Staatsoper Unter den Linden
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| Images: Bernd Uhlig (from the first performances, in 2015) |
Hans Sachs – Wolfgang Koch
Veit Pogner – Matti Salminen
Eva – Julia Kleiter
Walther von Stolzing – Burkhard
Fritz
David – Siyabonga Maqungo
Magdalene – Katharina Kammerloher
Kunz Vogelgesang – Graham Clark
Konrad Nachtigall – Adam Kutny
Sixtus Beckmesser – Martin
Gantner
Fritz Kothner – Jürgen Limm
Balthasar Zorn – Siegfried
Jerusalem
Ulrich Eisslinger – Reiner
Goldberg
Augustin Moser – Florian Hoffmann
Hermann Ortel – Arttu Kataja
Hans Schwarz – Franz Mazura
Hans Foltz – Olaf Bär
Night Watchman – Erik Rosenius
Andrea Moses (director)
Jan Pappelbaum (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)
‘Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar
Ding,’ sings Strauss’s Marschallin: a truth that seems to grow truer with our –
at least with my – every advancing
year. More prosaically, and more specifically, we might also say that openings
and re-openings, constructions and reconstructions, creations and recreations,
unifications and reunifications are strange things: rarely what they seem, and
rarely what the fashionable, the non-critical presume them to be. Such ideas
lie at the heart of Die Meistersinger:
at its heart, concerned with the ongoing creation and performance of a song,
within a society that has both placed such endeavour at its heart and also done its utmost to thwart the same. Perhaps all
societies, at least all bourgeois societies – what could be more bürgerlich than this early modernity
created and recreated by the nineteenth century? – are like that. As Schiller
and Marx, Wagner too, insisted, left to his own devices, man – woman too? –
will create as an artist; as all three lamented, that ‘natural’ state of
affairs rarely, if ever, pertains. At best, a higher, mediated state of unity
might be achieved; but how?
Such thoughts came very much to
mind watching, for the first time, Andrea Moses’ 2015 production of the work.
Not because it really engages with them: alas, this is a sorry piece of
theatre, considered as staging. Nonetheless, the work and its traditions
enabled, at least in retrospect, some manner of critique. The gravest charge
against the production is its tedium, the second its hapless incoherence. (The
two are not unrelated.) It seems to suggest ideas, yet they never seem
grounded, never connected; its amateurism, in the worst sense, suggests what the
Masters might think of Walther before he sings a note (and many of them do once
he has). For the action plays out mostly as if this were the most hidebound of
traditionalist stagings, albeit without either that sixteenth-century (or even
nineteenth-century) ‘original’ context or a new one to put in its place. The
first act takes place in something resembling a concert hall – there are
apprentice ushers, or something like that, in black tie – or perhaps a
corporate event, Masters’ names displayed as if sponsors. Nothing, however,
makes much sense, since there is no apparent effort to explain, to criticise,
to create, to recreate, and so forth. Or is it a sportsground sponsors’ lounge,
competition here being the thing? Perhaps, for the second act takes place in
what seems to be the backstage of a stadium. For some reason – or none – the
inhabitants of Nuremberg are now in punk garb. That seems implicitly to be the
reason, though surely not the intention, for their descending into a riot, in
which football flags are waved. Beckmesser has meanwhile, bafflingly, squeezed
himself into sixteenth-century costume. Everyone else has otherwise wandered
around aimlessly, save for Walther and Eva who wrap themselves in an
ever-present German flag. An Orthodox Jew walks across stage during the
turmoil, untouched by and seemingly oblivious to it. I have no idea either…
The first part of the third act
moves to a library: fair enough in itself, as setting for Sachs’s world
chronicle, although there is no sense of how it relates to anything that has
gone before, still less of who these people might be and why they might act as
they do. The Festwiese scene
attempts, I think, to tie things together, but not only is it too late, the
message it appears to project is glib and disturbing, as well as ultimately
incoherent. For the production’s origins now come more clearly to the fore. It
had originally been intended that this Meistersinger
should reopen the renovated eighteenth-century house on Unter den Linden. Work
having fallen behind – or new work having been necessitated – that was delayed
until 2017, Daniel Barenboim and the outgoing Intendant, Jürgen Flimm, then
presenting a staged version of Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust’. Both
‘reopenings’, anticipated and actual – even the latter was a little false, the
theatre soon closing again until December – were scheduled for Germany’s new
national day, the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, which explicitly celebrates the
anniversary of reunification in 1990. The first performance, it seems, took
place in two parts: the first two acts on the day itself, the third the
following day (the equivalent to Wagner’s Johannistag morning-after to Polterabend, I suppose).
With that in mind, one can
perhaps see the celebrations by the Spree, our Pegnitz substitute, as trying,
Sachs-like, to bring peace, even unity, to the revelry and violence of the night
before. Alas, it is all terribly confused. Is the ‘night before’ the troubled
German, past and the ‘morning after’ the here and now? If so, that makes little
sense in terms of the premiere chronology; it also makes no sense of the settings,
all ‘present’, if little related. The backdrop of the absurdly ‘restored’ old
Berliner Schloss – ironically, a mere Potemkin façade, – suggests, however,
that we are intended to reflect in such a way. Those who might have preferred a
restored GDR Palast der Republik or something new will have had very different
thoughts, uneasy at this banal, Disneyfied celebration of capital’s victory
over socialism. (I saw the ‘new-old’ façade for the first time fully risen,
whilst walking to the performance: a dispiriting sight indeed.) Seemingly as an
afterthought, a few Kaiserreich flags are flown and, captured by Sachs, cast into
the river. Given that the palace was the Hohenzollerns’, ‘modern’ rejection of
that flag seems disingenuous. Most bewildering, though, is the appearance of
two Arab ‘sheikhs’ with bodyguard. Our Master ‘sponsors’, their logos again
proudly displayed, act with great solicitude to them, explaining events – would
that they had to us – and caring for their needs. Have they funded the ‘event’?
And if so, what might that mean? They notably leave the stage before the close,
excluded or excluding themselves from the final celebration, replete with
German flag. A celebration of corporate, ‘moderate’ nationalism, then, from
which financially enabling non-Germans must absent themselves? Try as I might,
I cannot come up with an inoffensive explanation – even should that prove to be
mere cluelessness.
Faced with such irritating nonsense,
I found it difficult to concentrate on the musical performances in themselves,
though much was clearly admirable. Barenboim’s command of the outstanding Staatskapelle
Berlin continues greatly to impress, flexibility, clarity, delight in the score’s
Mozartian, conversational qualities, and a thorough grounding in Wagner’s
harmonic plan unquestionably apparent. His idea of presenting an array of old
Masters – some may recall a similar concept at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival to
mark Brian McMaster’s farewell – was engaging. It was a delightful thing indeed
to encounter and re-encounter so many great names from the past, such as
Siegfried Jerusalem, Graham Clark, and Olaf Bär, all the way to Franz Mazura,
due to celebrate his ninety-fifth birthday the following day. Matti Salminen’s
Pogner fell into that category too, occasional instability a price well-worth
paying for sheer likeability. Wolfgang Koch gave a typically thoughtful,
musicianly performance as Sachs, interacting nicely with Martin Gantner’s
Beckmesser, Julia Kleiter’s sprightly, sometimes radiant Eva understandably
torn. Burkhard Fritz’s Walther had his moments – though they were not always
happy; he kept going, though, which is something. Siyabonga Maqungo’s David and
Katharina Kammerloher’s Magdalene both impressed in lively, detailed
assumptions, making as much as could reasonably be expected from a difficult
situation.
If, ultimately, many of these
performances seemed more observed than felt, that may well have been the fault
of the production – and my inability to rise above it. There will be other
creations and recreations, though, other attempts to construct and reconstruct
the past, present, and future. This production’s predecessor from Harry Kupfer
still lingers in the mind; let us hope the next in line will prove worthier.
