Glyndebourne Opera House
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| Hans Sachs (Gerald Finley) Images: Tristram Kenton/Glyndebourne |
Walther – Michael Schade
Eva – Amanda MajeskiMagdalene – Hanna Hipp
David – David Portillo
Veit Pogner – Alastair Miles
Sixtus Beckmesser – Jochen Kupfer
Hans Sachs – Gerald Finley
Kunz Vogelgesang – Colin Judson
Konrad Nachtigall – Andrew Slater
Fritz Kothner – Darren Jeffery
Hermann Ortel – Nicholas Folwell
Balthasar Zorn – Alasdair Elliott
Augustin Moser – Daniel Norman
Ulrich Eisslinger – Adrian Thompson
Hans Foltz – Henry Waddington
Hans Schwarz – Sion Goronwy
Night Watchman – Patrick Guetti
David McVicar (director)
Vicki Mortimer (designs)Andrew George (choreography)
Paule Constable (lighting)
The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus
master: Jeremy Bines)
London Philharmonic OrchestraMichael Güttler (conductor)
Having been privileged already
to see in little over two months two great productions of Die Meistersinger, one
in Paris (Stefan Herheim) and one in Munich (David Bösch), I was unable to resist the prospect of a third
staging, at Glyndebourne. Alas, David McVicar’s production – for the moment, I
am considering solely the staging, for there was much to admire in the musical
performance – proved by far the weakest. Alas, we see here the continuation of
the sad decline of a once accomplished director – his ENO
Turn of the Screw remains the
finest I have seen – into the Franco Zeffirelli de nos jours. McVicar’s Glyndebourne Entführung seemed like a caricature of something from an alleged ‘golden
age’, which of course never was and never could have been, before the alleged
invention of big, bad ‘Regietheater’.
As I discuss in my recent book, After Wagner, that would take us back at least before Wagner’s own opera
stagings. Indeed, it would take us back, paradoxically, to a time of opera
staging prior to the origins of opera.
Such an approach, if one may
call it that, disdaining,
with more than a hint of Teutonophobia, any hint of the directorial Konzept, could hardly find a
composer less suited to it than Wagner. And yet, there seems, to start with, as
though there might actually be a Konzept:
well, an updating, at least. For the action does not take place in
sixteenth-century Nuremberg, but rather in the earlier nineteenth century,
presumably at around the time Wagner was growing up. There is much to be said for
such an idea, looking at the societal influences upon the young Wagner, which
certainly helped shape his world-view (from a more hostile standpoint, his
ideology). Moreover, the guilds and corporations came under sustained post-Enlightenment
attack at this time, the Stein-Hardenberg reforms in Prussia, for instance, offering
more or less the only instance in that reforming programme of a policy
vehemently opposed by Hegel (as an attack on partial association, on civil
society). The guild in Nuremberg, then, might be portrayed as under attack;
that, after all, is partly the meaning of Walther’s intrusion, a typical
Wagnerian move of introducing a charismatic leader from outside. And so we
might go on. There is, unfortunately, no attempt to do anything with the
updating. Indeed, as with the aforementioned Entführung, or as with McVicar’s
Marriage of Figaro for the Royal
Opera, one is left with the nasty suspicion that the principal point, or at
least principal result, of the updating is simply to present us with a host of ‘pretty’
designs. Vicki Mortimer’s handsome designs might have done so much more – or even
just a little more.
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| Beckmesser (Jochen Kupfer) attempts the Prize Song |
Moreover, the typical McVicar
trait of reducing drama to mere ‘entertainment’ is much in evidence here. There
is nothing wrong with art being entertaining, of course; much of it would be
failing if, in at least some sense, it were not. However, here the playing to the
gallery – and not in some metatheatrical sense, imitating or leading the
relationship between the Masters and the populace – becomes especially wearying.
‘Amusing’ interpolations, which serve little or no purpose other than to make
those who have partaken of a few too many erupt into apparently helpless
laughter, are too often the order of the day. (Quite what led someone to the
verge of hysteria during Sachs’s Wahn
monologue, I have no idea; on that occasion, the responsibility does not seem
to have lain with the production.) And since every McVicar production now seems
to have compulsory choreography by Andrew George, we have silly, irrelevant
dances, especially painful at the opening of the second act. Beckmesser, for
some reason best known to the director, becomes a preening figure of high camp.
Fortunately, the score was in
better hands. The London Philharmonic Orchestra was on excellent form
throughout. Clearly well rehearsed, the orchestra offered as satisfying a
German tone – the strings, to my ears, more typically Brahmsian than one often
hears in Wagner, but certainly, in this of all Wagner’s dramas, none the worse
for that – as one is likely to hear in this country. There were, moreover, many
elements of exquisite wind-playing, doubtless having their roots, at least in
part, in the LPO’s long experience of performing Mozart here at Glyndebourne. Michael
Güttler’s conducting never drew attention to itself; in the first and second
acts, it perhaps lacked the sense of life with which the greatest Wagner
conductors will bring the melos into
dramatic reality, but there was sure structural understanding. In the third
act, which, perhaps not coincidentally, offers a more satisfying, if defiantly
conservative, experience in McVicar’s staging too, Güttler seemed relatively liberated.
His was never an ‘interventionist’ account, but there was a greater willingness
to play, and to let the singers, play with the ebb and flow.
What made this Meistersinger compulsory viewing (and
listening) for me, however, was Gerald Finley’s Hans Sachs. Finley had also
played the role in Herheim’s Paris production. Perhaps because of the lack of
anything here to say from the staging, he sounded, if anything, finer still. At
any rate, the distinction of his performance fell into greater relief, for I
have never heard a finer rendition, more anguished and yet, ultimately, more
imbued with relative hope, of the Wahn
monologue than here. In ‘purely’
musical and in verbal terms, this was a Sachs whose role emerged from lengthy experience
and understanding of Lieder. The size
of the house probably helped too, the Bastille perhaps not the ideal venue for
Finley, excellent though his Paris performance undoubtedly was.
Michael Schade seemed miscast,
I am afraid, as Walther. If he made a better job of the role than I should have
suspected, he too often sounded strained. Little of the ‘natural’ – whatever that
might mean – ease with which Walther should pour forth his artistry was
present. However, his Eva, Amanda Majeski, offered a beautifully sung
performance, drawing, as does the character, upon greater reserves of feeling
as the work progressed. There was nothing of Bösch’s radical (feminist)
reappraisal here, of course, but Sajeski did a good deal with what she had. Jochen
Kupfer did a sterling job with McVicar’s jarring understanding of Beckmesser;
indeed, he managed almost to convince us that this was an illuminating
standpoint. If he could not quite do so, that was not the fault of this fine
actor, whose darkly attractive vocal portrayal proved equally impressive; I
hope to see him play the role in another staging. David Portillo’s lyric tenor
was just the thing for David: his was an eager, diligent, attractively sung
performance very much in the traditional mode. Hanna Hipp’s Magdalene
complemented him with similar qualities and great warmth of tone. Alastair
Miles’s Pogner sounded somewhat elderly at times, but that is hardly inappropriate
here. Last but far from least, the singing of the Glyndebourne Chorus, well-prepared
indeed by Jeremy Bines, was something to savour from beginning to end. In a
house of this size, it sounded just right: words and music in excellent balance,
warmth and clarity anything but antithetical. If only the staging had given
them something more interesting to do.
