghita’s anguish at being the agent of that destruction.  Powerful stuff for a pantomime.  In truth, though, everybody delivered a performance that gelled as a coherent vision of what I think must rank as a masterpiece.  It certainly received the utmost advocacy.

I’ll leave the last callous words to the Infanta: “A broken heart?  For the future, let those that come to play with me have no hearts”.  Poor Zemlinsky, he had it bad.

photo credit: Pádraig Grant