Abstract:
Die Schöne Müllerin is a tale of heartbreak that follows a young miller along his journey of disillusionment and obsession. Schubert completed the twenty-song cycle in 1824, setting the poetry of Wilhelm Müller. The cycle begins with a young journeyman as he follows a brook to a mill, where he falls madly in love with the miller’s beautiful daughter. His love is not reciprocated, and he becomes so engrossed in the fantasy he creates that his passion turns into disillusionment. The journeyman is a Romantic, becoming fixated more on the idea of the miller maid than on her actual physical self, and most interaction is imagined in his head. Finally, a rival enters who personifies virility and masculinity and sweeps the maiden off her feet. The journeyman’s passions become masochistic and set off a downward spiral leading to his inevitable depression and suicide by drowning. Our protagonist is a fascinating case of failed masculinity; a strange kind of inverted tragic hero who becomes a sacrifice to a misguided ideal of manhood. He fails, not because he is unmasculine, but because he does not recognise in himself a viable alternative to the clichéd masculinity of his rival. This staged production explores the tension between the journeyman’s two main relationships: with the miller maid in his fantastical dreams, and with nature and the brook which is his grim reality. The two characters undergo the same journey: one in the present and the other looking back to reminisce and guide from beyond the grave. The brook is his accomplice throughout and eventually seduces him to a watery grave. This performance is the culmination of a University of Auckland summer research project completed over the past 3 months.