Man on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown
He walked briskly onto the stage, closely followed by his accompanist Lars David Nilson, and down the dark, dark rabbit hole he went, without missing a beat. The piano was positioned remarkably far upstage, giving the singer plenty of physical room between piano and audience to build his character. In Mister Mattei’s hands, the protagonist of Schubert’s iconic Lieder cycle about a forlorn young fellow became an utterly shattered man in his late forties who, as I read it, had come close to making his peace with being unloved and alone before meeting a young girl who had illuminated his life with a new hope for love and redemption, a dream that turned out to be tragically short-lived and was soon smashed to bits and pieces by a world that would not grant him what his tender soul had always been yearning for.
The entire performance unfolded as an emotional journey in real time. Here was a deeply wounded man trying to come to terms with his doomed fate, blaming both the world and his foolish, naïve self for it, desperately clinging to faint strands of hope before seeing his every attempt at finding love, peace, and acceptance rebuked by humans, his surroundings, even time itself. Moments of incredible vulnerability and tenderness are overthrown by fits of anger, tightened fists and clenched teeth, hissing sounds and even foot stomping. At times, the wretched character’s hands clutched the half-open lid of the grand piano with the vehemence of a drowning man grasping the edge of a lifeboat.
This was the most visceral Winterreise I have ever seen, and I have been lucky to see a great many powerful interpretations of it and written about them on this blog. Mister Mattei’s performance was so well crafted and specific that it even conjured for me his love interest as an innocent, sensitive and tightly chaperoned young girl (I pictured her about half the size of his own towering, 6-foot-4-inch self, making the impossibility of a union even more apparent). The protagonist’s despair at the world’s misreading of his character, treating him like a brutish outcast, became physically palpable when he sang with what in German I would call Inbrunst, a word describing an intense inner heat emanating from glowing ambers, the line, Wann halt’ ich mein Liebchen im Arm – when will I hold my sweetheart in my arms? The devastating answer is implied in the defeated reprise of the question: never, ever. Looking out at the audience, the character at times seemed to see in us the culprits for his suffering, the smug philistines who deny him dignity and happiness. J’accuse! I got the sense that the character was virtually on the verge of exploding and committing a violent act of terror, yet I could not help feeling empathy for him and his suffering. It was riveting and deeply unsettling. This is how despair can bring a man to the verge of madness.
Mister Mattei seems drawn to wounded characters. His gut-wrenching performance as Amfortas in Wagner’s Parzival was a highlight of the Met’s 2018 season, and he recently played the homicide, psychotic title character in the Met’s new production of Wozzeck (where I came away thinking that his voice was almost too beautiful for the part, nearly clashing with the brutal sound of Berg’s dissonant, schizoid score). I suspect that both roles might have infused his highly dramatic, operatic take on Winterreise, for his character embodied elements that reminded me of both the martyrial suffering of Amfortas as well as the seething angst of Wozzeck.
It’s not unusual for singers nowadays to perform Winterreise as a theatrical solo piece instead of a traditional, rather static recital, but I have rarely seen it so exceptionally well done. It was fearless, nuanced, intelligent and confident. Mr. Mattei’s intensity reminded me of Jaques Brel, another charismatic performer who knew how to convey rage, shame and disgust about the world without reserve. Like Brel, Mr. Mattei succeeds in creating not alienation but empathy in us because he contrasts the emotional extremes of his characters with the exquisitely beautiful sound of his velvety voice. One can feel how much care and thought he puts into every note, every syllable, illuminating every nuance in both the lyrics and the melody. Therein lies the key to his rare artistry: conveying with beauty how ugly the world can be.
Peter Mattei had the best imaginable support from Mister Nilson, who all but disappeared behind the music that effortlessly ran from his fingers like a brook accompanying the lonely wanderer on his journey. I only wish that Zankel Hall had fully lowered the lights in the auditorium and given this particular performance the dramatically lit presentation it deserved. There are occasions when a venue should trust an artist to know how to take the audience along for a journey without the didactic aid of a lyric sheet. It must not have been easy for Mister Mattei to face a brightly lit audience that earnestly tried to read along the translation of the libretto, avidly flipping pages between numbers.
At the end of the cycle, during the pivotal Leierman, the protagonist’s perspective shifted away from the unforgiving world at large and focused with the sharpness of a laser beam on the singular character of the hurdy-gurdy player he seemed to spot from a distance. Tacitly advancing towards him, he shyly asked him if he might join him on his lonely journey, hinting at the chance that, together, they might yet create beauty out of misery. The question hung in the air. There was no doubt that this was his last chance at finding redemption and avoiding to fall into the abyss of terror. Devastatingly, the question remained unanswered.