Two Nights at the Armory

Schubert: The Immersive Experience

In a way, the Park Avenue Armory’s production of “Doppelganger” — the final performance of which I saw on Thursday, Sept. 28 — began before I even got to my seat.

Navigating the dark maze of gymnasium bleachers — as spooky ambient sounds played in the background — I almost expected someone to jump out at me, à la a haunted house.  

The production — taking place in the Armory’s drill hall — is set during World War I. On the “stage” below, rows of beds with pianist Helmut Deutsch in the middle, his instrument like another piece of furniture.

Nurses in Handmaid’s Tale-esque costumes tend to soldiers — wounded? shell shocked? — who toss and turn synchronously. A suspendered Jonas Kaufmann, whom I almost hadn’t noticed, jumps out of bed, singing “Kreigers Ahnung.”

With projected subtitles in English and German, Kaufmann, sounding especially sweet-voiced on, “How often I have dreamt sweetly upon her warm breast,” ends the song in what would be best described in yoga as “boat pose.”

The idea of a large-scale production of Franz Schubert’s Schwanengesang is objectively crazy. Not only was Schubert a failed opera composer. But the posthumously-published songs — which aren’t really a “cycle” at all, being by different poets — are conceived as an intimate dialogue between voice and piano.

But maybe director Claus Guth — not unlike “Doppelganger’s” protagonist — is a bit of a mad genius.  To boot, no one could do this except Kaufmann. In addition to being a brilliant tenor, he is a convincing actor — and relatively attractive, at least by operatic standards.  

In “Liebesbotschaft,” Kaufmann paces, runs, is escorted back to bed — a spotlight following him all the while. The sound of dancers’ feet was especially present in “In der Ferne,” with soft piano word painting on “whispering breezes” with Kaufmann’s breathy head voice.

I couldn’t decide whether the “interval sound compositions” by Mathis Nitschke were disruptive or not — ambient sounds interspersed with funerial piano chords.

With fracturing sounds, the soldier-dancers drop, and staticky projections, like TV snow, flood the stage. Deutsch reaches into piano and plucks its innards. It reminded me of one of those immersive Van Gogh experiences.

In “Frühlingssensucht,” there are falling blood-red petals, as well as a pillow fight. In the haunting “Ständchen,” Kaufmann is stabbed in the stomach, strewn among the sheets. Indeed, some of Kaufmann’s best singing in “Doppelganger” was done from a lying position.

“The wind blows with an autumnal chill,” sings the bundled Kaufmann in “Herbst.” As the nurses drop petals on a shroud, “So do the roses of love die,” he sings.

My ears pound as soldiers whack bedframes with metal rods. Nurses make beds during “Aufenthalt,” while Kaufmann holds a pillow over his head. “Farewell, lively, cheerful town” sings Kaufmann in “Abschied,” donning a jacket and rucksack.

With the spotlight, for the first time, on Deutsch, he plays the “Andante sostenuto” from Schubert’s B-flat major piano sonata. It felt like a palate cleanser. Indeed, I noticed Kaufmann taking a swig (of water?) from a flask.

In “Ihr Bild,” Kaufmann is, albeit briefly, standing in the piano’s belly — the way you usually hear lieder. Until then, there was little face-to-face between Kaufmann and Deutsch. But these long-time collaborators never seemed out-of-synch.

In “Das Fischermädchen,” the women stood on beds. There were plenty of jump-scares, gunshots, and smoke machines. Indeed, some of the choreography was more successful than others.

 But — I thought as I watched Kaufmann build a pillow fort — isn’t all of this a kind of word painting? Some obvious, verging into “immersive Schubert” territory, and some subtler.

In the gorgeously sung “Am Meer,” Kaufmann is lifted up in his casket-like bed, marched slowly towards a blinding light. By this point, I had lost count of how many times the tenor had died.

“On the distant horizon appears, like a misty vision, the town with its turrets,” sings Kaufmann in “Die Stadt.” The Armory’s garage door opens revealing sirens and other street noises — real or recorded, I couldn’t tell.

Kaufmann limps outside and, to the sound of infernal ticking, returns with a (noticeably thinner) double. “A man stands there too, staring up, and wringing his hands in anguish,” sings Kaufman mournfully in “Der Doppelgänger.”

“I shudder when I see his face,” sings Kaufmann, this “pallid companion” a zombie-like NPC.

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Self-Destruct

The audience at Arca’s “Mutant; Destrudo” — also at the Armory on Wednesday, Oct. 11 — couldn’t have been more different from that at “Doppelganger.”

White hair and walkers were traded out for platform boots and mesh crop tops. I may have been the only person at both.

Yet I almost didn’t make it. Tickets to “Doppelganger” ranged from $45 to $250, with anything under $100 selling out immediately. Tickets to “Mutant; Destrudo,” which runs through Oct. 15, are $60 for standing room.

The Armory’s PR denied me press tickets to either — a problem I rarely encounter, as most arts organizations are eager to help early-career critics — leaving me with a bit of righteous indignation. Especially as the concert was geared towards younger, queer, trans audiences.

However, I’m glad I paid for standing room. Because what appeared to be press seats — half of which were empty, by the way — were in the back of the drill hall, far away from any moshing. You couldn’t possibly experience the concert to its fullest from this vantage point.

I wonder if this contributed to Zachary Woolfe’s tepid review in the New York Times. “If you squint,” he writes, “this is pop.”

From my perspective, it often felt like a pop concert. Voguing down the catwalk, to shouts of “We love you, Arca,” the Venezuelan artist stopped to take selfies with her fans, who swayed to her most danceable songs, singing along in Spanish.

Arca — switching between blue, pink, and rainbow wigs — looked like a fallen angel in a black sequined gown. To the left of the stage, scaffolding with trapeze rings, from which Arca occasionally swung. I could feel the beat in my chest. Orange earplugs, distributed like Halloween candy, often came in handy.

But this wasn’t just EDM. Praised for her vocal lyricism, Arca switches seamlessly between falsetto and chest voice, with all sorts of hums, whispers, and orgasmic rumbles in the throat. Her melodies sounded, at times, modal — like a folk song. A Pitchfork review cites Schumann and Mendelssohn as influences.

And I noticed many similarities to “Doppelganger,” though “Mutant; Destrudo” was probably more successful in its immersivity.

The concert began with a video feedback loop of the audience. Throughout, trippy projections resembled hypnotic spirals, lava, bacteria under a microscope, starbursts, geodes, Rorschach tests. Glitch and strobe lights. High-pitched feedback and plenty of reverb. At one point, Arca appeared as a doll-like video game avatar.

One stunt involved a Frankenstein-like electric chair. An elaborate costume change, handled with surgical precision, left Arca with glass titties. The almost-violent transformation, Arca’s crazed face onscreen, evoked Marina Abramovich as Maria Callas.

“Do you wanna hear piano or synths first?” she asked the crowd, who screamed, “Piano!” As tenderly as if she were playing Mozart, Arca produced an otherworldly sound, detuned and buzzing, her face reflected in the instrument’s lid.

Magnets are placed on each string, she explained to the crowd, so you don’t need hammers. The result is an “augmented piano,” but “even more sensitive,” she said, gleefully. “It sounds like a synth, but it’s electroacoustic.”

Holding a glass of champagne, she began improvising at the synthesizer, a sound both raw and full of awe. It felt like play. “This is new technology, bitches,” she said, trying on her “midi heels,” clapping like a flamenco dancer.

At one point, she stepped into the audience, breaking the fourth wall. She wandered the space, inviting anyone to follow her, like disciplines. Unfortunately, the sound didn’t follow, making the experiment less-than-successful. But that’s what it was — an experiment.

“Everyone’s listening so intently,” she told the crowd — a phrase unusual at a high-energy concert. I couldn’t help but agree.  

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