Deutsche Oper, Berlin
 |
| Images: Marcus Lieberenz, from the 2012 premiere (different cast) |
King Henry the Fowler – Marko Mimica
Lohengrin – Brandon Jovanovich
Elsa – Rachel Willis-Sǿrensen
Friedrich von Telramund –
Thomas Johannes Mayer
Herald – Dong-Hwan Lee
Ortrud – Anna Smirnova
Brabantian Noblemen – Ya-Chung
Huang, Andrew Dickinson, Byung Gil Kim, Dean Murphy
Pages – Saskia Meusel, Andrea
Schwarzbach, Cordula Messer, Martina Metzler
Kasper Holten (director)
Steffen Aarfing (designs)
Jesper Kongshaug (lighting)
Claudia Gotta (revival
director)
Chorus and Supplementary Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines) of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin
Donald Runnicles (conductor)
The last time I had seen Lohengrin at the Deutsche Oper it must
have been one of the final performances of the old Götz Friedrich production. It had worn well; indeed, I wrote that ‘it would be better
to retain Friedrich’s production for a while longer than to err by rushing into
replacing it.’ On the basis of seeing this, already the twenty-fourth
performance of Kasper Holten’s production since it was first staged in 2012,
there was no rushing, although the pace of change was nevertheless swift.
Holten’s staging at its best, especially in the second and third acts, has
something pertinent and – to me, at least – new to say. It has made me think
about a work I know reasonably well, which is surely precisely what we should
hope and look for in new stagings of repertory works.
Holten’s production has three
main strands, in which Steffen Aarfing’s designs and Jesper Kongshaug’s highly
dramatic lighting, play, as one would hope, an integral part. The first seems
to me less successful, although it is always difficult to know how much of that
is a matter of changes made once a work is in repertoire and rehearsal time
available. The wartime setting of the work is highlighted, but intermittently.
I tend to think it should either be more present or less; as it is, the slight
coming and going of what seems almost to be a Konzept proves a little distracting or even confusing. It is
certainly to the fore in the First Act Prelude – conducted, by the way, with
magnificent breadth and depth by Donald Runnicles: perhaps his very finest
moment here – when we see a battlefield, strewn with corpses, which women then
visit in grief, one emitting a very loud scream indeed at orchestral climax.
(It will be echoed by Elsa when she sees Gottfried’s corpse at the close: a
powerful moment indeed.) Holten says that he views the Prelude as a kind of
requiem, which seems to me a misunderstanding of both music and mass, but
anyway. Uniforms are to the fore throughout, suggesting soldiers from different
eras, the light mixing of eras intentional, so as not to fix, although again I
am not sure to what end precisely. War between Germany and Denmark over
Schleswig-Holstein, appropriately enough, seems to have formed part of Holten’s
inspiration, even though it came some time after Lohengrin’s genesis and first performance. There is certainly
particular resonance in Berlin to the heavy royal-imperial imagery of
Prussia-Germany, not least in the Tiergarten’s Siegessäule, albeit purely in
the memorial sense, rather than as the queer emblem it has since become:
perhaps a missed opportunity.
For there seems little doubting
Lohengrin’s agenda. Whatever it is he is hiding, it is not in pursuit of
anything other than what we should expect. He acts in unusually predatory fashion
towards Elsa in the third act – quite chilling, in fact – and treats her with
utter contempt thereafter. If he is not going to have her, then what is the
point? Otherwise, he is, quite simply, a politician: a charismatic politician,
yes, but one we can see through immediately and do. I do not think I have seen
so unremittingly negative a portrayal of the ‘hero’ in this work, and it works
very well indeed, confronting one with questions one might prefer never to have
been asked, let alone answered. The angel wings – an angel, a memorial, a swan?
– are taken off once in private. The crowd loves them, though, and he responds
in kind, snake oil salesman, perhaps even thaumaturge, that he is. Does this
disregard the text unduly? I do not think so, for what he says gains new
meaning in such a context. Is he lying? Is Wagner? Or is he at least deluded?
The legacy of the charismatic hero, not least in the wake of war, is after all
a problematic one, to say the least, especially in Germany. (It is in that
respect that I wished the wartime idea had been pressed further, since it comes
across a little unclearly in the crucial final scene.) If only Wagner’s
original ‘Führer’ had been retained, as it was, for instance, in Peter Konwitschny’s celebrated staging, which I saw in Leipzig. None of this, of
course, would have been possible without a fine performance in the title role.
We certainly had that, however, in the case of Brandon Jovanovich, whose
engagement with complexities of work and production was unquestionably one of
the finest I have seen and heard. This was no unearthly hero; this was
preening, fatally attractive man and politician, whom we knew would lead us to
rack and ruin, although we felt unable to stop him. Jovanovich’s range of vocal
colours proved far greater than in many assumptions of the role: never, however,
for its own sake, but always in the service of the drama.
Elsa’s self-realisation is the
other main strand – or at least was for me. Perhaps it was a matter of
execution, or my own reception, but I did not feel that her role, where she was
coming from, and what quite was going on came across strongly enough in the
first act. Yes, she is blindfolded, and will soon begin to see, but her
progress through the crowd, intriguingly led by Ortrud, seems a little
confused, and not in a good way. Thereafter, though, the idea, familiar through
Holten’s Copenhagen Ring, of viewing
the work from a heroine’s standpoint has much to recommend it, especially when the
tragedy truly becomes hers. The crowd remains in Lohengrin’s thrall, but Elsa
has discovered disillusionment, even the abyss. Rachel Willis-Sǿrensen’s
performance in the first act proved somewhat disappointing, her shrillness of
tone extending into sections of the second too. However, she picked herself up
commendably, and ended up giving a splendidly engaged performance, meriting the
character’s shift into the dramatic foreground.
There was much to enjoy in
other performances too. Thomas Johannes Mayer was suffering from a heavy cold,
but did a sterling job under the circumstances. Some, I suppose, might have
found the vibrato of Anna Smirnova as Ortrud a little much. I did not, for
there was always a centre to her singing. Moreover, if there were occasionally
a little of the pantomime villainess to her stage action, I suspect that was
part of the point; if not, it nevertheless grabbed the attention. She was
certainly giving the performance her all, and that was really what mattered.
Marko Mimica proved a subtle King Henry, the competing demands of role and
production – not for the first time, we are moved to ask ‘how does he fit into
all of this?’ –questioningly, fruitfully balanced. Choral singing, as one might
expect at this house, was excellent, as was the playing of the Orchestra of the
Deutsche Oper, very much in its element throughout. Runnicles paced the work
well, its ebb and flow apparent without being forced upon one’s attention. There
was something attractively self-effacing, although far from anonymous, to
conducting that was clearly born of deep knowledge of Wagner’s score.
