Inside ERWARTUNG: Get to Know Anna Gabler

Soprano Anna Gabler has appeared on many internationally renowned stages, including at Staatstheater Nürnberg where she made her recent sensational role debut as Kundry in Parsifal.

This spring, she makes her COC debut in Schoenberg’s gripping one-act opera Erwartung—a psychological thriller sung entirely by one female lead. We spoke with her ahead of opening night about preparing to meet the challenges of this role, as well as what audiences can expect from this giant of musical Modernism.

COC: How would you describe Erwartung to someone new to opera?

Gabler: Erwartung is not a typical operatic piece as one would imagine with beautiful arias and ensembles and melodies that are easy to remember. It's a dramatic monologue set to modern music. A woman's passionate love story told in just 30 minutes—but a thrillingly intense 30 minutes. 

COC: This is your role debut as The Woman, who carries the entire opera musically, along with the orchestra. Can you describe the particular challenges of this role, and perhaps also what you’re most excited about?

Gabler: Listening to Erwartung, the piece sounds organic and logical in all its passionate outbursts. Schoenberg succeeds in putting the words into music as if they were a spoken monologue. The music reinforces the drama. It could be described as a perfect fusion of words and music. When learning it, the great challenge is first of all understanding and studying the musical and rhythmical structure up to a point where you can freely dive into this woman's inner world vocally and physically and make it sound as organic as Schoenberg intended.  

The piece draws a very powerful picture of a woman's love up to a passionate obsession and depicts a direct response to a man's deceit and, yes, abuse of her love. A leading operatic role is normally between 25 to 45 minutes of singing, in a timeline of three to four hours of opera. Here you have 30 minutes on your own nonstop, mentally, physically, and vocally. Quite an adventure and a great challenge! I love working on challenges like this one a lot. It shows me my limits every day and I love finding out how to push them further. 

COC: Do you have any pre-performance rituals?

Gabler: As I do yoga every day, that's definitely part of my ritual. Eating before a show is different for every singer; some have to, some mustn't. I definitely need to eat well, with preferably a lot of protein and some vegetables, in order to keep my energy stable throughout the performance (very much like in athletics, really). And then I have my warming up rituals physically, vocally, and mentally to get into focus. Erwartung especially needs a lot of focus, otherwise one gets lost quickly. 

COC: COC Music Director Johannes Debus will be conducting this production. How would you describe the singer/conductor relationship in a piece as hyper-focused as Erwartung?

Gabler: Erwartung is a "one-woman" show but definitely a "two-person performance,” if one could describe it like that. Every conductor has their own conducting pattern for this piece as the orchestra has a very complicated score to play. So it's crucial to work closely together in order to understand each other, preferably blind, in the end. I'm very happy and grateful that Johannes is in rehearsal every day. 

COC: Erwartung is being presented as a double bill with Bluebeard’s Castle. Are there any creative or logistical challenges to working in a paired production?

Gabler: To be honest, I wouldn't know at the moment. I haven't seen anything of the Bluebeard production and as far as I know there haven't been any "interpretive" connections made between Bluebeard and Erwartung.  But I think the combination of those two pieces is very exciting as they both deal with similar topics from a male and a female point of view.

COC: Do you imagine any link between Bluebeard’s Judith and The Woman in Erwartung? 

Gabler: Well, my idea was that The Woman could be Judith who kills Bluebeard. Like all the women who follow Bluebeard blindly into his castle unaware of its hidden dangers, because they are all infatuated by him...so does Judith. But she could be The Woman who turns the story around and kills him in the end. Not without consequences as far as her mental health is concerned, of course.

COC: What would you suggest people listen out for in this piece?

Gabler: Telling my friends back home in Vienna that I was doing Schoenberg’s Erwartung, some reactions were "Oh no, I hate that kind of music," some were "Oh fantastic, but soooooo difficult to listen to," and some just really loved the piece. I think it's important to be open to irritation. The piece is irritating. But once you hop on to this 30-minute ride through this incredibly rich inner world of this woman, it's just fantastic. Her love, her passion, her isolation, her grief...it's all there in the music. Just brilliant. And yes, it's not "easy listening,” but it's so worth it. 

COC: Robert Lepage’s staging is known to be particularly groundbreaking. Without giving too much away, have there been any surprises in the rehearsal process?

Gabler: As this is my role debut as The Woman and as many of my colleagues will confirm it's a very difficult piece to learn by heart (as the piece was written to be done in concert, not staged), I was a little nervous having to jump into a production which is as active as this one. I think it's probably the most active and interactive production of this piece ever. So for the audience it's something to look forward to, because it's full of fantastic images and interactions, and for me it's a great challenge…but so far I can definitely say, let's go for it and see what happens!