Donald Trump, one of the most dangerous American demagogues, stepped down from the political stage at the beginning of the year. But also a president who offered himself as an object of ridicule like no other – a real estate tycoon with a blonde mop on his head and orange skin (for which he once blamed the poor light of the lightbulbs, “we use them are forced”). Trump as president – that was a gift for political satire. In the competition between reality and fiction, he outdid the former: the real Trump played every satire on the wall.
“Playing Trump” is the name of the new mono opera by the Austrian composer Bernhard Lang, which has now premiered at the Hamburg State Opera: a good hour-long, fast-paced spectacle based on original texts from speeches by Trump that Dieter Sperl has compiled into a libretto. This new “Cheap Opera”, as Lang calls a series of small-scale pieces on documentary material, does not want to be primarily satirical. Rather, it is a matter of aesthetically taking up, exhibiting and spinning on the manipulative rhetoric of the American big man, who fell for 63 million voters.
This is extremely entertaining and often bitingly funny, but never moralizing and that makes it all the more sophisticated. Because a simple alliance between makers and audience, through which one would immediately know that you are on the right side against an obvious monster, is already made impossible by the casting of the Trump figure. Instead of a misogynistic, angry monster, from which one could easily distance oneself as a spectator, a petite blonde singer in shorts, boots and leather jacket acts on stage with an almost contagious love of play and transformation. A balancing act that is calculated on the verge of trivialization.
She grabs her crotch and brags: “Nobody has better toys than me!”
Like the vocal acrobatic soprano Donatienne Michel-Dansac Put yourself in the position of Trump’s facial expressions and body language without being too thick is brilliant. With an almost seductive suppleness, she throws herself into infantile tantrums and tantrums, imitates the melodramatic facial theater, clenches her hands during the awkward Trump shuffle or grabs her legs with a sexual boast, and finally a red tie from the fly to draw: “Nobody has better toys than me!”
The director Georges Delnon, who is also director of the Hamburg State Opera, stages the one-person piece with a few effective props on the rehearsal stage of the house (instead of as planned as an open-air show on the forecourt of the Elbphilharmonie). Red baseball caps, a long blue coat, a pair of boxing gloves and a block of wood that sometimes serves as a lectern, sometimes as “the great wall” – the scenery of power is ready. On the right of the stage are the extensive drums (brilliant: Lin Chen), on the left the virtuoso playing “band” consisting of electric guitar (Christian Kiefer), saxophone (Andreas Mader) and synthesizer (Johannes Harneit and Robert Jacob).
Bernhard Lang, born in 1957, is just as much at home in jazz as in the avant-garde. His music sweeps forward as a suggestive mixture of jazz, pop, groove, minimal music and electronic music in motorized grids and repetitive loops with small barbs and carries away with allusions to what American music history has to offer: Marching bands and crime thriller soundtrack, rap, Rock, hip-hop or electro-rock, along with alienated original sounds from Trump speeches and applause.
The conductor Emilio Pomàrico encourages the musicians to play enthusiastically, but the rhythmic precision still needs to be fine-tuned a little. Donatienne Michel-Dansac masters all the breakneck register changes, high-pitched coloratura, erratic changes in mood and expression and the steady transition between an abundance of different linguistic styles to singing in a breathtaking manner. “Playing Trump” is so much fun that it makes you think. The piece is a throw.