Hanoch Levin – The Opera premiered at the Israeli Opera this week in a production that connected the late playwright’s works and music. “Yossi’s Mother,” composed by Yossi Ben Nun, is a dark song about a castrating mother who ensures her boy “sings like an angel.” Performed by tenor Adi Ezra in a colorful drag costume, it is a vivid scene depicting a cruel woman – a Levin trope – as well as a reference to castration in opera’s history which created famous figures like Farinelli.

Soprano Tom Cohen sang “On a Summer Night.” A song that draws a comparison between passing wind and our fleeting human lives. This constant see-saw swing between high and low, fleshy mess, and lofty desires – kept the audience riveted.

In “Popper,” composed by David Sebba, a married couple is ruined. Schwartziska (Soprano Yael Levita) picked her nose when her husband Schwartz (Baritone Oded Reich) walked in and asked to kiss her finger. Her attempts to placate him by offering other body parts, like shoulders, fail. Schwartz demands the finger.

As the couple told their woes to two Freud-like characters, Levita took the cigar away from her therapist and made him cower in fear. Freud famously said that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Levin offers that only a finger is a finger.

An eternal roller-coaster ride of fright and pleasure

In “Bachelors and Bachelorettes,” composed by Roni Reshef, Bulba (soprano Daniela Skorka) promises her lover Zneidoch (baritone Yair Polishook) “an eternal roller-coaster ride of fright and pleasure.”

She then makes good on her promise of not letting him “tie a shoelace without me sticking a finger up there.”

The comical muscle suit Polishook wears and the 1950’s housewife dress Skorka has on, designed by Ula Shevtsov, are in stark contrast to the actual power dynamics here. This mountain of a man is unable to defend himself from a prodding finger. Bulba knows better than him what he allegedly wants. Zneidoch, like nearly all of Levin’s male characters, is doomed by a woman’s finger. 

A potpourri of various excerpts of Levin’s work, the opera combines Levin’s dark songs for children, scenes from his various plays, and cabaret songs. The result is an eclectic tour of Levin’s theatrical imagination. A scene from the 1975 play Schitz appears after a scene from the 1983 play The Suitcase Packers (‘London’) to be replaced in turn by a scene from the 1968 cabaret You and Me and the Next War.

An excellent introduction to Levin’s charm, the end result is also a magic ouroboros. A being that devours itself to create itself and never dies. Wars follow wars; women torment men – rinse and repeat. Levin indeed wrote about breaking wind and fleshy bottoms, but had much more to say and show us. 

In Levin’s dark comedy, there is something in the nature of living itself which oppresses us. In The Child Hayuta a young girl goes to London and is crushed by a mammoth. In London we are informed that the British capital has great television, yet the speaker knows she will die alone. There is civilization, but somehow we are never able to fully enjoy it. If one must see animals, it is better to “watch worms wriggle,” the mother in Levin’s awful lesson for children advises.

Take Ruth Shekhash (Levita) who informs Itamar Yacobi (Reich) she is two things in one, a big-bottomed woman who is also a pianist, flesh, and spirit. When Yacobi attempts to consummate the relationship he discovers, to his horror, she is not a pianist. Shekhash smashed her piano, along with the small figure of Beethoven on top, and would have strangled the composer too had he been there.

“I want what I want,” she explains, “and I will not stand a piano or a composer standing in my way.” 

Hanoch Levin – The Opera will be offered on Fri, Feb 2, at 8 p.m. Mon, Feb 5, at 8 p.m. and Tue, Feb 6, at 8 p.m. Friday, June 14, at 1 p.m. and Saturday, June 15, at 9 p.m.  Tickets range from NIS 150-290. Hebrew with English subtitles. Call (03) 692 777 for bookings. The Israeli Opera, 19 Shaul Hamelech St., Tel Aviv.