A Few Words About The Black Rider ********************************* The Black Rider tale probably originates with a work of German romantic literature known as "Gespensterbuch," published in 1811. It is, however, a universal story - one of a vast body of sagas of men who make questionable arrangements with Satan. Most famously told in Carl Maria Von Weber's opera, Der Freischutz - which featured an altered (happy) ending - The Black Riders latest telling is a dark, symbolic and comedic affair. The original story concerns a clerk, Wilhelm, who is in love with Katchen, daughter of the old forester, Kuno. Kuno wishes his daughter to marry a hunter. Katchen insists that a marksmanship contest be held to determine the finest hunter, hoping that Wilhelm might thus have a chance to win. Wilhelm, however cannot hit the broad side of a barn - until he is approached by a "dark horseman" called Pegleg. Pegleg arranges to give Wilhelm some "magic bullets," mysteriously guaranteed to hit anything Wilhelm aims at -except for one bullet, which Pegleg earmarks for his own purposes. Wilhelm wins the initial contest, and his bride's hand, but another shooting match is scheduled for their wedding day. Wilhelm asks Pegleg, who bears a suspicious resemblance to a leading citizen of the netherworld, for that last, unused bullet. Firing at a wooden dove, Wilhelm instead thanks to the cursed bullet - slays his bride. In Freischutz, divine intervention prevents Wilhelm from killing his bride, and he gets off the hook with a stern warning about dealing with the devil. In the Robert Wilson-directed rendition of the story, Wilhelm ends up raving mad, another strait-jacketed lunatic in Hell's traveling carnival. The final scene is of Pegleg, sleek in a tuxedo singing a mock-sentimental song written by Waits, "The Last Rose of Summer" which beings, "I love the way/The tattered cloud/Go wind across the sky..." Wilson's direction and, more obviously, Burroughs' libretto imbued The Black Rider with modern implications and allusions. At one point, the old forester, Kuno declares: "Some way he got into the magic bullets, and that leads straight to the devil's work, just like marijuana leads to heroin." Later, as Waits explained, "one of the actors comes out on stage, stands alone in a spotlight, talks about an argument between Hemingway and his agent - about selling out in Hollywood. Burroughs found some of the branches of the story, and let them grow into more metaphorical things in all of our lives every day that, in fact, are deals with the devil that we've made. What is cunning about those deals is that we're not aware we've made them. And when they come to fruitation, we are shocked and amazed." Originally staged at a cost of $1.75 million in Hamburg, The Black Rider was, by all accounts, a remarkable spectacle. John Rockwell referred to it in the New York Times as a kind of cross of Cabaret, The Threepenny Opera, and The Rocky Horror Picture Show: Douglas Sutton wrote in the International Herald Tribune: "Wilson makes objects and actors appear, disappear, and reappear in pursing the story with tight choreographic precision." Jackie Wullschlager enthused in the Financial Times of London: "For three hours of graceful, cold artifice, they (the actors) look, act, and sound like figures from silent movies...Wilson turns children's drawings into three-dimensional monstrosities. Crooked chairs, two meters high, dangle at odd angles...pine trees are scissor cut-outs which collapse and grow again like cartoons...Waits, sarcastic ballads, full of folk and blues and rock, call back the scarred idealism and mock simplicity of Kurt Weill, while Burroughs' monosyllabic banality has here found the setting which makes it seem perfect." Aside from Hamburg, The Black Rider was performed in Vienna, Paris, Barcelona, Genoa, Amsterdam and Berlin. The original production and cast will make their U.S. debut Nov. 20 at The Brooklyn Academy of Music in Brooklyn, New York, for a run of ten performances.