Semperoper
Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg
– Anja Harteros
Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Peter
RoseOctavian – Sophie Koch
Herr von Faninal – Adrian Erőd
Sophie – Christiane Karg
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Christiane Kohl
Valzacchi – Thomas Ebenstein
Annina – Christa Mayer
Police Officer – Peter Lobert
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Simeon Esper
Faninal’s Major-domo – Tom Martinsen
A Notary – Matthias Henneberg
A Landlord – Dan Karlström
A Singer – Yosep Kang
A Milliner – Nadja Mchantaf
A Vendor of Pets – Mert Süngü
Leopold – Dirk Wolter
Lackeys – Ingolf Stollberg, Andreas Keinze, Jun-Seok Bang, Matthias Beutlich
Waiters – Rafael Harnisch, Torsten Schäpan Norbert Klesse, Thomas Müller
Three noble orphans – Jennifer Porto, Emily Dorn, Christel Loetzsch
Lerchenauschen – Alexander Födisch, Michael Wettin, Thomas Müller, Mirko Tuma, Werner Harke, Holger Steinert
Mohammed (‘The little Moor’) – Amala Boashie
Uwe
Eric Laufenberg (director)
Christoph
Schubiger (set designs)
Jessica
Karge (costumes)
A
superlative evening! Above all on the musical side, Christian Thielemann’s
conducting having been the initial attraction for me in the first place, but
with an intelligent staging too, which quite belied its years. Uwe Eric
Laufenberg was announced as director of the new Bayreuth Parsifal after I had arranged to attend this performance, but since
I was unfamiliar with his work, this proved a subsequent attraction. What, if
anything, this 2000 staging might tell us about a 2015 Parsifal remains to be seen, but, quite in contrast to reports I
had heard (‘boring’, ‘conventional’, etc.), this proved, if not the equal of Harry
Kupfer’s Salzburg production this summer, then a more than acceptable
alternative. When one recalls in horror Munich’s perpetual ‘revival’, if only
in name, of an Otto
Schenk production long past its sell-by-date, now at long last set to be pensioned
off, Laufenberg offers almost the height of radicalism.
The
staging of the Prelude seems to me a miscalculation, and an embarrassing one at
that. Strauss makes it perfectly clear the sort of thing that is going on. We
have little need to see the Marschallin and Octavian gingerly undressing each
other (though not very far) and disappearing under the sheets. It certainly is
not raunchy; instead, we appear stranded in a no-man’s-land – literally, I suppose
– between ‘tastefulness’ and The Benny
Hill Show. Things improve thereafter, however. Perhaps the most impressive
developmental aspect is the way in which the sense of time, or better of times,
creeps upon us, becomes more complicated – just as in the work itself. The
Marschallin and Octavian might well be where they ‘should’ be, in Maria
Theresa’s Vienna, or rather in Hofmannsthal’s intricate construction thereof,
which is not to be confused, nor is it intended to be, with the ‘real thing’,
or Ranke’s wie es eigentlich gewesen.
As the first act progresses, however, it gradually becomes clearer that we are,
or have progressed, some time later than we had suspected. Is it the nineteenth
century, the period of those Johann Strauss waltzes Richard sublimated? It
seems as though it might be, and then, through costumes and actions, we realise
that we are actually a little later. The time of composition? Yes, perhaps. Ah
no, in the second act, in Faninal’s strenuously ‘beautiful’, up-to-date palace,
we realise that we are probably a little later still. The Marschallin, of
course, lives in a more well-worn establishment, with truer, or at least more
ancient, pedigree, still living, more or less, though perhaps not entirely, the
life she imagines, we imagine, her eighteenth-century self having lived. At
least when at home; the third act deepens historical understanding further.
Octavian seems to understand his life similarly when with her, but proves more
likely, aristocratic pride notwithstanding, to be influenced by his
surroundings; after all, he is young and easily swayed.
The
latest – that is, for the interwar years – ‘media’ techniques are employed in
Faninal’s Faustian bargain: cameramen record the event, but have to be
prevented, with limited success, by his Major-domo, the characterful Tom
Martinsen. It is not as if the years have actually passed; this is not Stefan
Herheim’s Parsifal. However, we
appreciate the construction of past and present, so long as we pay attention
both to the general and the specifically scenic. Moreover, we are certainly
made aware, without having the point unduly hammered home, that the media
attention paid to Sophie is very much an aspect of that heterosexual male gaze
which excites itself with the cavorting of three women in the first place. That
is not, of course, to say that others cannot find much to interest them too in
those relationships, but rather to remind ourselves of the ‘norm’ on which both
work and production seem predicated. The special prominence granted Mohammed,
listed in the programme as ‘der kleine Mohr’ seems odd, though. He is kept as
something akin to the Marschallin’s pet, and the racial overtones – especially
when all the other children were so clearly of ‘Germanic’ appearance – unsettle
without evident reason.
It
is an impressive but far from obtrusive frame, then, in which the specific
action unfolds. The success of that action is doubtless, especially at this
remove from the original production, to be attributed more to the efforts of
those on stage than to the production ‘itself’, but the latter does no harm.
Anja Harteros proved well-nigh perfect as the Marschallin. Her grace and
conviction were married to an alluring tone that yet did not preclude subtle
verbal nuance. One believed in her – and felt with her. Sophie Koch’s Octavian
is of course a very well-known quantity, but seemed reinvented for the
occasion, keenly responsive to others on stage, eminently plausible in his/her
various guises. Christiane Karg’s Sophie was a far more interesting character
than one generally encounters; normally, my reaction is likely to tend towards
irritation at least at her vacuity. Not so in Karg’s case; there was clearly ambition
here, on the part of both singer and character. There was also clearly instant
attraction – perhaps the production overdoes this? – between her and the
rose-bearing count. Adrian Erőd’s Faninal was dry-toned to start with, but gained in
vocal lustre thereafter, offering throughout a detailed portrayal, whether
musically, verbally, or on stage.
Peter Rose’s Ochs was simply
wonderful: a buffo portrayal, yes,
but a portrayal born of deep musico-dramatic intelligence, evidently gauging
and creating the moment as it presented itself. His way with Hofmannsthal’s
text lay beyond reproach. His impatience during the resumption of the Italian
Singer’s aria offered a masterclass in silent stage presence. No one
disappointed and most of the ‘minor’ roles strongly impressed, not least Yosep
Kang’s ardent Singer and Thomas Ebenstein and Christa Mayer as the other
‘Italians’, both more obviously characters than caricatures.
Thielemann’s
conducting was perhaps the finest I have ever heard in this work; so was the playing
of that great Strauss ensemble, the Staatskapelle Dresden. The openings to the
first two acts were perhaps surprisingly, though far from inappropriately,
vigorous, Octavian’s – and Sophie’s – youthful impetuosity to the fore. But the
flexibility with which Thielemann held and developed Strauss’s line was
something truly to savour. Likewise the colour, depth, and allure of the
orchestra, which Thielemann played with virtuosity and understanding that
respected the score and yet beyond it into the truest of performative
‘interpretation’. Caesuras that might on paper sound as if they would disrupt
instead increased our anticipation, the longer line somehow maintained. There
was doubtless an element of theatricality, even of showmanship, but born of a
deep knowledge of ‘what works’; to steal from Strauss’s operatic future, La
Roche himself might have approved. Strauss’s materialistic
development-cum-rejection of Wagner’s orchestral metaphysics was demonstrated,
experienced far better than words could ever hope to do. This was a Greek
Chorus that answered, perhaps after Goethe as much as Nietzsche, to no gods
above. Our life, as the opera and its performance made clear, was here on
earth, in the present – and yet it was also somewhere else and in the past that
had made that present, even if that past had never actually been present. Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding…
