Opera Post-Funny in Poland

By Michael Walsh.

If some Romantic operas are funny (e.g., Wagner's Die Meistersinger), can some post-Romantic operas be called post-funny? That was the question raised last week by the newest work of Poland's Krzysztof Penderecki, 57, a leading European composer who has increasingly been changing the gardes, from avant to rear. UBU REX, which opened the Munich Opera Festival, is based on the 1896 play Ubu roi, by French Absurdist Alfred Jarry, about a loathsome clod (read: typical bourgeois) who murders the King of Poland and, supplanting him, ruins the country. Yet even with the events of the past two years before him, Penderecki draws no particular political symbolism from the text, and his harmless, rather charmless tonal score simply galumphs forgettably along. Far more Ubu-like are the sets and costumes by artist Roland Topor, which achieve startling new depths of vulgarity through their persistent evocation of feces and entrails. Is a triumphal arch crowned by a defecating man waving toilet paper black humor, or does it go beyond post-funny and into the realm of merely disgusting? -- M.W.