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| Images: Wilfried Hösl Dyer's Wife (Elena Pankratova) and the Apparition of Youth |
Nationaltheater, Munich
Emperor – Burkhard Fritz
Empress – Ricarda Merbeth
Nurse – Michaela Schuster
Spirit-Messenger – Sebastian Heleck
Barak – Wolfgang Koch
Dyer’s Wife – Elena Pankratova
Apparition of Youth, The
Hunchback – Dean Power
Voice of the Falcon, Guardian
of the Threshold of the Temple – Elsa Benoit
Voice from Above – Okka von der Damerau
The One-Eyed – Tim Kuypers
The One-Armed – Christian Rieger
The One-Eyed – Tim Kuypers
The One-Armed – Christian Rieger
The Hunchback – Dean Power
Keikobad – Renate Jett
Servants, Children’s Voices – Elsa
Benoit, Paula Iancic, Rachael Wilson
Children’s Voices – Elsa
Benoit, Paula Iancic, Alla El-Khashem, Rachael Wilson, Okka von der Damerau
Voices of Nightwatchmen –
Johannes Kammler, Sean Michael Plumb, Milan Siljanov
Krzysztof Warlikowsi (director)
Georgine Balk (Abendspielleitung)
Malgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Denis Guéguin (video)
Kamil Polak (video animation
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)
Children’s Chorus (chorus
master: Stellario Fagone) and Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff) of the
Bavarian State Opera
Bavarian State Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)
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| Empress (Ricarda Merbeth) and Nurse (Michaela Schuster) |
It was fascinating to see – and
of course, to hear – Krzysztof Warlikowsi’s productions of Die Gezeichneten and Die Frau
ohne Schatten on consecutive nights of this year’s Munich Opera Festival.
First, and perhaps most important: both received outstanding performances,
fully worthy of any festival in the world, let alone one such as this which
offers both new productions and stagings from the repertory. This FroSch may have been the latter, but who
would have known? There are clearly advantages to being conducted by the Music
Director – not least the identity of this particular music director – but even
so…
Both works offered the director
considerable challenges. In the Schreker opera, Warlikowski rose admirably to
the challenge of drawing out what was of greatest interest in a flawed work
and, indeed, even to criticising certain of its more problematical aspects. Die Frau ohne Schatten is not without
its problematical aspects either, of course, not least Hofmannsthal’s bizarre
pronatalism – perhaps a staging that made more of its wartime context (or near-context) might
help, but I have yet to see one – and, more broadly, the mismatch between
Strauss and Hofmannsthal here. If Strauss misunderstands Hofmannsthal, though –
and we should be wary of awarding priority simply on a chronological basis,
especially with so complex a composer-librettist relationship as this – it is,
to borrow a term from Webern and the post-war avant garde, a productive
misreading.
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| Emperor (Burkhard Fritz), Nurse, and Empress |
How does Warlikowski deal with
that, in a production first seen in 2013? I am not entirely sure that he does,
but it may well be that I am missing something. What he certainly does
accomplish is to present a number of standpoints, which may, to an extent, like
those presented in the work ‘itself’, be reconciled, or even set against each
other. The world of medicalised hysteria, of the sanatorium is present, just as
in Claus Guth’s production (seen at La Scala, Covent Garden, and the Berlin State Opera. Perhaps
counter-intuitively, for a work in which, laboriously at times, Hofmannsthal at
least seems to offer layer upon layer of symbolism, often highly referential or
at least allusive, Warlikowski penetrates to a very human drama at the work’s
heart. It might sound banal; perhaps in some ways it is; but why not actually
present this as a drama concerning a woman, the Dyer’s Wife rather than the
Empress, who wishes to have children, is pressured to renounce her desire, and
then achieves what would seem to be genuine fulfilment by doing so? There are
various answers to that, of course, or at least to why such a drama might be
problematical; but they are not unanswerable answers.
Freud hangs less heavily over
the production than he does over Guth’s, but he is there, glimpsed indeed in
video projections at the end alongside a motley crew that includes (I think)
Gandhi, Christ, the Buddha, King Kong, and Marilyn Monroe. (I have no idea, I am afraid; I
suspect I am missing something terribly obvious, but never mind…) More overtly
present is Last Year in Marienbad.
Pictures from the film lead us in to the opening of the opera and accompany its
course, far from obtrusively, yet offering connections should we wish to follow
them. A sadness born of lack of fulfilment, perceived or otherwise, hangs over
what we see – and interacts, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes less so, with
what we hear. Even the Nurse seems a far more human figure than usual. There
is, perhaps, loss there too, but to see her a broken woman, trying to deal with
an impossible situation that is not of her choosing is fascinating: it
certainly made me reconsider the role.
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| Empress, Falcon(s), and Emperor |
Where Ingo Metzmacher had given
a commanding account of Schreker’s score the previous night, Kirill Petrenko
went further still in Strauss’s score. It does no harm, of course, that Strauss
is by far the greater composer and musical dramatist. But that can come to
naught, or at least be severely diminished in the wrong hands. Musical
performance is certainly not a matter of league tables, but I can certainly
say, hand on heart, that I have never heard the opera better conducted or
played. This was at the very least a musical performance to set alongside those
by Christoph von Dohnányi and Semyon Bychkov at Covent Garden, and superior to
any of the others I have heard. Petrenko’s ear for Strauss’s complex orchestral
polyphony is second to none, not only amongst any conductor alive but any I
know from recorded performances.
The similarities and
differences between Strauss and Schoenberg – you will have to forgive me for
having the latter very much on my mind at the moment – are as complex as their
music ‘in itself’. There is, though, something here which, ironically, given
Strauss’s reported remarks on Schoenberg’s score, brings Strauss closer than
one might expect to the Five Orchestral
Pieces, op.16. Alma Mahler just could not help herself in telling Schoenberg
that Strauss had said Schoenberg would be ‘better off shovelling snow’ than
‘scribbling on manuscript paper’. (What is less often reported is that he
recommended the younger composer for the Mahler Foundation grant in any case.
Schoenberg, unsurprisingly, never forgave him; when asked the following year
for a fiftieth-birthday tribute, he responded angrily: ‘He is no longer of the
slightest artistic interest to me, and whatever I may once have learned from
him, may God be thanked, [I had] misunderstood.’) Petrenko is a very fine
Schoenberg conductor; indeed, it was in Erwartung
at Covent Garden that I first heard him. The interplay between colour, line,
harmony, every changing parameter was such that I could not help but think I
was hearing Strauss with somewhat Schoenbergian ears – and that was not
entirely to be attributed to my own present preoccupations. The Bavarian State
Orchestra was at least equally responsible: in every respect worthy of the most
exalted comparisons, past or present. I do not think I have ever heard the solo
cello part played with greater tenderness and yet with such a sense of where,
motivically and harmonically, it is heading. Nor have I heard the full
orchestra sound more thrillingly present and yet more transparent. It was not
only seeing the glass harmonica in one of the boxes overlooking the pit that meant I could
hear it so well.
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| Barak (Wolfgang Koch) and the Dyer's Wife |
Vocal
performances were almost equally magnificent. Burkhard Fritz greatly impressed
in Berlin earlier this year, and did so again here: quite tireless and
perfectly capable of riding Strauss’s orchestral wave. The Emperor is, perhaps,
the best role in which I have heard of him. Ricarda Merbeth was more than his
equal as his consort: as tenderly moving as, when required, imperious. She
truly drew one into her particular drama, as did the Dyer and his Wife, even,
as mentioned above, the Nurse. Elena Pankratova and
Wolfgang Koch were also in previous casts I had seen, London and Berlin respectively. Fine though their performances had
been then, Petrenko’s conducting seemed to incite them to still greater things
in Munich. (The more I consider Zubin Mehta in Berlin, the more uncomprehending
his conducting seems by comparison.) Theirs was at root a human, commonplace
relationship, exalted by particular musico-dramatic circumstance and by musical
performance into something transformative, in a sense that both Strauss and
Hofmannsthal might have acknowledged. The sadness both felt could be perceived
in their faces, their body language, but still more in the alchemy of stage,
words, and music that is opera at its greatest – and which, with the best will
in the world, a lesser composer such as Schreker could never have summoned. To
her trademark malevolence in the role, Michael Schuster was here fully enabled
to offer a poignancy one rarely sees and hears in the Nurse. Sebastian Heleck’s
Spirit Messenger was perhaps first among equals – intelligent, deeply musical
singing – amongst the ‘smaller’ roles, but there was no weak link here. Choral
singing and acting were equally outstanding. Likewise those roles played by non-singing
actors: the Apparition of a Youth here our first among equals, sporting an excellent line in gigolo contempt when collecting his earnings for unachieved attempted seduction from the Nurse. As had been the case in the
previous night’s performance, the dramatic whole was greater than the sum of
its parts – just not quite in the same way. Now how about a Moses und Aron?
