A "Freischütz" rehearsal day has a strict timetable

First impressions are often decisive. What is true of a job interview also applies, figuratively speaking, to the opening of an opera. In Der Freischütz, it’s the rich farmer Kilian who sets the scene for the drama with the first solo of the evening (“Schau’ der Herr mich an als König!”). In this scene, Kilian not only celebrates his victory as marksman; he and half the village also revel in the failure of the young court clerk Max. Max has missed the target again, which in this archaic world makes a wedding with the forester’s daughter Agathe, whom he adores, a remote prospect. This ultimately leads Max to a crisis of conscience which ends with him making a pact with the devil.

A special responsibility
Maximilian Krummen says that “getting a performance off to a good start” with the first aria is a special responsibility. He is one of two singers who alternate as Kilian on the lake stage in this premiere season. Things get physical between Max and Kilian, he reveals, and straight away water plays a part, which will be a recurring theme throughout the opera in Philipp Stölzl’s production. Since rehearsals began three weeks ago, Maximilian Krummen has known that this Freischütz will be physically demanding. He travels by bike – without electricity, of course – and keeps fit by jogging.

A rehearsal day for the opera on the lake stage can sometimes be quite long for the singers – even if their role, like that of Kilian, is a relatively small one. At 10.30 a.m. when rehearsals on the lake stage begin to the first bars of music, Maximilian Krummen has already been warming up his voice for ten or fifteen minutes, put on his rehearsal costume and fetched his props. The singers finish their first session on the lake stage at 1.30 p.m., followed in the afternoon by make-up and costume fittings and other adjustments before the second rehearsal session of the day, which runs from 7 to 10 p.m. But at least “the closing times are sacred,” Maximilian Krummen says. That’s because at 10.00 pm, the lighting technicians are ready and waiting to put all the details of the village and the Wolf’s Ravine in the right light during the lighting rehearsals. A rehearsal day at the Bregenz Festival follows a strict timetable.

All proceedings, however, are subject to whims of the weather gods. For rehearsals on the lake, it’s not unusual for it to be raining cats and dogs one day and for “sun cream and dark glasses to be essential for the morning rehearsal the next,” as Maximilian Krummen says. He is very familiar with weather conditions at Lake Constance, even though he currently has a permanent engagement at the State Theatre in Braunschweig. This is because, when he was a child, his parents moved from Fürth to Radolfzell (Germany) at the other end of Lake Constance, where he remained until his music studies in Cologne. The family took him to every one of the Bregenz Festival’s lake stage productions. Those first impressions were positive. Now the young baritone has come full circle, and performing in Der Freischütz at Bregenz is like a homecoming.