The Fair at Sorochintsy, Komische Oper, 2 April 2017

Komische Oper, Berlin

Dream Vision ballet sequence
Image: Monika Rittershaus

 

Solopu Cherevik – Jens Larsen

Khivrya – Agnes Zwierko
Parasya –Mirka Wagner
Gritsko - Alexander Lewis
Afanasy Ivanovich – Ivan Turšić
Gypsy – Hans Gröning
Kum/Chernobog, Master of the Demons – Tom Erik Lie
Choral Solos – Friederike Meinke, Paula Rummel, Volker Herden, Matthias Spenke
 

Barrie Kosky (director)

Katrin Lea Tag (designs)
Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy)
Franck Evin (lighting)

Children’s Chorus of the Komische Oper, Berlin (chorus mistress: Dagmar Fiebach)

Chorus of the Komische Oper, Berlin (chorus master: David Cavelius)

Vocalconsort Berlin

Orchestra of the Komische Oper, Berlin

Henrik Nánási (conductor)

Who would not want to stage a third opera by Mussorgsky? Boris Godunov and Khovanschina are universally regarded as two of the greatest musico-dramatic works of the nineteenth century, even if neither, and the latter in particular, is performed nearly so often as it should be. Thanks are due, then, to the Komische Oper and Barrie Kosky simply for performing The Fair at Sorochintsy for the first time since 1948, in Walter Felsenstein's very first season, let alone for doing it so well. This new production is something of which all who have taken part can justly be proud.

 

There are problems, of course, but there always will be with this work (if indeed one can call it that). If one has to piece together something that cannot fail to be somewhat fragmentary, all the better for active listening and spectating. The theatre is not, or should not be, a place simply to sit back and ‘enjoy’. Richard Taruskin’s New Grove article lists four versions that have been staged. This is the fourth, now standard insofar as one can speak of ‘standard’ for such a rarity: the edition by Pavel Lamm, completed and orchestrated by Vissarion Shebalin, first performed in Moscow in 1932. (An earlier version of this version, as it were, similarly prepared by Shebalin, had been given in Leningrad the previous year.) Even without the textual difficulties – to put it mildly – the listener would most likely experience something of a shock, or at least a surprise, upon hearing the music that is unquestionably Mussorgsky’s. Very little stands in the radical line of Boris. The opera is not a tragedy, but a comedy of peasant life, after a story by Gogol, and the musical style is simpler, closer to a more ‘popular’ conception of what is Russian. Taruskin, having noted that it ‘is frankly a number opera,’ – impossible to dissent from that! – goes on to say that it is ‘possibly modelled to some degree on Gulak-Artemovsky’s popular “Little Russian” Singspiel Zaporozhets za Dunayem,’ and, ‘as traditionally befits a peasant comedy, even the dialogue scenes are modelled not on speech but on folktunes’. Indeed, there is one such recurring theme I half-wondered whether I recognised from The Rite of Spring, but suspect that it was similarity rather than identity. (I should happily be informed and/or corrected!)

 

Shebalin’s orchestration and composition likewise – to my ears, anyway – distance the music from what I have come to think of as authentically Mussorgskian. Brighter, more ‘conventional’ orchestral colouring, seemingly more characteristic of other nineteenth-century Russian composers, Tchaikovsky included, is accomplished, but does not necessarily sound quite ‘right’. Perhaps, though, that is my fault, in expecting this very different work to sound more like Mussorgsky’s other operas than it should. The interpolated music was as follows: before the first and after the third: Rimsky-Korsakov’s Hebrew Song, op.7 no.2; and, between the first and second acts, Mussorgsky’s own ‘Trepak’ from his Songs and Dances of Death; between the second and third, his ‘Cradle Song’, also from that celebrated cycle; in the third act, ‘The Field Marshal,’ likewise from that set.

 

A Gogol opera would almost seem made for Barrie Kosky, offering magic, sex, exoticism, and of course grotesquerie. He and his production team certainly do a fine job here. Katrin Lea Tag’s set designs are relatively spare, without being minimalist; they provide an excellent frame for Kosky’s always detailed, convincing Personenregie. There is no doubting the mastery of his craft here. Costumes are undogmatically suggestive of when and where one would expect: no fetishisation, but again a way into the drama. The Dream Vision ballet sequence is, unsurprisingly, an exception to any hint of spareness. The sudden appearance of St John’s Eve on Bald Mountain seems bizarre, even incongruous, but one comes to feel that is part of the point (which, in a sense, of course, it is). Kosky’s fantastical imagination here runs riot. One does not necessarily understand, although one may feel compelled to attempt interpretation nevertheless. It is spectacle in the best sense, though, mysteriously changing what we have seen and heard forever.

 

The lavish banquet for diabolical beings with pig heads (Chernobod, Master of the Demons, speaking to us with hellish amplification) has been clearly prefigured, moreover, in the second-act scene in which Khivyra has her assignation with the priest’s son, Afanasy Ivanovich. After some sexually inventive shenanigans with the contents of her larder, she must hide him quickly, her husband, the drunken peasant Cherevik and others returning. Stuffing him as far as he will go into a pig’s head is, rightly, both absurd and absurdist, and yet also preparing the way for what is to come. Jens Larsen and Agnes Zwierko both gave strong, characterful performances in those two roles, a fine sense of theatre contributing to their musical success. As their daughter and her suitor, Parasya and Gritsko, Mirka Wagner and Alexander Lewis also shone brightly, their lyrical moments beautiful indeed, stylish and on occasion even heart-rending. As so often in this house, there was a very fine sense of company, all contributing to something greater than the sum of its parts. (If only British houses still retained such a thing as a company in that emphatic sense.)

Henrik Nánási shaped the action well, in an account of the score that seemed to relish rather than to feel any hint of embarrassment towards the interpolations, revisions, orchestrations, and so on. It did not sound like Boris, for it could not. The orchestra was in any case on excellent form: precise and colourful, supportive and spectacular. So too were the magnificent choruses, their members’ acting as impressive as their command of the musical and verbal text. That goes for the children too. All choral singers had clearly benefited greatly from the preparation offered by David Cavelius (also the furnisher of arrangements of three of those four interpolated items, the ‘Cradle Song’ remaining, touchingly, in its original form) and Dagmar Fiebach. No wonder Nánási brought Cavelius forward. Olga Caspruk made an excellent impression as bandurist, returning us to a Ukraine that, imagined or otherwise, inevitably provoked complicated emotions in 2017. What to make of it all? That was as much up to us as the performers: in this problematical work, just as in many others, that will always, quite rightly, be the case.


(This first night performance may be viewed here on The Opera Platform, for the next six months.)

King Roger, Royal Opera, 1 May 2015



Images: ROH/Bill Cooper

Royal Opera House

Archbishop – Alan Ewing

Deaconess – Agnes Zwierko
King Roger – Mariusz Kwiecień
Edrisi – Kim Begley
Roxana – Georgia Jarman
Shepherd – Saimir Pirgu

Kasper Holten (director)

Steffen Aarfing (designs)
Jon Clark (lighting)
Luke Halls (video)
Cathy Marston (choreography)
John Lloyd Davies (dramaturgy)
 
Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)


At last, Szymanowski’s masterpiece, King Roger, has reached Covent Garden. With one, sadly predictable, exception, it receives excellent treatment too. What a joy it is to see staged here a work, which, like Janáček’s bizarrely ignored operas, is no longer than it need be, and so handsomely repays attention in every minute of its mere ninety. (Incidentally, placing an interval after the second act was surely a mistake; this is a work considerably shorter than Salome or Elektra, and nothing was gained by having to step outside for half an hour.)

 

Kasper Holten’s production is relatively straightforward, but none the worse for that. Save for gentle costume updating to the time of composition, it is difficult to imagine self-styled ‘traditionalists’ having anything much to worry about. A gigantic King Roger’s head, in different states, inhabits the centre of the stage. Are we to understand that the conflict between Apollo and Dionysus is entirely within his head? Probably not; surely there remains some important element of the social. However, a reminder that this is, amongst other things, his conflict is no bad thing. Oppressive, patriarchal Orthodoxy surrounds the realm of the personal in the first act.

 

In the second, the head turns around so as to reveal, if  not strictly speaking, the inner palace courtyard of the libretto, then something pretty close: royal quarters, in which books – is that, ultimately, whence these dangerous ideas come? Nietzsche, perhaps? – are prominent. In the basement are writhing bodies, refugees from Tannhäuser’s Venusberg – which, in terms of the work, musically as well as conceptually, is very much what they should be. Cathy Marston’s choreography did little for me, I am afraid, but having recently endured again the absurdly excessive dance of Sasha Waltz’s Tannhäuser, there was relief for me to be had in lesser intrusion.

The third act, rightly, presents ruins, both social and personal. The head has been destroyed under whatever new dispensation it is the Dionysian Shepherd offers. Not for the first time, I thought of Henze’s The Bassarids in Christof Loy’s Munich production. The dangers of this brave new world are clear, for, not only have the erstwhile faithful blindly followed their new master, they blithely throw a few surviving books upon the pyre. To destroy culture is cheap, as inconoclasts from Alexandria to Rupert Murdoch to ISIS have known all too well; the cost is crippling. Mere hedonism is not the way forward; the blinding light at the end – here as simple and as striking as in Mariusz Treliński’s production, which I saw in Edinburgh in 2008 – shows that another path for Roger, and for us, will not be easy; it may not even be right. We need, however, to try. If, sadly, as in Treliński’s staging, Szymanowski’s overt homoeroticism is played down, then there are other ideas well worth pondering: not hammered home, for such tends not to be Holten’s way of operating, but more open-ended, which seems quite apt for the work and, in particular, for its unresolved, perhaps irresolvable, conclusion. After all, the final C major chord is no more convincing as affirmation than that in Elektra; the Shepherd’s strains remain.

Antonio Pappano’s conducting proved somewhat disappointing, although he certainly seemed aware of the difficulties of balance within the orchestra and for the most part steered a judicious enough path in that respect. However, if not so bedevilled by stopping and starting as his Wagner, Pappano’s account nevertheless seemed incapable for the most part of rising above the indifference of mezzo piano, to misquote Pierre Monteux. The orchestra here is defiantly post-Wagnerian, at least as much a character as anything we see on stage; here, despite some truly excellent playing, Pappano reduced it to mere accompaniment. There was too much of a tendency to meander, too: a hostage to fortune to those who would claim Szymanowski’s world amorphous. It is not, but it requires a more comprehending conductor to present to full advantage its golden tapestry in motion.

 

Choral singing, however, was excellent, from, to quote Stephen Downes’s excellent programme note, that ‘majestic, awe-inspiring chorus’ onwards. Indeed, in that’ Byzantine Sanctus sung in harmonies that evoke archaic primitivism and power,’ the basses – a sizable extra chorus had been enlisted – offered a highly convincing impression of their Eastern European confrères. Weight and sensitive diction were, throughout, shown to be anything but opposing tendencies. Renato Balsadonna and his singers deserve great credit, not least for discretely posing the question of to what extent we might consider this work a staged oratorio. It is a tendency rather than an identity, but a worthwhile tendency to raise, especially given the subject matter.

The cast was excellent too. At its heart stood Mariusz Kwiecień’s Roger. Although an ailing Kwiecień sounded – if only relatively – a little tired at the end of the second and third acts, that in no way detracted from the thoughtful heroism of his portrayal. It is a role with which, of course, he has a lengthy association; indeed, on this occasion, it seemed made for him, so close were his identification and projection of the King’s conflicting voices. This was certainly not a Roger, even when unwell, who stood in need of Pappano’s quenching the fires of Szymanowski’s orchestra. The rest of the cast seemed no more in need of that. Saimir Pirgu offered an alluring, properly dangerous, ultimately yet prematurely triumphant Shepherd, whom many would have followed. The alterity of his Lydian-inflected music, deliberately non-developmental, ‘an enclosed, complete and self-referential musical system’ (Downes), made its dramatic point strongly, even without the overwhelming orchestral contribution that might have been present. Georgia Jarman’s Roxana certainly seemed clear why she was doing so, yet not without affection for her consort; one sensed that she would like to have included him. Her second-act aria was as ravishingly sensual as anyone might decently – or indecently – have hoped. Alan Ewing, Agnes Zwierko, and Kim Begley all distinguished themselves in the smaller roles. Old Szymanowski hands and newcomers alike should hasten to the Royal Opera House.

 

Rusalka, Royal Opera, 27 February 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Nymphs and Rusalka (Camilla Nylund)
Images: Royal Opera/Clive Barda

Rusalka – Camilla Nylund
Foreign Princess – Petra Lang
Prince – Bryan Hymel
Ježibaba – Agnes Zwierko
Vodník – Alan Held
Huntsman – Daniel Grice
Gamekeeper – Gyula Orendt
Kitchen Boy – Ilse Eerens
Wood Nymphs – Anna Devin, Justina Gringyte, Madeleine Pierard
Mourek – Claire Talbot

Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabito (directors)
Samantha Seymour (revival director)
Barbara Ehnes (set designs)
Anja Rabes (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Chris Kondek (video designs)
Altea Garrido (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Yannick Nézet-Seguin (conductor)


It is a truth universally acknowledged that an interesting opera production will be met with incomprehension and lazy, philistine hostility by vast swathes of the audience in many, perhaps most, of the world’s ‘major’ houses, a truth that renders one all the more grateful for the Royal Opera showing the courage to stage this new – to London – production of Rusalka. That is not to say that any production meeting with hostility qualifies as interesting; some, of course, are simply not very good, or worse. Yet, it seems that only the most vapid, unchallenging – and yes, I realise that the word ‘challenging’ is a red rag to self-appointed ‘traditionalist’ bulls – of productions will garner approval from the ranks of the petite bourgeoisie. The boorish behaviour of those who booed this Rusalka equates more or less precisely to the sort of antics they would condemn if they occurred on the street – the work of ‘hoodlums’, the ‘lower classes’, the ‘uneducated’, ‘rioters’, ‘immigrants’, et al. – yet somehow unwillingness or inability to think, the fascistic refusal to consider an alternative point of view, the threat of mob violence, becomes perfectly acceptable when one has paid the asking price for what they consider to be their rightful ‘entertainment’. They would no more bother to understand, to explore, to question, Rusalka were it depicted in the most ’traditional’ of fashions, of course, but they explode at the mere suggestion that a work and a performance might ask something of them. For, as John Stuart Mill famously noted, ‘Although it is not true that all conservatives are stupid people, it is true that most stupid people are conservative.’ Wagner’s ‘emotionalisation of the intellect’ – ‘emotionalisation’, not abdication! – remains as foreign a country to them as it did to the Jockey Club thugs who prevented Tannhäuser from being performed in Paris; at least one might claim that the latter were having to deal with challenging ‘new music’, Zukunftsmuik, even. Here they were faced with an opera by Dvořák, first performed in 1901, in a staging that would barely raise an eyebrow in most German house or festivals. (The production, by Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito, hails initially from the Salzburg Festival.) It would be interesting to know how many of those booing had selfishly, uncomprehendingly disrupted a recent Marriage of Figaro in the same house by erupting into laughter at the very moment Count Almaviva sought forgiveness from the Countess. (There was also, bizarrely, to be heard at the opening of the third act a shouted call from a member of the audience for a ‘free’ Quebec.)

Rusalka, Prince (Bryan Hymel), and Foreign Princess (Petra Lang)

What, then, was it that incurred the wrath of the Tunbridge Wells beau monde? I can only assume that it was for the most part Barbara Ehnes’s sets, since the stage direction (presumably a good part of it from revival director, Samantha Seymour) was more often that not quite in harmony with the urgings and suggestions of Dvořák’s score. (The hostile rarely if ever listen to the music; at best, they follow the surtitles and bridle at deviations from what they imagine the stage directions might have been.) Even modern dress is mixed with a sense of the magical, the environment of Ježibaba the witch a case in point. There is even a cat, played both in giant form by Claire Talbot, and in real form, by – a cat, ‘Girlie’. What is real, and what is not? Collision between spirit and human worlds is compellingly brought to life, the devils and demons of a heathen past, including Slavonic river spirits (rusalki) come to tempt, to question, to lay bare the delusions of moralistic, bigoted modernity. Just as modern ‘love’ and marriage’ quickly boil down to money and power, so Vodník the water goblin finds his tawdry place of temptation whilst issuing his moralistic warnings. (Did the audience see itself reflected in the mirror? Perhaps, though I doubt that it even bothered to think that far.) Our ideas of Nature having been hopelessly compromised by what we have become, we ‘naturally’ see the world of rusalki from within the comforts of our hypocritical bordello. Who is exploiting whom, and who is ‘impure’? The souls of women who have committed suicide and of stillborn children – there are various accounts of who the rusalki actually are – or those who shun them in life and in death? Wieler and Morabito do not offer agitprop; rather they allow us to ask these questions of the work, and of ourselves. But equally importantly, they permit a sense of wonder to suffuse what remains very much a fairy tale, realism coexisting with, being corrected by, something older, more mysterious, more dangerous, and perhaps ultimately liberating. Chris Kondek’s video designs, not unlike the hydroelectric dam of Patrice Chéreau’s ‘Centenary’ Ring, both suggest Nature and through their necessary technological apparatus remind us of our distance from any supposed ‘Golden Age’, just as the opening scene will inevitably suggest to us Alberich, the Rhinemaidens, and the power of the erotic. (Wagner used the term liebesgelüste.)

Musical performances were equally strong, in many respects signalling a triumph for Covent Garden. First and foremost should be mentioned Yannick Nézet-Séguin, making his Royal Opera debut. The orchestra played for him as if for an old friend, offering a luscious, long-breathed Romanticism that made it sound a match – as, on its best days, it is – for any orchestra in the world. Magic was certainly to be heard: the sound of Dvořák’s harps again took me back to Das Rheingold – and to Bernard Haitink’s tenure at the house. Ominous fate was brought into being with similar conviction and communicative skill. Above all, Nézet-Séguin conveyed both a necessary sense of direction and a love for the score’s particular glories. If there are times when Dvořák might benefit from a little more, at least, of Janáček’s extraordinary dramatic concision, it would take a harder heart than mine to eschew the luxuriance on offer both in score and performance. Crucially, staging and performance interacted so that the contrast between worlds on stage intensified that in the pit, and vice versa.

Ježibaba (Agnes Zwierko)
and her cat, Mourek (Claire Talbot)

Camilla Nylund shone in the title role. At times, especially during the first act, one might have wondered whether her voice would prove to have the necessary heft, but it did, and Nylund proved herself an accomplished actress into the bargain. Bryan Hymel may not be the most exciting of singers; the voice is not especially variegated. However, he proved dependable, and often a great deal more, the final duet as moving as one could reasonably expect. Alan Held was everything a Vodník should be: baleful, threatening, sincere, and yet perhaps not quite. The Spirit of the Lake may well have his own agenda – and certainly did here. Agnes Zwierko played the witch Ježibaba with wit, menace, and a fine sense of hypocrisy that brought the closed environments of Janáček’s dramas to mind. The four Jette Parker Young Artists participating, nymphs Anna Devin, Madeleine Perard, and Justina Gringyte, and Huntsman Daniel Grice all acquitted themselves with glowing colours. Indeed, Grice’s solo, enveloped by miraculous Freischütz-like horns from the orchestra, movingly evoked a world of lost or never-existent woodland innocence. Last but not least, Petra Lang’s Foreign Princess emerged, like Wagner’s Ortrud, as in some respects the most truthful, as well as the most devious, character of all. Splendidly sung and acted, Lang’s was a performance truly to savour. But then, this was a performance as a whole that was far more than the sum of its parts, a triumphant return to form for Covent Garden with its first ever staging of the work.