Elektra, Vienna State Opera, 26 June 2017

Vienna State Opera

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Regine Hangler

Klytämnestra – Waltraud Meier

Orest – Alan Held

Aegisth – Herbert Lippert

First Maid – Monika Bohinec

Second Maid – Ilsyear Khayrullova

Third Maid – Ulrike Helzel

Fourth Maid – Lauren Michelle

Fifth Maid – Ildikó Raimondi

Overseer – Donna Ellen

Young Servant – Benedikt Kobel

Old Servant – Dan Paul Dumitrescu

Orest’s tutor – Wolfgang Bankl

Confidante – Simina Ivan

Trainbearer – Zoryana Kushpler

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Karin Voykowitsch (revival director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)

Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)

Andreas Grüter (lighting)

Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Michael Boder (conductor)

I first saw Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s production of Elektra in 2014; two-and-a-half years on, it still impresses, although much seemed at least a degree less sharp – not in pitch, well not always...! – than first time around. Perhaps that is simply a reflection of available rehearsal time and the travails of a repertory house. It had the consequence, to my mind somewhat regrettable, of throwing the focus more upon the musical performances as such – not, of course, that they are not greatly important – and less upon the sum of the parts, or, if one must, the Gesamtkunstwerk.

As I observed last time, Laufenberg’s production is intelligent throughout and, for the work, intriguingly different, although not for the sake of ‘difference’. It is certainly infinitely preferable to his truly dreadful Bayreuth Parsifal, which manages somehow to be deathly boring and downright offensive at the same time. (Let us hope, against hope, for major revisions this summer!) Rolf Glittenberg’s set designs remain in keeping with the general ‘look’ of Elektra: does any major opera seem to lend itself less to a radical change of scenery? Accentuating the domesticity is in line with the Strauss-Hofmannsthal psychoanalytical approach to the myth. It is not that there is anything small-scale about this, but we are reminded that this is a home, a home of sadness, of ‘perversion’, whatever that might be, and far less a political setting. That said, I thought the interwar – Nazi-ish – overtones of the costumes, of the characters’ look, came across more strongly than last time. This is not simply a place of death, but a place death has visited and will not release for particular reasons. One need not worry too much about that context if one does not wish, but the uniforms and dogs are suggestive.

The lift connecting the palace proper to the courtyard remains a crucial cabinet of movement, of display, a cabinet of curiosities taken to its deadly extreme. Klytämnestra descends, twice (the second time dead) in it, and Aegisth never reaches the top. Behind the glass, the characters, above all Klytämnestra already seems encased, entombed: a taxidermist’s objet d’art, as I thought of it last time. Again, I can imagine that some might be irritated by the cliché of her wheelchair. But it is put to good, if relatively straightforward, use. Once her retinue is out of the way, she can put it to one side, actually engage with Elektra ‘as a mother’ – as Andrea Leadsom might put it. The overtly ‘beautiful’ dancers and dancing at the close, in counterpoint to Elektra’s own plight, continue to make an interesting, not un-Adornian point concerning Strauss’s score. That Adorno was, I think, quite wrong to condemn Strauss as he did is neither here nor there; we can argue about that. There is something, though, to the hollowness of the ending that merits exploration – and it receives that here.

I wrote at length on Nina Stemme’s performance last time. She is a very great singer, of course, one who pays a near ideal blend of attention – attention, moreover, that is fully achieved – between words and vocal line. That said, her performance did not grab me quite as it did in 2014, let alone as it did in the unforgettable Patrice Chéreau production (which I saw on the Met cinema broadcast last year: much better, incidentally, than when it came to Berlin that autumn). Like much else on this occasion, there seemed to be a relative disengagement. Waltraud Meier’s Klytämnestra likewise suffered from that same comparison with New York. I yield to none in my admiration for her as a singing actress, but the ‘singing’ part was unquestionably lesser on this occasion. Regine Hangler was a highly variable Chrysothemis: sometimes wildly out of tune, on other occasions – alas, too few – thrillingly able to ride the orchestral wave. Her acting skills, though, proved rudimentary: a pity. Alan Held’s Orest offered an estimable blend of musical values and subtle dramatic psychopathy. Herbert Lippert’s Aegisth was, sadly, no better than last time. The orchestra did not fail to impress; it would be a sad day indeed if this of all orchestras did not in Strauss. However, it did not impress as it had done under (the surprisingly good) Peter Schneider in 2014. Michael Boder knew how the score went, but there was a touch of fuzziness around the edges by comparison. Certain passages came a little too close to dragging. As for Esa-Pekka Salonen in New York – or indeed, Daniele Gatti in Salzburg a few years ago – that was conducting in a different league altogether.

Munich Opera Festival (4) - Tristan und Isolde, Bavarian State Opera, 8 July 2015

Nationaltheater

Tristan – Robert Dean Smith

King Marke – René Pape
Isolde – Waltraud Meier
Kurwenal – Alan Held
Melot – Francesco Petrozzi
Brangäne – Michelle Breedt
Shepherd – Kevin Conners
Steersman – Christian Rieger
Young Sailor – Dean Power

Peter Konwitschny (director)

Johannes Leiacker (designs)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Werner Hintze (dramaturgy)


Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)
Bavarian State Orchestra

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

 

 

What do we call Tristan und Isolde? That may seem a silly question. Tristan und Isolde, surely, and Tristan for short, although already we come to the exquisite difficulty, as Tristan and Isolde themselves partly seem – though do they only seem? – to recognise, of that celebrated ‘und’. Yes, Tristan is just a shortened title, so we should not necessarily read anything into the disappearance of Isolde, but, whilst we clearly value both lovers and both singers portraying those lovers more or less equally – great Tristans perhaps more so, given their ridiculous rarity – it struck me as perhaps particularly perverse to have been referring to my seeing Tristan at the Munich Opera Festival, when, like so many in the theatre, I had been going especially to hear and, yes, to see Waltraud Meier. For these two performances in Munich, of which the one I heard was the first, have been announced as her farewell to the role. ‘Waltrauds Abschied’, then, I sentimentally called my visit, in dubious Mahlerian homage to a last performance that was actually to be a penultimate performance. I could, after all, hardly say I was off to hear Isolde – or maybe I could, even should, have done.

 

Of course, when I asked, ‘what do we call Tristan und Isolde’, I was not necessarily just referring to the title. There is no need to frown upon those calling it an opera; I am sure we have all done so at some point, or ought to have done so. But, as with all of Wagner’s dramas, it distances itself from the norms of opera and, perhaps still more so, the opera house. I am perhaps over fond of deploying this quotation from Boulez, but it so often seems to hit the nail upon the head. Whilst at work on the Ring at Bayreuth, Wagner’s great conductor-composer successor observed: ‘Opera houses are often rather like cafés where, if you sit near enough to the counter, you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!’ What was needed, Boulez noted approvingly, ‘was an entirely new musical and theatrical structure, and it was this that he [Wagner] gradually created’. It might then, not be entirely wrong to suggest that Wagner’s works deserve shielding form the opera house, at least as it currently exists. (Let us leave Bayreuth and its never-ending travails to one side for the moment.) However, by the same token, Wagner’s Handlung –his own term, ‘action’, a Teuton’s rendering of ‘drama’, admirably supersedes debates concerning nomenclature – is surely at home in Munich, if anywhere at all. For ‘Waltrauds Abschied’, then, and what I calculated must be at least my twentieth ‘live’ Tristan – sorry, I cannot yet bring myself to call it Isolde – there was something fitting to experiencing it for the first time in the house in which it had received its premiere, 150 years previously (10 June 1865).

 

Moving on a little from what we call Tristan und Isolde, what do we think it is ‘about’? Wagner was pretty clear, and I have tended to take him at his word, or at least some of his words. In 1859, summarising the work’s concerns for Mathilde Wesendonck, he omitted not only King Marke’s forgiveness, but also Tristan’s agonies at Kareol. True action, Handlung, had been irreversibly transferred to the noumenal world: ‘redemption: death, dying, destruction, never more to waken!’ But as Peter Konwitschny, in a brilliant programme note, argues, quoting Heiner Müller, himself director of a renowned Tristan, ‘Ein Werk ist immer klüger als sein Autor.’ (‘A work is always cleverer than its author.’) Such, one might have thought, was a truism, and for many of us it is, although not for those strange people who seem to think it not only no cleverer but actually more limited, referring to the tedious mantra of a ‘composer’s intentions’ , whilst actually having no more interest in them than their most wild-eyed caricature of so-called Regietheater would. For them, the questionable taste of a questionable memory of their first exposure to a work seems to suffice. Handlung? Madame Tussauds, more like. (‘Museum’ would be too generous, given its connotations of learning, culture, and stewardship.)

 

Back, however, to Konwitschny. He makes the somewhat startling claim – at least to me – that Tristan is ‘ein sehr hoffnungsvolles Stück’ (‘a very hopeful piece’). As ever, it depends what one means – and it depends what one means by love, death, and so many other things. But Konwitschny, arguably taking his cue from the score, from Isoldes Verklärung, declines to see desolation, although, certainly not taking his cue from Wagner, he seems to tend more to Liszt’s conception of a Liebestod. And so, following our heroic couple’s shuffling off their mortal coils, sombrely dressed in black at the foot of the stage, below the other Handlung – if indeed that qualifies as such – we return to the raised level of that other Handlung, and see Marke and Brangäne visiting their graves. Love, ‘whatever that means’ – and we may understand that as part of Wagner’s ongoing internal battle between Feuerbach and Schopenhauer – may partly have won out, which sounds pat, but does not feel so. Perhaps we have experienced Wagner’s Gefühlswerdung des Verstandes (‘emotionalisation of the intellect’). More optimistically still – and it is surely a useful corrective at least to consider the non-pessimistic aspects or possibilities of the work – we might consider the words of Wagner’s fellow radical 48er, Arnold Ruge, writing of an envisaged religion of freedom, ‘the entire world of humanistic ideals, the entire Spirit of our times, must enter the crucible of feeling, out of which it must again come forth as a glowing stream and build a new world.’

 

Perhaps the most striking thing about Konwitschny’s production, first seen in 1998, is how it creeps up upon one; indeed, how its owl of Minerva truly only seems to take flight at dusk. The first act takes place, relatively conventionally, on a ship, doing pretty much what Wagner asks, and doing it rather well, although the colourful curtain, presaging aspects of the second act, has perhaps called into question our preconceptions before we are aware of their status as preconceptions . The realms of light and day, phenomenon and noumenon, make their presence felt after the taking of the potion through Michael Bauer’s excellent lighting: a distinction that continues, greatly to the enhancement of the drama. One certainly feels the tragedy in Tristan’s death upon Melot’s sword, but equally, one feels, knows that that is not the only story. The world of Tristan’s past, played to him on old video reels, complements what he tells us, without – this is crucial – overpowering it, as too many overtly psychological, even psychoanalytical readings do. Tristan is not ultimately about the hero’s childhood; it remains concerned with metaphysics, in one way or another. And the release provided by Isolde’s last song is married, not in an easy way but certainly in a fruitful way, to those final scenic aspects mentioned.

 

We came, of course, at least most of us did, above all for Meier. It is a tribute to the performance and production alike that she did not overshadow but indeed flourished. It would be unduly perverse, though, to overlook her contribution. Over the years in which she has sung Isolde, she has offered many, developing virtues, whether related to production, musical performance, or even the stage of her career. Here, everything seemed in more or less perfect balance – or, better, fruitful dialectic. Attention to words was second to none, likewise stage presence. Sustaining of a vocal line, however, was equally impressive. Suffice it to say, she did not play Isolde; she was Isolde.

 

Robert Dean Smith also gave the finest performance I can recall from him, and not just as Tristan. It was as tireless a performance as I can recall from anyone, without the disadvantages that often entails of sheer persistence trumping vocalism. The sheer refulgence of René Pape’s King Marke had to be heard to be believed; Markes rarely disappoint, but Pape achieved far more than not disappointing. Alan Held was a thoughtful, dramatic, even at times impetuous Kurwenal: all in character, impressive indeed. Michelle Breedt’s Brangäne was just the right foil for Meier’s Isolde; this was a confidant, beautifully sung, in whom one could – confide. Dean Power’s Young Seaman at the start was as sensitively sung as any I can recall. Kevin Conners offered a powerful embodiment of the Shepherd – Konwitschny’s two English horn players on stage an unforgettable image – and even the Steersman, Christian Rieger, made a fine impression with his all-too-brief line. Francesco Petrozzi presented ultimately inconsequential malevolence, as he should, in the role of Melot.

 

As Wagner wrote to Eduard Devrient of his ‘most musical score,’ Tristan has, and in performance should have, ‘the most vivid dramatic allusions totally at one with the dynamic of its musical texture’. That is asking a great deal of any conductor, orchestra, and cast. (And that is before we even consider that this is emphatically not a concert work, whatever dark hopes we might entertain upon seeing an unsatisfactory staging.) Philippe Jordan presented Wagner far more impressively than I have heard from him before, whether in Bayreuth or in Paris. The Handlung was as much in the orchestra as on stage, arguably more so, which is just as it should be. Pacing rarely, if ever, faltered, and details were presented without overwhelming (crucial woodwind lines in particular). The splendid Bavarian State Orchestra, whose praises I have been singing all week, excelled itself here. Dark of tone, yet clear and transparent where necessary, it was, in the pit that so much of Tristan und Isolde was truly brought to that life which its director argued so forcefully was of its essence.

 

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.

Fidelio, Opéra national de Paris, 18 December 2008

Palais Garnier

Don Fernando – Paul Gay
Don Pizarro – Alan Held
Florestan – Jonas Kaufmann
Leonore – Angela Denoke
Rocco – Kurt Rydl
Marzelline – Julia Kleiter
Jaquino – Ales Briscein
First Prisoner – Jason Bridges
Second Prisoner – Ugo Rabec

Johan Simons (director)
Jan Versweyveld (scenery and lighting)
Greta Goiris (costumes)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Winfried Maczewski)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Sylvain Cambreling (conductor)

This was the best Fidelio I have seen in the theatre. By far the best performance I have heard in the flesh was a concert performance with the London Symphony Orchestra under Sir Colin Davis, but the others, all in the opera house, were all let down by a variety of factors, not least by, though not restricted to, their conductors. Certain musicians notwithstanding, ours does not seem to be an age that responds well to Beethoven. I am, then, delighted to report that this new Paris production, whilst far from perfect, was much better than reports had led me to expect.

For one thing – and, when it comes to Beethoven this is a very big thing indeed – the orchestra was on excellent from. It had weight, so often lacking nowadays in this music; it had rhythmic security; nor was it without human tenderness. Sylvain Cambreling, the unofficial house conductor, presented a controversial version of the score. Opening with the least-known Leonore overture, no.1, he proceeded to restore an earlier plan, whereby Beethoven proceeded from aria, to duet, to trio, to quartet, stressing an underlying original tonality of C major. There seems to be something of a fashion for tampering with Fidelio at the moment; the Hungarian State Opera did so earlier this season. I was not ultimately persuaded by Cambreling’s decisions but at least they had some rationale behind them. And how many opportunities is one likely to have to hear Leonore I in the theatre? At least we were spared the dramatic nonsense, again perpetrated in Budapest, of Leonore III during the second act. (And yes, I am well aware of the illustrious roll-call of conductors who once followed this practice. Yet what Mahler or Furtwängler might have been able to get away with is best disregarded by mere mortals.) Moreover, whilst there were certain tempi decisions with which I might have disagreed, for instance an excessively fast, even carefree first act March, Cambreling spared us the indignities of metronomic ‘authenticity’. There was even the odd occasion when I thought him a little slow. It was welcome to hear ‘O namenlose Freude!’ as something other than the typical unmusical rush, but starting at the speed it did, it should have gathered momentum at some point. As I said above, Colin Davis remains hors concours from my otherwise disappointing live experience of the work. Yet Cambreling’s reading was vastly superior to the dullness of Richard Hickox (English National Opera), to Antonio Pappano (Royal Opera), less out of his depth than failing even to enter the Beethovenian shallows, or to the straightforwardly inappropriate veering towards Rossini (!) of Ádám Fischer (Budapest). The great recorded legacy remains, of course, another matter entirely.

There was another controversial aspect to the version of Fidelio presented. Gérard Mortier, in honour of whose sixty-fifth birthday the first performance of this production was mounted, had decided that the spoken dialogue was nowadays of dubious theatrical value. Alternative dialogue was therefore commissioned from Martin Mosebach. I am not at all sure that there is anything especially wrong with what we usually hear – for one thing, its familiarity has made it part of our expectation of ‘the work’ – but I was quite sure that this was no improvement. Some of it was perfectly acceptable, although even then I could not quite understand why it should be preferred. However, it made for a considerably longer evening than otherwise might have been, not least given the typical inability – this goes for every performance of Fidelio I have attended, bar that in English – of the non-Germans in the cast to speak the language with credibility. One can generally hear every word, partly because it is spoken at half-speed. Some of the new text was also rather peculiar. At the beginning, we hard Marzelline ponder at some length over what sort of man she would prefer. Having considered the hairier option, she proceeded to wonder about a man who was more like a woman. The difficulty of accepting Leonore’s disguise as Fidelio may detain literal-minded souls, but I am not sure that broaching a ‘bi-curious’ interpretation of Marzelline would have assisted them.

The production was in general convincing. It was not unforgettable, but nor was it married to an irrelevant concept or concepts. (I think here of Balázs Kovalik’s production in Budapest, where all sorts of odd ideas did battle against one other.) The surveillance cameras in a sinister control room during the first act pointed to a terrifying feature of our own society. Florestan was always being watched, just as we are. And what went on around? People attended to their ‘daily lives’ – for such, of course, is the dramatic material of the first half of the first act – some of them doubtless quite sure that, in their accustomed Daily Mail-speak, they had ‘nothing to hide’. How many days’ detention without trial would New Labour have inflicted upon Florestan? Ask Pizarro. Of course, Johan Simons is unlikely to have had specifically British references in mind, but the point is increasingly general in Western societies; it is just rather more advanced in my own. There was a contrasting timelessness to the dungeon scene. Whilst there is, of course, a place for specific references and we can hardly fail to think of Guantánamo, it is worth reminding ourselves that such obscenities can happen at any time, in any place. The willingness of human beings to torture has been reaffirmed through scientific experiment; it is part of the role of culture, of works such as Fidelio, to make us rise above such barbarism.

In the title role, Angela Denoke sometimes struggled vocally. There were moments when her voice was simply not strong enough, although not so many as I had expected from other reports. However, she responded readily to the text – both spoken and sung – and brought her considerable skills as a singing actress to the role. Whilst this was not a performance I should wish simply to hear on a recording, I was often gripped by it on stage. Alan Held oozed malevolence as Don Pizarro, though I thought his hysterical laughter overdone and strangely camp: more Rocky than Rocco Horror. Kurt Rydl was a late substitute for Franz-Josef Selig as the jailkeeper. He acted splendidly: quite an achievement, when he could hardly have had close acquaintance with the production. However, he exhibited considerable wobble. I also found it dramatically odd to have so much blacker a voice in this role than for Pizarro. (Admittedly, that is not a problem confined to this production.) Julia Kleiter and Ales Briscein were lively and attentive as Marzelline and Jaquino, whilst Paul Gay impressed as Don Fernando.

But the undoubted star of the show was Jonas Kaufmann. I cannot imagine that there has ever been a better Florestan. He exhibited a heroism to rival that of Jon Vickers, albeit without the vocal oddness. Kaufmann displayed an an astonishing range, not only of dynamics, but also of timbre. The crescendo upon his first note, delivered head down to the floor, starting off mezza voce and leading up to a radiant, ringing, yet never crude fortissimo, was something I suspect I shall never experience again – unless, of course, it comes from him. He managed to sound utterly credible both as a starved, tortured prisoner and as a virile incarnation of freedom. Moreover, his acting was on an equally exalted level, marrying perfectly with the vocal portrayal. This Fidelio, even had it lacked other virtues, would have been justified by Jonas Kaufmann alone.