Festspielhaus
Hans Sachs – Michael Volle
Veit Pogner – Günther
Groissböck
Kunz Vogelgsang – Tansel
Akzeybek
Konrad Nachtigall – Armin
Kolarczyk
Sixtus Beckmesser – Johannes
Martin Kränzle
Fritz Kothner – Daniel
Schmutzhard
Balthasar Zorn – Paul Kaufmann
Ulrich Eißlinger – Christopher
Kaplan
Augustin Moser – Stefan Heibach
Hermann Ortel – Raimund Nolte
Hans Schwarz – Andreas Hörl
Hans Foltz – Timo Riihonen
Walther von Stolzing – Klaus
Florian Vogt
David – Daniel Behle
Eva – Camilla Nylund
Magdalena – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Night Watchman – Wilhelm
Schwinghammer
Helga Beckmesser (Harpist) – Ruth-Alice
Marino
Barrie Kosky (director)
Rebecca Ringst (set designs)
Klaus Bruns (costumes)
Franck Evin (lighting)
Regine Freise (video)
Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy)
Bayreuth Festival Chorus
(chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Philippe Jordan (conductor)
As a Wagner scholar, one
becomes wearily accustomed to the most arrant nonsense being spoken and written
about him and his work. The so-called ‘popular imagination’ – usually nothing
of the sort, instead a carefully manufactured commercial view – will stop at
literally nothing in its hunt for grievances. The actual problems Wagner’s work
presents us with are far more important, far more interesting, but no matter.
Perhaps worst of all is the pseudo-– very
pseudo- – ‘literature’ that has been the bane of discourse concerning Wagner
since at least the 1850s. It sells books, makes its way into newspapers; alas,
it now makes its way onstage too. If only Barrie Kosky had been given a Wagner
reading list by someone who knew what (s)he was talking about. Presumably his
dramaturge, Ulrich Lenz, should bear some responsibility here; if his programme
note is anything to go by, he surely does. Moreover, when we reach Kosky’s own
note, we read the following extravagant claim, swiftly moving from the
tendentious to the Ken-Russell-fantastical: ‘Wagner transforms medieval blood
libel and reinvents it into 19th[-]century music libel. Jews used to
drink the blood of Christian children but now they drink the blood of German
culture. And for this crime, for this act of “Crimes against Culture”,
Beckmesser must be expelled from Nuremberg. Rather like those little Jewish
figures in the anti-Semitic 1930’s [sic]
board game “Juden raus!”’
Does it? Alas not. Familiarity may
have blunted somewhat the offence of this Meistersinger
(first reviewed here)
onstage, but that is the best one can say for it. Whether that offence spring
from ignorance or dishonesty is arguably beside the point. So, however, are the
production and its underlying ideology. Moreover, it remains irredeemably glib,
surely a very odd standpoint if one actually believes the things Kosky claims
to, punctuated as it is by reams of slapstick and trademark silly dances. (And
no, Chaplin is not a helpful comparison here: not even slightly.) Still,
notwithstanding a few boos for Kosky on a surprise curtain call, most of the
audience seemed to love the ‘entertainment’ placed before it. Interpolation of all-too-predictable
campery will usually elicit wild applause from a good few. Doubtless others
will flatter themselves that they were made to think. I doubt, though, that
they could tell us how.
Once more, then to Wahnfried.
It is not an original idea, but many things are not. What is ‘original’ – some
might prefer ‘disingenuous’, ‘misleading’, or perhaps something stronger – is
to present Die Meistersinger as
somehow having originated there, in 1873, as part of an invented incident from
Wagner’s life when he supposedly bullied Hermann Levi into kneeling and
genuflecting. Wagner sometimes treated Levi appallingly, quite inexcusably;
sometimes he treated him otherwise. What on earth that has to do with Die Meistersinger I do not know, given that
he completed it in 1867. So all the alleged documentary evidence beamed onstage
– including a temperature for the day, which some in the audience found
side-splittingly hilarious – is untrue. It is not quite presented as ‘true’, of
course, or at least it might be argued that it is not; it is difficult,
however, to avoid the implication that it is so even then, still less when the
production later becomes explicitly an attempt to put Wagner in the dock, on
trial. No evidence for permitted: only (largely) manufactured evidence against.
A weird play of confused,
confusing identities ensue, in which not only does Wagner become both Hans
Sachs and Walther – in a sense, of course, that is fair enough, if a little
restricting – but Liszt becomes Pogner, giving away his daughter, Cosima/Eva.
Why, then, is Levi/Beckmesser – yes, I am afraid so – also wooing Cosima? Hans
von Bülow, maybe, even Nietzsche, but Levi? The Masters have to be made to
loathe Beckmesser from the start, although the words and music tell us quite
differently. Why? Because, in the typical circularity of so much writing on
Wagner and anti-Semitism, Beckmesser is an unattractive character, doing
unattractive things, and therefore must be… well, you know the rest. He
therefore ends up the victim of a pogrom at the close of the second act, replete
with gigantic, horrifying, Völkische
Beobachter caricature of a Jew. None of it makes any sense, because none of
it ever seems either to have been thought through or properly prepared. At the
moment any difficult question arises, one can always have another silly dance,
or zoom in on a Nuremberg courtroom in, you guessed it, 1945. Even better, do
both. Why choose?
Goodness only knows who ‘Helga
Beckmesser’, onstage harpist for Beckmesser’s attempted rendition of the Prize
Song, is supposed to be. She can hardly be his wife, given that he is
attempting to woo Eva, or Cosima, or whomever the poor woman is supposed to be;
unless, that is, Beckmesser nurses aspirations to bigamy, which seems an
eccentric way to work towards his rehabilitation. ‘Helga’ seems actually to be
dressed like Helga from the 1980s BBC sitcom, ’Allo, ’Allo! but perhaps that is just a coincidence. I hope it is,
at any rate. At least much of the second act is played out with greater
theatrical awareness than last time, Wahnfried clutter providing a backdrop,
rather than Sachs and Beckmesser simply sitting in a green space inside a
courtroom. That is a definite improvement, but the concept, if we may call it
that, remains beyond questionable.
Musically, there was much to
admire. Philippe Jordan’s conducting was fluent and inobtrusive (the opposite
of the production, one might say). He handled the massive orchestral and choral
forces with great skill; they responded with all the excellence one should
expect from Bayreuth. This was probably the best Wagner I have heard from him,
perhaps because he responded so keenly to the affinities with Mozart. I was put
in mind of Georg Solti, shortly before his death, speaking of recognition that much
in this work should be conducted as if it were Così fan tutte. Michael Volle’s Sachs was as magisterial as ever:
word, tone, and gesture an object lesson to all. So too, in different vein, was
Johannes Martin Kränzle’s keenly observed Beckmesser. Their chemistry was a
wonder to behold. Klaus Florian Vogt’s assured Walther and Camilla Nylund’s
lively Eva were beautifully complemented by similarly excellent, yet
contrasting, performances from Daniel Behle as David and Wiebke Lehmkuhl as
Magdalena. The relationship between the two couples might justly have been
described, in line with Jordan’s conducting, as Mozartian. Günther Groissböck’s
Pogner was similar impressive, the guild at whose head he stood cast from commendable
depth.
As for the production, Wagner
and his works will survive; they survive worse most days. It does not follow
that they should have to.
