tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51812296990065628062024-03-19T08:48:35.597+00:00BoulezianMark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comBlogger2407125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-19995551223980503982024-03-18T12:48:00.001+00:002024-03-18T12:48:08.602+00:00RSB/Brabbins - Mendelssohn and Stravinsky, 16 March 2024<br />Konzerthaus<br /><br /><b>Mendelssohn: </b>Symphony no.4 in A major, op.90, ‘Italian’ <br /><b>Mendelssohn</b>: <i>Hymne</i>, op.96 <br /><b>Stravinsky:</b> <i>Symphonies of Wind Instruments </i><br /><b>Stravinsky:</b> <i>Symphony of Psalms </i><br /><br />Denis Uzun (mezzo-soprano)<div>Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Philipp Ahmann)</div><div>Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra</div><div>Martyn Brabbins (conductor)</div><div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Mendelssohn and Stravinsky might not seem
the most obvious bedfellows, but this Berlin Radio Symphony (RSB) concert,
originally planned with Andrew Davis but conducted by Martyn Brabbins, offered
pause for thought as well as enjoyment. Both composers had fraught
relationships either with Wagner or his music—and, by extension, with that
strain of musical Romanticism. (Even Liszt, that most generous spirited of
composers, could refer dismissively to the ‘opposition’ as ‘leipzigerisch’.)
The nature of their (neo)classicism is far from the same, but it offers an
interesting perspective, even when the music performed is not so markedly in
that mould. One could certainly spill a good deal of ink in discussing the
relationship of the two Stravinsky works here to ideas and practice of
neoclassicism. That, you will doubtless be relieved to know, must await another
day, but such initial thoughts offered a frame through which to hear the works
concerned.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The RSB played Mendlessohn’s <i>Italian</i>
Symphony with irresistible élan, string sheen and sunny woodwind a delight
throughout. Brabbins was surely on the fast side for ‘Allegretto vivace’, but
many conductors are. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Throughout, he imparted
a proper sense of development to Mendelssohn’s writing, nowhere more so than in
the featherlight counterpoint of the development section proper, though that
certainly continued in the recapitulation. There was Abruzzo-like heat too in a
reading full of colour and incident, aptly foreshadowing the processional of
the second movement, which similarly benefited from transparent textures and a
keen sense of direction. A graceful minuet, replete with trio that went
properly beyond it in more than one direction, led to a saltarello both disciplined
and wild, its contagion as impressive as its chiaroscuro.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The op.96 <i>Hymne</i>, ‘Three Spiritual Songs’
(as they are known in the version with organ) plus a concluding ‘Fuga’,
received a winning performance, mezzo Deniz Uzun and the Berlin Radio Chorus
joining Brabbins and the orchestra. Telling detail could be heard without
exaggeration, variety in scoring (the opening of the second, an especially lovely
‘hymn’, setting solo voice against woodwind consort) registering in every case.
A lively third, with growing sense of jubilation, revealed once again what a
fine chorus this is: ideal in weight, balance, and clarity. Much the same could
be said of the concluding fugue.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Stravinsky’s <i>Symphonies of Wind Instruments</i>
sounded as seductive and rebarbative as ever, a perfect <i>objet trouvé</i>
that find itself somehow chiselled to still further perfection. Apparently
ossified lines suggestive of <i>The Rite of Spring</i> were imbued with radically
new life, the performance as a whole splendidly alive: a liturgy in itself, to
which we were permitted audience if not participation. If Boulez was an ideal
interpreter (celebrant?) of this hieratic music, I could not help but think
Stockhausen must have loved it too. At any rate, it made for a splendid introit
to the <i>Symphony of Psalms</i>, whose similar strangeness registered visually
in orchestral layout (famously, no violins and violas, nor clarinets) before a
note had been heard.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">It proved another labyrinth, as full of
incident in its way, above all in the first movement, as Mendelssohn’s Symphony.
Glorious choral sound was well complemented by the orchestra; if there were occasions
when the two threatened to go their separate ways, it never quite happened.
More to the point, the inscrutability of Stravinsky’s musical devices – utterly
characteristic ostinato in the first movement, the double fugue of the second –
proved once again to pass all ‘expressive’ understanding, the composer’s
ever-surprising ear made musically manifest. What a strange ‘response’ to the
text Stravinsky offers in the words from Psalm 150 in the third movement. He
would doubtless have said he was not responding at all, but simply setting
them. That can readily become play with words, for ‘expression’ here, if hardly
Romantic, was no less powerful for being what it was: quite the contrary.
Brabbins took the opening daringly slow, providing all the greater contrast
with what was to come. Music seeming at times to circle the worlds of the <i>Symphony
in Three Movements</i> and even the <i>Circus Polka</i> never seemed remotely incongruous;
roots and essence led to a hypnotic, even sanctified close.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-26429336705228034782024-03-15T10:40:00.000+00:002024-03-15T10:40:02.399+00:00RIAS Choir/Kammerakademie Potsdam/Doyle - Mendelssohn, Hensel, and Bach, 14 March 2024<div><br /></div>Kammermusiksaal<br /><br /><b>Mendelssohn:</b> Psalm 115, ‘Nicht unserm Namen, Herr’, MWV A 9 <br /><b>Fanny Hensel:</b> <i>Hiob </i><br /><b>Mendelssohn:</b> <i>Ave Maria</i>, op.23 no.2, MWV B 19 <br /><b>Mendelssohn:</b> <i>Hör mein Bitten</i>, MWV B 49 <br /><b>Bach:</b> Cantata, ‘Die Elenden sollen essen’, BWV 75: Sinfonia to the second part <br /><b>Mendelssohn:</b> Psalm 114, ‘Da Israel aus Ägypten zog,’ op.51 <br /><br />Anna Prohaska (soprano)<div>Benjamin Bruns (tenor)</div><div>Ludwig Mittelhammer (bass)</div><div>RIAS Chamber Choir</div><div>Kammerakademie Potsdam</div><div>Justin Doyle (conductor)</div><div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">A delightful and enlightening concert from
the RIAS Chamber Choir, Kammerakademie Potsdam, Justin Doyle, and an excellent
trio of vocal soloists: focusing on Mendelssohn, but also including a cantata
by his sister Fanny Hensel and a sinfonia by the family’s musical house god, Johann
Sebastian Bach. Mendelssohn’s setting of verses from the 115<sup>th</sup> Psalm
was the first of five such large-scale settings he made for soloists, chorus,
and orchestra between 1829 and 1844. It revealed almost equally strong
influence from Bach and Handel, the latter in particular occasionally Mozartified.
Here, as throughout, the RIAS Chamber Choir proved admirable in every respect:
warm, clear, faultless in pitch and diction. The second of its three movements,
a duet with chorus, whilst not un-Handelian in its way of duetting, was less
obviously ‘Baroque’ on the surface. Anna Prohaska and Benjamin Bruns offered a
mellifluous performance, bassoons and more generally orchestral wind pleasingly
audible. The ensuing bass arioso was, similarly, beautifully taken by Ludwig
Mittelhammer, with a closing chorus, its opening <i>a cappella</i>, confirming all
preceding choral and orchestral virtues.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Hensel’s 1831 cantata <i>Hiob</i> (‘Job’)
sets three pairs of verses from the Book of Job. Three trumpets, timpani, and
an excellent mezzo from the choir joined the orchestra and soloists on stage. Here,
especially in the opening chorus, Bach’s influence was still stronger: in
woodwind writing, figuration, harmony, chromatic lines, and more. It is not
pastiche: there were pleasing instances to be heard of nineteenth-century
colour and, again, Mozartian mediation (perhaps, in the final chorus, the Haydn
of <i>The Creation</i> too). But Hensel had certainly learned her Bachian
lessons well, as well indeed as her brother. The central arioso, ‘Warum
verbirgest du dein Anlitz’ employs all four soloists, the mezzo’s opening
question responded to by the other three, followed by a brief reprise of the
former. A third, choral movement once again revealed highly accomplished harmony
and counterpoint, the assembled forces under Doyle’s wise leadership performing
this – and the rest – with relish and understanding.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Mendelssohn’s responsorial <i>Ave Maria</i>
for tenor, chorus, and orchestra (here two clarinets, two bassoons, three
cellos, and two double basses) from 1827 seems to me less inspired. I am not
sure Marian devotion was really his thing, though this is of course also a very
early work (if later than the <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> Overture and the
Octet). Its central, choral section struck me as more interesting, nimble cello
pizzicato offering an uncanny presentiment of the second movement processional from
the <i>Italian</i> Symphony. It was, in any case, interesting to hear the
piece.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In the second half, we were in
different territory altogether, with far more characteristic Mendelssohn. In
the 1844 <i>Hör mein Bitten</i> (or ‘Hear my Prayer’, as most English-speaking
listeners will know it), Prohaska brought a welcome sense of drama: not ‘operatic’,
but certainly drawing on her rich and varied operatic experience. There were
some truly magical passages, not least her sinuous duet with clarinet (partly set
against cello pizzicato). With a larger choir and orchestra than one generally
hears, as well as increasingly dramatic delivery – overall conception well-shaped
indeed – this was worlds away from English cathedral music; it certainly evinced
more biting consonants and accompanying verbal meaning. Both have their place,
of course, but, closer to a miniature <i>Lobgesang</i> and even to Wagner, here
was a splendidly Romantic Mendelssohn, the composer of <i>Elijah</i> and <i>St
Paul</i>.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The Sinfonia to the second part of Bach’s Cantata
‘Die Elenden sollen essen’ received what struck me as a near-ideal performance:
warm, cultivated, and welcoming, My only regret was that that was all we heard
of the piece. No matter: in Mendelssohn’s 1839 setting of verses from the 114<sup>th</sup>
Psalm, we had a perfect crown to the concert, surveying in each of its four
stanzas a different aspect to the composer’s craft. The integration of
Handelian antecedents and the world of <i>A Midsummer Night’s Dream</i> in the
second proved a joy, but then so did the simpler questioning homophony of the
third, and the glorious jubilation (and struggles) of the fourth. ‘Da Israel
aus Ägypten zog’ was always likely to bring echoes of Handel’s <i>Israel in
Egypt</i>, but Bach remained as strong a guide. Doyle once again led a fine
performance, colourful and directed, in which every word as well as every note
told.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-3390539981422495342024-03-12T12:40:00.002+00:002024-03-12T12:45:34.919+00:00Aimard/RSB/Popelka - Schoenberg and Mahler, 9 March 2024<br />Philharmonie<br /><br /><b>Schoenberg:</b> Piano Concerto, op.42 <br /><b>Mahler:</b> Symphony no.1 <br /><br />Pierre-Laurent Aimard (piano)<div>Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra</div><div>Petr Popelka (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnGllhQZ9X0NczBLewR9JiHC4dbLlG9A_MLjuswkMTG7GdYu0aacAvO9XJFuV1F9yKQPkZFYKRHjgKvcYZDVk0QNSW5nG3x6Pg5NaXrRq5SHsJ3t-f14mQeFQe5ToREQUKRNKUEl221V2VUNrMNUiZtJQA5p62k9Mb6B5HwSjrqc-2KEvO4elmEqBEW5wd/s5489/240309_Popelka_Aimard%C2%A9PMeisel_083.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3659" data-original-width="5489" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnGllhQZ9X0NczBLewR9JiHC4dbLlG9A_MLjuswkMTG7GdYu0aacAvO9XJFuV1F9yKQPkZFYKRHjgKvcYZDVk0QNSW5nG3x6Pg5NaXrRq5SHsJ3t-f14mQeFQe5ToREQUKRNKUEl221V2VUNrMNUiZtJQA5p62k9Mb6B5HwSjrqc-2KEvO4elmEqBEW5wd/w640-h426/240309_Popelka_Aimard%C2%A9PMeisel_083.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Peter Meisel<p class="MsoPlainText"><o:p></o:p></p></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><br /><div>The world’s near-silence for Schoenberg’s anniversary year continues to deafen. Perhaps everywhere is waiting for September, when his birthday falls, and all will be revealed in a flurry of ‘new season’ announcements. And perhaps eternal <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VspcenwuI64"><i>Friede</i> will descend upon the <i>Erde</i></a> this Christmas. In the meantime, Berlin, mostly at the Philharmonie, where there is an exhibition from the Arnold Schönberg Center in the foyer, continues to do better than most. Pierre-Laurent Aimard, who is certainly doing his bit, joined the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra (RSB) and Petr Popelka for an outstanding performance of the Piano Concerto, probably the best I have heard live—and a match for the best on record. <br /><br /><br />The opening was unusual: difficult to put my finger (or ear) quite on how, but Aimard’s solo put me in mind a soliloquy, with a melancholy hint of exile. Perhaps it was recently having seen a dramatization of <i>Exil</i> by Schoenberg’s fellow Californian exile Leon Feuchtwanger at the Berliner Ensemble, though I do not think it was only an external matter. Other voices joined from the orchestra, conversationally, also as if recalling, yet with a distinct hint of foreboding. In general, I have not found Schoenberg’s ‘programme’ for the work especially helpful. Indeed, looking at what I wrote in my <a href="https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/arnold-schoenberg">‘critical life’ of the composer</a>, I see I went so far as this: ‘Whether the programme is of any help is highly debatable. Schoenberg, speaking vaguely of war, in a way that could readily be made to fit an almost infinite number of pieces of music, described the work’s expressive content as follows: “1. Life was so easy; 2. Suddenly hatred broke out; 3. A grave situation was created; 4. But life goes on.” Perhaps it assisted his overall conception; there is no more reason for us to dwell on it than Schoenberg had found there was, all those years previously, to dwell on Mahler’s for his Third Symphony.’ (For that, I am afraid you will have to read the book!) Mahler’s programmes are another issue, of course, and I tend to feel similarly about them, probably more so; for whatever reason, the programme of Schoenberg’s concerto seemed to speak more readily than I have previously experienced. The performance was not bound to it; it is not a performance indication. It is also highly subject to criticism, were one to take it too literally as about the world; of all people, Schoenberg knew there was nothing sudden about the outbreak of hatred. Yet here, in this performance, these suggestions and their expressive implications proved almost suddenly precise. It is always good to re-learn something one thinks one knows. <br /><br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmMOZgRnSA-ojsxbbiXnG_yB-ymn2reI0cnT079MvQfeQDO5qt2jmPhhjX80q2arWwyG2A7vr7d83gZZ-VCveZiNCurdX6DtSNqK2d7uucFEwsL1z9O9tVwxAu7AHD3sdFZRt9QwTP0qZZJa_J8odXRrEWpjCbcPN1YctKOksekFjqRJGxB896YguFBvPB/s8640/240309_Popelka_Aimard%C2%A9PMeisel_080.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5760" data-original-width="8640" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmMOZgRnSA-ojsxbbiXnG_yB-ymn2reI0cnT079MvQfeQDO5qt2jmPhhjX80q2arWwyG2A7vr7d83gZZ-VCveZiNCurdX6DtSNqK2d7uucFEwsL1z9O9tVwxAu7AHD3sdFZRt9QwTP0qZZJa_J8odXRrEWpjCbcPN1YctKOksekFjqRJGxB896YguFBvPB/w640-h426/240309_Popelka_Aimard%C2%A9PMeisel_080.jpg" width="640" /></a><br /><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>There was close to ideal clarity of texture, which certainly did not preclude weight, but rather proved the key to understanding it. Very much like Brahms, one might say. One could hear the extraordinary ear for orchestration, combinations of instruments sounding as if newly invented, not unlike one of Schoenberg’s Bach transcriptions. Ever-transforming in developing variation, the first section built subtly—and, as Schoenberg does so often, for those who care to listen, it danced too. As the mood darkened, increasing rhythmic angularity made its point in performance as well as work. Echoes of the Golden Calf scene from <i>Moses und Aron</i> were stronger, not only in tuned percussion, than I can recall. It was a (controlled) riot, but there was something still more unsettling behind it. We should not be unduly reductive about such matters, but the deceptions of too-ready communication and the fanaticism it breeds stand with us now almost as strongly as they did in 1942. When the orchestra sang what came across as a great song of protest, it was difficult not to think of current predicaments, all the more so as Mahlerian echoes issued from a twilight zone. All the while, Aimard had a pianistic work-out to give Prokofiev a run for his money. <br /><br /><br />The Adagio section emerged as consequent, then, as its counterpart in the First Chamber Symphony, reminding us of the deep roots of many of Schoenberg’s formal preoccupations. It was just as songful and soulful too, though seemingly still under assault from all around, Bachian string figures weaponised with terror. They spoke from Hell, and they spread. Aimard’s piano part seemed nonetheless to bind everything together, enabling a turn around. It was not easy, but that made it all the more a Schoenbergian triumph of the human spirit, Popelka’s collaborative stewardship of the orchestra as important in that success. <br /><br /><br />For an encore – I once heard, in another context, Maurizio Pollini give this as one of several (!) – Aimard played the complete op.19 <i>Six Little Piano Pieces</i>, introducing them by saying several people had told him, in their hearts, they hated Schoenberg’s music; he however, loved it. (Imagine saying that to anyone. Why would you ‘hate’ music in that way, let alone some of the most influential and rawly expressive music of the twentieth century? There continues, alas, to be no better place to find freely expressed antisemitism than in Schoenberg reception.) If anything, this proved a conception more heroic still, not only on account of some of the most determined bronchial disruption from around the hall I have ever heard. From the first, heard as if in a single, ever-variegated breath, through a pulverising miniature fourth (its joy is that one cannot become too heavy, its curse that one cannot become heavy enough), to the evocation of Mahler’s funeral bells in the sixth, a bridge to the second half: it was clear-sighted, unsentimental, but imbued with true sentiment in every note and its manifold connections.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_rUZEeJY0HZbUd6v_02uP8XTnNM4d3fMRYwczLshXj1wgFxMoxSdiWrHGMOlhr51BlCL5vKWbEQo2uNLxwYzPgYjnmeHnSZ90MK81pWKxOFRLh1rB38LDr1Rh4a0mCY_NQYVS-8Q6cWBReOob82mr0niytW78vRZELCGNYKF_ywF1Foe9Pj3-XOf9t3c8/s5121/240309_Popelka_Aimard%C2%A9PMeisel_101.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3414" data-original-width="5121" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_rUZEeJY0HZbUd6v_02uP8XTnNM4d3fMRYwczLshXj1wgFxMoxSdiWrHGMOlhr51BlCL5vKWbEQo2uNLxwYzPgYjnmeHnSZ90MK81pWKxOFRLh1rB38LDr1Rh4a0mCY_NQYVS-8Q6cWBReOob82mr0niytW78vRZELCGNYKF_ywF1Foe9Pj3-XOf9t3c8/w640-h426/240309_Popelka_Aimard%C2%A9PMeisel_101.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><br />That Mahler’s First Symphony had a performance in many ways admirable, if ultimately lacking the volcanic necessity of both Schoenberg works, yet was received with considerably greater enthusiasm by the audience tells its own tale, on which there is no further need to dwell. It certainly suggested that Popelka is a young conductor to be reckoned with, who has already made significant progress in his conception of a work whose difficult corners have defeated many, as well as confirming and renewing the excellence of the RSB. String harmonics, at the opening, imparted a sense of something that has always been there, of Nature – to which (human?) subjectivity had yet to be added, which it was by interjections from elsewhere. The first movement as a whole received a lyrical, characterful performance, which, whilst one should be wary of essentialisation, seemed rather in the line of Bohemian traditions of Mahler performance. Some might have found it too leisurely; for me, there was a keen sense of finding one’s way, perhaps through woodland, and with moments of existential loneliness to match (so long as one listened). Did it sometimes lose its way? I do not think so, though there were occasions when it might have been more clearly traced. That will come, though. And the eight horns of the RSB sounded glorious. <br /><br /><br />There followed a vigorous, buoyant, ‘naturally’ rustic <i>Ländler</i>: full of character once more, if slightly sectional and just a touch hard-driven at the close of its first iteration. The trio evinced grace and <i>Schwung</i>, though it might have had greater depth. The reprise of <i>Ländler</i> material was on the brash side: deliberately so, I am sure, though veering a little too close to the ‘orchestral showpiece’ tendency driven by past decades’ Mahler-saturation. The third movement came off better, its opening taken (thank God) by solo double bass rather than the frankly idiotic practice suggested by editor Sander Wilkens of employing the entire section. The mood, as it and Mahler’s writing developed, was nicely twilit. Ensuing stylistic contrasts were well handled and integrated, a hushed, languorous sweetness imparted to the second trio. It was, perhaps, a bit listless, but that seemed to be the point, to evoke a world of dreams, disrupted by the return of <i>Bruder Martin</i>. The final mostly fell into place very well, balance, weight, and momentum well judged, whilst permitting space to enjoy the ride. These are very tricky balances to strike; if at this stage, Popelka’s conception lacked the last measure or two of formal integration, orchestral excellence and compensation offered fine compensation. <br /><br /></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-90201356199867184962024-03-09T12:50:00.006+00:002024-03-09T13:01:18.307+00:00Parsifal, Deutsche Oper, 8 March 2024<br />Amfortas – Jordan Shanahan <br />Titurel – Andrew Harris <br />Gurnemanz – Günther Groissböck <br />Parsifal – Klaus Florian Vogt <br />Kundry – Irene Roberts <br />Klingsor – Joachim Göltz <br />Knights of the Grail – Patrick Cook, Youngkwang Oh <br />Esquires – Sua Jo, Arianna Manganello, Kieran Carrel, Chance Jonas-O’Toole <br />Flowermaidens – Flurina Stucki, Sua Jo, Arianna Manganello, Hye-Young Moon, Mechot Marrero, Marie-Luise Dreßen <br />Voice from Above – Marie-Luise Dreßen<br /><br />Director – Philipp Stölzl<br />Co-director – Mara Kurotschka<br />Set designs – Conrad Moritz Reinhardt, Philipp Stölzl<br />Costumes – Kathi Maurer<br />Lighting – Ulrich Niepel<br />Revival director – Silke Sense<br /><br /> Chorus, Men of the Extra Chorus, and Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus masters: Jeremy Bines and Christian Lindhorst)<div>Opern-Ballet, Statisterie, and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin</div><div>Donald Runnicles (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPPeV_0yXTrAXyYF8TIOB_TfNUalziRQ53yP8lC7K7x91lOVmGZRJ5Al_eehLQL36N6ELHjAlFCa9A5Y0tZnO51xKRTV4_w6ZNn-TaZe4lsI-jbRyRwiGc-bJp3qvk3fgTLrMYmMl44zt0tN6afE9c8Ou1CW8kb0mzwHIZboH0N_NsGpfkB04QE7vac1Y/s3192/PARSIFAL_3MB0621_MatthiasBaus.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2124" data-original-width="3192" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXPPeV_0yXTrAXyYF8TIOB_TfNUalziRQ53yP8lC7K7x91lOVmGZRJ5Al_eehLQL36N6ELHjAlFCa9A5Y0tZnO51xKRTV4_w6ZNn-TaZe4lsI-jbRyRwiGc-bJp3qvk3fgTLrMYmMl44zt0tN6afE9c8Ou1CW8kb0mzwHIZboH0N_NsGpfkB04QE7vac1Y/w640-h426/PARSIFAL_3MB0621_MatthiasBaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span face="Akzidenz-Grotesk-Pro-regular, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif" style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">PARSIFAL von Richard Wagner, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright.<br /></span>Image: Matthias Baus</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Memory plays all manner of tricks: major
and minor. I could have sworn I had seen Philipp Stölzl’s Deutsche Oper <i>Parsifal
</i>twice before this, distinctly recalling having revisited it. I actually
have no record of having done so, and am reasonably sure I would. I was also
more enthusiastic the first time I saw it, <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2014/04/parsifal-deutsche-oper-21-april-2014.html">in 2014</a>, than now, describing it – admittedly for the vocal performances as
much as the production – as ‘a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Parsifal</i>
demanding both to be seen and to be heard’. Now it seems to me that it fulfils
its repertory role, but is in looking somewhat tired. What has happened in the
meantime? The tempting answer would be Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth production,
which transformed experience and understanding for so many. I myself have thought
of it as akin to Patrice Chéreau’s <i>Ring</i>; things can never be the same
again. I still do, but in this case the chronology does not fit, Herheim having
been seen for the last time <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2012/08/bayreuth-festival-1-parsifal-11-august.html">in
2012</a>. It may have had a role in raising expectation and achievement across
the board. Ironically, a major production from the intervening years, Dmitiri
Tcherniakov’s <i>Parsifal</i> for the house across town, has in retrospect a few
points in common with Stölzl, perhaps more in terms of appearance than
substance, yet it remained by some way the bolder experience. (Click <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2020/03/interpreting-wagners-dreams-staging.html">here</a>
for a brief comparison of Herheim and Tcherniakov.) Maybe this just needs more
time devoted to revival (a well-nigh insuperable problem with repertoire
houses). Or perhaps all this talk of comparison is a little decadent, and we
should simply concentrate on what lies in front of us.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">What, then, lay in front of us here? In
broad terms, Stölzl’s concept, insofar as I understand it, presents Monsalvat
as a Templar-like community that has not only become tired, but deadly in
preservation of long since dead rituals. Fanatics keep alive certain external
forms, albeit in the form of weird <i>tableaux vivants</i>, which tellingly
freeze rather than develop. Control, as in the typical secular claims against ‘religion’,
is all—of the self and others, bloody (self-)flagellation included. These
doubtless just about keep things going, but whatever it may have been that
animated the community in the first place, presumably in some sense the Grail
or related to it, has long since vacated the premises. Klingsor’s anti-Monsalvat
is not merely the same: the cave within clearly hosts a different cult. There
is something disquietingly orientalist, if not nearly so blatant as <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2017/08/bayreuth-festival-3-parsifal-25-august.html">Uwe-Eric
Laufenberg’s Islamophobic farrago</a> at Bayreuth, to it; that may, of course,
be deliberate, in playing with our conceptions. There is, though, I think, a
strong implication that they ultimately have more in common than separates
them. And the way the Flowermaidens emerge from the stone, becoming something
otherwise through minimal shedding of costumes and clever lighting, is a nice
touch.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Presumably the whole thing, though, is a
delusion: anti-religion claiming its title, against Wagner, though in common
with many who have admired him. Talk of renewal, let alone that extraordinary –
almost always ignored or underestimated – third-act claim of taking Christ down
from the Cross, is probably just mumbo-jumbo; it certainly seems to be a lie.
When Parsifal returns, Amfortas impales
himself on the spear: a way out for him, though not necessarily for those left
behind. Perhaps, as I noted last time, Stölzl heeds John Deathridge’s warning against
resolution in ‘high-minded kitsch’, for redemption is an alien concept, one
that never arises. The problem for me was not so much the grim framing, as the
danger that by now the production had become its own ritual, in danger of
succumbing to something not a million miles away from what it claimed to portray.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJxU3wb88t8c3Kh8q3jabZ7dTM5keXaWe1U9NhXuilh1gi_jyFUgIG7Gvmk3Y5cIyO_Q5xS_JXuIV1M1JcASJ-NOSDIWb6gpwn1Q35J-MfOfCHLZoJ3nwjI8YvI1HvkxrAUtfco9NobyDBGIiOfi3K5RtJm-bU4MeonipWJ3AEXoLfdd0Zn0mm9WENMO58/s2126/2019WAParsifal45_hf.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1417" data-original-width="2126" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJxU3wb88t8c3Kh8q3jabZ7dTM5keXaWe1U9NhXuilh1gi_jyFUgIG7Gvmk3Y5cIyO_Q5xS_JXuIV1M1JcASJ-NOSDIWb6gpwn1Q35J-MfOfCHLZoJ3nwjI8YvI1HvkxrAUtfco9NobyDBGIiOfi3K5RtJm-bU4MeonipWJ3AEXoLfdd0Zn0mm9WENMO58/w640-h426/2019WAParsifal45_hf.JPG" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: Bettina Stöß</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Donald Runnicles led a performance not so
very different – as memory serves – from Axel Kober ten years ago,
though probably still more secure. He and the splendid Orchestra of the Deutsche
Oper (the chorus too) put not a foot wrong throughout. This was not the sort of
performance one might characterise as a particular ‘reading’; Runnicles’s
collegial brand of music-making is not about that. Instead, he drew on what is,
by now, clearly deep knowledge and understanding of the score to present it as
faithfully as he could, neither merely framing nor inciting the action, yet
considerate of the competing demands that go towards performance of opera
(even, or especially, one calling itself a <i>Bühnenweihfestspiel</i>). If
there were times when I might have preferred the orchestra to take the lead more
strongly, there is room for various approaches here.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Runnicles’s musicianship unquestionably
allowed the cast, entirely new from ten years ago, to shine. Klaus Florian Vogt’s
voice is, to my ears, more suited to some aspects of Parsifal’s character than
others. He comes across, like no other, as father of Lohengrin (whilst still
tempting Nietzsche’s mischievous question: how did he manage that?) There were
a beauty and clarity to line and verbal projection that are not readily to be
gainsaid, though ultimately I missed a sense of development. (One might, I
suppose, argue that that is less needed in this production than in many.) Günther
Groissböck’s Gurnemanz intrigued, not so much because he looked younger than
many, but because he acted younger, particularly in the first act, there being
a creditable distinction between both portrayals. Here was a charismatic
leader, not some old bore, with interesting implications for those who listened
and followed, and the life of the community as a whole. Jordan Shanahan proved
an unusually likeable Amfortas, although he certainly had us share his pain
too. As Kundry and somewhat like Runnicles, Irene Roberts seemed more concerned
to bring out the text than present a strong ‘reading’ of her own. This she did
with great skill, as did the cast as a whole. What was the problem, then?
Perhaps there was none after all, or rather it was mine.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-34200191165604960772024-03-08T11:10:00.000+00:002024-03-08T11:10:13.282+00:00Arditti Quartet at 50: Harvey, Milliken, Hosokawa, and Birtwistle, 7 March 2024<br />Pierre Boulez Saal<br /><br /><b>Jonathan Harvey: </b>String Quartet no.1 (1977) <br /><b>Cathy Milliken:</b><i> In Speak</i> for string quartet (2023, world premiere) <br /><b>Toshio Hosokawa: </b><i>Oreksis</i> for piano quintet (2023, world premiere) <br /><b>Birtwistle:</b> <i>String Quartet: The Tree of Strings</i> (2007)<br /><br />Irvine Arditti, Ashot Sarkissjan (violins)<div>Ralf Ehlers (viola)</div><div>Lucas Fels (cello) </div><div>Tomoki Kitamura (piano)<br /><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">On 7 March 1974, the Arditti Quartet gave
its first concert at the Royal Academy of Music, music to honour Krzysztof
Penderecki on bestowal of an honorary degree. Fifty years later to the day and
several changes of personnel later – Irvine Arditti the one constant – the Quartet
celebrated at Berlin’s Pierre Boulez Saal its fiftieth birthday, followed by a
reception hosted by the Paul Sacher Stiftung, which also hosts the ensemble’s archive
. True to its spirit, here was a mixture of new and newer: two Arditti
commissions, Jonathan Harvey’s First String Quartet (the first ever) and
Harrison Birtwistle’s <i>The Tree of Strings</i> sandwiching two new
commissions from Cathy Milliken and Toshio Hosokawa.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">We do not hear enough of Jonathan Harvey’s
music. If that was the case before his death in 2012, it is all the more so
now. Reminders such as this can do no harm at all. In a single movement, which,
to my ears at least, might possibly have been subdivided into three sections of
unequal length, it opened with violin (then viola, then cello) harmonics, melting
yet also, like snowflakes, flurrying, becoming stronger: something both fragile
and yet primal, the latter especially in the unison melody that emerged and
seemed to rule over the Quartet as a whole. It felt like embarking on a magical
adventure for composer and performers, the latter tracing and projecting the
piece’s expressive contours with typical expertise, as the repertoire piece it
must be for them, though without a hint of the routine. Sparks flew later, what
in the work of another composer we might characterise here as éclat, but here
suggesting something deeper, more fundamental, perhaps even Germanic,
acknowledging the composer’s crucial encounter with Stockhausen. Material that
emerged from the debris developed in any number of other ways, prior to a third
section (?) in which a ghost in the machine, a machine in the ghost, or perhaps
both propelled the music on its way. Unifying yet further developing, like the ‘tradition’
to which it perhaps still laid claim, the music yet had no ‘return’ in a sign-off
of deft brevity.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Cathy Milliken’s <i>In Speak</i>
immediately sounded, perhaps to state the all-too-obvious, as if arising from
different cultural concerns, a proper contrast in programming as well as
composition. Almost dance-like at times, with unmistakeable ‘human’
interjections of speech, ghostly whistling, and so on, it seemed to take in a
more ‘connected’ world (not that there was anything remotely insular about
Harvey) and some sort of dramatic-conceptual stimulus arising therefrom,
without that being ‘the point’. There was even, I thought, a hint of
celebration. ‘Tradition’, if it still exists at all, has moved on considerably
in half a century, not least thanks to the Arditti Quartet. ‘I hear different
notes emerging’, ‘punchline’, ‘I dragged’, ‘until he was pushed’, ‘finding the
right word’, a concatenation of verbal phrases enabled strings to take over
again, in turn inaugurating a slower moving, constantly shifting section. Further
musical scampering, almost suggesting a ‘classical’ return of material in
ternary form – suggesting, not straightforwardly representing – brought the piece
to its conclusion. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The players were joined by pianist Tomoki
Kitamura for Toshio Hosokawa’s <i>Oreksis </i>for piano quintet. Again, this
was a very different musical world: not only the soundworld, but procedures,
preoccupations, everything. Post-‘impressionist’? Perhaps. Post-Debussy? A
somewhat stronger perhaps. But it was not only, or principally, post-anything,
however helpful such thoughts may be to gain our initial bearings. Centres of
gravity proved very different, lines emerging from them, whilst those centres
remained obstinately, strangely alluring. The pianist was not a ‘soloist’, yet
had a somewhat different role, seemingly growing from the piano’s different instrumental
qualities. (That may sound obvious, but it is far from always the case.) Dreamlike
in apparent creation of chords, it built slowly to climaxes that seemed always
to be pushed a little further into something beyond. Sliding, slithering lines
later seemed liberated from whatever it was that had kept them grounded: new ‘air
of another planet’ perhaps? There both are, and are not, new things under our
sun(s). Music floated with strange precision, upwards once again, into…</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">For the final work on the programme,
following the interval, we turned to Birtwistle’s 2007 <i>String Quartet: The
Tree of Strings</i>. If one might have found a point of comparison with Harvey’s
piece in a ‘frozen’ opening, what struck more forcefully again was the difference
from all that had been heard before. There was certainly no question who the composer
was—nor how great our loss continues to be. These were not so much musical
fractals, as some might musically imagine trees, but rather this sounded as
music born of an ancient, far from consoling, ‘then’ as seen, or heard, from ‘now’.
Melody, harmony, even gesture were as immediate as in stage works such as <i>Gawain</i>
or <i>The Minotaur</i>; there was a similarly keen sense of narrative(s) too,
without moving into the realm of representation. Even when occasionally more
frenetic, it retained a sense of spareness, of everything counting. A not
un-Stravinskian candle continued to burn, even to dance, to rock; yet there was
a deeper melancholy that seemed to speak of and from remembered or invented landscapes
of a Britain beyond its modern towns and cities (not anti-metropolitan, but
rather non-metropolitan) as well as memories of Dowland. (How the composer must
have hated the snake-oil-salesmen of ‘Brexit’. How wonderful it would have been
to see him give Nigel Farage a piece of his mind, not that Farage would have
known what to do with it.)</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Strength persisted, intensified, through
techniques seeming to cross the centuries without ever truly being ‘of’ them.
Was that a mediaevalism there? If so, it was hardly the point. Compelled, so it
seemed, by the music’s inherent drama, the players, one by one, moved from
centre stage to new stations around the hall, the spatial quality of the
musical landscape confirmed and extended. It was no gimmick, as it might have
been for many – was there a less gimmicky composer than Birtwistle? – but
rather born of an expressive need. Was there a centre any more? That may be <i>the</i>
question of musical, and not only musical, modernity, or at least <i>a</i>
question. Does it matter? Others left the hall, Lucas Fels’s cello persisting
with gruff integrity that came close to overwhelming. It, or rather this, did
matter.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">To read my 2009 interview with Irvine
Arditti, ahead of two performances at the Edinburgh Festival, please click <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2009/08/interview-with-irvine-arditti.html" target="_blank">here</a>.</span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-29129495506810917532024-03-06T12:30:00.006+00:002024-03-06T12:35:52.381+00:00Hercules, Komische Oper, 3 March 2024<br />Hercules – Brandon Cedel <br />Dejanira – Paula Murrihy <br />Iole – Penny Sofroniadou <br />Hyllus – Caspar Singh <br />Lichas – Susan Zarrabi <br />Priest of Jupiter – Noam Heinz <br />Choral soloists – Martin Fehr, Taiki Miyashita<div><br /></div><div>Director – Barrie Kosky<br />Designs – Katrin Lea Tag<br />Dramaturgy – Zsolt Horpácsy, Johanna Wall<br />Lighting – Joachim Klein<br />Assistant director – Tobias Ribitzki<br /><div><br /></div><div>Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper (director: David Cavelius) </div><div>Orchestra of the Komische Oper</div><div>David Bates (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK-Kbo8wuEYvKsEEklkPNYBB-JdHUtJdPO8Rw-zKe9i6StzpSy8_CIFV0zTIY8fRU_BL7UW6sG0T4tw-xUs1yhzba-H9h6_1pbLT4ZFpVD1N_CU8KwDWEHSeWenq8pY31IyjyJGQZyORMXiDdhpcBSj7QxO8Tthn-aGKkdzW7Oq7i_Zj5tYRizEeVnG5hM/s3264/4983_hercules_kob_202.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2179" data-original-width="3264" height="429" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgK-Kbo8wuEYvKsEEklkPNYBB-JdHUtJdPO8Rw-zKe9i6StzpSy8_CIFV0zTIY8fRU_BL7UW6sG0T4tw-xUs1yhzba-H9h6_1pbLT4ZFpVD1N_CU8KwDWEHSeWenq8pY31IyjyJGQZyORMXiDdhpcBSj7QxO8Tthn-aGKkdzW7Oq7i_Zj5tYRizEeVnG5hM/w640-h429/4983_hercules_kob_202.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Monika Rittershaus<br />Dejanira (Paula Murrihy), Lichas (Susan Zarrabi)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Handel’s ‘musical drama’ – an interesting
term, though we can sometimes make too much of such things – <i>Hercules</i> has
never proved especially popular. The composer’s public at the time and for a
long while after tended to prefer his Biblical oratorios. Since the revival
and, latterly, the craze for his Italian <i>opere serie</i>, they have ruled
the roost. <i>Semele</i>, another ‘musical drama’, ‘after the manner of an
oratorio’, has fared better since its modern stage revival in Cambridge in 1925.
Handel never intended it to be staged, though the librettist (William Congreve)
and original composer (John Eccles) had. It perhaps comes closest to <i>Hercules</i>,
whose first staging was also in 1925 – the very beginning of the modern Handel
revival – though in Münster. Whilst perhaps not the most compelling,
dramatically, of all Handel’s works, <i>Hercules</i>, to a libretto by the
Anglican clergyman Thomas Broughton, is certainly not the least either. This
new production from Berlin’s Komische Oper affords a valuable opportunity,
certain shortcomings notwithstanding, for news audience to see and hear it for
themselves—many doubtless for the first time, the present writer included.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In a programme interview, Kosky tells how and
why he has long found Handel’s oratorios, to which he reasonably assimilates <i>Hercules</i>,
more compelling than his operas. Me too, though we seem to stand nowadays in a minority.
One question presented by staging the oratorios (broadly considered), though,
relates to how to treat the chorus. Its dual role in participation and
commentary dates back to Attic tragedy, of course, as well as holding an
obvious point in common with Bach’s Passions. There remains the question of how
to stage this, especially when the chorus is being asked to sing some notably
difficult music conceived for singers standing with their scores rather than
darting around the stage. (Insofar as the Italian operas have ‘choruses’ at all,
the music is far simpler, and in general we might consider them simply to be
the cast coming together.) One needs an excellent chorus, of course, which was
certainly the case. Its singers and their director, David Cavelius, deserve much
praise; audience appreciation was rightly enthusiastic on the opening night. Kosky
involved them directly in the action where required, including a disturbing
scene of largely implicit violence when Iole is brought home (for Hercules, not
for her) as spoils of war. There is also mesmerising choreography for the reflective
role in which singing and movement combine to evoke and perhaps even provoke
the deadly jealousy forming in Dejanira’s fevered imagination.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9ap26szkrrIZg8PjNHYvqDa_ejaXZph_C2dBKxoBKQIjsX2jZ68oOaHhI8yIVM6FbH0lTA96RrSAgYAqebn3Ufi4wkHQObTiHO2trJjS2S3_kVxUz2YKSbunikRcG-YGzVyID1_CX4nC2MC-QS4KjDgIuc-hEoH1e704tndaUyydrt3Gce8RVCxFm5nTO/s3246/4976_hercules_kob_64.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2164" data-original-width="3246" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9ap26szkrrIZg8PjNHYvqDa_ejaXZph_C2dBKxoBKQIjsX2jZ68oOaHhI8yIVM6FbH0lTA96RrSAgYAqebn3Ufi4wkHQObTiHO2trJjS2S3_kVxUz2YKSbunikRcG-YGzVyID1_CX4nC2MC-QS4KjDgIuc-hEoH1e704tndaUyydrt3Gce8RVCxFm5nTO/w640-h426/4976_hercules_kob_64.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Chorus and Dejanira<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">For, as Kosky points out, Handel focuses
everything not on Hercules but on his wife, Dejanira. ‘Everyone is constantly
talking about Hercules,’ as is typical for a hero, or an idea of a hero, ‘but
all one sees is one theme – and that is jealousy, which the chorus also sings
about at a central point. What is jealousy, what does jealousy do, what is fantasy,
what is projection, what is reality? Dejanira spins herself through jealousy
into madness,’ in her obsessional belief, quite unfounded, that her husband has
deserted her for the foreign princess Iole. Kosky’s suggestion that Broughton
probably read <i>Othello</i> strikes me as eminently plausible, and certainly makes
its way in here, with a good touch too of Ovid. This unfolds in an unsparing visual
environment, situated at the dramatic trisection of antiquity, its eighteenth-century
revisitation, and our twenty-first-century revisitation of both. Glaring light and
whiteness impart a sense of nowhere to hide. We may not wish to watch at times,
but we must—just like those taking part. Katrin Lea Tag’s designs here play a
crucial role; indeed, one cannot imagine the action without them. A statue of
Hercules, ever present, make Kosky’s point about constant reference when the
drama is not really ‘about’ Hercules at all. <o:p></o:p></span><p></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF84J_D8pF7qdPs89E3lqKe0P3THMJ5f6FAjTDc2qFSbTJOsmFAdIMlSE-aM84vfM1QOgbI5iL6nh8zDM2anYo6hFMpUd0qrtmuyi6o-FhPSLb-sFFkjx-FOpzMcHP4bn_7jXlAnYT7bSUmrRgvCbIXigyXOlCHY7F8zKlocHzW01yc_MEZI8jCTnH9qAy/s8256/4980_hercules_kob_157.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5468" data-original-width="8256" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiF84J_D8pF7qdPs89E3lqKe0P3THMJ5f6FAjTDc2qFSbTJOsmFAdIMlSE-aM84vfM1QOgbI5iL6nh8zDM2anYo6hFMpUd0qrtmuyi6o-FhPSLb-sFFkjx-FOpzMcHP4bn_7jXlAnYT7bSUmrRgvCbIXigyXOlCHY7F8zKlocHzW01yc_MEZI8jCTnH9qAy/w640-h424/4980_hercules_kob_157.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dejanira, Hercules (Brandon Cedel)</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">We knit our own heroes, Dejanira to extremes,
and in this respect Paula Murrihy’s performance must be accounted a striking success.
Murrihy has much to do and not only did it very well indeed, but functioned, as
she must, as the dramatic lynchpin. As Hercules, Brandon Cedel has a somewhat thankless
part, but presented it with conviction and due collegiality, doing just what
was required of him to have the apparently strange focus of the drama work.
Kosky has an inventive solution, which tightens the bonds of family loyalty
further, to the question of the role of the messenger Lichas. Handel made it an
oddly large role; that is, oddly, until one knows that it was on account of the
popularity of its creator Susanna Cibber. For revivals, it was cut. Kosky
elects to make the herald, always sung by a woman, Hercules’s younger sister. It
works well, I think, and helps make sense of something that can otherwise seem
a little odd. Susan Zarrabi’s heavily accented performance might have been a
little much for some English speakers, but it was certainly animated and dramatically
committed; we should remind ourselves that German- and Italian-speakers face similar
distractions frequently. Penny Sofroniadou’s Iole was beautifully, sparklingly
sung, with just as keen an eye and ear for drama, her initial, well-nigh regal disdain
for Hyllus, Hercules’s son, duly wounding. Caspar Singh offered a subtle, often
moving performance of that difficult role: very much in his father’s shadow,
his mother’s too, in need of space to become his own person. The small role of
the Priest of Jupiter was well taken by Noam Heinz, from whom I shall likewise be
keen to hear more.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3bsaOMvacsaHAUf_AtJLae0XHfP0uG7BNAnpQnEjrHEaNzJcx4s-yuh9zQ19Xqp9LaZDtEVPorMd_iGVsAJN7C3ga1m_Sb9YReUqLGDh7ouNAcxlzS3Sn14-9zlLfiaOyWvMM_MEP28bb7opOUAEYhNJX72XPHoZfzWSMpRL94SPO6PTvIhfsfUgmuXSF/s3264/4977_hercules_kob_97.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2155" data-original-width="3264" height="422" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3bsaOMvacsaHAUf_AtJLae0XHfP0uG7BNAnpQnEjrHEaNzJcx4s-yuh9zQ19Xqp9LaZDtEVPorMd_iGVsAJN7C3ga1m_Sb9YReUqLGDh7ouNAcxlzS3Sn14-9zlLfiaOyWvMM_MEP28bb7opOUAEYhNJX72XPHoZfzWSMpRL94SPO6PTvIhfsfUgmuXSF/w640-h422/4977_hercules_kob_97.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hyllas (Caspar Singh), Dejanira, Lichas</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The one significant drawback for me was
David Bates’s direction of the orchestra. Clearly intent on making it sound as
little like a modern orchestra as possible – in which case, why use one? –
Bates often sounded as if he were presenting a caricature of rebarbative ‘early
musicking’. Not only was there no longer line; there were barely orchestral phrases
at all, which made for a peculiar contrast with such excellent singing. If it
was, alas, too much to hope for even the slightest manifestation of string
vibrato. The orchestra doubtless did as it was asked, but lunging extremes of
tempo only highlighted the strange assumptions underlying Bates’s performance.
Quite how we have backed ourselves into a corner where all manner of explorations
are permitted on stage, yet a single, highly questionable idea of ‘correctness’
(or otherwise) in instrumental performance is all that can be allowed, I really
do not know. One can only hope that, some day, wiser, more humane counsels will
prevail. There are certainly far more alluring Handel performances on period
instruments, let alone the all too rare occasions when more properly ‘modern’
readings are permitted.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxDF25sXqqCu9WbHmmtC4FUuiXWAehmzsQGXqK1V1TiNcaTF5vGms3pNtpVpiGUK_SvjmFwk5JJGfJXh0IX-fUgMmnPpQ4YU1BLUrB3fcOnYWMn45JYdwTvxihBmLWFOj09yznh8CeeY864A9QVyoYF3FZBmW5e757HHIwQ0qznOI0OY_3dnvQ2SpS8bU/s8256/4982_hercules_kob_186.png" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5507" data-original-width="8256" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtxDF25sXqqCu9WbHmmtC4FUuiXWAehmzsQGXqK1V1TiNcaTF5vGms3pNtpVpiGUK_SvjmFwk5JJGfJXh0IX-fUgMmnPpQ4YU1BLUrB3fcOnYWMn45JYdwTvxihBmLWFOj09yznh8CeeY864A9QVyoYF3FZBmW5e757HHIwQ0qznOI0OY_3dnvQ2SpS8bU/w640-h426/4982_hercules_kob_186.png" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hercules, Hyllus</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">It would doubtless be an exaggeration to describe
<i>Hercules</i> as an ‘Anglican work’, but it chimes well enough with a broadly
Christian yet latitudinarian outlook. If part of the reason for the work’s ‘failure’
– it received only two performances in its initial run at the Haymarket – was,
as has been claimed, its lack of moral and spiritual uplift, then it is
tempting to conclude the audience was not paying as much attention as it might.
From a modern standpoint, it might all seem a bit clean, the <i>deus ex machina</i>
in need of questioning or undercutting. Kosky does not opt to do so too overtly,
letting the work speak largely for itself. Yet in continuing his focus on Dejanira,
for whom this is certainly not a happy ending, one can continue, as it were, to
hear her pain, renewed and intensified by the sounds of rejoicing that surround
her.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-55482239283140324662024-03-03T12:13:00.001+00:002024-03-03T12:47:14.580+00:00BPO/Thielemann - Bruckner, 29 February 2024<p><br />Philharmonie <br /><br />Symphony no.00 in F minor, ‘Study Symphony’ <br />Symphony no.0 in D minor <br /><br />Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra<br />Christian Thielemann (conductor)</p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt6YTSC0ZJd6tr-xKiHR6pgSiXP_2SgrqNhjt5AiGSthFickWvTtjrU5JXQM_zPyfgAIELHNVayCHUVK3Q0V-mP8iU5kko2EYY_vuhwFH9XtBJbp4NycWP1LvKy1bPPsRTNypI3H_o-PR5wA18I_qNHAH0p2ptYA72LIxon47Pngg9pNRGld3KICwoMroo/s5244/240229_Thielemann%20_fvds-27.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3496" data-original-width="5244" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt6YTSC0ZJd6tr-xKiHR6pgSiXP_2SgrqNhjt5AiGSthFickWvTtjrU5JXQM_zPyfgAIELHNVayCHUVK3Q0V-mP8iU5kko2EYY_vuhwFH9XtBJbp4NycWP1LvKy1bPPsRTNypI3H_o-PR5wA18I_qNHAH0p2ptYA72LIxon47Pngg9pNRGld3KICwoMroo/w640-h426/240229_Thielemann%20_fvds-27.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Frederike
van der Straeten</td></tr></tbody></table><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Bruckner years seem to come around
considerably more frequently than most others. Presumably they do not; indeed
they cannot. The sense probably reflects instead the eagerness of orchestras,
conductors, and orchestral managements to make the most of any such
anniversary. This concert had the merit of performing two works we have less
opportunity to hear, what have come to be eccentrically numbered as 00 and 0, in
performances from Christian Thielemann, conducting from memory, and the Berlin
Philharmonic. I was grateful for the opportunity, though I cannot say they are symphonies
to which I shall return in a hurry, not when there is so much neglected Haydn
and even Mozart.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The 1863 ’Study’ Symphony in F minor has
had ‘00’ attached on account of its preceding the work known as ‘0’. Written at
the end of Bruckner’s studies with Otto Kitzler, it is not unpleasant, but it
is difficult to imagine anyone would bother with it if it were the work of
someone else. For one thing, like the ‘Nullte’, it seems to last considerably
longer than it does. I was convinced, until I looked at my watch, that the
programme’s estimated timings had been exceeded. The first movement opened
promisingly, sounding surprisingly close to Mendelssohn at times, without ever
sounding quite ‘like’ him. Thielemann and the Berliners offered a fine match of
(relative) lightness and polish, without sacrifice to heft or underlying
harmony. I was put in mind of Thielemann’s way with <i>Elektra</i>, which
confounds expectations at many a turn. A charming cello solo in the development
section came as a pleasant surprise, and it was a relief to discover, a few awkward
corners notwithstanding, that there were none of the blind alleys down which
the traditionally numbered early symphonies have a habit of proceeding. The
coda at last gave a hint, it not more, of the apocalyptic Bruckner, three
trombones and all.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Schumann was more in evidence in the second
movement, ‘Andante molto’, though again without edging too close to
resemblance. The lack of memorable material was a problem for me, likewise anything
approaching the essential simplicity that is the key to so many slow movements,
but those who simply like the ‘sound’ will have enjoyed themselves. Thielemann
certainly had it flow nicely, permitting plenty of space for detail. Another
lovely solo, this time for oboe (Albrecht Meyer) offered contrast. The more
turbulent passages received outstanding playing that never fell into
exaggeration. Slightly stronger pre-echoes of mature Bruckner characterised the
scherzo, albeit with stronger flavours not only of Mendelssohn but also
Schubert. The finale struck me as, by some distance, the weakest. ‘Influences’,
particularly those of Schubert and Schumann, were stronger; so was a tendency
towards aimless meandering. It is doubtless not without interest for those
especially interested in Bruckner; that is the best I can say. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Mh1oM7qDTy6lwOOnsdGLDjHf189ygMY4kycRTLjTFnpQXLK9X-KF_abPKFUi2PWQzw-QV84mlijuWR5KL5bzFQ1LS0yKkdTP96z6sHmJCIfHV9GHg3upcNM5gnZnLwwuAI92l7bnJDFBOt_zq1wurlUi2EPSoDnoIWP4DvgyaQbDeYZ4-bwLatS2MQ_D/s5244/240229_Thielemann%20_fvds-40.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3496" data-original-width="5244" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9Mh1oM7qDTy6lwOOnsdGLDjHf189ygMY4kycRTLjTFnpQXLK9X-KF_abPKFUi2PWQzw-QV84mlijuWR5KL5bzFQ1LS0yKkdTP96z6sHmJCIfHV9GHg3upcNM5gnZnLwwuAI92l7bnJDFBOt_zq1wurlUi2EPSoDnoIWP4DvgyaQbDeYZ4-bwLatS2MQ_D/w640-h426/240229_Thielemann%20_fvds-40.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p style="text-align: left;"><span style="font-family: georgia;">The D minor symphony of 1869, the so-called ‘Nullte’, is not in any meaningful sense ‘no.0’. It was written between the First and Second Symphonies, but when, in the 1890s, Bruckner reviewed it for publication, he decided against inclusion, nullifying it both with the word ‘annulirt’ on the title page and by amending the number 2 to the sign ‘∅’, erroneously taken thereafter as ‘0’. It certainly sounds, if patchily so, more like the Bruckner we know. The ominous quality of onward tread at the opening to the first movement offered quite a jolt, as did Bruckner’s harmonic language. There was greater consistency of voice and general direction: far from complete, but getting there. It was a thrill, moreover, to hear the tremendous Berlin sound. As time went on, though, the musical argument – or lack of one – simply bewildered me.</span></p><span style="font-family: georgia;"><br />The second movement is not without fussiness, even in so accomplished a performance as this, but what we heard was a committed and, at times, involving missive from a world not so distant from Lohengrin. I know Brucknerians resist – with good historical reason – the idea that the composer might benefit from active editorial intervention; perhaps we do simply have to take this as it is. I wonder, though, whether there is room for something to be done to have Bruckner say what needs to be said more directly. The scherzo came across as a much more coherent whole. (Yes, that may well be more readily accomplished for a scherzo.) It also, doubtless not coincidentally, sounded closer to the mature voice of the composer. A Janus-faced trio, ‘new’ harmonies set against a backward glance to an imagined eighteenth century, worked similarly well. The fourth movement offered an inventive, if not always successful, attempt to address the ‘finale problem’ after Beethoven. There is much, perhaps too much, going on, which does not always feel properly connected, although Thielemann’s performance gave connection its best shot. The music stopped and started, as surely it must, but we had an enjoyable and, at times, exciting ride in between. Now may we have some Haydn?</span><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Cambria Math";"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIUrkcOJGCmpWqDK1E54irXIQXhx0QIClanZksHV39tMcUmHYDBRHUxRe3gBuLVki9FvfAEyJBZE1_Elwx2aizHiSItPQdB7UIHfaDt1qNcQ8xEBjFFXyuyHiolV1NwMkg5aeFt4_U8aUrgxg9zoKylIEx6JqhXkWtcOMgCDr_3Dhwst85qiHkQEZyPTh8/s4364/240229_Thielemann%20_fvds-52.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2909" data-original-width="4364" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjIUrkcOJGCmpWqDK1E54irXIQXhx0QIClanZksHV39tMcUmHYDBRHUxRe3gBuLVki9FvfAEyJBZE1_Elwx2aizHiSItPQdB7UIHfaDt1qNcQ8xEBjFFXyuyHiolV1NwMkg5aeFt4_U8aUrgxg9zoKylIEx6JqhXkWtcOMgCDr_3Dhwst85qiHkQEZyPTh8/w640-h426/240229_Thielemann%20_fvds-52.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><span style="background: white; color: #202122; font-family: "Georgia",serif; mso-bidi-font-family: "Cambria Math";"><br /></span><p></p><p></p>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-61044081356641739962024-02-21T18:49:00.003+00:002024-02-21T18:49:25.435+00:00Le nozze di Figaro, Deutsche Oper, 20 February 2024<div><br /></div><div>Count Almaviva – Thomas Lehman</div>Countess Almaviva – Maria Motolygina <br />Susanna – Lilit Daviyan <br />Figaro – Artur Garbas <br />Cherubino – Meechot Marrero <br />Marcellina – Michaela Kaune <br />Don Basilio – Burkhard Ulrich <br />Don Curzio – Chance Jonas-O’Toole <br />Bartolo – Padraic Rowan <br />Antonio – Patrick Guetti <br />Barbarina – Ketevan Chuntishvili <br />Two Bridesmaids – Yuuki Tamai, Asaha Wada <br /><br />Director – Götz Friedrich<br />Set designs – Herbert Wernicke<br />Costumes – Herbert Wernicke, Ogün Wernicke<br />Revival director – Gerlinde Pelkowski<br /><br />Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Richter) of the Deutsche Oper <br />Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper<div>Giulio Cilona (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5_8avxsSsjQJtMhyphenhyphenm2WxtE1Qj8SmrFWrWD9iGJmIHS_-bTUmtHx5ynfJlOjmmNZUsHnVlrKryZw4lDriDpO40MQoaWfJLk4ohJQ9XP3pYO32Pi5f2oJClY6qSm-kejR2qR62LOMdHJgYlsmLhwAFi1jH7eAy0I3eZWazqP8bJtMhSxPpAxzfGACxNd5Ht/s2126/WAFigaro75hf_LehmanDavtyanUlrich.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1415" data-original-width="2126" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5_8avxsSsjQJtMhyphenhyphenm2WxtE1Qj8SmrFWrWD9iGJmIHS_-bTUmtHx5ynfJlOjmmNZUsHnVlrKryZw4lDriDpO40MQoaWfJLk4ohJQ9XP3pYO32Pi5f2oJClY6qSm-kejR2qR62LOMdHJgYlsmLhwAFi1jH7eAy0I3eZWazqP8bJtMhSxPpAxzfGACxNd5Ht/w640-h426/WAFigaro75hf_LehmanDavtyanUlrich.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Akzidenz-Grotesk-Pro-regular, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">DIE HOCHZEIT DES FIGARO von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, <br />Deutsche Oper Berlin,copyright: Bettina Stöß<br />Count Almaviva (Thomas Lehman), Susanna (Lilit Dayivan), Don Basilio (Burkhard Ulrich)</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Next stop on my tour of Berlin’s ‘vintage’
opera productions: Götz Friedrich’s Deutsche Oper <i>Marriage of Figaro</i>, a joy
to encounter in itself and a nice sequel to Ruth Berghaus’s <i>Barber of
Seville</i> across town at the Staatsoper. Friedrich’s productions are gradually
making their way to the great opera house in the sky. When I first came to
Berlin, a number of his Wagner stagings, for instance, were still in the
repertoire; now there are none. This, from 1978, with designs by Herbert
Wernicke – like Berghaus’s designer, Achim Freyer, going on to become a notable
director in his own right – is certainly worth catching whilst it is still around.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">For once, I admit it was a relief to see an
eighteenth-century society of orders portrayed as it ‘should be’. It is not the
case that the drama cannot be reimagined in different settings, nor even that
the complexity and hierarchy of such a society need in every case be reproduced
(though one loses something if it is not). Yet too often, one gains the
impression that a director has simply not bothered; or worse, has not even realised
what is at stake. Such is the pathway to vulgar farce. Here, instead, almost
everything seemed to fall into place. Not that that necessarily ‘happens’
without a good deal of thought and work, but the impression is important; the
world created on stage worked, helped by being in accordance with that created
by its librettist and composer, but also enabled to work by them. Even at this
remove, there seemed to me no doubt that Friedrich had been involved at every
level of this production, had made decisions founded upon musical and
historical as well as stage understanding, and that characters and their relationships
had been properly considered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Costumes and their changes were never
arbitrary or simply on account of a ‘look’, or even a concept. They had
historical meaning and often looked handsome – Cheubino’s uniform, for instance
– without being a fetishistic recreation, in which similarly the ‘look’ rather
than the drama was the thing. Cherubino’s hiding from the Count actually worked
for once; the number of times directors simply mess that up is, alas, all too
numerous for comfort. I liked the touch of having the Count assert his manorial
authority in front of the house’s customary picture of his ancestors. Likewise
the audience room in which the last two scenes of that third act were set. Such
attention to detail would chime with many people’s experience of visiting such houses
and their estates and would therefore help bring to life the historical record,
as well more straightforwardly as making sense of what was said, sung, and done.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Perhaps more important, the choreography made
sense, listening to the music rather than simply disregarding it in the usual ‘modern
silly dance’ routines unmusical directors or their associates foist upon opera.
(By all means offer something in counterpoint to it, however that may be
understood, but at least do the score and its historical context the decency of
listening to them first rather than simply skim-reading a libretto.) Scene
changes were more frequent than will often be the case now: not only between
but sometimes within acts. Current directors would do it differently, no doubt,
but different is sometimes just different, not necessarily better or worse.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQCgp1HT4yOL8jQIsuUC1me9V7gAnvTcfOH76_YmHOoo8I3cwzLecamddt3pK_2QzjgsjhpwzBg2sQBXwp2Oo4XXGxPVrJK15oLwJc_OKyTL7FE1UAlSCjZfXmvtx5aaXwYQPyduexxawkAe7tZYXZvyTEXBLtlRIhUwU0CX4hRfn1Hrwfz1NhQbTph72x/s2126/WAFigaro120hf_MarreroMotolyginaLehman.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1415" data-original-width="2126" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQCgp1HT4yOL8jQIsuUC1me9V7gAnvTcfOH76_YmHOoo8I3cwzLecamddt3pK_2QzjgsjhpwzBg2sQBXwp2Oo4XXGxPVrJK15oLwJc_OKyTL7FE1UAlSCjZfXmvtx5aaXwYQPyduexxawkAe7tZYXZvyTEXBLtlRIhUwU0CX4hRfn1Hrwfz1NhQbTph72x/w640-h426/WAFigaro120hf_MarreroMotolyginaLehman.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cherubino (Meechot Marrero), Countess Almaviva (Maria Motolygina), Count Almaviva</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">To questions concerning the opera are to
what extent knowledge of the play and indeed of its sequel are expected. At one
level, none: many of us saw and loved it before proceeding to Beaumarchais in
either incarnation. Did Da Ponte and/or Mozart, though, expect any such
knowledge, in the first instance by not having to show something that might
have caused trouble with the censor; or, milder still, does one gain further
insight from having done so? Here, rightly, the question was left open. No one
was compelled to have extra knowledge, but we had both a sense of difference
from the corresponding play that suggested purpose rather than mere accident,
and one could certainly read aspects of the characters to suggest their lives
had developed from the first instalment (even from Rossini after the fact; Paisiello
too, I think). Thus when confrontations between Figaro and the Count were less
studies in contemporary masculinity than will often, quite reasonably the case,
one was led to think of their history together—and, as Friedrich noted in a
fascinating programme interview, the fact that the Count is not an idiot,
indeed most likely he is a man of the Enlightenment himself, entrusted as he
will shortly be to represent his country as the ambassador in London. This, one
might say, is him regretting the passing of certain aspects of something he
knows to be wrong and attempting to recover them through guile, not through neofeudal
reaction pushed to the level of absurdist tyranny. That, after all, is the story
being told in the opera, though often one would not know it. The director may
or may not have good reason for taking a slightly different line, just as (s)he
might for failing to recognise what once had passed between the Count and
Rosina, as once we knew here, but it is good to know, and to have suggested to
us, that such matters have at least been considered.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">And so, if I have been more thrilled by
portrayals of Figaro and the Count, I came to appreciate a subtle more placing
of them and the rest of the household within a greater social whole. Thomas Lehman
and Artur Garbas did not seem to be presenting a modern portrayal and falling
short; they were doing something different, as was Friedrich. Lilit Daviyan’s
Susanna was not so different from what one might expect, though that is not to
say she took anything for granted. Maria Motolygina’s Countess truly came into
her own in ‘Dove sono’, a finely yet not fussily coloured account, in which
musical means conveyed dramatic ends. Meechot Marrero’s Cherubino was not only
dramatically alert but perhaps uncommonly beautifully sung. Michaela Kaune’s
Marcellina offered a surprising star drunken turn in her fourth-act aria, for
once retained. It was a pity still to be missing Don Basilio’s, but Burkhard Ulrich
made a fine impression elsewhere: for once, a reading (Friedrich’s too, of
course) that presented him as music master rather than a bizarrely camp
caricature as has been recently fashionable. Everyone made a mark as required
without overshadowing the rest of the company, down to Chance Jonas-O’Toole’s
Don Curzio, whom one actually noticed in the sextet as well as before it,
simply (or so it seemed) by virtue of Friedrich having given matters due
consideration, as well as excellent singing.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">I cannot be so enthusiastic about Giulio
Cilona’s conducting, though on the whole it seemed preferable to what I had
heard last month in <i>The Magic Flute</i>. The Overture, hard-driven and with
little audible at times other than rasping brass, brought us close in the wrong
way to Rossini, as did too much of the first act. If there was little depth to
what followed and a few too many disjunctions between pit and stage, especially
during ensembles, at least it showed greater flexibility. And it certainly improved,
the third and fourth acts more all-purpose ‘light’ rather than motoric. That
Friedrich’s production survived and shone is all the more testament to its
virtues—and to the cast that brought them back to life.</span></p></div><br />Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-1584066396593552862024-02-19T17:22:00.005+00:002024-02-19T17:35:38.680+00:00Il barbiere di Siviglia, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 16 February 2024<br />Count Almaviva – Siyabonga Maqungo <br />Doctor Bartolo – Renato Girolami <br />Rosina – Marina Viotti <br />Don Basilio – Grigory Shkarupa <br />Berta – Adriane Queiroz <br />Figaro – Samuel Hasselhorn <br />Fiorillo – Dionysios Averginos <br />Ambrosio, Notary – Florian Eckhardt <br />Officer – Wolfgang Biebuyck<div><br /></div><div><br />Director – Ruth Berghaus<br />Designs – Achim Freyer<br />Revival director – Katharina Lang<br /><br />Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)<div>Staatskapelle Berlin</div><div>Ido Arad (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDmL69TXUY0O9spIvPZ0Eg2qS6VstN_rfXKk_5t5AiKjDaiQfTI2Iaz8zFHHlmRTz-fn8kWa6g_BdRNDHkOW92qZEUoPCtSKjKIeXauXs6OpQ92tLj6jeL33wREYSCTj2HNdYlQHtMcHVtTREGbgA6qRZL7CXeNISXZkbNplIUhThBvMPJOn4qGC86Q6Ij/s4576/Il%20barbiere%20di%20Siviglia%20IV_2010%20(c)%20Monika%20Rittershaus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3035" data-original-width="4576" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDmL69TXUY0O9spIvPZ0Eg2qS6VstN_rfXKk_5t5AiKjDaiQfTI2Iaz8zFHHlmRTz-fn8kWa6g_BdRNDHkOW92qZEUoPCtSKjKIeXauXs6OpQ92tLj6jeL33wREYSCTj2HNdYlQHtMcHVtTREGbgA6qRZL7CXeNISXZkbNplIUhThBvMPJOn4qGC86Q6Ij/w640-h424/Il%20barbiere%20di%20Siviglia%20IV_2010%20(c)%20Monika%20Rittershaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images (from 2010): Monika Rittershaus</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">I see that, in London, Jonathan Miller’s
1987 ENO production of <i>The Barber of Seville </i>is receiving another
outing. It seems positively modern, though, at least when it comes to years and
performances on the clock, when compared with Ruth Berghaus’s 1968 staging for
the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, first seen a little less than midway between
the declaration of the German Democratic Republic and the fall of the Berlin
Wall and now past 350 outings. In one of these near-miracles impossible fully
to explain, though, Berghaus’s production seems more of our time – I cannot
quite bring myself to describe anything, anti-historically, as ‘timeless’ –
than many a staging receiving its premiere. It is probably the oldest I have
ever seen in the theatre, yet it does not seem like it. Doubtless it has
changed over the years; the director who dared to make changes at the Berliner
Ensemble, would hardly have wished it otherwise. Some gestures struck me as
highly unlikely to have been hers. Still more than usually, then, to speak of ‘Berghaus’s
production’ will be a short-hand for a collaborative, changing effort. By the
same token, it is difficult to believe that, at its heart, this is not
something true, through fidelity and infidelity alike, to her conception. Above
all, it provided the foundation on which a delightful evening of Rossini’s comedy
unfolded.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">At that heart, I think, is a crucial
insight not only into the artificiality of theatre – though that is certainly
present – but into the very particular artifice involved in that arch-formalist
Rossini. In a passage extracted in the programme, Berghaus exclaims (my
translation): ‘Reality! Theatre is not reality and does not mirror reality.
Theatre asserts a lfe that is taken from reality. But it is not reality. One
must accept theatre as an addition to reality. It is a stage that does not mean
the world. … The theatre is an institution that makes it possible to come to
terms with reality.’ That is what we see here, not only in outcome but in
construction too. Returning, via Brecht yet only in part, to the <i>commedia
dell’arte</i>, beautifully evoked by the young<i> </i>Achim Freyer – then in
his mid-thirties, this year celebrating his ninetieth birthday – the production
simply builds its sets before our eyes and ears. Curtains, a few props, and an
eye for design are all that is needed for a ‘Seville’ that is neither a
naturalistic presentation nor a provocative anti-Seville to arise as the
necessary backdrop for singers to act, to make comedy.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhPMO1KaCAf5E1RYNVBkQKpAkJjFKoYJxV2_b6hSteSzOKZDXYrB-VeCl6U8iPOC5Odwj2K48llQ4lighjQ3rhvYMwEgoFvu7rjkIy5hHcrdiF-W0NluUnCFdMbI9NUq5_IcSAKPIqGxYU6VocTrSH6SIshZSU3vekoNHezJSv-yjYcdGQcQkpaVFUXvHH/s4256/Il%20barbiere%20di%20Siviglia%20VII_2010%20(c)%20Monika%20Rittershaus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2832" data-original-width="4256" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhhPMO1KaCAf5E1RYNVBkQKpAkJjFKoYJxV2_b6hSteSzOKZDXYrB-VeCl6U8iPOC5Odwj2K48llQ4lighjQ3rhvYMwEgoFvu7rjkIy5hHcrdiF-W0NluUnCFdMbI9NUq5_IcSAKPIqGxYU6VocTrSH6SIshZSU3vekoNHezJSv-yjYcdGQcQkpaVFUXvHH/w640-h426/Il%20barbiere%20di%20Siviglia%20VII_2010%20(c)%20Monika%20Rittershaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Very well they did so too. Samuel
Hasselhorn, as Figaro, emerged as first among equals, unfailingly musical,
clean and meaningful in coloratura, and with the timing of a seasoned actor. Marina
Viotti’s Rosina similarly excelled, with Sitabonga Maqungo a likeable if, occasionally, a less theatrically tight Almaviva. Grigory Shkarupa
constructed a splendidly real-yet-not-real Don Basilio. A sparkling performance
from Adriane Queiroz left one wishing Berta had more to sing. What Renato
Girolami sometimes lacked in vocal presence, he made up for in theatrical
commitment as Doctor Bartolo. The Staatskapelle Berlin, keenly directed
throughout by Ido Arad, did not put a foot wrong, evoking, somewhat to my
surprise, a sound not so distant from that of Neville Marriner’s vintage
Academy of St Martin in the Fields. Bright, precise, and likewise with pinpoint
timing, here was another crucial dimension never to be reduced to anything
else, yet likewise never approaching abstraction. The aesthetics, then, were as
‘right’ as the execution.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvcWKiefmtrkO9T58V7UEhedWmZWz9gFEOJGKjaA71a5BCLLG6EoIqRM7xoiyMCOsf7UU0qB-HE0wuBDpC8jHTr3sfJJK2md27znPsodo04gb-w1Ixmraraty6WKJWsPjK_SLvLh75Ciq3t0MXFB30w3K12tGAGxUBN2Hb5E2sqRYLu7TZqAg9EtTTb-_-/s4424/Il%20barbiere%20di%20Siviglia%20I_2010%20(c)%20Monika%20Rittershaus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4424" data-original-width="2750" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvcWKiefmtrkO9T58V7UEhedWmZWz9gFEOJGKjaA71a5BCLLG6EoIqRM7xoiyMCOsf7UU0qB-HE0wuBDpC8jHTr3sfJJK2md27znPsodo04gb-w1Ixmraraty6WKJWsPjK_SLvLh75Ciq3t0MXFB30w3K12tGAGxUBN2Hb5E2sqRYLu7TZqAg9EtTTb-_-/w249-h400/Il%20barbiere%20di%20Siviglia%20I_2010%20(c)%20Monika%20Rittershaus.jpg" width="249" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">‘The picture,’ Berghaus explained, ‘really
only has to enable the singer to act. I am very dependent on good singers, and
sometimes I am of the opinion that singers are greater comedians than actors.’
They sing and take their bows, then, neither to depict ‘reality’ nor simply to
present a ‘plot’. The relationship is complex, yet it does not feel as though it
is. There does not feel as though there is anything to be ‘interpreted’ at all,
though that is surely to conceal much work. That, in any case, can be
considered afterwards, or before. A world of enjoyment is created, yet one
which permits something deeper to speak, to sing, to be felt. By never
forgetting that it is theatre, its success continues.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p></div></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-62606730834667876752024-02-16T15:10:00.005+00:002024-02-16T15:16:47.042+00:00Batiashvili/BPO/Petrenko - Brahms, Szymanowski, and Strauss, 15 February 2024<div><br /></div>Philharmonie<br /> <br /><b>Brahms:</b> Tragic Overture in D minor, op.81 <br /><b>Symanowski: </b>Violin Concerto no.1, op.35 <br /><b>Strauss:</b> Symphonia Domestica, op.53 <br /><br />Lisa Batiashvili (violin)<div>Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra</div><div>Kirill Petrenko (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh52ffc90-Bhtizh0QCFg9z11axJSuV1sUuLQmzt2VUNlJgM44swmyou4hLdWcEEWDpVSkMM2Pvft7p0GbjJwp-pFsHLdJos0ONb8VOZTfOZYVp5DCta8p1a1HJxMztPt4wssjLzi9FX7e7GVanyujwM1pQrYWOlS_rCZGzfDdI_XjaApUXQ0X31Ms4k_sh/s6000/BPhil_20240214_Petrenko_Batiashvili_highres_AdobeRGB_LL-14%20(1).jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="6000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh52ffc90-Bhtizh0QCFg9z11axJSuV1sUuLQmzt2VUNlJgM44swmyou4hLdWcEEWDpVSkMM2Pvft7p0GbjJwp-pFsHLdJos0ONb8VOZTfOZYVp5DCta8p1a1HJxMztPt4wssjLzi9FX7e7GVanyujwM1pQrYWOlS_rCZGzfDdI_XjaApUXQ0X31Ms4k_sh/w640-h426/BPhil_20240214_Petrenko_Batiashvili_highres_AdobeRGB_LL-14%20(1).jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: Lena Laine</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">For me, the highlight of this concert from
the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko was the performance of Szymanowski’s
First Violin Concerto, for which they were joined by the equally outstanding violinist
Lisa Batiashvili. Almost any few bars – the sound and the direction it took –
would have been enough to justify attendance; it was not, though, necessary to
choose. Its opening, a fairyland in which orchestral children of Mendelssohn
and Debussy took flight to the emergent strains of a silken violin line spun
with longing and languor presaged what was to come, such interactions, melodic,
harmonic, rhythmic, and timbral the stuff on which dreams were made on—at quite
a temperature. Whatever its twists and turns, there was no doubting the musical
line and one’s compulsion to follow it. Metamorphoses magical, martial, and
more proved gorgeously beyond good and evil in their phantasmagoria, form
created before our ears. It seemed both old and new, all the while played as to
the manner born, balances both perfectly projected yet constantly shifting.
Fantasy became reality, or perhaps <i>vice versa</i>.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Brahms’s Tragic Overture preceded it. Here
I was somewhat more uncertain. It was tremendously played, of course, though
perhaps driven a little hard at the beginning. (Such matters are mostly a
matter of taste, yet even fate need not be quite so remorseless.) There was
certainly contrast to come, not least in a charming, surprising echo of
Schubert in onward tread before Brahms’s Beethovenian inheritance reasserted
itself. What I never quite grasped was how the tragic pageant hung together.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In the second half came Strauss’s <i>Symphonia
domestica</i>. Of all Strauss’s tone poems, even <i>Aus Italien</i>, it is the
one I know least well. Indeed, I am not sure I can claim to know it in an
emphatic sense at all; I do not think I had been to a live performance before
this. I was therefore hoping for some sort of ‘eureka’ moment, or at least a
shift in my response to a work that has somewhat baffled me on previous hearings.
Alas, it was not to be on this occasion—and that is not necessarily any
reflection on the performance. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There
were times, especially earlier on, when I thought it was. It is not often that
Strauss is bested for great washes of orchestral sound, yet after Szymanowski he
was; precision and clarity in the opening were therefore all the more valuable by
way of contrast. The composer’s antiromanticism was here strongly to the fore,
as it was when the music, more strongly than I can recall, presaged the operatic
Strauss of a decade or more hence: <i>Der Rosenkavalier</i>, <i>Ariadne</i>,
even <i>Intermezzo</i>—which, in terms of subject matter, makes sense. Darker
passages proved as ambiguous as the music at its more playful; the Mendelssohn
quotation might almost have been filtered by Reger, save that it would surely
have been the other way around. The sheer strangeness of Strauss’s tonal
journey registered, though ultimately I am not sure I followed it, nor the work’s
form (as opposed to mere structure) more generally. The ‘finale’ at times sounded
intriguingly close to the enigmatic exuberance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony,
written at more or less the same time, yet an element of failing, as it were,
to conclude here seemed less part of the narrative than, well, an inability to
conclude. I am doubtless missing something and have little doubt Mahler would
have relished the Berliners’ virtuoso handling of Strauss’s counterpoint. (He
conducted the <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Viennese premiere in
1904.) Sometimes, though, one must wait until a piece comes knocking on the
door—which, judging by the reaction accorded this performance, it already had
for most of my fellow concert-goers.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-4414952937632460002024-02-15T10:28:00.005+00:002024-02-15T10:28:23.433+00:00Madama Butterfly, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 14 February 2024<br />Cio-Cio-San – Sonya Yoncheva <br />Suzuki – Natalia Skrycka <br />Kate Pinkerton – Rebecka Wallroth <br />Pinkerton – Stefan Pop <br />Sharpless – Carles Pachon <br />Goro – Gonzalo Quinchahual <br />Prince Yamadori – Taehan Kim <br />Uncle Bonze – Grigory Shkarupa <br />Commissioner – Dionysios Avgerinos <br />Cio-Cio-San’s Mother – Verena Allertz <br />Aunt – Michèle Cusson <br />Uncle – Insoo Hwoang <br />Child – Carl Beyme<div><br /></div><div>Director – Eike Gramss<br />Revival director – Marcin Łakomicki<br />Designs – Peter Sykora<br />Lighting – Irene Selka<br /><div><br /></div><div>Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)</div><div>Staatskapelle Berlin</div><div>Domingo Hindoyan (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgguqIsd-c9w4zlI8f-YQJ-cebnbpR6Pwa7y8JELyX4teMJS7sXhiBFeSMR1CZ6La7vvQ_Anmx9SzUwZqq87CdjthWn13pcJG3SfAnn5Gydgy5DfE64HccXHOIbfwHQbnM88kDgIfDavL10jwjCEDjH8ASO1nrxvkMWnvw3CVigH4v9ZMtTBD5BQdPXPXwL/s3543/BUTTERFLY-3172.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2363" data-original-width="3543" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgguqIsd-c9w4zlI8f-YQJ-cebnbpR6Pwa7y8JELyX4teMJS7sXhiBFeSMR1CZ6La7vvQ_Anmx9SzUwZqq87CdjthWn13pcJG3SfAnn5Gydgy5DfE64HccXHOIbfwHQbnM88kDgIfDavL10jwjCEDjH8ASO1nrxvkMWnvw3CVigH4v9ZMtTBD5BQdPXPXwL/w640-h426/BUTTERFLY-3172.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images (from the 1991 premiere): Gianmarco Bresadola</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Happy St Valentine’s Day! Ash Wednesday and
an opera about sex tourism. Whatever we might think about the latter two, many will
agree that the coincidence is well deserved by the pseudo-feast of heart-shaped
balloons and ‘special menus’ at three times the price, a third of the culinary
quality. In retrospect, or rather more or less as soon as I had arrived, I
could not help but think it was perhaps not the wisest of evenings to have
chosen to see a Puccini opera; some fellow audience members seemed more
concerned to chat, consult their telephones, and more rather than to devote
attention to what might reasonably be considered the main attraction in an
opera house. More broadly, though, an opera house’s life and health extend
beyond the glamour and excitement of premieres. For that reason and for their
own sake, I try to sample older stagings I have not seen too and have made that
a particular effort to explore these, both in opera and spoken theatre, for
this spell in Berlin.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Here, then is Staatsoper’s <i>Madama
Butterfly</i>, in Eike Gramss’s production, first seen at the end of April
1991, when it was conducted by Fabio Luisi, with Miriam Gauci in the title role.
Fashions change, of course, often rapidly so—and that certainly applies to
opera staging. To see something hailing from less than two years after the fall
of the Berlin Wall is to step back some time indeed (not helped by the realisation
we reached the point some years hence that the post-Wall era had lasted longer
than ever the Wall stood). German reunification and full sovereignty were
little more than a month old. One of that process’s sternest and most hapless
foes, Margaret Thatcher, had recently been replaced as Prime Minister of the
United Kingdom. The first Iraq War had still more recently concluded. And closer
to home in newly reunified Berlin, Daniel Barenboim, fresh and doubtless a
little sore from his atrocious treatment at Paris’s new opera house in the
Place de la Bastille had yet to be appointed music director at the Statsoper
Unter den Linden; that would come at the end of the year.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">I wondered initially, then, whether the
safety curtain picturing a US sailor and other images, an
eagle included, of Yankee imperialism had been initially intended to have more
precise reference thirty-three years ago. Perhaps they had, although the theme
is, as they say, ongoing, the opera itself bearing witness to that. I think that
image may also, or primarily, have borne witness to a more existential
conception, which I suspect will have come across more strongly earlier on,
before the staging settled into a comfortable, perhaps necessary, repertoire
life. There is a sense that Cio-Cio-San is perhaps delusional – obviously, on a
very important level, she is – and certainly looking for escape. She does none
of the things that would have helped her, in a difficult, disgraced position,
owing to her father’s <i>hara-kiri</i>, to lead a better life; indeed,
obstinately she rules them out. And this, I think, we can still see here; her
movements suggest a refusal to confront her existing society, and an obstinate
turn towards a fantasy of someone who will come to rescue her. (Wagnerian
precedents in particular came to my mind.)</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_y9kLBjJegbQAgYhvxShnFe2mdj5f1wmJui6aRtKwpKPgNGQnN4H2wOXv1SiCnZ3RatxE9u0Xo3vd1GEg4vxcMZ9i8n-ImHlLkm0epbweLw8u5zNH3wdWpTS0BZPw-0Ku8yFXpAR-wpvrDqaicAXVlpddV8KJgTypCz8Fz3HfoiI7hJJOR8fxRHmeZWFW/s3543/BUTTERFLY-4103.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2363" data-original-width="3543" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_y9kLBjJegbQAgYhvxShnFe2mdj5f1wmJui6aRtKwpKPgNGQnN4H2wOXv1SiCnZ3RatxE9u0Xo3vd1GEg4vxcMZ9i8n-ImHlLkm0epbweLw8u5zNH3wdWpTS0BZPw-0Ku8yFXpAR-wpvrDqaicAXVlpddV8KJgTypCz8Fz3HfoiI7hJJOR8fxRHmeZWFW/w640-h426/BUTTERFLY-4103.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"></td></tr></tbody></table></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In a notably unsympathetic portrayal of
Pinkerton, there was perhaps just a chink of light suggesting that he too might
have bought into ‘white saviour’ mode, as opposed to acting with pure cynicism.
In many ways, that simply rephrases questions, but is probably worth bearing in
mind. Otherwise, the action proceeds more or less as one would expect—and still
perhaps might see from a smaller company, albeit probably with greater racial
awareness. On the latter score, I think – and I know it is easy for me, as a
white man to say this – one can be somewhat forgiving. There is nothing
especially outrageous here, and doubtless all concerned would take a different approach
from the outset today. Moreover, one can always read things more than one way:
the dangerously orientalising portrayal of Japanese women fanning in concert
can now be taken, if not intended, as a critique of such portrayals or at least
a warning. We are free to have our own thoughts and should surely pursue them.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Sonya Yoncheva gave a commanding
performance as Cio-Cio-San. It offered a wealth of dynamic and other contrast,
expertly shaded. There is, as ever, the problem as to how convincing, in a highly
realist setting, someone can be as a fifteen-year-old Japanese girl. It is not
clear to me what we do about that, other than abandon realism (which is clearly
a question for another day), and that is not her fault. Natalia Skrycka’s
Suzuki offered deep compassion and a high degree of on-stage chemistry. Stefan
Pop can certainly has the vocal reserves for Pinkerton, yet I could not help
but find his portrayal a little generalised: of thirty-odd years ago in a way
that was not entirely beneficial. Maybe that was brought about by the venerable
production, but I missed something more variegated. Carles Pachon’s Sharpless,
though, had me wishing he had more to sing—and act. This was a creditably – and
credibly – detailed performance, asking questions as much as answering them.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The rest of the cast, chorus included,
impressed, as did the Staatskapelle Berlin: the first time, I think, I have
heard this orchestra in Puccini. If I am not sure Domingo Hindoyan always had
the pacing quite right – the evening did sometimes seem to drag – then this is
also in part a matter of taste and is related in complex ways to what one sees,
and does not, on stage too. His approach was more Italianate than
post-Wagnerian; something at least a little more symphonic might have helped
bind the action together more strongly. By the same token, though, there was little
doubt the score was unfolding as he envisaged it, and he certainly knew how to
whip up a head of steam at climactic moments. It may well be time, so far as
some of us are concerned, to replace this production, but audience reaction was
enthusiastic in the extreme.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-74485228046238808792024-02-06T18:50:00.010+00:002024-02-09T18:33:42.035+00:00Rusalka, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 4 February 2024<br />Rusalka – Christiane Karg <br />Prince – Pavel Černoch <br />Foreign Princess – Anna Samuil <br />Vodník – Mika Kares <br />Ježibaba – Anna Kissjudit <br />Gamekeeper – Adam Kutny <br />Kitchen Boy – Clara Nadeshdin <br />Nymphs – Regina Koncz, Rebecka Wallroth, Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein <br />Huntsman – Taehan Kim <br /><br />Director – Kornél Mundruczó<br />Designs – Monika Pormale<br />Lighting – Felice Ross<br />Video – Rūdolfs Baltiņš<br />Choreography - Candaş Baş<br />Dramaturgy – Kata Wéber, Christoph Lang <br /><br />Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)<div>Staatskapelle Berlin</div><div>Robin Ticciati (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdVHs6XSmsv5c-rdQWfDPQjFIoBL_jtqqJcWrhD46IXuYxmxRgzrOCVfBEiwNiRCroyrpArIJ7DW4HTyPCHmZJQZ6uMfgfXCBf6bVWleZ1zLhe1JxTwkrj4E-d99cjnamDoF22yQFUdepmXvtbxDZFC0CPioPeBvO77lxgMtVtHSPFXxx8F-A2fsx6do76/s3543/RUSALKA_KHP-6638.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2363" data-original-width="3543" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdVHs6XSmsv5c-rdQWfDPQjFIoBL_jtqqJcWrhD46IXuYxmxRgzrOCVfBEiwNiRCroyrpArIJ7DW4HTyPCHmZJQZ6uMfgfXCBf6bVWleZ1zLhe1JxTwkrj4E-d99cjnamDoF22yQFUdepmXvtbxDZFC0CPioPeBvO77lxgMtVtHSPFXxx8F-A2fsx6do76/w640-h426/RUSALKA_KHP-6638.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Gianmarco Bresadola<br />Rusalka (Christiane Karg)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Director Kornél Mundruczó comes like a
breath of fresh air to unsettle our conceptions of Dvořák’s penultimate and, by some way, greatest opera and thus to do precisely what the material demands; or rather,
it comes as something bitterly stale, menacing, even poisonous to accomplish
what fresh air on its own might not be able. It is certainly refreshing, though
it should not be, to have a production that takes class seriously as a form of
social distinction, a social barrier, though ultimately it will go beyond that,
re-engaging with the opera in all its strange tragedy and tragic strangeness. By
grounding itself in the here and now, but also a here and now our society
largely wishes to ignore, it challenges, but it challenges further and with
brilliant theatricality by the course subsequently taken.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Rusalka – not strictly her ‘name’, but it
is all we have, and ‘the rusalka’ or even ‘the sprite’ would seem unduly
pedantic – lives in a shared, ground-floor Berlin apartment, a WG or <i>Wohngemeinschaft</i>,
her flatmates the other three nymphs and Vodník (if you prefer, the Watergoblin).
She does not fit in with, or has grown distant from, her female flatmates at
least; they are so much more laid back, fun-loving, quite happy in their
less-than-ideal home of disrepair. Theirs is a working class, it seems, the
bourgeoisie simply cannot stomach, however much it might claim to act in its
name. But nor, any more, can Rusalka, at least since she has seen signs of the
life – above all, the Prince – upstairs. In his modern penthouse with balcony
and views across the city including, yet far from restricted to the Fernsehturm
and the Rotes Rathaus, he and his appallingly grotesque group of friends, the
Foreign Princess (his ex-) included, have ‘made it’. They know each other
inside and out, as it were; they probably even vote Green.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxK2A5pT7p3VSsJMnnRQlk4zIWqE7PPQkzCXH5E8QZ3xyY_HJS_9vi6kv8A70gutRiFT4y2mYxJEEkFRxbBqaY5TYH6TLv-7uPBwispkm2fdpq8pslggbP6JF0WOxYfy967tXerCLRCYIMi-C23iUZ5ZJa7z4zWOTmBPrR88luZ08b7Z1ayT9QbE2T2m70/s3543/RUSALKA_KHP-7508.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2363" data-original-width="3543" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxK2A5pT7p3VSsJMnnRQlk4zIWqE7PPQkzCXH5E8QZ3xyY_HJS_9vi6kv8A70gutRiFT4y2mYxJEEkFRxbBqaY5TYH6TLv-7uPBwispkm2fdpq8pslggbP6JF0WOxYfy967tXerCLRCYIMi-C23iUZ5ZJa7z4zWOTmBPrR88luZ08b7Z1ayT9QbE2T2m70/w640-h426/RUSALKA_KHP-7508.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rusalka, Prince (Pavel Černoch), Gamekeeper (Adam Kutny), <br />Kitchen Boy (Clara Nadeshdin), and Ensemble</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">One can see why she would like to escape to
that other world, embodied in an attractive, trendily dressed mysterious (to
her, though not to us) stranger. For one thing, other than the drugs that may
or may not be Ježibaba’s stock-in-trade (what <i>is</i> that fascinatingly
beyond-good-and-evil or just-plain-evil neighbour doing?) she is hardly spoilt
for choice in alternative paths. Needless to say, an actually existing
working-class young woman is the most shocking sight of all to the Prince’s
friends and they work immediately to exclude her, the Foreign Princess going
all out to rekindle those embers until the culpably weak yet more sympathetic
Prince succumbs. No wonder the two sides cannot communicate, at least not until
it is too late. For it is important to recognise that Rusalka fits in on <i>neither</i>
side of this social divide. She only discovers – and this is entirely faithful to
the work – where she might have done far too late. There is, again as in the
work, a sort of tragic communion in that the Prince realises too late; he can
only do what is right (for him, as much as ethically) by surrendering his life,
which, movingly he does.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In a programme interview, Mundruczó says he
kept thinking of Kafka when working on the opera: doubtless a surprising
reference for some of us, the Prague connection, albeit intergenerational,
notwithstanding. But that may be to fall for outdated ‘national’ histories of
music. Why not, after all? It certainly comes into his own in the third act
here, where the action transfers less to a house than a cellar of horrors. Having
returned to Ježibaba, been scorned and perhaps even poisoned, Rusalka leaves
behind the world of social realism in which we imagined we should remain until
the end and morphs into an impossible creature, part human, part goodness knows
what, although it is perhaps not coincidental that its black suggests the
colour of refuse and its disposal. One can and perhaps should read that in
social and environmental ways; after all, what could be more of a social issue,
what could hit the working class harder, than the destruction of the planet?
But the aesthetic is actually quite different; one can read it for ‘meaning’ in
that way, but the vision seems to lie beyond that: something spellbinding, from
which one wishes to avert one’s eyes in horror at the agony Rusalka is
experiencing, yet cannot. It is more filmic than theatrically Gothic, I think,
but that choice seems a deliberate decision, again, judging from the interview,
to attempt to reach younger audiences with different frames of reference. Whatever
one might think of that – I am not sure I am the target audience here – for me
it works. It truly unsettles and actually leads us to reconsider clashes
between ‘natural’ and ‘human’, or ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ worlds very much
as the work does—yet which can become lost if the setting is too folk-like. A sort of deformed, already-dead tree-in-plastic has grown, suffocating and perhaps literally trashing all that approach it.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJYMFwuUQeaxaSkfb4PkM1LH1IA9vEy1yUH_JGyRsZpQ2SbaQpdS8wkQkYevCNIUAkbB1AOFRJu44fUZ2P6AGztodEEpc92pE7gDcYXZRp0m5wXDELW6eWU29eOZoC6h2bU_C2krTWp3rjXa9AucAS1atFVlhO6pQI5MrjqEv5Vbt8yr8C_Yh0iu4xZwk7/s3543/RUSALKA_KHP-8742.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2363" data-original-width="3543" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJYMFwuUQeaxaSkfb4PkM1LH1IA9vEy1yUH_JGyRsZpQ2SbaQpdS8wkQkYevCNIUAkbB1AOFRJu44fUZ2P6AGztodEEpc92pE7gDcYXZRp0m5wXDELW6eWU29eOZoC6h2bU_C2krTWp3rjXa9AucAS1atFVlhO6pQI5MrjqEv5Vbt8yr8C_Yh0iu4xZwk7/w640-h426/RUSALKA_KHP-8742.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rusalka, Prince, Third Nymph (Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein)</td></tr></tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Fairy tales, told properly, are dark, even
sick, not through a sort of tired, bourgeois exhibitionism – that might be
better left upstairs in the deceased Prince’s apartment – but because they tell
of dreams, fantasies, delights, and horrors. They are not of the sanitised,
commercial world of <i>Disney</i>, but come from a place of sex, violence, and
more. The mirror they hold up is truthful because it is distorted, not despite
that distortion. This production recognises such twisted truths and turns them
into a drama at least implicit in Dvořák’s –and Jaroslav Kvapil’s – work and
world. It may predate Freud and Kafka, but it is not without connections and
even presentiments. I have nothing at all against a production presenting a single-minded
view of a work, incorporating more current concerns, and so on. The work, whatever
it may be, will survive. But a particular point of interest here is that the
director does <i>not</i> impose a framework, even a related conceptual framework,
on the work, but rather presents such a related framework as a way in to
experience or re-experience the very strangeness of the work ‘itself’.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">For Dvořák progresses in this score too; even
in so late a work as this, written after (!) <i>Pelléas et Mélisande</i>, he
does not rest on his laurels. If those laurels are too folk-like for some early
on – their loss, but there is no accounting for taste – then they surely will
not be by the third act. For me, conductor Robin Ticciati and the superlative
Staatskapelle Berlin came truly into their own in this act, opening up a range
of post-Wagnerian language and emotion, not just or even principally emotion,
extending beyond what I have heard from Ticciati previously (save, perhaps, at
Glyndebourne for the <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-wreckers-glyndebourne-21-may-2022.html">dramaturgically
unfortunate Ethel Smyth opera, <i>The Wreckers</i></a>). Not that there was
anything wrong with what he did earlier. I initially found it a bit
hard-driven, but came to realise that this was probably as much a reading
developed in tandem with the production as a conception ‘in itself’ of the
score. Lack of what might be thought of as sentimentality – not necessarily so,
but that is arguably another matter – was the point. It was not cold, but nor
was it a kitsch (or readable as such) tale of forest life.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik-nKZ8XHHQkwpsY8EO0gpWexWk8awvu-Qq6uF9aD_5ligCJEWBgYi50DnQksmB4ItRqV96KpKPCXygdAbjk4spiK_TyKDXbjPxJ446GBv_CpV41owz4Gq8UghCWVSk1CSllAVwJ-SDII3vG9Q-78_21iI1qTGDK-SiugTfNX65Bk-R6qZezGhI0DW4g9v/s3543/RUSALKA_KHP-8298.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2363" data-original-width="3543" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik-nKZ8XHHQkwpsY8EO0gpWexWk8awvu-Qq6uF9aD_5ligCJEWBgYi50DnQksmB4ItRqV96KpKPCXygdAbjk4spiK_TyKDXbjPxJ446GBv_CpV41owz4Gq8UghCWVSk1CSllAVwJ-SDII3vG9Q-78_21iI1qTGDK-SiugTfNX65Bk-R6qZezGhI0DW4g9v/w640-h426/RUSALKA_KHP-8298.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rusalka, Ježibaba (Anna Kissjudit)</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The same might be said of performances from
an excellent cast, only more so, for there was some singing of ravishing warmth—but
not only of that. Making her role debut, Christiane Karg not only traced the
journey(s) proposed by composer, librettist, conductor, director, and more; she
was instrumental in creating them. Occasionally during the first act, I
wondered whether she might be a little under-powered, and perhaps there were a
few first-night nerves there, but this was more, I think, a matter of wise
marshalling of resources and dramatic trajectory. In many ways, I liked the way
the Song to the Moon did not become a stand-alone aria and indeed related
strongly to the music surrounding it, but I can well imagine some not having
done so. Whatever one’s position on that – mostly a matter of personal preference
– this Rusalka grew in stature through shocking experience, a tragic heroine to
remember for the denouement.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">There was tremendous acting on her part too.
Pavel Černoch’s Prince was similarly, if differently, involving. Despite it
all, and partly on account of twin vocal intelligence and beauty, one could not
help but like him, and again shared his ultimate tragedy at the close. Mika
Kares’s Vodník also grew as his character – and the truth that character told –
increasingly gained our sympathy. Anna Samuil offered glamour and refulgence –
just the thing – for the Foreign Princess. Anna Kissjudit’s already horrible Ježibaba
became all the more splendidly, horrifyingly so on her return, just as the
production demanded, without sacrifice to more ‘traditional’ vocal values. Smaller
roles and choral parts were all well taken, all contributing to a greater
musicodramatic whole.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">As for the audience member who not only booed
the end of the first act, but through his failure to stop – I am trying to be
polite – seemed determine to prevent the second from beginning, what part of that
whole troubled him so much? And why?</span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-19849771302346469992024-02-04T11:53:00.003+00:002024-02-05T10:30:07.316+00:00The Golden Cockerel, Komische Oper, 3 February 2024<br />Schillertheater<br /><br />King Dodon – Alexander Roslavets <br />Prince Guidon – Pavel Valuzhin <br />Prince Aphron – Hubert Zapiór <br />General Polkan – Alexander Vassiliev <br />Amelfa – Margarita Nekrasova <br />Golden Cockerel – Julia Muzychenko, Daniel Daniela Ojeda Yrureta <br />Queen of Shemakha – Kseniia Proshina <br />Astrologer – James Kryshak <br />First Boyar – Taiki Miyashita <br />Second Boyar – Jan-Frank Süße <br />Dancers – Michael Fernandez, Lorenzo Soragni, Silvano Marraffa, Kai Chun Chung<div><br /></div>Director – Barrie Kosky<br />Assistant director – Denni Sayers<br />Set design – Rufus Didwiszus<br />Costumes – Victoria Behr<br />Choreography – Otto Pichler<br />Dramaturgy – Olaf A. Schmitt, Meike Lieser<br />Lighting – Franck Evin <div><br />Orchestra and Chorus of the Komische Oper (chorus director: David Cavelius)</div><div>James Gaffigan (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMSBwtIlzvxdTArS5Pig5zcJepzpEi50Mz9hZ-sQcIAEC1O0C-YZCQgHzDvCWgdWgzCE8aY0Tah_poPxt25EGS27vz_U-XyhU5nh-eQwhkFACfr1Ie9xUvcRj8hYwm5418BWN-kPcBEi8X8tbQ-OrK30X9yjRylv98wyI9K4k05AR6S_yy-xFlWZVF6nv4/s8149/4297_der_goldene_hahn_257_c_monika_rittershaus.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5459" data-original-width="8149" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMSBwtIlzvxdTArS5Pig5zcJepzpEi50Mz9hZ-sQcIAEC1O0C-YZCQgHzDvCWgdWgzCE8aY0Tah_poPxt25EGS27vz_U-XyhU5nh-eQwhkFACfr1Ie9xUvcRj8hYwm5418BWN-kPcBEi8X8tbQ-OrK30X9yjRylv98wyI9K4k05AR6S_yy-xFlWZVF6nv4/w640-h428/4297_der_goldene_hahn_257_c_monika_rittershaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Monika Rittershaus</td></tr></tbody></table><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Two productions, very different, of
Rimsky-Korsakov’s last opera, <i>The Golden Cockerel</i>, within two years: <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2022/03/the-golden-cockerel-english-touring.html">James
Conway for English Touring Opera</a>, which I saw in Hackney, and now Barrie
Kosky’s new production for Berlin’s Komische Oper in its temporary home in
Charlottenburg. Both are experienced, though neither was planned, in the wake
of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ETO’s first night less than a fortnight
after, the Komische Oper’s second night falling as we approach the two-year
anniversary (although intended for 2020 and thwarted by the coronavirus
pandemic). Rimsky’s satire on tsarist power and Russian imperialism in the wake
of the Russo-Japanese war could hardly be more topical, then, and it would be
difficult, indeed perverse, to banish thoughts of today’s King Dodon from our
minds completely. In neither production, though, were such ideas first and
foremost—and that is arguably a good thing. Spelling out so clearly rarely is,
though there will always be exceptions. ‘Rimsky in Hackney’ gave a good
introduction to the piece and played fruitfully with ideas of orientalism.
Though necessarily given in a reduced orchestration, that proved surprisingly –
for a composer and score for whom orchestral colour are so crucial – little of
a problem. A dated English translation, replete with ‘amusing’ rhyming
couplets, offered more of a barrier. This <i>Cockerel</i>, given in Russian, in
full, and in excellent style by James Gaffigan, the Orchestra of the Komische
Oper, and a fine cast of singers, took a different turn in Kosky’s production,
which initially had me feel a little dissatisfied. However, the more I considered
it, the more it grew on me.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">What is missing? Russia, orientalism, and
the ‘fantastic’ colour associated with them, though certainly not fantasy
itself; and most of the politics too. There is nothing wrong with including the
former trio; there is every reason to do so. We can live without them, though,
for they will never disappear from what we hear—and all of them benefit from or
rather, in today’s climate, demand something in the way of deconstruction. The
politics are perhaps more of a problem—or were for me. Surely a satire on war
and power stands in a curious position if little attention is granted either?
Yes and no, though to start with my answer, doubtless as someone strongly
inclined toward political theatre, would definitely have been ‘yes’. Instead,
taking his leave from the Astrologer’s claim – a deft way of dealing with the censor,
who nonetheless refused to approve the opera – that this was only a fairy tale
whose characters he had brought to life, Kosky treats this all as Dodon’s
dream.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtFmuR6vKYxmsbc0-Q6gY5zU1ClMxFKWkD-LsvC6ZpR2sT5cUW3c926DXWvLPID5g89m2bmdch6oSn6eFvQkMumd-vHc45Rrmov89yXKp5bR9jlDAXmZ1J_MqN2VLWI1vZOdjPRRBuY1GURvfXlNo2N9La-Q693QRCSuBywzXKcN8QsPOSMJbKCsuPZNcb/s8256/4299_der_goldene_hahn_345_c_monika_rittershaus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5523" data-original-width="8256" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtFmuR6vKYxmsbc0-Q6gY5zU1ClMxFKWkD-LsvC6ZpR2sT5cUW3c926DXWvLPID5g89m2bmdch6oSn6eFvQkMumd-vHc45Rrmov89yXKp5bR9jlDAXmZ1J_MqN2VLWI1vZOdjPRRBuY1GURvfXlNo2N9La-Q693QRCSuBywzXKcN8QsPOSMJbKCsuPZNcb/w640-h428/4299_der_goldene_hahn_345_c_monika_rittershaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">A cop out, you might say: one of the most
tired devices in children’s, let alone adults’, writing. And yes, most of us
will have felt cheated at, say, the end of John Masefield’s <i>The Box of
Delights</i>, though things become more complex when we read it in the light of
<i>The Midnight Folk</i>, which is <i>not</i> a dream. Here the spur is to
consider the work more psychoanalytically. If this is a fairy tale, the dream
permits a more erotic but also a more absurdist turn. Rufus Didwiszus’s designs
disdains a palatial world of gilt for a landscape that might be a setting for <i>Waiting
for Godot</i>; Dodon’s clowning and dishevelment owe something to that world
too. Victoria Behr’s costumes are crucial here too: Dodon remains the same, but
all around him change, delineating stages of the dream-drama as much as character,
arguably more so. It would hardly be a Kosky production without someone in
fishnets; here the King’s men are horses on top and cabaret artists below. Some
might complain we have seen it all before, and perhaps we have, but within this
framework it makes sense. <br />
<br />
Kosky also makes excellent sense of the second act – as did Gaffigan – which I
see I found ‘over-extended’ in Hackney. It arguably sits less well with a
political interpretation and, without something else, might seem oddly
unwarranted. Such a thought never occurred to me on this occasion; indeed, my
thoughts on occasion turned to Kundry’s revelations to Parsifal in the second
act of that opera, an example certainly well known to Rimsky. The Queen of
Shemakha becomes Dodon’s wish-fulfilment, and thus – in a twist of the final
revelation when the Astrologer owns that only he and the Queen were ‘real’ – an
impossible male fantasy, a siren who cannot exist. I wonder whether there might
be room for both, and doubtless there can, but perhaps then I might be
complaining of a lack of focus. This opens up possibilities rather than closing
them, and for that, as well as Kosky’s clear attention to the fact that this is
a <i>musical</i> drama, with an orchestral score and vocal parts that demand dramatic
attention, we should certainly be grateful. Likewise for the sense of mystery
that attends certain shifts, not least in presentation of the ‘people’, be they
shadowy or downright oddball. A framework is provided, but there is no attempt
to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. Dreams may or may not ‘mean’ something;
that remains in large part up to us. They will nevertheless certainly signify,
if never quite representing, wishes and fears—which may be amenable to stronger
political interpretation for tsars then and now. Note the Queen’s skilled troupe
of dancing boys, but also the stark image of the King's sons hanging from a tree, all for a ruler whose principal skill seems to be tilting at windmills.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrygjnSXQ0xofy586T9hAwKmxvLdtQNsvzXGxhJ9OncUJo8bcQ5OAVg4hG7Nc75cj660PXAoc63EiDyz5o2aJMnJlS4EoYdZnStNp9Hp4CtrtEVTjYNDKbtB5r5RblF_J4JC1CizzycqZEln5kDAUx_kz58u_7Kq9s3881ZddS5d3n6rfD3iKMEsU8VA02/s8885/4305_der_goldene_hahn_314_c_monika_rittershaus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5905" data-original-width="8885" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrygjnSXQ0xofy586T9hAwKmxvLdtQNsvzXGxhJ9OncUJo8bcQ5OAVg4hG7Nc75cj660PXAoc63EiDyz5o2aJMnJlS4EoYdZnStNp9Hp4CtrtEVTjYNDKbtB5r5RblF_J4JC1CizzycqZEln5kDAUx_kz58u_7Kq9s3881ZddS5d3n6rfD3iKMEsU8VA02/w640-h426/4305_der_goldene_hahn_314_c_monika_rittershaus.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Gaffigan’s command of colour, rhythm,
structure, and harmony are superb, revealing this as a truly incisive score
with multiple interpretative – dramatic, as well as ‘purely’ musical –
challenges of its own. The orchestra was on terrific form throughout: important,
I think, to underline, given the tendency to think of this company’s values
being more on the ‘theatrical’ side. In truth, any opera company that does not
bear witness to the multifaceted nature of the genre will not get very far: no
one goes to see an opera without music, and if some reactionaries may claim to
prefer to close their eyes, their manufactured outrage gives the lie to that.
Motifs imprinted themselves in the memory, as did rhythms, timbres, and their
combination. Sometimes – often – this drew us in, but it could distance us too:
not exactly <i>Verfremdung</i>, but certainly an advantageous framing to the
framing of our fairy tale.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2zxZboZOhpEQ8BDCQoTBRFMATxA1qzLyJJujwjUHgyAkKUyuk_i4awv8rbVa3I44HsKtqCF_A_IXuWnq9EghTCDmr7_JZV0V_qUccT5Ukldbqz3yylCM1KWEpRjM-0VqJ0bZ7XUOINUA-61EDg6UbV42r3u-60ynX9QlZGCYMS4VN_4mq0pSuJxRAn9t/s8770/4300_der_goldene_hahn_141_c_monika_rittershaus.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="8770" data-original-width="5725" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjj2zxZboZOhpEQ8BDCQoTBRFMATxA1qzLyJJujwjUHgyAkKUyuk_i4awv8rbVa3I44HsKtqCF_A_IXuWnq9EghTCDmr7_JZV0V_qUccT5Ukldbqz3yylCM1KWEpRjM-0VqJ0bZ7XUOINUA-61EDg6UbV42r3u-60ynX9QlZGCYMS4VN_4mq0pSuJxRAn9t/w261-h400/4300_der_goldene_hahn_141_c_monika_rittershaus.jpg" width="261" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Equally important to that and so much
else was the excellent cast. On stage almost the whole time for a two-hour-plus
performance without an interval, Alexander Roslavets gave a towering
performance as King Dodon. It is not an easy thing to bring a plodding, in many
ways unimpressive character to musical life, but that Roslavets certainly did, granting
him sympathy as well as absurdity, through equal concentration on words, music,
and gesture. Kseniia Proshina’s Queen of Shemakha offered old-style stardom,
partly ‘straight’, partly in inverted commas, and pristine command of all the
vocal challenges Rimsky threw at her. James Kryshak’s Astrologer trod a fine
line between sympathetic and almost frighteningly unsympathetic, and emerged
all the stronger for it. Margarita Nekrasova’s deep, unerringly ‘Russian’ mezzo,
as near a contralto as made no odds, was just the thing for the
housekeeper-turned-regent Amelfa. Julia Muzychenko brought the Cockerel itself
to vivid vocal life, in a fine partnership with Daniel Daniela Ojeda Yrureta’s
onstage performance, which offered plentiful malice and ambiguity. As ever,
there was a fine sense of company, these singers and their colleagues all contributing
to the greater whole. What did it mean? What, indeed?<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-71520367157957204832024-02-03T12:46:00.005+00:002024-02-03T12:46:47.276+00:00BPO/Gatti - Schoenberg, Strauss, and Wagner, 2 February 2024<br />Philharmonie<br /><br /><b>Schoenberg: </b><i>Verklärte Nacht</i>, op.4 (1943 version for string orchestra) <br /><b>Strauss:</b> <i>Tod und Verklärung</i>, op.24 <br /><b>Wagner:</b> <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>: Prelude to Act I and ‘Liebestod’ <br /><br /> Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra<div>Daniele Gatti (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh__Yyk6yuy4pdTsSAsZMuyfwSRxLCvSl3wzmcWcpzS2isxMH-_wgWPGhyphenhyphenP0eK0oTN5KBbO4C12kxq53yG_bDthjcEjVeeq9v1hHlPzr8ZDGHLu4uaeXwIEj_RKWzn4v7OHLfaHMQWaWhIeUtwUzHiOu6eAK_0gbq55c6ToJBAqSoeWAL9ZpnFHoxdOboL6/s5934/Phil_240131_069_SR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3655" data-original-width="5934" height="394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh__Yyk6yuy4pdTsSAsZMuyfwSRxLCvSl3wzmcWcpzS2isxMH-_wgWPGhyphenhyphenP0eK0oTN5KBbO4C12kxq53yG_bDthjcEjVeeq9v1hHlPzr8ZDGHLu4uaeXwIEj_RKWzn4v7OHLfaHMQWaWhIeUtwUzHiOu6eAK_0gbq55c6ToJBAqSoeWAL9ZpnFHoxdOboL6/w640-h394/Phil_240131_069_SR.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Stephan Rabold</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Repertoire, orchestra, and conductor: a
marriage made in heaven—or, if we are to be Nietzschean about it, in the ‘voluptuousness
of hell’ with which he diagnosed Wagner’s <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>. In this
cleverly devised programme, Daniele Gatti and the Berlin Philharmonic took us
through three works of explicit transfiguration, that transfiguration, transcendence,
or whatever we want to call it in each case following something darker, more
malign, more voluptuous and yes, both heavenly and hellish—or, as Nietzsche
would have it, beyond good and evil.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The Berliners followed their <a href="https://seenandheard-international.com/2024/01/an-outstanding-celebration-of-schoenberg-by-kirill-petrenko-and-the-berlin-philharmonic/">outstanding
Schoenberg programme</a> of the previous week, under Kirill Petrenko, with a <i>Verklärte
Nacht</i> of equal distinction. I often have my doubts about the version for
string orchestra – what does it actually add to the original string sextet
writing? – but not here, not for a second. What it was to hear massed Berlin
strings, superbly led by Vineta Sareika-Völkner, in this music: the tremolo of
seven double-basses, or the unanimity of violas in pizzicato, and unisons to
put the fear of God into Bruckner. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
dark allure of its opening, taken a little slower than usual and all the better
for it in Gatti’s particular conception, attested to a veritable symphonic poem.
Flexibility was such that one did not notice it, all part of a greater,
coherent whole, heard – like all the music on this programme – as if in a
single, infinitely variegated breath. Violence was unsettlingly sweet;
transfiguration, when it came, never without shades of something darker. For
all its tonal insistence, relatively speaking, there were spellbinding passages
that took us to liminal places of near-suspension. And, for once, we heard a
true outpouring of love, abundant, fulfilling, even overflowing, once the
figurative tide had turned. It seemed to prefigure, perhaps even to ‘correct’,
as Wagner attempted with Schopenhauer, its <i>fons et origo </i>in <i>Tristan</i>.<i>
</i>There was rhetorical eloquence too, but never did it come into conflict
with form and structure. Post-Wagnerian narrative, be it musical or
extra-musical, seared its way into our consciousness, albeit with all the chamber-music
motivic rigour of a composer devoted with equal ferocity to the legacy of
Brahms. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifk3DtQ06rkDefk9X60NCyQfNRhbhOSdQNHG6gq89bQDPEIQawtsTqGP-iAYCCgKS0r_CNn2cm6uss8bo7K6ZJdQNtxoqbWpC51vQ9lnHhxrGi7xopqjQL4FhtVGI6fagJK9nwr_fyBgDIHj8YK3ioSRa6rME07t3OtREV9xqoZWD-0YSKN9qspTwZHQxL/s5943/Phil_240131_002_SR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3678" data-original-width="5943" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifk3DtQ06rkDefk9X60NCyQfNRhbhOSdQNHG6gq89bQDPEIQawtsTqGP-iAYCCgKS0r_CNn2cm6uss8bo7K6ZJdQNtxoqbWpC51vQ9lnHhxrGi7xopqjQL4FhtVGI6fagJK9nwr_fyBgDIHj8YK3ioSRa6rME07t3OtREV9xqoZWD-0YSKN9qspTwZHQxL/w640-h396/Phil_240131_002_SR.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Another dark opening announced <i>Tod und
Verklärung</i>: one noticed and felt, in its heartbeat hesitations both
similarity and difference vis-à-vis <i>Verklärte Nacht</i>. It was immediately clear
that this was a more tonally stable world; there was no question here of losing
aural sight of those tonal moorings, even as the soul departed for wherever it
was going (or not). The excellence of the Berlin strings was now added to by
woodwind and eventually others, the orchestra once more at the very top of its
game. I should be listing the entire orchestra were I to name every instance,
but special mention should go to the solo flute, oboe, English horn, and of
course to Sareika-Völkner as leader. Clarity and purpose in musical narrative
were second to none in Gatti’s reading, that there was simply no need to ask
the old question about the importance (or not) of the programme. The work’s
complex form – the more so the more one truly listens, just as in Beethoven –
was brought to life unerringly, moving and thrilling in equal measure in a
performance that had one feel one was hearing this music for the first time.
The radiance of the conclusion proved every inch worth of comparison to that of
Schoenberg’s piece.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2T6yKUYO1XVTO2eWkSNK4eBnrbKiUZFIytbBfC8Ol3llqXR5Lc-5HSxEaCejE6XhLwtwbpGvliGEPdzz0-Hqf9S7a8NXey8qoq6Cqdn7e49DeKlpGcK1o9CLPtXQASe7ZK99sFsz72zQcf-787kK1wCqSZmQIym-Wp6a3zge5wUn9tI_BSJyvmblGcTmF/s11218/Phil_240131_305_SR.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="11218" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2T6yKUYO1XVTO2eWkSNK4eBnrbKiUZFIytbBfC8Ol3llqXR5Lc-5HSxEaCejE6XhLwtwbpGvliGEPdzz0-Hqf9S7a8NXey8qoq6Cqdn7e49DeKlpGcK1o9CLPtXQASe7ZK99sFsz72zQcf-787kK1wCqSZmQIym-Wp6a3zge5wUn9tI_BSJyvmblGcTmF/w640-h228/Phil_240131_305_SR.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">As it did to that of the <i>Tristan</i>
excerpts. Again, I often have my doubts about the wisdom of pairing the
first-act Prelude to the so-called ‘Liebestod’; again, such was the conviction
of this performance that such doubts never arose, and not only because Liszt’s
description is better jettisoned for Wagner’s own: ‘Isoldes Verklärung’. The
intensity of the Prelude had to be heard to be believed, vibrato but a single
example of its expressive richness at a dramatic temperature at least equal to
that of Karl Böhm, albeit in less of a hurry. Not only did the music unfolded
as if in a single breath; it offered testament to Schopenhauer’s one, all-pervasive
Will, of which it stands as the closest and dearest representation. The Prelude’s
inability or unwillingness to close was so apparent that it seemed, for once, a
natural move to expunge its pantonal presentiments through Isolde’s transfiguration.
That second part flowed as if against the most inviting of tides, until enveloped
by them. ‘Sind es Wellen sanfter Lüfte?’ Why choose? This was a miraculous
lightness of being – and non-being – unbearable, doubtless, were it forever,
yet for the moment exquisite and necessary beyond words. I have yet to hear
Gatti conduct Wagner’s drama in the theatre, but on this evidence it would be a
<i>Tristan</i> to rival those of Barenboim and Kleiber—and his own Bayreuth <i>Parsifal</i>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-88235794001331332752024-02-02T16:03:00.001+00:002024-02-02T16:03:38.115+00:00Written on Skin, Deutsche Oper, 1 February 2024<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaTIO7zMuJQIKoaNC1ZJX8JmxfeFf7QdnBdIbM9Cld1GUOB1dRt_eF6UDnoZbtmu5PwpMHIeDBFDhWodBvzwhkiWz9mcfh4zGvw5Bz4OGfl_39MXofRppUyq_g2dZe0F3NpvhJn9KWETaEgvAJWMP-lF_y2ZiHh_oQqceBg_krhkPjC0fd-k5XqdIwH-X0/s4466/Written%20on%20Skin_102.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="4466" height="406" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaTIO7zMuJQIKoaNC1ZJX8JmxfeFf7QdnBdIbM9Cld1GUOB1dRt_eF6UDnoZbtmu5PwpMHIeDBFDhWodBvzwhkiWz9mcfh4zGvw5Bz4OGfl_39MXofRppUyq_g2dZe0F3NpvhJn9KWETaEgvAJWMP-lF_y2ZiHh_oQqceBg_krhkPjC0fd-k5XqdIwH-X0/w640-h406/Written%20on%20Skin_102.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Akzidenz-Grotesk-Pro-regular, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">Images: WRITTEN ON SKIN, Regie: Katie Mitchell, <br />Deutsche Oper Berlin, Premiere: 27. Januar 2024, copyright: Bernd Uhlig</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><br />Protector – Mark Stone <br />Agnès – Georgia Jarman <br />First Angel, The Boy – Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen <br />Second Angel, Marie – Anna Werle <br />Third Angel, John – Chance Jonas-O’Toole <br />Angel archivists – Leander Gaul, Yasmina Giebeler, Milli Keil, Maximilian Reisinger<div><br /></div>Director – Katie Mitchell<br />Revival director – Dan Ayling<br />Designs – Vicki Mortimer<br />Lighting – Jon Clark<br /><div>Dramaturgy – Sebastian Hanusa <br /><br />Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper <br />Marc Albrecht (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdnXQqutNvUkxa-sv2rD-8LoaZMao0Ka1aKgCwVncyZldyO1ZbgXw4C8hEihZElvjPsFDYssSALl-2iuX7GOYwZmU78fQg97Pn38ZV7sgRiDzXGMxU6ZjSgtvY6n3LWzwB2GKPIXJ7ff29B_dobdpWJ2i8llfyDmR6F9ViizzGMj20NDEXMD1D2ydaYtNd/s4253/Written%20on%20Skin_74hf_JarmanStoneNussbaumCohen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="4253" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdnXQqutNvUkxa-sv2rD-8LoaZMao0Ka1aKgCwVncyZldyO1ZbgXw4C8hEihZElvjPsFDYssSALl-2iuX7GOYwZmU78fQg97Pn38ZV7sgRiDzXGMxU6ZjSgtvY6n3LWzwB2GKPIXJ7ff29B_dobdpWJ2i8llfyDmR6F9ViizzGMj20NDEXMD1D2ydaYtNd/w640-h426/Written%20on%20Skin_74hf_JarmanStoneNussbaumCohen.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">More than a decade has passed since I first
saw George Benjamin’s second opera, <i>Written on Skin</i>, <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2013/03/written-on-skin-royal-opera-18-march.html">at Covent Garden</a>. The premiere, both of the work and Katie Mitchell’s well-travelled
production, took place at Aix in 2012. Now it reaches, for the first time,
Berlin in a further revival of Mitchell’s staging for the Deutsche Oper. It is
my fourth hearing, since I attended both the Royal Opera’s 2017 revival and,
the year before, a <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2016/03/george-benjamin-day-chamber-works-and.html">concertperformance at the Barbican</a> with Aix’s original Mahler Chamber Orchestra.
Greater acquaintance leaves my admiration undimmed; if anything, it glows all
the brighter. For whilst the casts of my previous encounters had much, though
not everything, in common, and Benjamin conducted them all, here we have
something new in all but the staging, ably revived by Dan Ayling.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">I shall not attempt a broad overview,
whether musical or dramatic, of the work, as I did in 2013. (My review can be
read <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2013/03/written-on-skin-royal-opera-18-march.html">here</a>,
for those interested.) Rather, I shall point to some aspects of work,
production, and performance that struck me on this occasion. First, I cannot now
understand my lukewarmness concerning Mitchell’s staging. Maybe I have grown
more accustomed not only to her work but to contemporary theatre more
generally. If anything, the danger for me is perhaps the opposite, that I now
associate the work with this particular production. There have, astonishingly
for a new work, especially a new work that is not, shall we say, of the US ‘easy
listening variety’, been numerous productions already; for now, though, this is
the only one I have seen. Vicki Mortimer’s split-level set enables us to see
the world of angels and that of men (specifically, the Protector, Agnès, her
sister and brother-in-law, and The Boy) and, crucially, their transformative interaction,
as, for, instance one of the angels is apprised of the situation – narratives
already building upon one another – and assumes, as it were, the role of the
Boy who will chronicle his patron’s life in words and images. That includes the
liberating sexual relationship that arises between him and the brutalised Agnès,
the Protector’s ‘property’, truly coming to life in an authentically
musicodramatic marriage of words, music, and staging. Indeed, the eroticism here
of Benjamin’s score struck me more strongly than ever before, perhaps a hallmark of conductor Marc Albrecht’s approach to the work.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOHCRH0UultxYHll8gzjwjAZfX2s5Y7GqxDY1T7rV48MHwD1gKPy_CIslHYFDmYPlTBt5geu08E2SR76dgdKh5wrtRxayiydCX87G3ml_FFkSiPuaMkjjwWxwX117wc8rD0FwhQGEEV-ccjQT7ekgG3gccwyub4VJQLRMcthHJPmpzUljh3pUJ0r2B5DaV/s4252/Written%20on%20Skin_54JarmanNussbaumCohen%20(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4252" data-original-width="2835" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOHCRH0UultxYHll8gzjwjAZfX2s5Y7GqxDY1T7rV48MHwD1gKPy_CIslHYFDmYPlTBt5geu08E2SR76dgdKh5wrtRxayiydCX87G3ml_FFkSiPuaMkjjwWxwX117wc8rD0FwhQGEEV-ccjQT7ekgG3gccwyub4VJQLRMcthHJPmpzUljh3pUJ0r2B5DaV/w266-h400/Written%20on%20Skin_54JarmanNussbaumCohen%20(2).jpg" width="266" /></a></div> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">So does what might seem a commonplace of
drama, yet here seems particular, unique, partly because one is led to feel,
not only observe, it in its very particular character: inexorability of fate.
As tightly organised a score as <i>The Turn of the Screw</i>, yet less
obviously so, holds us captive, almost like Agnès herself. It beguiles, perhaps
even breaths a little of the Occitan air, mediæval and now, but never via an
attempt to reproduce or even to represent. Illumination, in whatever sense we
care, is both more complex and more immediate than that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is certainly commentary; it is inscribed,
as it were, upon the very skin of the work. Yet however much the angels might classify,
file away, their real work is in transformation: of persons and perhaps
ultimately of souls.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Senses of time passing, of claustrophobia,
of fate closing in – though never merely mirroring – the work – and indeed of an
uncontrollable, dangerous joy that must be controlled, yet in that act of
controlling requires new life are conveyed scenically in new layers of an
activity that conspires both to be particular and quotidian. It is almost a religious
ritual, bringing further to life a quasi-Passion of passion to join works such
as <i>Così fan tutte</i> and <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>, as well as the more
obviously (and musically) related <i>Pelléas et Mélisande</i>. In work and
performance, this intriguing, almost mythical combination of straightforward
action and elusive allusion that may or may not be symbolism suggests a
temporal palimpsest. (Not for nothing, perhaps, is <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2019/03/wigetensemble-modernbenjamin-boulez.html">one
of Benjamin’s major orchestral works</a> an exploration of that idea.)</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuol-CWBgqfQFww13kAMVVi0Qgdo0BGZ0mEXddeUNuBxzflWrDvg8LrdNX0YGa2RQ-rH0CiKEu-UXMEK6BwXHFde_sAETziOQ5MWg7nAX8JCjx0zqUBB7ZheyRX40GDF0NLl97RMBOD8gsFQ0uhC1XpIIqjOw-DIMiuoMXd92MGQieapP0aOVDny8F_26/s4253/Written%20on%20Skin_27hf_WerleJarmanNussbaumCohen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="4253" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinuol-CWBgqfQFww13kAMVVi0Qgdo0BGZ0mEXddeUNuBxzflWrDvg8LrdNX0YGa2RQ-rH0CiKEu-UXMEK6BwXHFde_sAETziOQ5MWg7nAX8JCjx0zqUBB7ZheyRX40GDF0NLl97RMBOD8gsFQ0uhC1XpIIqjOw-DIMiuoMXd92MGQieapP0aOVDny8F_26/w640-h426/Written%20on%20Skin_27hf_WerleJarmanNussbaumCohen.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">By the same token, though, there is no doubting
the rawness and immediacy of acts, of things also being very much what they
seem. In Agnès’s words not only of liberation, but also of the Boy’s instruction:
‘Love’s not a picture; love is an act.’ This and so many other moments
confirmed and furthered my admiration for Martin Crimp’s libretto. Unlike so
many attempts at writing for opera, Crimp’s work for Benjamin here and elsewhere
permits plenty of space for music. Indeed, if one did not know, one might struggle
to guess which came first; it would be fascinating to read any correspondence
they may have had about this. <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMT_PSWnEYlK5hNR2stxpJDNSbHMY9OaqoRqj_u5bbeFsfjUhtHcSKdGSep-_ibvmnHnJX2LprNPXsGv5rxUMBul0zFiZF74Px17ODoVqVk-sPIcgj8V-pUOLQbtSv3Za0vxLAUrvKdgZ9wR_0B8i-XMfefhqOVA8MBttxJwtHT-imuN9-Enpc3_65_ylH/s4375/Written%20on%20Skin_41hf_JarmanStone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2835" data-original-width="4375" height="414" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgMT_PSWnEYlK5hNR2stxpJDNSbHMY9OaqoRqj_u5bbeFsfjUhtHcSKdGSep-_ibvmnHnJX2LprNPXsGv5rxUMBul0zFiZF74Px17ODoVqVk-sPIcgj8V-pUOLQbtSv3Za0vxLAUrvKdgZ9wR_0B8i-XMfefhqOVA8MBttxJwtHT-imuN9-Enpc3_65_ylH/w640-h414/Written%20on%20Skin_41hf_JarmanStone.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Performance is itself a necessary act. We
are not here speaking merely of something written or drawn on the page. Albrecht
and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper gave a commanding performance, with all
the freshness of discovery yet also an understanding and conviction that might
have been born of repertoire status. (It is, arguably, a repertoire opera now,
yet not yet in this house, for this was only its second performance.) Georgia Jarman
made the role of Agnès very much her own, fully inhabiting a character come to
life through the alchemy of music as well as words and staging. One felt her
predicament strongly, shared her struggle and ultimate revenge, without the
drama being reduced merely to them. Mark Stone’s Protector was cruel and, in
his own way, righteous, torn himself between two loves, the question of his
feelings for The Boy opened up rather than ‘dealt with’. Pride and
vulnerability were both present. Aryeh Nussbaum Cohen’s performance as The Boy
might almost have stolen the show in its uncannily angelic combination of the
worldly and otherworldly; that is, it might have done, had the cast not worked
so closely together. Anna Werle and Chance Jonas-O’Toole, doubling as Angels
and, respectively, Marie and John offered equally fine performances in smaller
roles. For in richness of layering and sureness of fatal direction, this was a performance as well as a work created and recreated through its writing on skin.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-35249139491526410772024-01-31T16:31:00.007+00:002024-02-09T18:50:51.334+00:00Salzburg Mozartwoche (6) - Peretyatko/Danish CO/Fischer: Mozart and Salieri, 30 January 2024<p><br />Grosser Saal, Mozarteum<br /><br /><b>Mozart:</b> <i>Lucio Silla</i>, KV 135: Overture; <i>Don Giovanni</i>, KV 527: ‘Crudele! Ah no, mio bene!’ – ‘Non mi dir, bell’idol mio’ <br /><b>Salieri:</b> Sinfonia, ‘La Veneziana’ <br /><b>Mozart:</b> Concert aria, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te?’ – ‘Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505; <i>Idomeneo</i>, KV 366: ‘Oh smanie! Oh furie!’ – ‘D’Oreste, d’Alace’; Symphony no.36 in C major, KV 425, ‘Linz’ <br /></p><p>Olga Peretyatko (soprano)<br />Danish Chamber Orchestra, <br />Ádám Fischer (conductor)</p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2eA28x57a4zFJZykgI3mhESHFYvFlzAeXypfGvAp1KZKuWUfV4E1yEgD3YaTHSBQ27Vz-kMOwz4aBWtmsLXtMbnCb_PYSNiIvwxX19NdpVVx3zDiTsREVDdxG3ls0gpFyVFS0_fd9q_nRtXmfVTQ3-CAs1XSY7KGgSfksaDRYjxD4blfGfCp2qSChrfV3/s4000/MoWo24_Danish-Chamber-Orchestra_Fischer_Peretyatko_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_131.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2667" data-original-width="4000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2eA28x57a4zFJZykgI3mhESHFYvFlzAeXypfGvAp1KZKuWUfV4E1yEgD3YaTHSBQ27Vz-kMOwz4aBWtmsLXtMbnCb_PYSNiIvwxX19NdpVVx3zDiTsREVDdxG3ls0gpFyVFS0_fd9q_nRtXmfVTQ3-CAs1XSY7KGgSfksaDRYjxD4blfGfCp2qSChrfV3/w640-h426/MoWo24_Danish-Chamber-Orchestra_Fischer_Peretyatko_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_131.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Wolfang Lienbacher<br /><br /></td></tr></tbody></table><p>
</p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Ádám Fischer is a fine if sometimes
eccentric Mozartian. His <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2023/08/salzburg-festival-2-il-re-pastore.html">concert performance of <i>Il re pastore</i></a> with the
Mozarteum Orchestra at last year’s Salzburg Festival was for me a highlight,
and his work with the Danish Chamber Orchestra has gained many plaudits.
Understandably, if this concert, my final engagement at this year’s
Mozartwoche, is anything to go by. Moreover, it confirmed the sensational qualities of soprano Olga Peretyatko, whom I had admired in <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2023/03/idomeneo-staatsoper-unter-den-linden-30.html"><i>Idomeneo</i> at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden</a> last year.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The concert opened with the Overture to <i>Lucio
Silla</i>, a new production of which has just opened next door at the
Landestheater, for which I hope to return to Salzburg later this season and
report. In the meantime, this proved quite a taster, as bright, theatrical, and
vigorous as one might expect of the young Mozart in D major, here palpably
excited to get his hands on the Milanese orchestra. (Paris was not the only
fruit.) Woodwind in the first section foreshadowed those of the warm, central <i>Andante</i>
in A, with just a hint of the shadows to come. In the final section, Fischer
employed a favoured device of his, also to be heard in the <i>Linz</i>
Symphony, of restricting certain passages to solo instruments only.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Peretyatko joined Fischer and the orchestra
for three numbers. First was ‘Crudele! Ah no, mio bene!’ – ‘Non mi dir,
bell’idol mio’ from <i>Don Giovanni</i>. Opening very much <i>in medias res</i>,
giving the <i>accompagnato</i> permitted the performers to prepare us for Donna
Anna’s aria, rather than experience it as a pretty, even generically ‘dramatic’
thing-in-itself. It certainly emerged as consequent, treated not only to pinpoint,
expressive coloratura and a luxuriant voice, but equal excellence from the orchestra
as a whole, gorgeous horns included. ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te?’ – ‘Non temer,
amato bene’ was written by Mozart for Nancy Storace, creator of roles for both
Mozart (Susanna) and Salieri. Here again, we experience the most vivid of
communication through words and music. Fischer’s decision to play Mozart’s
piano part too was unfortunate. I have little doubt that he could play or
conduct the piece perfectly well; doing both proved, alas, a mistake, and
renewed one’s admiration for those pianist-conductors able to do so. Strongly
connected to <i>Idomeneo</i>, the aria’s words (though not its recitative’s) coming
from Giambattista Varesco’s libretto, it paved the way for the appearance of
Elettra after the interval, in which Peretyatko’s star shone, if anything,
still brighter. Immediately in character, she had us feel the vipers in Elettra’s
bosom, as did the Danish strings, bows fairly bouncing off the strings. Voice
and oboe entwined in a veritable dance of death. A whole opera with Fischer, perhaps
indeed <i>Idomeneo</i>, would be just the ticket.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqmXvW64uvYUW0jRaMvlmGePLwndN2PHGsKCOsErOBPIycWSNJFUGU-FCn5UTARnuOWKKtphIEY7jWxVyW_7DsI0nBcpVavG2BI_igG06Epo2LVgXl2F0Lye-KMPrOsL9n1hzgYKJRYmV5RvC3__Lu5PA-odLbMkxU2KGJ0y2TGXNRsN3hGvJ6EQ_2GzkY/s4000/MoWo24_Danish-Chamber-Orchestra_Fischer_Peretyatko_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_192.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2667" data-original-width="4000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhqmXvW64uvYUW0jRaMvlmGePLwndN2PHGsKCOsErOBPIycWSNJFUGU-FCn5UTARnuOWKKtphIEY7jWxVyW_7DsI0nBcpVavG2BI_igG06Epo2LVgXl2F0Lye-KMPrOsL9n1hzgYKJRYmV5RvC3__Lu5PA-odLbMkxU2KGJ0y2TGXNRsN3hGvJ6EQ_2GzkY/w640-h426/MoWo24_Danish-Chamber-Orchestra_Fischer_Peretyatko_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_192.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In between Donna Anna and Mme Storace’s
aria, we had heard Salieri’s Sinfonia, latterly called <i>La Veneziana</i> by its
1961 editor Renzo Sabatini. It is not an ‘original’ work, but rather the encounter
of two opera overtures, its first movement from <i>La scuola de’ gelosi</i> (indeed
written for Venice) and the second and third from <i>La partenza inaspettata</i>.
Fischer and the Danish players were again in their theatrical element; anyone
could and surely would have guessed this to be the world of <i>opera buffa</i>.
Conviction and skill in performance placed this on a different level from any
of the Salieri performances I had heard earlier in the week. Counterpoint,
gesture, and harmony in the first movement had the composer seem fully worthy
of standing in this musical company. The charms of the second could likewise
well have been thought the equal of an ‘early’ Mozart symphony or overture.
Fischer made it sound easy: as important here as in Mozart. A rollocking
hunting finale echoed Haydn, if without his single-mindedness, which might in
any case have been less the thing for an opera overture.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The <i>Linz </i>Symphony, in its usual key
of C major rather than the D intriguingly if alarmingly promised by the
programme, showed in its first-movement introduction that certain ‘period’
characteristics can readily be employed, should one wish, in this music without
loss to a sense of mystery. The exposition proper responded in kind, offering
as did the performance as a whole a judicious balance between, well, balance
and symmetry on one hand and symphonic development on the other. (Those who
complain Mozart unduly emphasises the former could not be more wrong.) The second
movement was both more intimate and starker, Fischer excelling once more in reconciling
apparent opposites and also displaying a keen ear for colour, to which the
orchestra eagerly responded. Just occasionally, his handling could be a little
fussy, but there was nothing too grievous. The night-air of Mozart’s Salzburg
serenades was to be felt, albeit framed a little more darkly. A minuet hewn
from fine marble framed a trio (her for soloists) with effortlessly idiomatic
lilt and especially delightful bassoon. The finale went as it ‘should’,
apparently competing demands again reframed in collaborative fashion. A noisy
audience proved an increasing trial for listening, so observation of the final
repeat was a definite advantage in this case. The music sounded all the more
urgent until a final blaze in which Fischer gave modern brass its glorious
head. It was a little showy, but why not? Clarinets returned to the stage for a
remarkably keen encore performance of the <i>Figaro</i> Overture, bringing my Salzburg
visit almost <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2024/01/salzburg-mozartwoche-2-mozart-and.html">full circle</a>.</span></p><p></p>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-80463706995160853502024-01-31T12:10:00.004+00:002024-01-31T15:16:29.030+00:00Salzburg Mozartwoche (5) - Hagen Quartet, Haydn, Mozart, and Beethoven, 30 January 2024<div><br /></div>Grosser Saal, Mozarteum<br /><br /><b>Haydn:</b> String Quartet in D minor, op.76 no.2, Hob. III:76, ‘Fifths’ <br /><b>Mozart:</b> String Quartet in D minor, KV 421/417b <br /><b>Beethoven:</b> String Quartet in C-sharp minor, op.131 <br /><br />Lukas Hagen, Rainer Schmidt (violins)<div>Veronika Hagen (viola)</div><div>Clemens Hagen (cello)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDEgf01AugUorrrWA9_64nKQgJniNIH34aS0uGaPqtEQ-SFpHPf1v-3a-eyUoWgBIsCz7ZQW8OY_PlUm4Pg99tv8FtRFSLvhTvx6kwZXA2kk8bvGvt0FwK_s3Cu7C8v4D_lSQh_AbB75ueA3y0uIpoe9CaT1UYzLmOYPyNACRfrKVgO8yhjCTsxTnpQaLl/s4000/MoWo24__Hagen-Quartett_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_72.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2667" data-original-width="4000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDEgf01AugUorrrWA9_64nKQgJniNIH34aS0uGaPqtEQ-SFpHPf1v-3a-eyUoWgBIsCz7ZQW8OY_PlUm4Pg99tv8FtRFSLvhTvx6kwZXA2kk8bvGvt0FwK_s3Cu7C8v4D_lSQh_AbB75ueA3y0uIpoe9CaT1UYzLmOYPyNACRfrKVgO8yhjCTsxTnpQaLl/w640-h426/MoWo24__Hagen-Quartett_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_72.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: Wolfgang Lienbacher</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Three string quartets in minor keys, two
of them in the same minor key, might sound like an overload of misery, or at
least darkness, but matters were more mixed in this Hagen Quartet Mozartwoche recital.
It was not exactly full of the joys of spring, but then we have some way to go
in our <i>Winterreise</i> before we reach such joys. More to the point, we
could enjoy a cornucopia of invention from three of the supreme masters of the
genre, Mozart rightly at the centre.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Haydn was, of course, as close to the
inventor of the string quartet as makes little matter, certainly its ‘father’
in a way he was not, as once was claimed, of the symphony. He was represented
by his ‘Fifths’ Quartet, written at least five years after Mozart’s death, but
his voice arguably seemed the oldest here, not least with respect to a
surprising approach towards ‘early music’ sound at its opening. Whatever the
issues of ‘style’, motivic integrity and emotional intensity are the crucial
things for the first movement; they were certainly to be found here. The
development’s very particular course was vividly communicated, bringing us to a
recapitulation of drama, both on the motivic and the broader harmonic levels,
midway between the High Baroque and Beethoven. Melodic grace and expressive depth
characterised the second movement variations, major/minor oscillation key to
their progress. Vigour and rigour were insistently common to both minuet and
trio, as well as to the finale. We tend to associate the daemonic with Mozart
and Beethoven in this key, but Haydn here made his claim just as strong, through
material and sheer originality in its working that could be only his. This was
a fine mental work-out, moving in equal measure: that is, first-rate Haydn.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Mozart in D minor followed: the second of
his quartets dedicated to Haydn. Not that it did not possess many of the
qualities ascribed above to Haydn, but what struck me immediately was the
greater, more personal pathos, inviting one in to a drama whose subjectivity
suggested this might actually be ‘Mozart’s’ drama too, albeit with a question
mark such as one would never sense, rightly or wrongly, with Beethoven. The Hagen
Quartet made no apologies for the complexity of the first movement, greatly
admired by Schoenberg, its development counterpoint Janus-faced in
protomodernism and archaism—or so one could fancy. The turn to the minor for
the recapitulation’s second group was <i>echt</i>-Mozart, of course, and so it
sounded here. The <i>Andante</i> first breathed a warm consolation that was yet
fragile, followed by a vehemence sometimes tragic, sometimes merely stark: terms
were thus set, to be properly developed. There was no doubting the vehemence of
the minuet either, nor the necessary contrast of memories of Salzburg
serenading in its trio. If the finale seemed to suggest Schubert, it often does
on the page too. The idiocy one often hears about Classical variation form
somehow being lesser than that of the Baroque or Romanticism was once again so
utterly confounded as to have one wonder how anyone might have thought such a thing
in the first place. Perhaps the Hagens might have exercised a tighter grip at
times, but there was virtue in not pressing too hard.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">By the end of that first half, my ears were ready
for a new key. Beethoven offered that – and not only that – in the advent and
unfolding of his C-sharp minor Quartet. The ineffable sadness of the
first-movement fugue, so moving and prophetic for Wagner, was expressed without
exaggeration, material apparently speaking ‘for itself’, albeit with a (relatively)
gentle <i>sforzando</i> nudge for the final note of the subject during the exposition.
Everything, it seemed, came from its first statement. As Webern once put it, ‘To
develop everything … from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><u>one</u></i>
principal idea! That’s the strongest unity… But in what form? That’s where art
comes in!’ Art certainly came in here, at its rarest and most sublime. For
whilst this is undoubtedly holy ground, it was so not because we have
designated as such, but through intense, honest, ultimately radiant expression:
Beethoven’s, above all, but also surely that of the performers.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">A quizzical second movement and good-natured
third led us to twin complexity and simplicity in the central fourth. Depth and
direction were prey to ‘late’ instability, yet were never quite defeated, that
instability transformed into a guiding principle for the scherzo whose manic
rigour seemed to take us all the way to Bartók, even Schoenberg, and perhaps
even beyond. It may, even though one ‘knew’ otherwise, have seemed to be
hurtling towards a conclusion, but serene intervention in the guise of the sixth
movement and something approaching tragedy in the finale ensured there were no
easy answers—or even questions. This final movement hallowed both ‘old’ and ‘new’,
again posing the question ‘how to end it all?’ A signal strength of the Hagens’
performance was that, again irrespective of whether one ‘knew’, one felt that
all was in the balance until the very end.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-82885993123196768122024-01-31T10:23:00.007+00:002024-02-06T23:28:54.379+00:00Salzburg Mozartwoche (4) - Baborák Ensemble: Mozart, Reicha, and Michael Haydn, 29 January 2024<p><br /></p><p>Grosser Saal, Mozarteum</p><b>Mozart, arr. Radek Baborák:</b> Horn Concerto no.4 in E-flat major, KV 495 <br /><b>Anton Reicha: </b>Quintet for horn, string quartet, and double bass in E major, op.106 <br /><b>Michael Haydn:</b> Horn Concerto in D major, MH 134: ‘Larghetto’ and Allegro ma non troppo’ <br /><b>Mozart, completed Süssmayr (ed. Baborák): </b>Rondo for horn quintet in D major, KV 514 <br /><b>Mozart:</b> Horn Quintet in E-flat major, KV 407 <br /><br />Radek Baborák (horn)<div>Milan Al-Ashhab, (violin)</div><div>Martina Bačová (violin, viola)</div><div>Karel Untermüller (viola)</div><div>Hana Baboráková (cello)</div><div>David Pavelka (double bass)</div><div><br /></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Not very often does one have opportunity to
hear a chamber concert led by a horn player. Still less will it be by one of
the distinction of Radek Baborák. Still less than that will the rest of the
ensemble be of the distinction of the players Baborák brought together for
this, the fourth of my Mozartwoche performances this year. Mixing the familiar
and the considerably less so, it proved a joy from beginning to end.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The former was provided by Mozart’s fourth
horn concerto, arranged for ensemble by Baborák. Such an ensemble will never
quite sound as if it were an orchestra, perhaps especially in such familiar
music, but it imparted a proper sense of ensemble tutti nonetheless. At the
very opening, it could perhaps have afforded to play out a little more given
the new balance, but solo playing was of such calibre that it mattered not.
Phrasing, articulation, dynamic contrasts: all were achieved with apparent
effortlessness, married to profound chamber sensitivity from all in a first
movement of grace, light, and shade. Baborák’s own cadenzas were stylish and,
at times, in the best sense surprising. Grace characterised the slow movement
too, its course traced with affection and understanding, players taking all the
time in the world but never too much. The finale was likewise possessed of the
kind of ‘rightness’ one does not notice, that is a Mozartian rightness. It was
a further delight, with a further, foot-stomping surprise to come in the
cadenza.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Anton Reicha’s Horn Quintet followed,
written about forty years later in the mid-1820s, given here with its <i>ad
libitum</i> double bass. The first movement revealed an accomplished work with
plenty to hold the interest, not least given a performance of accomplishment
such as this. There was, at least to my Romantically inclined mind, a poignancy
to its historical position in the wake of Mozart and Haydn, as with all such
Austro-German music, Beethoven and Schubert included. Some intriguing harmonic
turns both made sense and helped ensure the music never quite sounded ‘like’
anyone else’s. The development section’s counterpoint convinced, Reicha’s
preparation for the return perhaps less so. If an editor might have shortened
this movement, there was much to enjoy in its amiable, decidedly
non-Beethovenian temperament and course. Likewise in the <i>Lento </i>second
movement, though with its own particular character. Baborák’s playing was
wonderfully long-breathed, readily complemented by sweet-toned strings, a
surprisingly ardent episode keeping all of us on our metaphorical toes. Light
fun was had with the minuet’s syncopations, a touch of something deeper offered
in the trio. A sunny finale reflected much of work and performance; I cannot
imagine the latter bettered.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The selection from Michael Haydn’s D major
Horn Concerto, MH 134, might have seemed puzzling, in that a ‘Larghetto’ and
‘Allegro non troppo’ suggested a second and third movement, in turn to preface
Mozart’s fragmentary Rondo in D, KV 514. Tempo indications can be misleading,
though, for these were in fact the first and second movement. In any case, the
first took us back to more Mozartian climes: Mozart’s (Salzburg) world, if not
necessarily more than that, albeit with telling points of contact. This was another
beautifully judged performance of considerable grace and, yes, depth, if worn
lightly. Harmony and perhaps not only that stood closer, say, to Mozart than to
the composer’s brother. Horn playing was to die for, with deeply sympathetic
string accompaniment. I did not miss the full orchestra at all. The second
movement was perhaps more distinctive, arguably a little closer to Joseph
Haydn, though with a few harmonic touches very much Michael’s own. Mozart’s
Rondo sounded every inch the classic hunting finale, though with a few strange
turns doubtless to be ascribed to its peculiar nature and completion.
Ultimately, though, the sense of ebullience with an implication of fragility
were spot on, and there was no question who was the presiding master.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Mozart’s Horn Quintet, obviously without
double bass and with one of the violinists taking up the viola, was arguably
the sole ‘masterwork’ played ‘as it should be’, but here it was at most first
among equals. In any case, the first movement offered all of the virtues from
what had gone before: judicious tempo, excellent phrasing and playing, a keen
sense of chiaroscuro, collegiality, and so on. It seemed very much to penetrate
to the heart, in more than one sense, of the matter; but then, so did everything
else. Directness of emotion in the slow movement was not at odds with implicit
and explicit compositional sophistication, far from it. Likewise, in different
vein, for the finale: sunny, yet never quite without the implication of
something darker. Joy is a strange, even difficult thing in Mozart’s universe,
as we also heard in the extraordinary encore performance of the slow movement
from the Clarinet Quintet.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-52544895811088377672024-01-30T12:30:00.002+00:002024-01-30T12:30:18.652+00:00Salzburg Mozartwoche (3) - Mozart and Salieri, 28 January 2024<div><br /></div>Grosser Saal, Mozarteum<br /><br />Mozart: <i>Die Zauberflöte</i>, KV 620, Overture; <i>Andante</i> for flute and orchestra in C major, KV 315/285<i>e</i>; <i>Rondo</i> for flute and orchestra in C major, KV 373/285<i>c</i> (arr. Pahud) <br />Salieri: Concerto for flute and oboe in C major <br />Mozart: Symphony no.38 in D major, KV 504, ‘Prague’<div><br /></div><div>Emmanuel Pahud (flute)</div><div>Camerata Salzburg</div><div>François Leleux (oboe/conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjztXkkZm7vXddQ1jlqOC04Upz2FaSvwUIG5hS14_a3vKg2pNSC63xEJxhb2J_rR_QPQXn5kX6gAVGTB1ihluc9Ld7aDlKLjx9yOCglj8VnloJkLVg9tLa204ynRw5Agpq2upY7rXkP2d93Y_SCK7k59m2V5LDx6ImGDnkcPygxen_oXVn-JxNg8Ij0VL0W/s4000/MoWo24_Camerata-Salzburg_Leleux_Pahud_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_228.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2667" data-original-width="4000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjztXkkZm7vXddQ1jlqOC04Upz2FaSvwUIG5hS14_a3vKg2pNSC63xEJxhb2J_rR_QPQXn5kX6gAVGTB1ihluc9Ld7aDlKLjx9yOCglj8VnloJkLVg9tLa204ynRw5Agpq2upY7rXkP2d93Y_SCK7k59m2V5LDx6ImGDnkcPygxen_oXVn-JxNg8Ij0VL0W/w640-h426/MoWo24_Camerata-Salzburg_Leleux_Pahud_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_228.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Wolfang Lienbacher</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">This was an interesting concert of music by
Mozart and Salieri, the lesser known music faring better for me than the celebrated
symphony on the programme. There is nothing unusual in that, of course,
especially in repertoire in which very different aesthetics are in play—and ultimately,
it may be of greater importance to grant an opportunity to rarely heard music
than to present a <i>Prague</i> Symphony to rival Karl Böhm or Daniel
Barenboim.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The <i>Magic Flute </i>Overture, well known
though it may be, stood somewhere in between. Tempi were apt and François
Leleux took evident care with elements of Camerata Salzburg’s shading. The
performance was clear and directed, if somewhat excitable, even fierce. Better
that, though, than the po-faced puritanism of many in the Anglo-American wing
of the ‘authenticke’ brigade. I sensed an idea – and the most any of us can
have is an idea – of the eighteenth-century theatre, though it was difficult to
warm to the astringent string tone, worlds away from Sándor Végh. Salzburg woodwind,
however, sounded splendid, as they did throughout.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">There followed two pieces for solo flute
and orchestra, for which Emmanuel Pahud joined Leleux and Camerata Salzburg. I cannot
claim to be a great fan of the lone <i>Andante</i>, KV 315/285<i>e</i>,
probably an alternative slow movement for the G major Flute Concerto, KV 313/285<i>c</i>,
but it was certainly played well here, with an Italianate long-breathedness
that Salieri would surely have admired too. That said, a sense of the ballet – to
my ears – is also suggestive of French music. (Think, for instance, of Gluck’s ‘Dance
of the Blessed Spirits’.) Nothing wrong with that: Mozart often blends
different stylistic influences. It is not always clear to me, though, quite how
those different traits come together. Pahud’s arrangement of the C major Rondo
for Violin and Orchestra, KV 373/285<i>c</i>, clearly struck a note of
recognition among the audience. Hand on heart, do I think it works as well for
the flute as for the violin? No, but it offers new repertoire for a solo
instrument less blessed (though hardly without blessings) and, arguably, greater
intimacy and sensuality. Occasional solo ornamentation was always tasteful.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Leleux collected his oboe, whilst
continuing to conduct, for Salieri’s Concerto for Flute and Oboe. The first
movement’s opening tutti brought both a different voice and a recognisable
sense, once again, of theatre. The two solo instruments’ duetting enhanced that
impression of opera. Echo effects amused some in the audience: they were well
done, if with diminishing returns. I was surprised by the motivic insistence of
some passages, but then I suppose we should recall Salieri was a teacher of
Beethoven. At other times, the orchestral part was more rhetorical, again
breathing the world of the theatre. The slow movement was charming enough, if
without the memorability of even lesser Mozart (or Haydn, for that matter). I
was not always convinced by its twists and turns, but remained grateful for the
opportunity to hear it at all. Here, as elsewhere, Heinz Holliger’s cadenzas
offered something new yet in keeping. The finale offered a few surprises,
though I struggled sometimes – doubtless labouring under an aesthetic too much
derived from Mozart and Haydn – to understand their motivation. A sudden
spotlight for the violas, for instance, was intriguing, but ultimately the
movement remained somewhat four-square. As an encore, Leleux and Pahud played,
without orchestra, the <i>Magic Flute</i>’s<i> </i>encounter between Papageno
and Monastatos.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE3NbgXds8yuwOZkCQdJ5__TygzO5l4fiOr3ACQJHWGtNgvZuMgrTLNj2Hgh4rU2t50B51aK_VSYU8g2fbr6RpppRRAk8IlzpQbRq4KoejRlYMZNybxBlX3djElDeYX2qtAx44fpWxu5lXO7ivPg0koGONs417I32JhhfnHuKZkdb9S45g4mOuGR5HJwtz/s4000/MoWo24_Camerata-Salzburg_Leleux_Pahud_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_125.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2667" data-original-width="4000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjE3NbgXds8yuwOZkCQdJ5__TygzO5l4fiOr3ACQJHWGtNgvZuMgrTLNj2Hgh4rU2t50B51aK_VSYU8g2fbr6RpppRRAk8IlzpQbRq4KoejRlYMZNybxBlX3djElDeYX2qtAx44fpWxu5lXO7ivPg0koGONs417I32JhhfnHuKZkdb9S45g4mOuGR5HJwtz/w640-h426/MoWo24_Camerata-Salzburg_Leleux_Pahud_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_125.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">And so, on to the <i>Prague</i>, its first
movement introduction rhetorical, even theatrical, rather than a harbinger of a
notably symphonic performance. It was certainly full of incident and notes
continued to fly off the page during the main <i>Allegro</i>, whose hallmark,
gentle contrast for the second subject notwithstanding, was ebullience: very
much a D major for (natural) trumpets and drums. Although enjoyable enough in
its way, it felt a little long, especially given the exposition repeat, for
something that seemed more inclined towards the early ‘sinfonia’ than the traditional
Austro-German symphony. The <i>Andante</i> flowed quickly, as is now
fashionable. It was similarly strong in gesture, weaker in overall line.
Ultimately, it seemed more a collection of episodes than what we have come to
expect. The finale worked best for me, if still lacking a strong enough sense
of harmony. Melodic events tumbled forth and sterner passages had an undeniable
drama to them, sometimes blazingly so. In context, observing the repeat seemed
questionable: again making the movement over-long for Leleux’s approach in
performance.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-68004163820719122352024-01-29T11:31:00.004+00:002024-01-29T11:31:52.656+00:00Salzburg Mozartwoche (2) - Mozart and Schubert, 27 January 2024<div><br /></div>Grosses Festspielhaus<br /><br /><b>Mozart:</b> <i>Le nozze di Figaro</i>, KV 492, Overture <br /><b>Mozart:</b> Piano Concerto no.9 in E-flat major, KV 271 <br /><b>Schubert:</b> Symphony no.9 in C major, ‘Great’, D 944 <br /><br />Igor Levit (piano)<div>Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra</div><div>Joana Mallwitz (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsTmPWgyBbOFAskM2ulor8huxNz2q8mF_VZbsdGXygY9IsEN-zKcA0Tc6pe4EGU7q2fJmziU-lgtH45Z1d4h3foAQqZmWWv0H9xpAbcUD3boNJtZ_w_3bzmkEP9_INaQkeXq6hZBnZjNBxL6U9WihW7_U7WfqhzVFjHTE6Vf7bPCqr1INuUWY6B2fhJmQ7/s4000/MoWo24_Joana-Mallwitz_Igor-Levit_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_321.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2667" data-original-width="4000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsTmPWgyBbOFAskM2ulor8huxNz2q8mF_VZbsdGXygY9IsEN-zKcA0Tc6pe4EGU7q2fJmziU-lgtH45Z1d4h3foAQqZmWWv0H9xpAbcUD3boNJtZ_w_3bzmkEP9_INaQkeXq6hZBnZjNBxL6U9WihW7_U7WfqhzVFjHTE6Vf7bPCqr1INuUWY6B2fhJmQ7/w640-h426/MoWo24_Joana-Mallwitz_Igor-Levit_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_321.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Wolfang Lienbacher</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Joana Mallwitz’s account of the Overture to
<i>The Marriage of Figaro</i> revealed the Vienna Philharmonic as of old.
(Conductors foolish enough to try to change its sound will quickly be rebuffed.
If you do not like it, work with another orchestra.) Warm sound, fine turning
of phrases, and a swift tempo that yet permitted time for the music to breathe
offered a proper curtain-raiser. Indeed – a good sign, this – when the Overture
had come to an end, I expected and wanted the opera to continue.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Alas not on this occasion, but instead we
were treated to a performance of ‘one of the greatest wonders of the world’
(Alfred Brendel): the E-flat Piano Concerto, KV 271, with Igor Levit as
soloist. This was the only work on the programme for which Mallwitz used a
score, though her head was certainly not in it. It was interesting to note the
change in her – and the VPO’s – approach: although using the same body of
strings, there was even in the opening tutti more of a sense of chamber music
writ large than in the Overture, whilst retaining warmth and variegation. That impression
was confirmed upon Levit’s entry, when he took the existing musical line and
ran with it, until handing it back or sharing, in what was very much a shared
endeavour. Replete with imaginative touches that never went against the grain,
this was a first movement full of life. With Levit’s pearly tone and the
heavenly sound of Vienna strings and woodwind, it is difficult to imagine
anyone feeling shortchanged, though just occasionally I wondered whether
something deeper was missing.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The answer came in the slow movement: not
that something had been missing, but rather that something had been kept in
reserve. Its dark C minor opening, direct from the world of <i>opera seria</i>,
prepared the way for a profound experience in which a finely spun Mozart line,
wherever it might lie, was revealed to be possessed of infinite sentiment. It
was not precious, but rather seemed to speak of something, to borrow from
Mendelssohn, too precise for words: a grief-stricken lament from the deepest of
all composers, or so it seemed here. Its radical interiority could be heard
particularly in Levit’s solo passages, even in the voicing of a trill. After
that, a finale both lighter and faster than one usually hears again had
Mendelssohn’s presence hover before us. The orchestra responded to Levit’s
opening challenge in helter-skelter fashion as if a nightmare had ended, and we
were back to the day, albeit a day that could not quite banish memory of what
had preceded it. The subdominant minuet emerged pristine in surprising
simplicity: again at a fastish tempo, but in proportion to the music
surrounding it. A surprising – and surprisingly apt – solo encore came in the
quizzical guise of Shostakovich’s ‘Waltz-Scherzo’ from the <i>Ballet Suite no.1</i>.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The second half was given over to Schubert’s
‘Great’ C major Symphony. Here there was much to admire – how could there not
be with the Vienna Philharmonic onstage? – even if the whole felt lacking in
the import and inevitability of the finest performances. Mallwitz presents the
work, especially its first two movements, more as companion pieces to the early
symphonies than harbingers of Romanticism. There is no Schubert performing
tradition here, of course, so one is at liberty to do what one wants so long as
it works; but does it? The first movement proceeded fluently without much in
the way of tempo modifications (save for actual transition of tempo). Voicing
of inner parts was a particular strength. The coda, however, felt less like a
culmination and more a signoff.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgldevaZewiBodzdyYhHREWyvMSR1TFKJ3SYncx5ckZIx2h4ygEmViddyilW9sqFxH6roZZc6971srv6bquWkKcHDNTNT25cXv8XyRRq-gEZGbORYP1LYftmZv3Nh6xNhyKIO3kum15EyojVOL8QVP1aFpKyN7ICEf3-kAlKQAWEts3h6fS9Wz4WKG6SmEU/s4000/MoWo24_Joana-Mallwitz_Igor-Levit_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_322.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2667" data-original-width="4000" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgldevaZewiBodzdyYhHREWyvMSR1TFKJ3SYncx5ckZIx2h4ygEmViddyilW9sqFxH6roZZc6971srv6bquWkKcHDNTNT25cXv8XyRRq-gEZGbORYP1LYftmZv3Nh6xNhyKIO3kum15EyojVOL8QVP1aFpKyN7ICEf3-kAlKQAWEts3h6fS9Wz4WKG6SmEU/w640-h426/MoWo24_Joana-Mallwitz_Igor-Levit_c_Wolfgang-Lienbacher_322.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">If the second movement were also on the fast
side, it was proportionally so. Such tempo relationships are crucial; Mallwitz has
clearly given them due thought. Detail was present and correct. Alternation of
string and wind choirs made its point, without veering too strongly towards
Bruckner. There was drama too in climax, silence, and aftershock, difficult not
to think of in quasi-military terms, given the unfailing march-like quality to
the VPO’s build-up. The scherzo I found engrossing; it offered weight and
movement without galumphing, charm as well as style. Its trio proceeded a
little too much bar-to-bar, its regularity too obvious. When it came to the
finale, it certainly sounded like one—and a finale to what had gone before too.
It was very well put together, with clear understanding and communication of
harmonic rhythm, indeed rhythm more generally. I could not help but ask,
though: what, if anything, might it all mean? Not that such 'meaning' could or should be put into words, but even so.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-88689823417127164622024-01-28T13:04:00.003+00:002024-01-28T13:04:43.314+00:00Salzburg Mozartwoche (1) – Mozart and Salieri, 27 January 2024<p> </p><p>Salzburg Marionette Theatre</p><p><br /></p><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR-RV0h0yIwDj7GUHV7DfQOxJsNccsoQLYtal3AKlXiEZdPUDQe5GTfKTv_uKwkIwIu8NJpfSG2CJmPb2_abzmZAPbXHlv-znXDwBq-YjKZMZtCzSpfOX_3fujCbJTz5U0g8LBSfZzlHqA07GrzPT4KPN1rYZUVpH074qfTJNkzzFHFc7txsUYzr51g6Lu/s4954/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3302" data-original-width="4954" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR-RV0h0yIwDj7GUHV7DfQOxJsNccsoQLYtal3AKlXiEZdPUDQe5GTfKTv_uKwkIwIu8NJpfSG2CJmPb2_abzmZAPbXHlv-znXDwBq-YjKZMZtCzSpfOX_3fujCbJTz5U0g8LBSfZzlHqA07GrzPT4KPN1rYZUVpH074qfTJNkzzFHFc7txsUYzr51g6Lu/w640-h426/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_1.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Bernhard Mueller</td></tr></tbody></table><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><b>Salieri:</b> <i>Axur, re d’Ormus</i>: Piccolo sinfonia to Act IV; <i>La secchia rapita</i>: ‘Son qual lacera tartana’; <i>Il ricco d’un giorno</i>: ‘Eccomi più che mai – ‘Amor, pietoso Amore’; <i>La grotto di Trofonio</i>: ‘La ra la ra’ <br /><b>Rimsky-Korsakov:</b> <i>Mozart and Salieri </i><br /><br />Director, designs – Matthias Bundschuh <br />Lighting – Matthias Bundschuh, Alexander Proschek <br />Production manager – Philippe Brunner <br /><br />Isora – Ekaterina Krasko/ Svetlana Schönfeld/Maximilian Kiener <br />Mozart – Konstantin Igl/Ursula Winzer <br />Salieri – Brett Pruunsild/Eva Wiener <br />Blind violinist – Philipp Schmidt</p><br />Students from the Mozarteum University Salzburg<br />Kai Röhrig (conductor)<div><br /><div><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYXQ1UcK95d_gLg5_6QCpX464EbplrQkQay1vVo8apTFM9lWMnbG190OxOXjmoEgvRznywkMYqPWN32igyOSfuLcizvv29mb-UGX3GeG5UOEiJ8CzQEhF7rDIzlujQofNPPSxsL9mEKFXdBCzcu0RuN5fkngJJ99t47eZl_q4N0yBzrRXKc1fV2ACrPWnv/s4736/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_DSC9906.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3034" data-original-width="4736" height="410" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYXQ1UcK95d_gLg5_6QCpX464EbplrQkQay1vVo8apTFM9lWMnbG190OxOXjmoEgvRznywkMYqPWN32igyOSfuLcizvv29mb-UGX3GeG5UOEiJ8CzQEhF7rDIzlujQofNPPSxsL9mEKFXdBCzcu0RuN5fkngJJ99t47eZl_q4N0yBzrRXKc1fV2ACrPWnv/w640-h410/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_DSC9906.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">After a few years concentrating on
Mozart alone, Rolando Villázon, Intendant of Salzburg’s Mozartwoche, has turned
to Mozart and Salieri. There is so much more, so much more of interest, to
Salieri than the preposterous charge that ‘everyone’ knows, but it has been greatly
influential, whether we like it or not, and that of course includes its
artistic legacy. Most celebrated of all is Peter Schaffer’s <i>Amadeus</i>,
which will be seen here both as film and play. (I should have been keen to see
the latter, but alas the scheduling gods had other ideas.) But long before Schaffer
was Pushkin, with his short story: basis, almost <i>verbatim</i>, for Rimsky-Korsakov’s
short, one-act opera of 1897, here given at Salzburg’s Marionette Theater with
puppets, three young singers, and a chamber ensemble of students from the Mozarteum
conducted by Kai Röhrig.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">It is a <i>very</i> short opera, so Matthias
Bundschuh has decided, in a prologue, to provide a back-story and to redress a little
the Mozart-Salieri imbalance by offering a little of the latter’s own music. A
middle-aged prima donna Isora recalls her career in its prime: she worked often
with Salieri, ‘Antonio’, though sadly never with Mozart. She sings us some of
his music, from the <i>buffa</i> rather than <i>seria</i> end of his output,
and tells of his unrequited love – he desired marriage – which resulted in her
joking dismissal of him through the gift of poison (happily or unhappily, <i>Gift</i>
in German). The scene is set, dramatically and musically, for the opera proper
to begin, in a German translation by Bundschuh and Philipp Schmidt. And so, in
brief, Mozart, full of live and a levity Salieri finds irresponsible, even
obscene, calls upon the elder composer, brings him a blind violinist as a joke,
massacring his own ‘Batti, batti, o bel Masetto’ – here accomplished with
wicked skill – and is invited to dinner, for which he returns in rather darker
mood. He tells Salieri the story about the mysterious stranger who has
commissioned his Requiem, drinks from the goblet Salieri has prepared, goes to
the piano to play from the work he is composing, and is killed.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid3yb-qjoP46LhPEHFhSjNS62a1d1L-6oSVL0Yc09U_pylRKvHzUSyMmfOneRYBG57YbDZ3ua8oULxUzhkoQ6z3Y65d2CXUW3Z7nBRAPbp2I0SBeFfpjtGO0X18ZIEZvBI7WpkAeyKENuSqbqVM8-UP8pccYYDxdTXotcGXZ2U41yKOWVSIHieK4v-vZ5E/s7573/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_DSC9720.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4685" data-original-width="7573" height="396" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEid3yb-qjoP46LhPEHFhSjNS62a1d1L-6oSVL0Yc09U_pylRKvHzUSyMmfOneRYBG57YbDZ3ua8oULxUzhkoQ6z3Y65d2CXUW3Z7nBRAPbp2I0SBeFfpjtGO0X18ZIEZvBI7WpkAeyKENuSqbqVM8-UP8pccYYDxdTXotcGXZ2U41yKOWVSIHieK4v-vZ5E/w640-h396/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_DSC9720.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">All is accomplished through collaboration
and synthesis in music, a little speech, and of course the excellent working of
Bundschuh’s own puppets. Nice additional touches include a crackly record of Mozart
as tango</span><em><span style="background: white; color: black; font-family: "Georgia",serif; font-style: normal; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-color-alt: windowtext;"> </span></em>which, somewhat incongruously, the two composers dance, and the intrusion of a recorded excerpt from the Requiem itself. But the scene in which the puppet Mozart plays a new composition of his own at the piano, with interjections from Salieri, is perhaps most impressive. One sees, hears, and appreciates just what craft is required in the collaboration of puppetry and music. </p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipX5SXEiFffRNR9NOgaQ-u4yhITKC506DNr2wlB5iGXDX4xZtJW8IVEUCCaoNy-4naLa7KzOvKsBk76mU-esJP_l67lALg4fyAycOFYcQCvq8SG0v7odFKXST_Do_n2ubdtSV3HZ9iGcY6qjd-RvD8VG3fdjySnWPqA0fuwYZ8eSS_nnVb-x5syQBM0FuN/s3360/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_DSC9812.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3074" data-original-width="3360" height="586" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipX5SXEiFffRNR9NOgaQ-u4yhITKC506DNr2wlB5iGXDX4xZtJW8IVEUCCaoNy-4naLa7KzOvKsBk76mU-esJP_l67lALg4fyAycOFYcQCvq8SG0v7odFKXST_Do_n2ubdtSV3HZ9iGcY6qjd-RvD8VG3fdjySnWPqA0fuwYZ8eSS_nnVb-x5syQBM0FuN/w640-h586/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_DSC9812.jpg" width="640" /></a></div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In a programme note, Bundschuh tells of
his dislike for ‘Russian pathos’: fair enough, I suppose, but I wonder whether
the approach adopted sells Rimsky’s opera, which in any case is hardly <i>Eugene
Onegin</i>, somewhat short. It is partly owed, of course, to the requirements
of marionette theatre, but might there not have been room for something a
little stronger, dare I say more <i>Amadeus</i>-like? Still, the general
lightness of what is in any case a light score by Rimsky’s standards has its
own allure, and allows our vocal Mozart and Salieri to impress. Konstantin Igl
as the former reveals an adept, characterful tenor. The (literally) deeper,
even more fragmented Salieri is a Chaliapin role, no less. (The bass apparently
claimed to have sung the work as a monodrama, given Mozart’s part also lay
within his range.) It was equally well sung by baritone Brett Pruunsild, the
two achieving considerable chemistry, notwithstanding the necessity of singing offstage.
Similarly impressive was Ekaterina Krasko’s sparkling despatch of the Salieri
arias, likewise to sympathetic playing from the conservatoire students and
lively overall direction by Röhrig.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">
There is charm and not a little magic here in this co-production between the
Stiftung Mozarteum, the Mozarteum University, and the Marionette Theatre. And once
again, I find myself wishing more composers would, as Pierre Boulez suggested
some time ago, avail themselves of the possibilities puppetry might offer
opera. There is something unquestionably Mozartian to the idea.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqrzxaaBzUTlN03Fj9whotO4cCq7BEt3f994fvzOz82I_DYurNJ2lS7vXcwMbsfC1oeNqQUVjC-Skbp8SwuGsarvTnbE9VF7foCfZgyVnKYFA5fxrVXAu3hOhbp_-E407dWPpb8OtWhCoBWK6iizzJIoGHALb_j4ieKW_tr3qVz-YqoTjOokd7F6gYuU32/s4835/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_Maximilian-Kiener_Eva-Wiener_Ursula-Winzer_Philipp-Schmidt_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_DSC0225.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3223" data-original-width="4835" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqrzxaaBzUTlN03Fj9whotO4cCq7BEt3f994fvzOz82I_DYurNJ2lS7vXcwMbsfC1oeNqQUVjC-Skbp8SwuGsarvTnbE9VF7foCfZgyVnKYFA5fxrVXAu3hOhbp_-E407dWPpb8OtWhCoBWK6iizzJIoGHALb_j4ieKW_tr3qVz-YqoTjOokd7F6gYuU32/w640-h426/MOZART-UND-SALIERI_Maximilian-Kiener_Eva-Wiener_Ursula-Winzer_Philipp-Schmidt_c_SMT-Bernhard-Mueller_DSC0225.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><br /></p></div></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-74273407824053582532024-01-26T10:02:00.002+00:002024-01-31T15:17:24.521+00:00BPO/Petrenko - Schoenberg, 25 January 2024<br />Philharmonie <br /><br />Chamber Symphony no.1 in E major, op.9 <br /><i>Die Jakobsleiter <br /></i><br />Gabriel – Wolfgang Koch <br />One who is called – Daniel Behle <br />One who protests – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke <br />One who struggles – Johannes Martin Kränzle <br />The chosen one – Gyula Orendt <br />The monk – Stephan Rügamer <br />The dying one – Nicola Beller Carbone <br />The soul – Liv Redpath, Jasmin Delfs <br /><br />Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Gijs Leenaars)<div>Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra</div><div>Kirill Petrenko (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz1QkTd0vQTuWwAphenF89q5mtZNIOXaHKdqi9ocugo4N2f-W2rOcDPMuvQpOd1x4J_eonvZMYrQ4wz1z8gOdHPQrEgFXXyfbcPpcrD0yXUrIYxGYWrvpdL6YQp8vTyVPINdYJsQsCBy63NV7DN9Rife1Bf7VazwkZhZb8QZy05OKujnvJh8TOYctY58nb/s6389/Phil_240125_152_SR.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="4000" data-original-width="6389" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiz1QkTd0vQTuWwAphenF89q5mtZNIOXaHKdqi9ocugo4N2f-W2rOcDPMuvQpOd1x4J_eonvZMYrQ4wz1z8gOdHPQrEgFXXyfbcPpcrD0yXUrIYxGYWrvpdL6YQp8vTyVPINdYJsQsCBy63NV7DN9Rife1Bf7VazwkZhZb8QZy05OKujnvJh8TOYctY58nb/w640-h400/Phil_240125_152_SR.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Image: © Stephan Rabold</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">150 years on from the birth of Arnold
Schoenberg, we could be forgiven for lamenting this world still does not know
what to do with him and his music. The most important of twentieth-century
composers, he languishes respected yet for the most part unperformed. The muted
tones in which even this, his anniversary year, is being celebrated – if not
now, then when? – are such that it could readily be missed altogether. There
are exceptions, not least my friends and colleagues at Vienna’s Arnold
Schönberg Center; I am referring essentially to the world of musical
performance—and listening. And just perhaps here also in Berlin, second of
Schoenberg’s three major cities. (Los Angeles, alas, has long seemed a lost
cause.) Not so much in the city as a whole: we search in vain for contributions
from its opera houses – surely things would have been different, were Daniel
Barenboim still at the helm of the Staatsoper – and indeed from most of its
orchestras, yet in the Philharmonie, home to the Berlin Philharmonic, we at
least see in the foyer a little exhibition, mounted in conjunction with the ASC,
and here we have now also heard the first of several contributions planned from
the orchestra.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">If they continue even to approach the level
of this instalment, all will not be lost. The First Chamber Symphony offered a
splendid way to start. It was the first live Schoenberg I heard, travelling
down as a schoolboy to London on the coach from Sheffield for my first Prom; I
think it was actually the first piece on the programme, so the first notes I heard
at the Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall, indeed in London, were Schoenberg’s. An
attempt at comparison would be pointless: I cannot remember much other than
that, even then, it impressed me greatly. But this is therefore a work with
which I have lived for a while, and of which I have heard a number of fine
performances since that CBSO Prom with Simon Rattle (and Maurizio Pollini), one
next door at the Kammermusiksaal included (from members of this same orchestra
as the Scharoun Ensemble and Pierre Boulez). Today’s Berlin Philharmonic and
Kirill Petrenko have little to fear from even the most exalted comparisons, but
it is better simply to consider their performance on its own terms.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">In some ways the most conservative – in the
proper rather than the debased, contemporary sense – of revolutionaries and
surely the most revolutionary of conservatives, Schoenberg stands Janus-faced,
that historical position readily conveyed here in immanent, performing terms. For
a work so sunny and life-affirming, it is haunted by ghosts, many of whom cheerfully
partook of this particular feast. First up, in the opening bars, was Richard
Strauss, already balanced by a heightened sense that this was as much chamber
music, a gathering of soloists, as symphony (or indeed symphonic poem).
Brahmsian developing variation, Wagnerian melos, passage of transition that
owed much to both, and of course Lisztian formal inheritance were to the fore,
but through the particular material and character of this piece; it never felt
like anything other than itself, though there was to be heard something of a
more traditional, darkly ‘German’ sound and warmth to the ensemble than might
often have been the case from Petrenko’s two immediate predecessors, Claudio
Abbado and Simon Rattle, albeit without sacrifice to clarity and balance. So assured
was the latter that one might almost have forgotten what an astonishingly
difficult feat it is to bring off (as Herbert von Karajan, Abbado’s
predecessor, freely admitted). Illuminating detail – sepulchral, Alberich-like
playing from violist Diyang Mei, a snatch of <i>Pierrot</i>-laughter from Kilian
Herold’s clarinet – was present to an extent sometimes difficult to believe,
but always within a sure and malleable sense of the whole. The development
truly developed, showing Schoenberg as heir to Beethovenian struggle. The ‘lightness’
of the beginning of the ‘slow movement’ offered a surprising presentiment of
the ‘air of another planet’ soon to be experienced in Schoenberg’s Second
String Quartet, prior to well-nigh Mahlerian ‘deepening’. No performance of this
complex piece can be perfect; it contains more than can ever be achieved in a
single performance. This came closer than most. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">True revelation, though, came with <i>Die
Jakobsleiter</i>. So seldom is this extraordinary work heard that I cannot have
been the only audience member hearing it live for the first time. I had thought
I knew this incomplete oratorio well enough, yet such were the strength and all-round
excellence of this performance that I realised I had hardly known it at all.
Indeed, not the least of my realisations was that one cannot really begin to know
it other than through live performance. Recordings, however excellent, can
barely suggest the spatial dimension – here the hall came into its own as much
as the performers – nor, more important still, the overwhelming power and conviction
inherent in the work and any performance worthy of it. One felt the work’s constructivism
from the off, its opening cello hexachord so clearly, powerfully generative of
what ensued: musical expression first, words from Wolfgang Koch’s Gabriel next.
‘Whether right or left, forward or backward, uphill or downhill’: one felt,
harmonically, motivically, conceptually the multi-dimensional Schoenbergian Idea.
Just as important, its colours, not only orchestral (though the inheritance of
the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16 was thrillingly apparent) but vocal too, not
least from the souls of the Berlin Radio Chorus, individual and as a mass.
Instrumental lines, as if generated by the Chamber Symphony and further developed
here, contributed equally to the composer’s hyper-expressivity and the sense of
its absolute necessity. It was relentlessly dialectical, relentlessly
communicative, already pointing to elements of the world of <i>Moses und Aron</i>.
A well-nigh flawless cast of vocal soloists had been assembled and exceeded expectations.
Again, the variety of colours and expressive gestures within a single
performance, be it that of the increasingly Wagnerian Daniel Behle, the dark,
rich Gyula Orendt, Liv Redpath and Jasmin Delfs’s souls in vocalise, or anyone
else had to be heard to be believed. Schoenberg’s vivid imagery – or is that
too representational a characterisation? – was brought still more vividly to
life that was both fleeting and aspirant to the eternal.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">All the while, we moved, after Swedenborg,
upwards, heralded by the sweetest of violin solos from above, instruments and
voices surrounding us as if truly from the heavens. This was less the air of
another planet than of another dimension, music and post-Wagnerian,
post-Mahlerian redemption above, beyond, around us. This was a magic unlike
anything I had yet heard. Part of our world, then, does know what to do with
Schoenberg and his music. May it serve as an example to the rest.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-15726300017488141962024-01-21T14:35:00.001+00:002024-01-21T22:39:42.820+00:00Daphne, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 20 January 2024<br />Peneios – René Pape<br />Gaea – Anna Kissjudit<br />Daphne – Vera-Lotte Boecker<br />Leukippos – Johan Krogius<br />Apollo – David Butt Philip<br />Four Shepherds – Arttu Kataja, Florian Hoffmann, Adam Kutuy, Friedrich Hamel<br />Two Maids – Evelin Novak, Natalia Skrycka<br /><br />Director, set design, costumes, lighting – Romeo Castellucci <br />Revival director – José Dario Innella <br />Choreography – Evelin Facchini <br />Assistant director – Maxi Menja Lehmann <br />Set design assistance – Lisa Behensky, Alessio Valmori <br />Costume assistance – Clara Rosina Straßer, Theresa Wilson <br />Lighting assistance – Marco Giusti<br /><br />Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)<div>Staatskapelle Berlin</div><div>Thomas Guggeis (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><br /><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFcmKfHHZrRcO6fHbrv_y4EdPc8lqjTxOkU0Y2Q7QkZ8ECgWz39h-mSFn_zcIgjVVL6KVpEIUO9rq0DRuMyu3FYBy3ztNioocTRXG-adx-tD50JVMh7yVbks2Jmplsl6LCQz8Tksczw_zzJxbAMzxaxSzN5nakGD4hdOwO3In8Dzp6sy1NgJRGa42O0Akf/s8256/daphne_RC_239.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5504" data-original-width="8256" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFcmKfHHZrRcO6fHbrv_y4EdPc8lqjTxOkU0Y2Q7QkZ8ECgWz39h-mSFn_zcIgjVVL6KVpEIUO9rq0DRuMyu3FYBy3ztNioocTRXG-adx-tD50JVMh7yVbks2Jmplsl6LCQz8Tksczw_zzJxbAMzxaxSzN5nakGD4hdOwO3In8Dzp6sy1NgJRGa42O0Akf/w640-h426/daphne_RC_239.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Monika Rittershaus<br />Daphne (Vera-Lotte Boecker)</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Seen first last year, Romeo
Castellucci’s production of <i>Daphne</i> receives its first revival. In one
sense, it could hardly be more timely, snow falling outside in wintry landscapes
across Berlin and beyond, as it does onstage. Yet that immediately presents a
greater untimeliness to the <i>mise-en-scène</i>, for a modern snowscape seems
perversely distant from the Thessalian pastoral of Joseph Gregor’s libretto
(and Strauss’s imagination). It is beautiful, of course, and with Castellucci,
matters aesthetic have a tendency to take on a life, approaching the painterly,
of their own. I have heard it said several times that Castellucci has no
concept of the dramatic; I think that goes too far in this case, for this is no
‘mere’ installation and a story certainly is told. But the alterity to his
aesthetic imagination, to which audiences, perhaps particularly opera audiences,
respond very differently, is undeniably present—to my mind, more fruitfully
than in, say, his <a href="https://boulezian.blogspot.com/2017/07/munich-opera-festival-4-tannhauser-9.html">Munich
<i>Tannhäuser</i></a> or even his Salzburg <i>Salome</i>. It may or may not be
the story some want to be told – ultimately, I think it remains the same story,
albeit from an angle unexpected until one becomes accustomed to its shift – but
we certainly have narrative and development as well as setting.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">That setting is one of widespread estrangement
from Nature: not, I think, in an especially environmentalist sense, though that
need not be excluded, but more existential. In light of that, the conception of
the nymph Daphne, according to a programme interview, as ‘a being who withdraws
from all social relationships in search of intensive, I should say,
(skin-)contact with Nature … a contemporary creature who breaks with her
surroundings’, seems central; so is her spiritual, as opposed to political,
need to do so. And so, even in the deep snow, it is there she wishes to be.
Whilst others, not unreasonably layer their clothing, she sheds much of hers.
It is for us a radical break with all we value, social, erotic, and so on—and therein
captures the dramatic essence of the work more clearly than one might suspect.
The unexpected slant makes clear what that essence and her character are not.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">When Apollo does eventually bring sun to
this world it registers powerfully, within its frame. He, after all, is far
from entirely at home with himself, having uncomfortably, even shamefully,
adopted the methods of Dionysus to ensnare the nymph. But acting in accordance
with Nature brings the three key figures, Daphne, Apollo, and Leukippos briefly
together, to an extent that would otherwise have been impossible; initial
estrangement arguably assists that. I honestly cannot say I understood why the
cover of the first edition of <i>The Waste Land</i> descended. It came across a
bit too much as ‘referencing’ rather than drama, though I suppose quotation is inherent
to the poem, and the act had an aesthetic as well as intellectual presence of
its own. I am assuming, I think correctly, that there is greater significance
to the invocation of Eliot than simply the scene of a winter waste land. But to
return to the snow, one thing one can do with and in it is a favourite act of
Castellucci’s: burial. (Another is the blood-like pouring and
smearing of red paint over the dying Leukippos, tar-black reserved for Daphne.) Daphne’s transformation takes
place both below – soon, we can no longer see her – and above, as the tree
present throughout has a sort of apotheosis. There is something magical here,
in the simplicity and wonder: ever tied or at least related to Strauss’s
inspired orchestral and, eventually, vocalised concluding transformation (very
much the composer’s own idea, rejecting Gregor’s idea of a choral finale).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoA0Q1QTlqzbjUcEMSKApOWNjrrwaFt5pk1-9dTVZB7tOz0-Qjk78KCLmiPVIU4WgeRH_-u8uGn1WdT102KUcMTn8ryKZo74MVPBzs0DMAiBhe4I94EJNfXcKGnLPpyPsPRwyqaOjMa1DuD4Cuxdu3tcSTH180MknEPyhcgAIbmf4tJbmibMvYC35pz89c/s8256/daphne_RC_090.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5371" data-original-width="8256" height="416" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoA0Q1QTlqzbjUcEMSKApOWNjrrwaFt5pk1-9dTVZB7tOz0-Qjk78KCLmiPVIU4WgeRH_-u8uGn1WdT102KUcMTn8ryKZo74MVPBzs0DMAiBhe4I94EJNfXcKGnLPpyPsPRwyqaOjMa1DuD4Cuxdu3tcSTH180MknEPyhcgAIbmf4tJbmibMvYC35pz89c/w640-h416/daphne_RC_090.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Whilst we naturally – rightly – accord Daphne’s
vocalise a key role here, it is actually quite short; for the most part this transformation
is orchestral, and Strauss called it an ‘extended orchestral piece’. Here and
elsewhere, Thomas Guggeis led the Staatskapelle Berlin with true distinction. From
the opening <i>Harmoniemusik</i> throughout the score, the conductor traced an
ever-transforming path, perhaps warmer than what we saw on stage, yet rarely
heated and never remotely over-heated. This was a reading of subtle mastery, upset
at most a couple of times by something intrusive from without—though that is
arguably Strauss’s own responsibility. The Goethian metamorphosis that surely
underpins Strauss’s method here as strongly and as generatively as in <i>Metamorphosen</i>
was painted, indeed lived, as if this were a work far more frequently performed
than it is; that is, conductor and orchestra showed deep knowledge and
understanding, without loss to a proper sense of discovery and magic. For the
orchestral players were at least equal participants in this achievement; I
cannot imagine any orchestra, be it in Vienna, Dresden, or elsewhere, sounding
more at home and proving a more rewarding guide.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">The cast likewise made an outstanding
contribution. In the title role, Vera-Lotte Boecker’s silver glistened, gleamed
and blended with her orchestral colleagues, though it could certainly grow into
something fuller-voiced, thrillingly so, when called upon. Boecker entered
enthusiastically, moreover, into the staging, grasping Castellucci’s at-times-somewhat
abstract enigmas and personifying them, enabling one to believe. Like her
fellow performers, she played the Straussian role of Music as well as singing or
playing its lower-case cousin. To have had not one but two excellent Straussian
tenor performances is quite something. Johan Krogius and David Butt Phillip
both shone as Leukippos and Apollo respectively: the former offering a properly
rounded portrayal, beautifully sung, Daphne’s likeable companion revealing tragic
dignity in death; the latter’s rather different journey traced sympathetically
and with due mystery. The deep voices of René Pape as Peneios and Anna
Kissjudit as Gaea contributed much to the ensemble. Kissjudit may be described
as a mezzo, but her chalumeau-like tones revealed, as in <a href="https://seenandheard-international.com/2023/04/follow-the-science-the-start-of-an-intriguing-new-perspective-on-the-ring-cycle-in-berlin/">her
Erda</a>, the ability to sing a true contralto line too. Pape’s tone was
similarly luxurious and similarly attentive to words. Shepherds, maids, and
chorus were all excellent too. If Castellucci sometimes held the drama at arm’s
length, though mirroring and responding it to throughout, that distance and
conception of distance arguably enabled the riches of the evening’s orchestral
and vocal performances to penetrate audience consciousness the more readily.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-25412481973381196582024-01-17T17:37:00.003+00:002024-01-17T17:37:33.007+00:00Così fan tutte, Komische Oper, 14 January 2024<br />Schillertheater<div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh79tWfGauJKheCqUoVsGwAngCjKCbCdnxskYDoa-d1n-o-BIHYOzuzY3DeU_XCxqE6b_1IrguWEfOrl0aruRzVKgqJIsZL5mC7hRJZDimmvHCua9drTAUf2mOsO034JBIZNUH3m032V_9OK4PI1giWCrzQrWx6UbfAhpP_WPNh45NNcOTQmRs_rPynf2Jz/s8256/751_cosi_ks_277a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5504" data-original-width="8256" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh79tWfGauJKheCqUoVsGwAngCjKCbCdnxskYDoa-d1n-o-BIHYOzuzY3DeU_XCxqE6b_1IrguWEfOrl0aruRzVKgqJIsZL5mC7hRJZDimmvHCua9drTAUf2mOsO034JBIZNUH3m032V_9OK4PI1giWCrzQrWx6UbfAhpP_WPNh45NNcOTQmRs_rPynf2Jz/w640-h426/751_cosi_ks_277a.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Images: Monika Rittershaus</td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /><br />Fiordiligi – Penny Sofraniadou <br />Dorabella – Susan Zarrabi <br />Guglielmo – Hubert Zapiór <br />Ferrando – Caspar Singh <br />Despina – Alma Sadé <br />Don Alfonso – Seth Carico <br />Sempronio – Amer El-Erwadi <br />Tizio – Goran Jurenec<div><br /></div><div>Director, set and costume designer – Kirill Serebrennikov<br />Implementation of direction, choreography – Evgeny Kulagin<br />Staff director (<i>Spielleitung</i>) – Martha Jurowski<br />Co-costume designer – Tatyana Dolmatovskaya<br />Assistant set designer – Nikolay Simonov<br />Dramaturgy – Beate Breidenbach, Maximilian Hagemeyer<br />Lighting – Olaf Freese<br />Video – Ilya Shagalov</div><div><br /><div>Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper (director: Jean-Christophe Charron) </div><div>Orchestra of the Komische Oper </div><div>Erina Yashima (conductor) <br /><br />
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">There should never be a run-of-the-mill <i>Così
fan tutte</i>: Mozart’s most exquisite opera, arguably his profoundest, and
perhaps ultimately his greatest. (It is, at any rate, my current favourite, and
not only because I heard it last.) This was certainly not it, whether in origin,
direction, or performance. Indeed, this staging from Berlin’s Komische Oper is
an outstanding achievement in almost every respect, giving one much to think
about, much to relish, and much by which to be discomfited. On top of that, it
is a long time since I have seen and heard so thoroughly accomplished a cast.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg09CK3nsjK2xTRf6CBAcues5-tYgP14T6sEhBGJebi1Vsz8lqyIW6HS0VEx0SI5lp8wESJYBavxt3KkVXEV0Ap8GbIbzaMUhusInvqCl3zerv7keWc8Q3oApBZ2l5tJuEkurhyphenhyphenaFHpsQNpUtOGzBQY-TKUh2NIg-7bsC-yi6y1jW7fs1ahBHPwBcmgMMSF/s8484/748_cosi_ks_273a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5681" data-original-width="8484" height="428" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg09CK3nsjK2xTRf6CBAcues5-tYgP14T6sEhBGJebi1Vsz8lqyIW6HS0VEx0SI5lp8wESJYBavxt3KkVXEV0Ap8GbIbzaMUhusInvqCl3zerv7keWc8Q3oApBZ2l5tJuEkurhyphenhyphenaFHpsQNpUtOGzBQY-TKUh2NIg-7bsC-yi6y1jW7fs1ahBHPwBcmgMMSF/w640-h428/748_cosi_ks_273a.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Kirill Serebrennikov’s production was first
seen in Zurich in 2018, albeit under highly unusual circumstances stemming from
the director’s house arrest. His choreographer and assistant Evgeny Kulagin,
here credited with ‘Umsetzung Inszenierung,’ took Serebrennikov’s place in
person, passing to Serebrennikov’s lawyer film recordings of what was
developing in rehearsal for the director in turn to comment on via video
message. Hence the somewhat involved list for the production team, which I
thought important to include as a whole and with as clear a translation of
terms as I could. Following several extensions to his house arrest, followed by
conviction for fraud, probation, dismissal from the Gogol Centre, and bans on
travel and leadership of any cultural institution in receipt of government
support, Serebrennikov’s suspended sentence was eventually cancelled by another
court on account of good behaviour and the travel ban lifted. Having been
permitted to travel to Germany in 2022, he was able to direct the Berlin incarnation
of the production, of which this is now the first revival. It would be
difficult to deny that these circumstances make the production’s achievement
all the more impressive; it certainly suggests some truth may yet lie in the double-edged,
Romantic adage that adverse circumstances can foster great artistic
achievement. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Onwards, in any case, to the production ‘itself’.
It has already begun when one enters the theatre. A horizontally split set (levels
1 and 2) reveals at this stage – it remains, whilst the settings it reveals
change over time – two gym settings, male and female, extras working out. Exercise
of a different kind, orchestral tuning, provides the accompaniment. The more
physical variety onstage continues into the Overture, skipping noises proving something
of an aural irritant, albeit a minor issue in the greater scheme of things. Guglielmo
and Ferrando arrive, and eventually Don Alfonso, with much stereotypically,
indeed performatively masculine behaviour to be observed as the stage is set. It
soon becomes clear, though, that whilst Alfonso has some sort of hold over the
men at the gym – not only our pair of lovers – he is also a deeply damaged
person, broadening and deepening his characterisation from the typical
stock-character cynic. This may be connected with war, which looms eerily large
for a production conceived in 2017-18; I could not help but wonder whether some
changes had been made in light of the invasion of Ukraine, which Serebrennikov
publicly opposed. For, when Guglielmo and Ferrando are sent off to combat – it
is unusually clear what might be involved, coffins and all, the women in
mourning – the military video game whose control Alfonso is trying, indeed
struggling, has him shaken, traumatised. Is that merely a metaphor? Perhaps. We
may remember Monteverdi’s <i>Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi</i> and any number
of other literary and artistic connections and constructions. Revelation of the
betrayal or defeat he has suffered in battles of the heart, via a display of
text messages, offers further context but does not exclude something darker and
deeper still. My sense was of a veteran of both types of conflict—and more.<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIYUlPsLdRffEtqnVsv95aiVYonohH4hOCWSrKLWHStz700EErAPw_vxBEc9OTSOoqkr2tj58jsLBXs13z1cJolHisV8q8GOagGqDqUDX6IT87JPSxyqdnCTriLKtVYpbXjd1T0yNCzFl2cwUJxLWYl2ovLztCAVeNR1hNG9LOZuTRaI_0g_QtIrflEhnf/s8344/752_cosi_ks_196a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="8344" data-original-width="5625" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIYUlPsLdRffEtqnVsv95aiVYonohH4hOCWSrKLWHStz700EErAPw_vxBEc9OTSOoqkr2tj58jsLBXs13z1cJolHisV8q8GOagGqDqUDX6IT87JPSxyqdnCTriLKtVYpbXjd1T0yNCzFl2cwUJxLWYl2ovLztCAVeNR1hNG9LOZuTRaI_0g_QtIrflEhnf/w270-h400/752_cosi_ks_196a.jpg" width="270" /></a></div><br /> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">For when the opposing ‘team’ takes stock,
led by Despina, now not a servant but a therapist, she shows Fiordiligi and Dorabella
slides of typical male behaviour, especially in the armed forces. What better
way to show her patients – the word is actually used in the subtitles, which alternate
as faithful translation and guide to the production – what their lovers will really
be up to, if they are still alive? Her visual aids pursue a number of lines,
some frankly feminist, some more cynical. The therapeutic turn that has
informed many of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s more recent productions (e.g. <i><a href="https://seenandheard-international.com/2017/07/tcherniakovs-carmen-makes-music-drama-come-alive-at-aix/">Carmen</a></i>,
<i><a href="https://seenandheard-international.com/2019/02/tcherniakovs-les-troyens-for-paris-opera-will-surely-prove-a-turning-point-in-its-chequered-fortunes/">Les
Troyens</a></i>, and the <i><a href="https://seenandheard-international.com/2023/04/follow-the-science-the-start-of-an-intriguing-new-perspective-on-the-ring-cycle-in-berlin/">Ring</a></i>;<i>
</i>as well, I am told, as his own <i>Così</i>, which I have not seen) is first
brought on board but also brought into question. If anyone is perpetrating a hoax
here, it is arguably Despina, who also, far from coincidentally, seems the most
resilient of the lot.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Clichés that elsewhere have become tired,
for instance the use of mobile telephones, both for messages and pictures, are
for once used to genuine dramatic ends. This is, after all, how modern
communications work—and modern relationships, even sex, too. Nowhere is this
clearer, yet also more genuinely complex, than when Guglielmo and Ferrando are
replaced by their ‘Albanian’ – in this case, first Arab – counterparts, Sempronio
and Tizio, here played by actors (Amar El-Erwadi and Goran Jurenec) whose time at
the gym seems to have been still more successful. The ambiguity over whether
they are actual, hired replacements – I think they almost certainly are – is such
that one can take different views. ‘Different views’, though, may be understood
in a different sense, action (of various kinds) being viewed from another level
via video link (not necessarily ‘inspired’ by the director’s treatment, but gaining
greater meaning nonetheless through that connection) or even ‘in person’ but as
ghostly presence, apparently unseen by and indeed deceased for Fiordiligi and
Dorabella. There are especially cruel touches, such as thinking all is well, only
to hear the lavatory flush from the <i>en suite</i> bathroom: all very much in
the spirit of those extraordinary horns of cuckoldry Mozart employs at crucial
points in the score. Actual horns are donned by both ‘Albanians’ at one point,
suggesting an assumption of quasi-divine status, Dionysus or even Zeus, enabling
and initiating congress and conquest.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAy_vZSPJLBM8x078e3p0aPq7WAlT-ynITLZYSW43ajYnKyJD4SLlAMcKM4-5GNDb7wAZNE6MA2xQyT1x6H1FHlCM1Y81_WLbiXVk7X3gtmkOBtLfdXyI0j2QTOoru2bM2sc9FdJcUrZ8jBje97iEmtZw0sjoJa-zb_oAbh-TtEjdPxU869XtfMZ7QO4I4/s7908/755_cosi_ks_236.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="7908" data-original-width="5272" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAy_vZSPJLBM8x078e3p0aPq7WAlT-ynITLZYSW43ajYnKyJD4SLlAMcKM4-5GNDb7wAZNE6MA2xQyT1x6H1FHlCM1Y81_WLbiXVk7X3gtmkOBtLfdXyI0j2QTOoru2bM2sc9FdJcUrZ8jBje97iEmtZw0sjoJa-zb_oAbh-TtEjdPxU869XtfMZ7QO4I4/w266-h400/755_cosi_ks_236.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><br /><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">For men now are as objectified as women. As
a gay man, Serebrennikov will know this all too well, but so do many younger heterosexual
men too. This remains a heterosexual opera on the most fundamental level,
without say the step into overt lesbianism taken by Stefan Herheim in his
reimagination of <i>Die Entführung aus dem Serail</i> as an exploration of love
between and beyond the sexes. On the other hand, the bodies of all concerned, but
especially Sempronio and Tizio, are so resolutely in the gaze of us all that boundaries
blur and dissolve whether we like it or not—and the implication would be that
most, perhaps all, of us do. We are all actors, playing roles here, Ferrando
explicitly in assuming the metatheatrical, ambiguous with respect to diegetic
status, role of ‘a singer’ in ‘Un’aura amoroso’, ‘credited’ at its close by Don
Alfonso. That extends, moreover, to gender roles, surely a tribute to the
much-maligned yet ever-relevant Judith Butler. It ultimately comes as no
surprise, perhaps even as a strangely satisfying fulfilment, that the title scrawled
at the back by Don Alfonso is corrected to ‘Così fan tutti,’ tellingly ‘girlish’
hearts atop the ‘i's a further turn of the dialectical gender-screw (as it
were).<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ZYkZfOoAu2wStqIbqlUjA8crTqVedhAdrbByhzAIP7aRPYI-HLmT7C-6UfMixadniIMG8tFdgyDGEoFmzA17gdQXgFOePvidFHs9WbkeY0vYCR_Ga4RaDQd5eIOGex7hkYK7JWPPZGJMPJkQI1uIxMDRElJqeKTJgPMXJIeC7oAXBrVPUMl6bGUCUWqL/s7802/754_cosi_ks_228a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5170" data-original-width="7802" height="424" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_ZYkZfOoAu2wStqIbqlUjA8crTqVedhAdrbByhzAIP7aRPYI-HLmT7C-6UfMixadniIMG8tFdgyDGEoFmzA17gdQXgFOePvidFHs9WbkeY0vYCR_Ga4RaDQd5eIOGex7hkYK7JWPPZGJMPJkQI1uIxMDRElJqeKTJgPMXJIeC7oAXBrVPUMl6bGUCUWqL/w640-h424/754_cosi_ks_228a.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">And yet, this remains a deeply disillusioning experience for all, the modern <i>anomie</i> of what
are either hotel rooms or a modern apartment so fashionable it might as well
be, not the least of the bridges constructed between deeper meanings to be drawn
from Mozart (to a lesser extent, Da Ponte too) and Serebrennikov’s conception. Both
women have incomplete, neon-lit crucifixes above their beds: probably only a ‘design
feature’, but extending into something more in Fiordiligi’s case, allied to her
little shrine (to what, though?) assembled for ‘Per pietà’, when she drags it
across the floor, failing twice to maintain the electric connection. For
Mozart, these parodies of <i>opera seria</i> have a message that is, among
other things, deeply theological; that may or may not be the case here, but it
is certainly not to be excluded. This is, after all, a Passion of Passion to
rival – to my mind, even to surpass – <i>Tristan und Isolde</i>.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqiF6n_SM1un6F_9MTpqHSU-o_EfGCENWdbnJFCimsJNIXoD74LWWAnZBSyRE1PUs2L_D2LKZXXscietdwujw-kWOhJNhCKgWQVRWWHSyzPAhMw3GquYrFGKPLRmZQzz-9so4vx7bWPCY3xerOlbgYYiyCmu29deaICawXjfxmQD2Dlwb8-wAR_5avyyb1/s8076/757_cosi_ks_308a.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5416" data-original-width="8076" height="430" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqiF6n_SM1un6F_9MTpqHSU-o_EfGCENWdbnJFCimsJNIXoD74LWWAnZBSyRE1PUs2L_D2LKZXXscietdwujw-kWOhJNhCKgWQVRWWHSyzPAhMw3GquYrFGKPLRmZQzz-9so4vx7bWPCY3xerOlbgYYiyCmu29deaICawXjfxmQD2Dlwb8-wAR_5avyyb1/w640-h430/757_cosi_ks_308a.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><br /><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Credit should again be accorded the company’s
extras (Komparserie) who had much to do throughout and did it well, not least
dressing the two brides in full traditional Russian wedding dress – they might
almost have been auditioning for <i>Les Noces</i> – only to have to undress them
once again in acts of inflation, deflation, and revelation. In a brilliant <i>coup
de théâtre</i>, we turn suddenly to an interpolated musical reminiscence – or premonition
– of <i>Don Giovanni</i>’s Stone Guest Scene. The Albanians, seizing hold like
twin Commendatores of ‘their’ women’s hands, may be standing in judgement over
them or may simply be trying to keep them. It is a disruption that can doubtless
only be visited once, unique to this production, but a highly productive one,
reminding us that even in the most hedonistic, secular, ‘sex-positive’ society,
the question of sin, of remoteness from the divine, does not disappear, far
from it; we simply pretend it has and mistake euphemism for theodicy. As desolate
as ever, probably more so, the characters attempting to draw some sort of
lesson from events that have shattered their world seem quite unaware that, on the
level above, an actual fire has begun to blaze. Narcissism, after all, is not
the least of our contemporary sins—and/or ailments.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">All this, or most of it, would go for
little, were it not brought to life by fine performances. This it certainly
received. I can honestly find nothing of any importance to which to object, and
much to praise. If I write less about them on this occasion, it is not because
I consider them less important; for one thing, they are not to be extracted
from what has been said above, but rather very much part of it. In any case, Penny
Sofraniadou and Susan Zarrabi portrayed, from the outset, properly distinguished
Fiordiligi and Dorabella, clean of line, if hardly of deeper intention. Both
drew on varied palettes of vocal colour that could blend where dramatically and
musically necessary, without loss to identities that shifted yet never merged.
Much the same could be said – and this is Mozart’s laboratory of musical quasi-geometry
at work, as well as their artistry – of the Ferrando and Guglielmo of Hubert Zapiór
and Caspar Singh. Equally adept as actors and singers, their exploration of
wounded masculinities was every bit as revealing as that of Seth Carico’s
uniquely subtle Don Alfonso. Ferrando, as usual, had two rather than his full
three arias: a pity but not the end of the world. Alma Sadé’s Despina likewise
not only acquired new depth as Despina, but contributed that greater range.
(And what a relief it was, for once, not to have to endure the usual ‘silly
voices’.) <o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga9GPfTxwSwQzGxc1PfogtdRvDgsXPe8W1515W5dt2IKuHKgrxXrr9S374Tuy_IP6rEW8AWkZBJm4FcP6EET1fx8kTDtOf2OeKjJLvG2ziGJxBZD39gBJ8Mhtc1hNdidYZK9PtHASkrSQl5B419Pg7zOPSwX2sSQnQ5sY-hrpwSouXCyYy4k1PxKrljeoj/s8256/756_cosi_ks_192.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="5504" data-original-width="8256" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEga9GPfTxwSwQzGxc1PfogtdRvDgsXPe8W1515W5dt2IKuHKgrxXrr9S374Tuy_IP6rEW8AWkZBJm4FcP6EET1fx8kTDtOf2OeKjJLvG2ziGJxBZD39gBJ8Mhtc1hNdidYZK9PtHASkrSQl5B419Pg7zOPSwX2sSQnQ5sY-hrpwSouXCyYy4k1PxKrljeoj/w640-h426/756_cosi_ks_192.jpg" width="640" /></a></div> <p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Erina Yashima’s direction of the orchestra proved
similarly impeccable. Hers was not the sort of deeply personal reading that
leads one to speak of a particular standpoint, ‘Böhm’s <i>Così</i>’<i> </i>or ‘Muti’s’;
but it performed a different, more readily theatrical function, near-faultless in its incitement,
mirroring, and at times questioning of the action onstage. That I barely
noticed her tempi as such speaks for itself: there was a ‘rightness’ in context
that could not be gainsaid. Nor could the excellence of the orchestral playing
in a score in which any false move, any slight infelicity of intonation or
phrasing, will stand out like a sore thumb. The Komische Oper may be known
primarily for its emphasis on theatre, but that should not mean the orchestra
matters less, rather that it is part and parcel of the action. At any rate, so
it sounded here. They may not have been singing, but our ‘Albanian’ actors Amar
El-Erwadi and Goran Jurenec also contributed greatly to the action and its
ultimate achievement. If, as I suggested earlier, the production was able even
to reinvigorate well-worn directorial clichés with new meaning, I may as well
offer as my own ‘a true ensemble performance’. Do not take my word for it,
though: if possible, try to see and hear this <i>Così </i>for yourself. It has,
for whatever this may be worth, my highest recommendation.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div></div></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5181229699006562806.post-88876849252987698342024-01-17T11:48:00.002+00:002024-01-17T11:52:13.210+00:00Antikrist, Deutsche Oper, 13 January 2024<br />Lucifer, A Voice – Thomas Lehman <br />God’s Voice – Jonas Grundner-Culemann <br />The Echo of the Air of Mystery – Valeriia Savinskaia <br />The Air of Mystery – Irene Roberts <br />The Mouth speaking Great Words – Clemens Bieber <br />Despondency – Maire Therese Carmack <br />The Great Whore – Flurina Stucki <br />The Scarlet Beast – AJ Glueckert <br />The Lie – Kieran Carrel <br />Hatred – Philipp Jekal <br /><br />Dancers – Ashley Wright, Giorgia Bovo, Ana Dordevic, Sakura Inoue, Vasna Felicia Aguilar, Yuri Shimaoka, Joel Donald Small, Shih-Ping Lin, György Jellinek, Miguel Angel Collado<br /><br />Director, set designs – Ersan Mondtag<br />Revival director – Silke Sense<br />Costumes – Ersan Mondtag, Annika Lu Hermann<br />Lighting – Rainer Casper<br />Choreography – Rob Fordeyn<br />Dramaturgy – Lara Gebhardt, Carolin Müller-Dohle <br /><br />Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (chorus director: Jeremy Bines) <div>Opera-Ballet and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin</div><div>Hermann Bäumer (conductor)</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7RLI5yWovkYhwbYPt_Gx-P9PuT4xRFmt21apX09GoI1xQDF4Sbl6tDtvUZPztMnrGJW5a0xv41mtReMW1970XWy_hcwjkZA54uX67Wr6uiRgZYkMKtPlRCz9qg63WslhABNSjEqnjbt6Fy4ckdXcKPwpymZJwaCdyMnjKJxG4Yh8i0B_XwXoZUYgu6gBE/s3543/antikrist2_8370mhf_LehmanGrundner-Culemann.jpg" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2358" data-original-width="3543" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7RLI5yWovkYhwbYPt_Gx-P9PuT4xRFmt21apX09GoI1xQDF4Sbl6tDtvUZPztMnrGJW5a0xv41mtReMW1970XWy_hcwjkZA54uX67Wr6uiRgZYkMKtPlRCz9qg63WslhABNSjEqnjbt6Fy4ckdXcKPwpymZJwaCdyMnjKJxG4Yh8i0B_XwXoZUYgu6gBE/w640-h426/antikrist2_8370mhf_LehmanGrundner-Culemann.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="background-color: white; font-family: Akzidenz-Grotesk-Pro-regular, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 14px; text-align: left;">ANTIKRIST, Regie: Ersan Mondtag, Premiere 30. Januar 2022 Deutsche Oper Berlin, <br />copyright: Thomas Aurin</span></td></tr></tbody></table><div><br /></div><div>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Rued Langgaard’s ‘church opera’ <i>Antikrist
</i>is a strange beast. The opera’s first staging was in 1999 at
Innsbruck. This, its fourth ever, was due to premiere in 2020, but was delayed for
two years on account of the pandemic. I was rather surprised to see a revival
at all, let alone a revival with almost no empty seats and an audience so
warmly enthusiastic. Limiting this season’s appearances to two, of which this
was the first, seems to have been a canny move. I wish I could have shared the
audience’s enthusiasm; instead, the work left me bewildered, although the
performances seemed excellent. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">There are arguments for and against doing
one’s homework before experiencing a musical work for the first time. On this
occasion, I did not, wanting to be surprised and to approach what I heard with
as few preconceptions as I could. Surprised I certainly was, above all by an
opera seemingly without plot, by a treatment of the apocalypse somehow devoid
of dramatic interest. What we hear at the Deutsche Oper – and what, it seems,
is always heard – is a revised version, from 1926-30. I am tempted to say
goodness knows what the original (1921-3) was like, given (from what I read)
the libretto was completely rewritten and yet still emerged almost comically
unsuited to music, let alone drama, let alone both; yet it seems that the first
version may have had a little more in terms of plot. At any rate, Langgaard’s
own libretto was the determining factor both times in the Royal Danish
Theatre’s rejection of the work, and it would be difficult, unless one were a
Langgaard cultist (perhaps there are such people), to argue against that verdict.
Not, I hasten to add, that the score proved especially convincing.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">What we have, here given in a German
translation by Inger and Walther Methlagl amounts to little more than a number
of largely unidentified figures – I established that one was the Whore of
Babylon and one the Antichrist, and suspected one might be Lucifer, but beyond
that was lost – denouncing the lost state of the modern world until an almost
literal </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">deus ex machina</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> puts things right. It was not at all clear to
me, though this seems to have been the fault of my slowness, from what
standpoint this was being presented. Part of me hoped a Nietzschean turn might
be taken, but it seems ultimately that Langgaard – I assume his ‘voice’ was presented
here as God’s – found all around him filth and depravity and wished to tell us
so at great length (just over ninety minutes, but it felt longer). It was as if
the ranting of a deranged street preacher were less transformed than converted,
editing kept to the bare minimum, into a libretto that somehow must then be set
to music. It takes all sorts, I suppose, and there is no intrinsic reason why a
reactionary message, perhaps especially one so bizarre as this, should not
prove fodder for drama; the problem is more that it does not. Perhaps some find
a ‘rejection’ not only of plot, not only of characterisation, but also of drama
itself. Again, there is no reason opera should not be postdramatic; much of it
is and has been, even </span><i style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">avant la lettre</i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">. What Langgaard presents, though, seems
more incompetent than a positive choice or an aesthetic.</span><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><o:p><br /></o:p></span></i></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><i><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"></span></i></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh51cFidGPLX6JqKhPZXQ907hSgKuua3AJBPnxYRaL2wAIlXMZ3xg_zQJTDtyBlq6GB5Wtp1PfYpRNG7Sb_FejqrDJ2JZZ5RF1wVEThcuhQSaHFSI3rTA7bOZmcwp0uvRSjdLyRxE0B-J6WKEHhqjc3n1_zlJcv9kspips_jQZZEb_kIdeuf9aIHKkFziZQ/s3543/antikrist2_0940mStucki.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2362" data-original-width="3543" height="426" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh51cFidGPLX6JqKhPZXQ907hSgKuua3AJBPnxYRaL2wAIlXMZ3xg_zQJTDtyBlq6GB5Wtp1PfYpRNG7Sb_FejqrDJ2JZZ5RF1wVEThcuhQSaHFSI3rTA7bOZmcwp0uvRSjdLyRxE0B-J6WKEHhqjc3n1_zlJcv9kspips_jQZZEb_kIdeuf9aIHKkFziZQ/w640-h426/antikrist2_0940mStucki.jpg" width="640" /></a></i></div><i><o:p><br /></o:p></i><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Might the ‘opera’ have been better off as
an oratorio? Perhaps, although it would surely still have required major
surgery, even a transplant or two. For there is little redemption to be found
in the music either. If you like the sound of Wagner and Strauss, but find
their musical arguments difficult to follow, perhaps the music ‘itself’ will
appeal. Here, phrases uncomfortably close to counterparts in Wagner dramas –
all from at least <i>Das Rheingold</i> onwards – are served up randomly with
little to connect them, and much the same is done with or to Strauss. Some
might call it a collage effect; I could not help but think Langgaard would have
been unlikely to survive a Turnitin inspection. There are, to be fair, more
promising, even modernistic passages, especially when he writes purely
orchestrally. (It is, by the way, difficult to discern much sympathy for the
human voice.) Hints – again, arguably more than that – of Hindemith seem more
amenable to something approaching sustained musical development, but ultimately
they do not lead anywhere. Maybe that is the point, although I fear I may be clutching
at straws.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">What I can say is that the Orchestra of the
Deutsche Oper, conducted by Hermann Bäumer, played with evident conviction and
even pleasure, making as strong a case for the score as is likely to be heard.
The chorus, as ever well trained by Jeremy Bines, did likewise, as did the
cast. Since neither work nor production gave much in the way of clues as to who
anyone was, I shall limit myself to singling out some wonderful singing from Flurina Stucki as ‘The Great Whore’. The other soloists were excellent too, though, as
were the dancers, even if some of the choreography – especially that without
music, at the beginning – proved more puzzling than revealing. In that respect, one
might say it suited the work.</span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8PZSOdW1dI4U4EsNPufHdFh-27PejkqHin9_RbAJ_KhXFDVMer8u9sKt_oLttnzjPJAlyXvETrmrQsMuZZyE0wtkWQLPVVPzf8HNimZQ8jRRNWJIP1sXbw83-ze0ZFked1-Pv4HtJYfbxy2dmbwfViznqceFPUMit6qTsEdczQMuEb8z0sxJJIQsRw_X2/s3700/antikrist1_3402mhf_LehmanStuckiGlueckert.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2550" data-original-width="3700" height="442" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8PZSOdW1dI4U4EsNPufHdFh-27PejkqHin9_RbAJ_KhXFDVMer8u9sKt_oLttnzjPJAlyXvETrmrQsMuZZyE0wtkWQLPVVPzf8HNimZQ8jRRNWJIP1sXbw83-ze0ZFked1-Pv4HtJYfbxy2dmbwfViznqceFPUMit6qTsEdczQMuEb8z0sxJJIQsRw_X2/w640-h442/antikrist1_3402mhf_LehmanStuckiGlueckert.jpg" width="640" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Ersan Mondtag’s production certainly looked
good. (The set designs were his too, and he had at least a hand in the costume
design.) To me it looked as if Achim Freyer were directing a sequel to <i>La
bohème</i>.<i> </i>I am not sure a modern-ish street inhabited by clowns was actually
intended as a wry commentary on Langgaard’s claptrap, but to an extent it could
be taken as such. What was intended by a car suddenly falling from the sky or the
similar aerial suspension of a large figure of a male God with vulva I have no idea, but they gave us something to look at, as did detailed direction of members of cast and chorus. I can only applaud the Deutsche
Oper’s courage in granting us a rare opportunity to assess this work for
ourselves with such excellent performers. That said, I cannot imagine wishing to do so again.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 150%; margin-bottom: 0cm;"><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><br /></span></p></div>Mark Berryhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17693194967620507933noreply@blogger.com