Schillertheater
Images: Monika Rittershaus Orest's Tutor (Franz Mazura), Elektra (Evelyn Herlitzius) Aegisth (Stephan Rügamer) and Klytämnestra (Waltraud Meier) |
Elektra
– Evelyn Herlitzius
Chrysothemis
– Adrianne PieczonkaKlytämnestra – Waltraud Meier
Orest – Michael Volle
Aegisth – Stephan Rügamer
First Maid – Bonita Hyman
Second Maid, Train-bearer – Marina Prudenskaya
Third Maid – Katharina Kammerloher
Fourth Maid – Anna Samuil
Fifth Maid – Roberta Alexander
Overseer, Confidante – Cheryl Studer
Young Servant – Florian Hoffmann
Old Servant – Donald McIntyre
Orest’s Tutor – Franz Mazura
Patrice
Chéreau (director)
Vincent Huguet, Peter McClintock (assistant
directors)Richard Peduzzi (set designs)
Caroline de Vivaise (costumes)
Dominique Bruguière (lighting)
Berlin State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Wright)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
Elektra |
I was fortunate enough to see the Met
broadcast of Patrice Chéreau’s Elektra
in April. Conducted with white-heat intensity by Esa-Pekka Salonen, with the
orchestra on exceptional form, a cast headed by Nina Stemme in the title role
convinced this relative sceptic concerning cinema broadcasts that the experience
might, in many ways, match that of being in the theatre. I shall spare you a
half-baked discourse on liveness and mediation for now; there are others who
might actually have interesting things to say on the subject. Comparison,
however, is inevitable. What intrigued, if disappointed me, was that, on
balance, and with certain exceptions, New York came off slightly better.
As I wrote last time, poor productions, performances
being another matter, of Elektra are
few and far between. Set designs tend to look very similar indeed, and the work
itself seems to be one of those that is less amenable, or less welcoming, to radical
reinterpretation. Perhaps that in part reflects Hofmannsthal’s own particular
reworking of Sophocles. What would one do? Return to a putative original?
Whatever for? Nevertheless, Chéreau’s humanism, and what I was – and still am –
tempted to call feminism, does offer something new and convincing for a Konzept.
Klytämnestra and Elektra |
It is hardly novel to consider Elektra as
damaged, but here, one sees a woman – or is she a girl? – so damaged, so
traumatised, that her illness almost is the story. What we see is surely real,
whatever that might mean; but imagination can run alongside reality. Whether
one experiences the close of the opera as catharsis is open to question, even
to taste, perhaps even to one’s mood, but here there is absolutely, without
question, none on stage. She participates more clearly, more directly, in
Orest’s revenge than she normally would – so does his tutor, here played by
Franz Mazura, well into his nineties! – and yet, in some sense, she appears
almost to be a bystander. Her clumsy, shellshocked attempt to dance at the end,
once again clashing with, undercutting, criticising our voyeuristic desires for
enjoyment – do we shade into the realm of Lacanian jouissance? – remains a shocking thing indeed. And it focuses our
attention somehow both on what she does and does not do, and upon the emptiness
of Strauss’s C major conclusion.
Orest's Tutor |
Has she emerged in a still worse position
than she was before, or has what we have witnessed made no difference at all?
Is the latter perhaps just as terrifying a prospect as the latter? A clash
between generations, underlined by the presence onstage of veterans such as
Mazura, Donald McIntyre, Cheryl Studer, and Roberta Alexander, has briefly
offered a semblance of hope, the reunion of old retainers and abused children
supremely touching here. Is not the real problem that of, as it were, the
post-Atreus Baby Boomers? Yes, in a way, at least for now – although let us not
forget how Klytämnestra herself has suffered – but that implies no hope for the
future. People so damaged as Elektra and Orest: well, forget it...
Oddly, though, I think what I saw and
understood – if indeed I understood it – may well have come across a little better
on screen. Chéreau was a great film-maker, of course, but he was also a great
man of the theatre. The unsparing nature of HD cinema had worked to the
advantage of Stemme and also Waltraud Meier. I described their performances in
New York as portrayals ‘that would
have been astonishing had they been actresses in a spoken drama, a spoken
filmed dramas’. Not being so
close had its drawbacks in this case, especially when the Klytämnestra ‘was so much more rounded than the norm,
indeed so much more rounded than I have ever heard’. One always needs to see Meier as well
as hear her, and perhaps even more so at this stage of her career. But Evelyn Herlitzius’s
Elektra, whilst an extraordinary achievement, by any standards, chilled me less
than Stemme’s; Herlitzius, is I suppose, a less cool – to put it mildly –
performer. She gave it her all, had us utterly enthralled, but for me, at least
– and I realise this is an unfair criticism – she seemed perhaps less in tune
with what I imagined to be Chéreau’s conception.
Adrianne
Pieczonka once again gave as fine a performance as Chysothemis as one could
hope to hear. The range of vocal colours alone was enough to satisfy the price
of entry. Michael Volle was at least as impressive as Orest, finer still, I
think, than New York’s excellent Eric Owens (although who cares?) Volle’s way
with German words is second to none; their combination with as damaged, if
differently so, a personality as Elektra’s made for powerful theatre indeed.
There were no weak performances; the contributions from Mazura and Alexander in
particular proved deeply moving.
Had I not heard Salonen, I might have had little quibble
with Daniel Barenboim’s conducting. By most standards, it was excellent; the
playing of the Staatskapelle Berlin, the occasional rough edge apart, most
certainly was throughout. However, I missed a little the icy control of
Salonen, perfectly complementing Stemme. Barenboim, almost always at his best
in Wagner, is perhaps less of a Straussian. His gift for hearing a work as if
in a single breath seemed slightly to desert him here; phrases and paragraphs
were all present, though, and that whole was not so very far off. There remained
a great deal to admire and to experience, and one cannot always have everything.