A ‘White Rose’ Blooms From Troubled Earth : Long Beach Opera Production Tells a True Tale of Protesters Who Were Executed in Nazi Germany

As America nears the end of a political campaign that has failed to ignite much passion, there’s a musical event that is taking striking and provocative stands on the realities of politics.

“There is definitely a political statement here, and it’s not just about the Nazis,” Swiss stage director Peter Reichenbach says of “White Rose,” a Long Beach Opera production playing at the Backlot Theater in West Hollywood. “It’s a statement about all dictatorships and the oppression of human rights everywhere.”

“White Rose” (“Weisse Rose”), a 70-minute opera by Udo Zimmermann, was given its West Coast premiere at the West Hollywood theater on Friday. It is scheduled to continue through Nov. 20.

Almost a staged song cycle, it is a setting of 16 texts by Wolfgang Willaschek on the execution of Hans and Sophie Scholl, organizers of the anti-Nazi White Rose resistance movement in wartime Germany.

Reichenbach is presenting his updated production here with Michael Zearott as musical director. Soprano Catherine Schwartzman sings the part of Sophie, and tenor Peter McLaughlin portrays Hans in this English version.

“It is only 2 years old but is already one of the most popular new operas anywhere,” Reichenbach said as he rehearsed his production recently. “Udo Zimmermann has succeeded in creating an astonishing opera. It is opera at its best.”

Zimmermann, a 45-year-old native of Dresden, East Germany, has written several operas, many political, and he has seen them staged throughout Europe, traveling easily between the East and West. But the success of “White Rose” has surprised many, especially since it deals with a tragic, depressing subject.

In February, 1943, the Nazis had just suffered the disastrous defeat of their Sixth Army near Stalingrad and the activities of an anti-Nazi student movement in Munich called Weisse Rose began to heat up. Headed by a 24-year-old medical student named Hans Scholl, his younger sister Sophie and a philosophy professor named Kurt Huber, the movement wrote protest letters to other German universities and printed leaflets requesting support for a popular resistance movement.

Then, triggered by a speech made by the gauleiter of Bavaria to the university students in which the official suggested that women should have babies every year for the good of the fatherland, the students rioted. (The gauleiter had even volunteered some of his own men to any women who couldn’t find a man, promising an enjoyable time.)

A handyman working at the university saw the Scholls distributing handbills during the riot and made a citizen’s arrest, turning them over to the Gestapo. Five days later, they were tried for treason and executed by guillotine at Stadelheim prison.

In the late 1960s Zimmermann wrote his first opera about the Scholls, also called “White Rose.” Its popularity was certainly not as great as his latest version and dealt more with the private lives of the two.

Re-inspired by the subject almost 20 years later, Zimmermann wrote his second “White Rose.” Commemorating the 43rd anniversary of the Scholls’ death, the opening of the updated opera in Hamburg in February, 1986, met with great success. Since then, there have been at least 35 different productions in European cities including Vienna, Bonn and Munich.

Last September, a production of the new “White Rose” was mounted in Omaha, Neb., marking the U.S. premiere of the work. There is also a recording available on Orfeo records with Zimmermann conducting. Reichenbach first heard about the opera in 1986 and was immediately taken by it. “I see a lot of things,” he explains. “I see what happens in South Africa. I know about violations of human rights in dictatorships, about the mistreating of minorities, and now that I am directing this opera in the U.S., a history that no one really wants to think about comes to mind.

“Wasn’t there once a country far away called Vietnam with a village named My Lai, and weren’t there once nations of Indians whose lands and honor were taken, never to be restored. This knowledge is uncomfortable.”

All of the action in “White Rose” takes place in the cells of Hans and Sophie as they await execution. The staging was originally conceived as being very simple, with only two singers and no scene changes.

Reichenbach takes a different approach. Instead of two singers on stage as called for in the score, there are also eight mimes, four of which represent Sophie, the other four, Hans.

Most of the time the mimes and singers are lined up in two perpendicular single files, making the same gestures simultaneously, as if each of the two characters were standing between two mirrors, with reflections on either side of them. Combined with dim lighting, the overall effect is strangely horrific, suggestive of German Expressionism.

“It’s very romantic music, almost like Strauss’ ‘Four Last Songs,’ ” observes conductor Michael Zearott, who conducts a 15-piece chamber ensemble for the production. “But there’s also a mixture of several contemporary devices, and a sophisticated motivic structure that make it relative to modern trends as well.”

“The text is a series of monologues about life, the joy of life, fear and questions about truth,” adds Reichenbach. “The music comes out of the Schubert lieder tradition, with an astonishing synthesis of form and content.”

The Romantic influences in the score are apparent, with soaring melodies that dominate the music and a motivic structuring that, at times, sounds Wagnerian. A polytonal fugato section that drives to a spectacular final cadence suggests a Baroque influence.

Other sections, laden with repetitive patterns, sound as if influenced by the minimalist school. But the mishmash of stylistic sensibilities goes unnoticed next to the prevailing agitprop nature of the drama, highlighted by chromatic vocal lines.

“It was an extremely difficult score for the singers,” Zearott said. “Unlike in the Berg operas, there’s no doubling of the vocal parts, so you almost have to have perfect pitch to be able to sing it.”

Long Beach Opera general director Michael Milenski, who enjoys the reputation of bringing unusual opera to the Southland, denies that there was any conscious effort to align the “White Rose” with the coming election.

“No, we weren’t trying to make a comment on the election, but I admit it’s certainly appropriate,” says Milenski.

However, he added that, in one way, producing the opera at this time might have been a bad idea: The heavy volume of mail during the political campaign may have contributed to the postal system’s loss of thousands of Long Beach Opera season brochures.

Certainly the popularity of “White Rose” comes from its political statement. But Reichenbach suggests that perhaps there is a broader reason for re-examining the Scholls’ story.

“When we hear the words National Socialism , names like Hitler, Himmler and Eichmann come immediately to mind,” he said. “Their biographies are well known, their actions have been well documented and commented upon. We have given them their place in history, however dubious it may be.

“But where are the victims? Do we know their names and destinies? Are we interested in them? Or is it that the perpetrators are always more interesting than the victims?”