The Cunning Little Vixen, Berlin Philharmonic, 12 October 2017

Philharmonie

Forester – Gerald Finley

Forester’s Wife – Paulina Malefane

Schoolmaster, Mosquito, Rooster – Burkhard Ulrich

Priest, Badger – Willard White

Hárašta – Hanno Müller-Brachmann

Vixen Sharp-Ears – Lucy Crowe

Fox, Crested Hen – Angela Denoke

Pásek – Friedemann Büttner

Mrs Pásková, Lapák the dog – Anna Lapkovskaja

Jay – Lotta Jultmark

Child soloists (in various of the smaller roles) – Anna Damiano, Ève Davillers, Victoria Florczak, Anton Hoppe, Artina Kapreljan, Raphael Küster, Johanna Mielisch, Luise Mielisch, Paul Mielisch, Johann von der Nahmer, Gabriel Pappalardo, Jonas Rattle

Peter Sellars (director)

Ben Zamorsa (lighting)

Nick Hillel (video)

‘Vocal Heroes’ Children’s Chorus from the Berlin Philharmonic’s Educational Programme

Vocalconsort Berlin (chorus master: David Cavelius)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Simon Rattle (conductor)

The best news, and indeed the most important news, is that this performance of The Cunning Little Vixen had clearly proved an invaluable experience for the children on the Berlin Philharmonic’s Educational Programme. It was not simply a matter of having participated in rehearsals and performance, but of a longer, deeper creative project, ‘MusikPLUS Fabelwesen' (‘Creatures from Fables,’ literally, which in this case probably works better than the more common ‘Mythological Creatures’), which had run from the middle of September until now. Under the artistic guidance of Berlin Philharmonic trombonist, Thomas Leyendecker, singer Judith Kamphues, and pianist Daniel Grote, children from St Paul’s School in Moabit had explored themes, musical and conceptual, from Janáček’s opera, in all manner of ways: music, movement, and so on. They had learned a good deal, it seems, about language too – given their multifarious backgrounds and the Czech of the performance. Splendid stuff then!

There was much to enjoy musically in the performance as performance as well, not least the excellent contribution of the children, whether chorally or as soloists. Mention should be made here of the work of Snezana Nena Brzakovic and Tobias Walenciak in rehearsing the child soloists and children’s chorus respectively. Otherwise, amongst the adults, I felt – not speaking Czech, I can say no more than ‘felt’ – a certain lack of idiom and intrinsic command at times and in certain cases, but nothing too grave. Willard White’s casting seemed odd; his voice is now, sadly, quite hollowed out. Angela Denoke, though, whose performances have proved vocally variable for quite a while, seemed at home in the role of the Fox; her dramatic commitment has never, of course, been in doubt. Lucy Crowe gave a spirited and vocally attentive account of Vixen Sharp-Ears herself. Gerald Finely proved typically thoughtful – if more than usually hamstrung by Peter Sellars’s bizarre collection of production clichés – performance as the Forester: more physical, indeed tortured, than Thomas Allen, say, but none the worse for that. As the Forester’s Wife, Paulina Malefane offered a well-judged balance between the strict and the likeable. Burkhard Ulrich, a justly esteemed Loge and Mime, emerged with great credit in each of his different roles: quite a test in itself.

The Berlin Philharmonic proved more than adept at communicating the changing demands both of the score and of Simon Rattle’s conception of it. The precision and almost Stravinskian (for Rattle) obsessiveness of the opening were balanced, or perhaps better opposed, by a well-nigh Straussian opulence later on, especially at climaxes and the approach to them. Perhaps there was room for something more in the way of mediation between such extremes, but that would be almost to find fault for the sake of it. It was a bold, dramatic orchestral performance, born of longstanding acquaintance with the score on Rattle’s part. There is so much in Janáček’s – frankly – miraculous score: perhaps more than can ever be conveyed, or at least appreciated, in a single performance. No one would have been disappointed by this, though, and I suspect that most would have heard things they had not heard before. Rattle’s role not just as conductor in the traditional sense but as enabler of the activities of children and adults alike showed him at his best: certainly something London has good reason to look forward to.

You felt a ‘but’ coming, dear reader? Of course you did, for it was ‘trailed’ in the second paragraph. This was not Peter Sellars at his very worst: may ENO’s Indian Queen – shudder – retain that title forever. However, it seemed bizarre both in its incoherence and in its often wild inappropriateness for children. ‘Distracting’ is a word so loved of operatic reactionaries that one hesitates to use it at all. However, it seems difficult to avoid doing so, and not worth the effort, with respect to the video screens dotted around the hall. The film had its justification, I suppose, when it showed pictures of ‘real-life’ versions of the animals singing at the time – although might not some small degree of costume or other stage indication have done the job better? Other scenes from nature did no particular harm either, although they showed a tendency, an irrelevant one at that, towards the generic wildlife documentary. The opening video sequence was, shall we say, very school biology class. But what on earth was Sellars thinking of when introducing a confusing – merely confusing, not ‘edgy’, not ‘transgressive’, not ‘daring’ – staged sequence in which the Forester appeared to have taken the Vixen home to have sex with her, sleeping together until discovered by his Wife. The poor Forester – ‘poor’ in terms of what was done to the character, not in terms of his deeds! – appeared then to be permanently traumatised by the whole affair, although the Vixen seemed fine.

Once again then, whatever his intentions, Sellars managed to turn something into a therapy session for that most vulnerable, threatened of groups: white men. Weirdly, the Forester and his wife appeared to live in a modern apartment block, several floors up; at least that seemed to be the indication of repeated footage (from the outside) of said apartment block. Quite what that was supposed to add, save for confusion about where much of the rest of the action was taking place, was, to say the least, unclear. If Sellars were trying to say that everything was in the Forester’s imagination, and that it was all an anthropomorphic projection, that certainly did not come across – either to me or to anyone else I asked. I eventually gave up on what I was seeing, insofar as that were possible. A concert performance, or concert staging in which the children at least could still have run around and enjoyed themselves, would surely have been a much better idea.

The Makropulos Case, Bavarian State Opera, 21 May 2016

Image: Bayerische Staatsoper, © Wilfried Hösl

Nationaltheater, Munich

Emilia Marty – Angela Denoke
Dr Kolenatý – Gustáv Beláček
Vítek – Kevin Conners
Krista – Rachael Wilson
Albert Gregor – Pavel Černoch

Jaroslav Prus – John Lundgren
Janek – Aleš Briscein
Hauk-Šendorf – Reiner Goldberg
Chambermaid – Deniz Uzun
Stage Technician – Peter Lobert
Cleaning Lady – Heike Grötzinger

Arpád Schilling (director)

Márton Ágh (designs)
Tamás Bányai (lighting)
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Tomáš Hanus (conductor)

Opera houses’ neglect of Janáček remains one of the most baffling of the many baffling aspects of the ‘repertoire’. At least three of the composer’s operas would be perfect introductions to the art form: Jenůfa, Katya Kabanova, or The Cunning Little Vixen would surely hook most for life. From the House of the Dead might do likewise for someone of a rather different disposition, sceptical of opera’s claims and conventions. The Makropulos Case perhaps falls somewhere in between, although surely closer to the more ‘conventional’ trio, an unusual story notwithstanding. At any rate, no Janáček opera outstays its welcome. Every one is musically and dramatically interesting, without – save, arguably, in the case of From the House of the Dead – being ‘difficult’ (a silly concept, anyway, but let us leave that on one side). There are strong, central female characters in most (again, not in his final opera, but...) And yet…

 

What, then, is the problem? Is it simply that the works are in Czech? Is there still resistance to following titles, from those of us who do not have the language? Perhaps, although how many in the audience actually have an understanding, let alone a good one, of other, more typically-used languages? Translation is, perhaps even more than usual, a bad idea, since the music depends so much on Czech speech rhythms. One can tell that, even when one does not know the language. I mention that here, since a great virtue of this particular performance was the ability to follow the words (with German titles). The sounds are important, but it is not just a matter of sound. In conjunction with the orchestra, this made sense, even for those of us having to rely upon our memories and upon the titles.

 

First and foremost to be thanked for that excellent, indeed crucial, outcome must be conductor Tomáš Hanus. His direction of the equally (at least!) excellent Bavarian State Orchestra left us in no doubt that not only did the conductor know where he was taking us, and how to do so, but that just the right balance was struck between the demands of the moment, of the intricate relationships between words and music, between vocal line and orchestra, between melodic and harmonic impulses, were being observed and, above all, dramatically communicated. The golden sound of the orchestra – again, perhaps, like the Czech Philharmonic in a recent concert performance of Jenůfa, more Bohemian than Moravian, but none the worse for that – was no mere backdrop, but a musico-dramatic cauldron from which words emerged and in whose self-transforming broth they acquired their meaning and impulse. The disjunctures were not sold short either; they held their dramatic ground, without being fetishised.

 

Angela Denoke had also played E.M. – or whatever we wish to call her – in the Salzburg Festival performance I heard in 2011. Dramatically, Denoke’s performance here in Munich was at least as fine as in Salzburg; she remains an excellent singing actress. Vocally, however, it was, if anything, superior, with few of the occasional flaws of five years ago. The virtues of the orchestral performance were also her virtues. So indeed were they of the rest of the cast. Brno-born tenor, Pavel Černoch offered an Albert Gregor of what seemed to me (again with the caveat that I am not a Czech-speaker) of vocal beauty and verbal acuity in equal measure, his stage presence just as impressive. His first-act dialogue with Emilia Marty proved one of the musical and dramatic highlights of the performance. Gustáv Beláček and Kevin Conners impressed with their difficult legal performative briefs. John Lundgren’s darkly ambitious Jaroslav Prus and Rachael Wilson’s bright-toned Krista were similarly noteworthy. Aleš Briscein’s Janek furthered the excellent impressions given in that concert Jenůfa, his crestfallen withdrawal from the Marty game a study in musico-dramatic observation and communication. And how wonderful to welcome back Reiner Goldberg to the stage as Hauk-Šendorf: so much more than a mere ‘character’ appearance. Character and artist similarly rolled back the years: a moving moment indeed, not least given the opera in question.

 

I have left Arpád Schilling’s production until last, because I do not have much to say about it, I am afraid. The principal impression is made by Márton Ágh’s stylish designs, both sets – for instance, a visually arresting pile of chairs – and costumes, Černoch’s Gregor thereby enabled to look very much as he sounded. Of a concept, let alone a Konzept, beyond that, I struggled to discern anything very much. This, then, is stage direction of the kind operatic reactionaries claim to like: non-interventionist and pretty, if a little too modern in its style for them. The work could (sort of) speak for itself, I suppose, but that is hardly the point. Christoph Marthaler delved deeper in Salzburg.

 

Salzburg Festival (2): Die Eroberung von Mexico, 10 August 2015

Cortez (Bo Skovhus) and Montezuma (Angela Denoke)
Images: Monika Rittershaus

Felsenreitschule

Montezuma – Angela Denoke

Cortez – Bo Skovhus
Soprano – Susanna Andersson
Contralto – Marie-Ange Todorovitch
First Speaker – Stephan Rehm
Second Speaker – Peter Pruchniewitz

Peter Konwitschny (director)

Johannes Leiacker (designs)
Manfred Voss (lighting)
fettFilm (video)
Peter Böhm, Florian Bogner (sound direction)
Bettina Bartz (dramaturgy)

Mixed Choir (on tape)

Movement Choir

ORF Symphony Orchestra, Vienna

Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

This was a magnificent evening in the theatre, to which my immediate reaction was to wish to see – and to hear – it all again. Partly, that was of course a matter of a rich work, experienced for the first time, in a rich staging, experienced for the first time, in rich performances, experienced for the first and last time. I am sure that I missed a great deal. I will do so in a staging of Parsifal, which I flatter myself I know reasonably well; how much more so will that be the case in a work hitherto unfamiliar? But I hope here to give a taste of my vivid theatrical experience of Wolfgang Rihm’s Die Eroberung von Mexico (The Conquest of Mexico).

 

 

Director Peter Konwitschny is at pains, in a programme interview, to dissociate the work from the merely ‘Mexican’. ‘We saw,’ he claims, ‘the sign warning us not to turn off into the dead-end marked “Mexico”’. Before that, we read Konwitschny: ‘It’s not about Europe/America or Mexico/Spain, but Man/Woman.’ Such might be the case for Konwitschny’s staging, though not, I think entirely, but I am less sure that it is the case for the Musiktheater (an interesting, not-quite-Wagnerism) itself. It is certainly not to be reduced to any one particular polarity, as the oft-repeated, Antonin Artaud-derived, ‘Neutral, Weiblich, Männlich’ (‘Masculine, Neuter, Feminine’ – not always, notably in that order) seems to remind us. And the space available for the mediating – or original? – ‘Neutral’ is not always clear, perhaps does not even survive, or at least survive in its initial form. Is it perhaps – and this might be a Wagnerism of sorts – in the orchestra? In Rihm’s own libretto, which, taking Artaud’s Le Théâtre du Séraphin as one of its building blocks, would thus both suggest and reject some form of verbal (perhaps even colonial?) supremacy?

 

With such an enterprise, it is, of course, difficult to know where to start, and I have probably stepped ahead of myself on one strand already. I shall attempt no clear division between work and staging, since such was not my experience – and indeed would not be possible on the basis of an initial encounter. (Frustrating, yet inevitable and indeed in some sense fruitful?) There is a perhaps predictable, yet already surprising, identification of Montezuma with the feminine – and not only in voice – and Cortez with the masculine. Rape occurs early on; does it not always? But before that, and returning at long last to my initial point concerning Mexico, we have had a long, introductory, introduction, or perhaps immersion, into the landscape. The first of three parts, ‘Die Vorzeichen’/’Omens’; ‘Bekenntnis’/’Confession’; ‘Die Umwälzungen’/’Upheavals’) has drummers surrounding the audience lead us in for a few minutes before the conductor has even arrived, and indeed before the audience has received the signal to sit and to be quiet. The drum melodies, Rihm writes, are ‘the melody “of a landscape that senses the approach of a thunderstorm”’. They do not – or at least, did not to me – feel ‘Orientalist’, or better ‘Occidentalist’; yet, at the same time, it is difficult, upon reflection, not to think that in some sense they must be, and, as the action unfolds, that they have, perhaps knowingly, been presented, even constructed as such. Oppositions, then, not entirely straightforward, continue to frame, to participate, to incite.

 

 

 

Rihm’s score, as often with this composer, covers a broad canvas in any number of respects. Yet, doubtless partly as a matter of the excellence of staging and all performances, though not only, I think, as a matter of that, it offers the composer at his integrative as well as his discursive best. Schoenbergian Sprechstimme – can we not but think of Moses at times? – vies or collaborates with choral writing and vocal amplification that bring to mind Nono and Lachenmann. Something far more Romantic, the ghost of Mahler perhaps, or of Strauss, swells up in the orchestral strings (fewer than one perhaps realises). Lyricism – whether vocal, or solo instrumental – that would surely have brought a smile to the face any of those composers has one melt, and at the same time has one suspect, has one question, not least in light of what we see and do not see on stage.

 

Konwitschny makes a strong case for his conception of male-female incomprehension. Not just in the violence, whether it be of Cortez towards Montezuma, of the movement choir (which, in a brilliant coup de théâtre, stands up and reveals itself as initially having been seated in the audience) towards the golden (yes, gold again brings us back to Moses and, of course, to the idea of the New World) female, danced portrayals of Malinche, ‘who speaks with her body’. The living room in which most of the action takes place – the rest surrounding that space – has at its centre Frida Kahlo’s The Wounded Deer: both image and knowledge of Kahlo’s relationship with Diego Rivera contribute to our understanding. In perhaps the most arresting image of all, still more so than the movement choir’s gang-rape of Malinche, Montezuma gives birth, we presume to Cortez’s child: the offspring is the offspring of Apple. fettFilm’s video images plunge us into a world of projected ‘apps’ and video games: Cortez’s war is virtual – remember those television images of Baghdad, and so many other victims of Western imperialism – but the virtual appears to be real and, of course is. Both sides suffer; both sides die, kill each other, and yet appear still to be in some sense alive. What is going on? What has gone on? The information age threatens to disclose all, yet leaves us all the more alienated. Montezuma’s transformation into a statue – here, a marrying, apparently pacified doll – does nothing to resolve, everything disquietingly to disturb, as does the further violence that ensues. And yet opera, the primæval and/or modern cry, reassert themselves at the end of each part, with verse from Octavio Paz, a striking, harrowing duet for Montezuma and Cortez at the very close. Or is it? Rihm’s libretto ends: ‘Ende (?) der Oper’. Images from the (Spanish/Mexican) past have fleetingly passed before our eyes: are they a clarification, or a ‘dead end’? Log in, to find out? Or should we turn away from our screens? Perhaps to listen?

 

 

Performances, as I suggested, were uniformly excellent. Angela Denoke and Bo Skovhus offered near-superhuman efforts as Montezuma and Cortez, range as impressive in dynamic terms as in pitch, in stage presence and conviction as in musical and verbal delivery. Cortez, backed up by speakers, never elicited sympathy, but suggested a broadening of our experience and understanding. Montezuma, shadowed by spectacular high soprano and deep contralto (Susanna Andersson and Marie-Ange Todorovitch) was anything but a sentimentally conceived victim. We did not – and surely should not – know what to do with him/her, and in some sense (s)he survived. I should probably add: in another sense, sadly, not at all. The contrast with the trendy banalities of Peter Sellars’s The Indian Queen, loudly proclaiming itself post-colonial, whilst all the time forgetting the ‘post’ bit, could hardly have been greater. This approached Wagnerian music drama, not on Wagner’s terms, but not opposed to them either. And, as with Wagner, the orchestra was perhaps most crucial of all. There could certainly no be gainsaying the outstanding contribution made by the ORF Symphony Orchestra, Vienna, wisely, viscerally, reflectively directed by Ingo Metzmacher. Yes, this work needs to be seen – and heard – again.

 

 

 

Cardillac, Vienna State Opera, 22 June 2015

Cardillac (Tomasz Konieczny)
Images: Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn

Cardillac – Tomasz Konieczny
Daughter – Angela Denoke
Officer – Herbert Lippert
Gold Dealer – Wolfgang Bankl
Cavalier – Matthias Klink
Lady – Olga Bezsmertna
Police Officer – Alexandru Moisiuc

Sven-Eric Bechtolf (director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)
Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)
Jürgen Hoffmann (lighting)

 

Is there at present any more unfashionable composer than Hindemith? Tippett perhaps runs him close, but I can think of no one else. Little has changed in that respect since I lamented this situation upon the Paris Opéra’s 2008 revival of Cardillac by André Engel. It is all the more welcome, then, that Vienna should not only stage but keep in its repertoire this wonderful opera, here given, as seems generally now to be the case, in its original, three-act form rather than Hindemith’s 1952 four-act revision for Zurich. (We miss, then, the performance within a performance of numbers from Lully’s Phaëton and the greater, post-Mathis der Maler sympathy accorded to Cardillac as artist.)

Daughter (Angela Denoke) and
Officer (Herbert Lippert)

Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s staging is probably the best I have seen from him. I opened my Paris review – bear in mind this was still the Gérard Mortier era of blessed memory – by saying, ‘Perhaps only Paris could turn in so stylish a production of the terminally unfashionable Hindemith.’ Bechtolf does not do so badly either, his stylisation fitting and lightly questioning the work too. The crowd scenes in particular benefit from carefully clockwork choreography, as if responding to the large timepiece (surely a more general nod to ETA Hoffmann, author of the original short story, Das Fräulein von Scuderi), and the black-and-white, top-hatted designs. The crowd both acts as a mob and retains, perhaps intensifies, its weirdness: not inappropriate for a Neue Sachlichkeit treatment of a German Romantic story. Sexual congress is again both plausible and stylishly removed from the merely representational. The realm of the master goldsmith himself offers powerful visual contrast – gold as much the order of the day here as in a later Schoenbergian orgy – and yet retains quirky, choreographed connection, as the action passes between different worlds. The work of Rolf and Marianne Gilttenberg as designers is very well fitted as frame and incitement to the exaggerated and musically-conceived, or at the very least musically-consistent, movement that ensues.  

For Hindemith’s motoric, extremely anti-Romantic conceptions of Bach – think of the Kammermusik transformed into opera – rightly came to the forefront here of our musico-dramatic attention. There were times, especially during the first act – all three acts were given, wisely, without an interval – when I missed the final degree of dry precision from the orchestral playing, but in general, Michael Boder’s conducting impressed, especially his handling – and the orchestra’s execution – of climaxes. Moreover, a relative relaxation of anti-Romanticism arguably held its own rewards, in preparing the way for the Officer’s compassion and, perhaps, whetting the appetite for a hearing of that later Zurich version. The Vienna State Opera Chorus’s contribution was excellent throughout, a credit to its chorus master, Thomas Lang.

Lady (Olga Bezsmertna)

 

 

Tomasz Konieczny offered a properly complex portrayal of Cardillac, permitting us to be torn between horror at his murderous narcissism, unable to permit his masterpiece to be owned by another, and his strange, increasing dignity as a craftsman. Vocal and stage presence were communicated as one. Angela Denoke, also Cardillac’s daughter in that Paris revival, gave quite the best performance I have heard from her in some time: lyrical and ever-meaningful verbally. As ever, she acted the role with passion and commitment. Herbert Lippert’s Officer struggled a little too often with Hindemith’s demands, but shared that sense of dramatic commitment. Olga Bezsmertna’s Lady showed true star quality. A member of the Vienna ensemble, she had me wishing her role offered more for her to sing. Wolfgang Bankl, Matthias Klink, and Alexandru Moisiuc all convinced in their roles. More Hindemith, then, please – in Vienna, but elsewhere too.

 

 

 

Denoke/Philharmonia/Jordan - Wagner and Strauss, 30 January 2014

Royal Festival Hall

Wagner – Tannhäuser: Overture

Strauss – Das Rosenband, op.36 no.1; Ruhe, meine Seele, op.27 no.1; Morgen! op.27 no.4; Die heiligen drei Köinge aus Morgenland, op.56 no.6; Freundliche Vision, op.48 no.1; Cäcilie, op.27 no.2; Don Juan, op.20; Salome: ‘Dance of the Seven Veils’ and Final Scene

Angela Denoke (soprano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Philippe Jordan (conductor) 

 

 

Strauss presumably for his 150^th anniversary: the Philharmonia has a few performances of his music this season. Why then the Overture to Tannhäuser? It is not, of course, that there is no connection between Richards I and III, but one might have expected either more Wagner or none. Anyway, it did no harm, though Philippe Jordan’s conducting began in rather four-square fashion (despite the time signature), with little of the flow one would anticipate from a great Wagnerian such as Barenboim. It was often nicely shaded though, and the Venusberg music proved, not inappropriately, much freer in conception. The strings were more alert too, violins shimmering beautifully. Perhaps the contrast was the point; if so, however, the point was somewhat exaggerated.

 

Angela Denoke joined the orchestra for six orchestral Lieder. She proved – somewhat to my surprise – an attentive, involving guide, her diction excellent, her emotional sincerity readily apparent. Jordan proved a sympathetic ‘accompanist’, and not just that: more attuned to colour and form too. There were, for instance, a nicely Tristan-esque heft and hue to the introduction to Ruhe, meine Seele; the celesta and woodwind response could only have been Strauss’s, hinting at the phantasmagorical world of Der Rosenkavalier. Wagner remained, though, in Denoke’s sometimes Erda-like delivery (that despite her soprano voice) and the horns; likewise the moment of storm, like the opening to Die Walküre in miniature, albeit shorn of the politics. Guest leader, Amyn Merchant offered a winning solo in Morgen! Here, of course, the harmony and orchestration, above all their indivisible unity, are of such breathtaking, heart-rending beauty that something would be terribly amiss were one not moved. No such problem here, though I had been spoiled by hearing just a few days ago the superlative recording from Christine Schäfer and Claudio Abbado. This was admirably unsentimental, but might it not have yielded just a little more? In Die heiligen drei Könige, cellos and double basses echoed – at least in the context of this concert – passages in the Tannhäuser Overture. Sadness soon gave away to fantasy. For Strauss, the tale of the Three Kings seems only to be a folk-tale; he certainly never gave himself to religious thoughts. But what orchestral fantasy there is, especially in that gorgeous postlude one wants never to end! It benefited from especially fine playing from the violas. Cäcilie offered a winning contrast to much of what had gone before. In its romanticism – with a small ‘r’ – we were reminded, albeit considerably avant la lettre, of the world of Sophie and Arabella. Then we were ‘to soar upwards’, which Denoke accomplished more than creditably.

 

Don Juan, which opened the second half, was something of a disappointment, despite excellent playing from the Philharmonia. The fault lay with Jordan, who seemed quite at sea with the work’s symphonic structure. He set the tone for subsequent lurching around by driving the opening all too fast – yes, it asks for swagger, but even so… – and then more or less grinding to a halt for the feminine interest. Furtwängler, Kempe, and many others have all proved far more convincing. Throughout, the incidental prevailed against coherence. Christopher Cowie’s splendid open solo nevertheless deserves mention.

 

Onward to Salome. The Dance of the Seven Veils opened in similar vein; absurdly fast, with ensuing contrast too extreme for coherence. Orchestral balances were sometimes odd too: pizzicato strings far too prominent early on. Though matters improved, too much seemed to be heard – or at least communicated – on a bar-to-bar basis. Moreover, the music never quite danced so freely as it might have done. Would that the conductor might have learned from, say, Karajan. The moment of breakdown, however, was magnificent: mechanical in the best sense. The final scene opened splendidly too, with full orchestral sound and far less stiffness. Perhaps Jordan is more at home when he is guided by words? There was considerable, laudable dignity to Denoke’s delivery of the text. Alas, she soon sounded rather strained. Intonational difficulties then soon became more than that: straightforward wrong notes. A pity, since the Philharmonia now sounded as radiant as it often does under Esa-Pekka Salonen.

 

Parsifal, Royal Opera, 2 December 2013

Royal Opera House

Gurnemanz – René Pape

First Grail Knight – David Butt Philip
Second Grail Knight – Charbel Mattar
First Esquire – Dušica Bijelič
Second Esquire – Rachel Kelly
Third Esquire – Sipho Fubesi
Fourth Esquire – Luis Gomes
Kundry/Voice from Above – Angela Denoke
Amfortas – Gerald Finley
Parsifal – Simon O’Neill
Titurel – Robert Lloyd
Klingsor – Sir Willard White
Flowermaidens – Celine Byrne, Kiandra Howarth, Anna Patalong, Anna Devin, Ana James, Justina Gringyte

Stephen Langridge (director)

Alison Chitty (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
Dan O’Neill (movement)
Thomas Bergmann, Willem Brasche (video designs)
Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Yet again, I am afraid, the Royal Opera House seems to have come up with a Wagner production for those who are not very interested in Wagner. Thunderous applause issued forth for Sir Antonio Pappano, when the best that one could say about his conducting was that it was a bit better than the appalling mess he had latterly made of, say, Götterdämmerung and Die Meistersinger. I am told, though I have yet to look at them, that newspaper critics have praised him to the skies; I wish I could say that that surprised me. There will be some writers who have a genuine alternative view on this matter, though I admit that in this case I find it difficult to understand how, but many of our opera critics seem not to know their Knappertsbusch from their Kempe, still less their Karajan from their Boulez. Members of the audience are perfectly entitled, of course, to attend a performance with as little or as much knowledge as they please, but the whole business of criticism is on very dodgy ground indeed when one doubts whether some opera writers can even read a score – let alone bother to do so.

I can only assume that in some sense, unless the first night performance were entirely different from the second, audience members and critics had confused some fine orchestral playing with the conductor’s sense of line, or rather lack thereof. There were even early signs, I admit, when it seemed as though Pappano might at last have learned to conduct Wagner. (Surely such an apprenticeship should have been served long before deigning to try one’s hand at Covent Garden, but anyway…) The First Act Prelude sounded both beautiful, sometimes luminously so, and possessed of a decent sense of direction, even if it were far from unclear that Wagner’s transcendental meaning(s) had been grasped. Yet soon we were back in the bad old arena of stopping and starting, underlining a motif and failing to grasp how it might be part of the composer’s fabled ‘art of transition’, let alone fit into a complex, dynamic, quasi-symphonic web. Has Pappano ever so much as read, let alone understood, Wagner’s words in Über die Anwendung der Musik auf das Drama?

To be an artwork as music, the new form of dramatic music must possess the unity of the symphonic movement; this it attains by spreading itself over the whole drama, in the most intimate cohesion therewith … This unity centres upon a web of basic themes, which contrast, complete, re-shape, divorce, and intertwine with one another as in a symphonic movement; yet here, the requirements of the dramatic action dictate the laws of separation and combination.

Somehow I doubt it – and that is even before one considers the complex role played by Wagner’s poem in all of this. As I said, there were passages in which, on a basic level, continuity was maintained, and there was some very fine orchestral playing too considered in isolation, but nothing in Wagner should be considered in isolation. That is the problem – and of course the ultimate opportunity. This was Wagner conducting devoid of any understanding of what makes Wagner Wagner – and we can be pluralist in that, of course. Yet such pluralism does not, or certainly should not, extend to having Wagner reduced to a slightly Teutonic Verdi. One can only weep when thinking that the last time Parsifal was staged at Covent Garden, it was conducted with unassuming greatness by Bernard Haitink. Sadly it seems that Haitink is destined never to return; in which case, might we not have someone else, if only occasionally, to do Wagner’s works a modicum of justice? Barenboim? Thielemann? Gatti? What might pass muster in a provincial house ought not to have any place on a world stage, a house once presided over by Haitink, by Sir Colin Davis.

Let us move on, without enthusiasm, to the production. ‘Stephen Langridge’s production emphasises the timeless and universal nature of the Parsifal story,’ claimed the cast list’s ‘quick guide to Parsifal’. I am not at all sure what that is supposed to mean, the drama of Parsifal lying in an epic theological struggle between time and eternity. But even if we could somehow accept that claim – very odd or unspeakably trite; most likely, both – it was not at all clear how Langridge’s production does anything of the sort. It certainly seems  to retreat from the mythological, from the questioning, to a weird unspecific specificity, which gave incoherent answers where answers were the last thing that was required. We appear to be in a world, not unlike that of Simon McBurney’s dreadful ENO Magic Flute, over which a quasi-Scientologist cult rules; yet that potential menace is undermined by a weird obsession with hospital care. I had thought a friend who attended the first night was being facetious when he asked whether the production had been intending a comment on British sanctification of the NHS; now I am not so sure. Much of the action takes place in something resembling the strange ‘Sex Box’ of Channel 4’s recent risible television programme. (I wonder indeed whether it were the worst television programme I have ever seen: four ‘couples’ have sex in a box in front of a studio audience, though unseen by that audience, after which they briskly emerge – they are not allotted much time – to answer, or rather not really to answer, questions put to them by Mariella Frostrup and some alleged experts. Parody seemed to be absent but who knows?) The box has a bed, on which scenes from Gurnemanz’s narration – Kundry’s decidedly unerotic ‘seduction’ of Amfortas, Klingsor’s self-castration – are depicted, since we are clearly unable to listen to Gurnemanz for ourselves and imagine, still less to play with past and present, with different modes of perception and understanding, as Wagner would have us try. Amfortas’s hospital ‘care’ also takes place there.

For some reason, the Grail is replaced by a little boy, whose side is pierced, echoing Amfortas’s own wounding, and presumably as some sort of Christ-like reference. Indeed, when we reencounter this ‘Grail’ in the third act, the boy has grown into a nubile young man, still in his underpants, still ready to be pierced, though that does not happen and instead he simply retreats inside his box. The way Titurel and some of the knights touch the boy’s wound suggests paedophilia, but that does not seem to be carried through, so maybe it is just another unfortunate misjudgement. Parsifal has arrived dressed like a vagrant, with more than a touch of the Jimmy Savile about him, so again: who knows? Frankly, who cares? There is, moreover, no castle to be destroyed, no sign of the Cross, etc. Instead, presumably as an Œdipal allusion, Parsifal is blinded, though just when an interesting idea might have manifested itself, its effect is blunted by the banal restitution of Parsifal’s sight at the end. Needless to say, the NHS works its wonders, Amfortas and Kundry walking off  together

Alas, Parsifal, as sung by Simon O’Neill, sometimes even sounded a little like Jimmy Savile too. There were better moments, especially during the third act, but too much was crude, undifferentiated, and most of all vocally unpleasant, redolent, as is this singer’s wont, of a misapplied pneumatic drill. His acting was little better, though seemingly by default, since there was little difference form the first two acts, he did a passable imitation of a blind man in the third. Why can the Royal Opera not at last engage Jonas Kaufmann in German repertoire, rather than waste him on largely trivial Italianate works? Or what about Christopher Ventris, or Stuart Skelton? The rest of the cast – and here were the only real candidates for redemption – were much better. Top of the class was René Pape’s Gurnemanz: authoritative, suave,  and so securely founded in Wagner’s alchemic combination of words and music that one could forgive a great deal – just so long as he was on stage. Likewise Gerald Finley’s wonderful Amfortas, for whom dramatic commitment was of course a greater task. This was the first time I had heard Finley in Wagner; I certainly hope that it will not be the last. Angela Denoke's Kundry was again a committed assumption; many of the notes she reached, but a good few she did not. Why she appeared in the third act as she had in the second, rather than as the creature seen in the first, I cannot imagine. Unfortunately, Willard White as Klingsor and Robert Lloyd as Titurel both suggested that they would be well advised to retire from vocal performance. The male chorus improved significantly in the third act, having lacked focus in the first. Whether it were a matter of the female chorus’s placing offstage or something else, its words were entirely inaudible. I hope that having Kundry sing the part of the Voice from Above was a matter of cost-cutting rather than a ‘dramatic’ decision; in the latter respect, it made no sense at all.

Only last year, I saw Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth Parsifal for the last time. It did not receive its finest musical performance, Daniele Gatti having been replaced by Philippe Jordan, who was little better – if at all – than Pappano. Moreover, the cast had been better in previous years too. Yet the dramatic integrity, the intellectual commitment, above all the sheer musicality of Herheim’s staging once again won out. Here I struggled and failed to find a single case of the director engaging with Wagner’s score. Haitink managed, more or less single-handedly, to salvage something from the meaningless triviality of the previous, at least equally dreadful production. But it needs someone of that stature; we seem fated endlessly to be denied such redemption.

Denoke/Philharmonia/Nelsons - Strauss and Beethoven, 28 February 2013

Royal Festival Hall

Strauss – Tod und Verklärung, op.24

Das Rosenband, op.36 no.1
Allerseelen, op.10 no.8
Ruhe, meine Seele, op.27 no.1
Waldseligkeit, op.49 no.1Cäcilie, op.27 no.2
Beethoven – Symphony no.5 in C minor, op.67

Angela Denoke (soprano)

Philharmonia Orchestra

Andris Nelsons (conductor)

 

 

I struggled to find much of an idea behind this Strauss and Beethoven programme. Both Tod und Verklärung and the Fifth Symphony open in C minor and close in C major, but their trajectories are very different: perhaps that was the point? Maybe it was just a matter of having Andris Nelsons and Angela Denoke available on the same evening. At any rate, if the combination did not especially enlighten, nor did it jar in the sense that the briefly-popular Eroica-plus-Ein Heldenleben did. (How could the latter work not pale by comparison, even if one did not tire of E-flat major?)

 

Nelsons has built quite a reputation already as a Straussian. However, on this occasion and to my ears, it was only intermittently fulfilled. The ‘heartbeat’ to the opening of Tod und Verklärung was as aural-pictorially convincing as Strauss could ever have hoped for: tribute of course to the Philharmonia’s excellence as much as that of Nelsons. Moreover, that figure was properly integrated in musical terms; it did not simply stand out as an ‘effect’. The soft, sometimes very soft, playing drew one in, despite a less-than-well-behaved audience. Unfortunately, what had sounded as though it would be a very fine performance lost its way somewhat, vehement assertions of the hero’s life coming across in all too hard-driven a fashion. The brass sounded uncharacteristically crude, clearly acting under instruction. It might have been Sir Georg Solti conducting, were it not for Nelsons’s hyperactive podium manner. (The problem with such things is that if the musical results are good enough, for instance in the case of Bernstein at his best, no one will care; the moment they are not, the manner will irritate. And in general, it is difficult to imagine the greatest conductors – Furtwängler, Klemperer, Kleiber père or fils, Boulez, et al., jumping around in demented fashion.) What was lacking was a stronger sense of overall line, indeed of (post-)symphonism. Still, the performance certainly did not deserve its blighting by a mobile telephone; leader, Zsolt-Tihámer Visontay, whose solos had been exquisitely taken, was not the only orchestral musician to glare into the audience at that point. At least the Philharmonia’s glorious echt-Straussian glow offered some ultimate compensation. Moreover, Nelsons’s shaping of the close, a little orchestral untidiness notwithstanding, showed significant return to form – in more than one sense.

 

Interestingly – and not necessarily unusually – Nelsons seemed more relaxed, certainly more fluent, as ‘accompanist’. Denoke is not possessed of the most ideally soaring of soprano voices for Strauss, yet from the opening of Das Rosenband she communicated the words most ably. Is that enough? Perhaps not in this case, ultimately, for as Julian Johnson remarked in his excellent programme note, in Strauss’s vocal music, it is often ‘the rich quality of the voice itself that seems to embody what the poem promises’. Nevertheless, there was much to enjoy, not least in the Philharmonia’s ability to offer almost ‘chamber’-like transparency without reduction in string forces. The orchestral stirring of the wood in Waldseligkeit sounded nicely Wagnerian, Siegfried in particular coming to mind; it was good to hear the harmonium too. However, it was in this song, that Denoke’s enunciation became less distinct. Matters were put right in Ruhe, meine Seele! If her soprano remained somewhat hard-edged, she marshalled her resources well, turning the song arrestingly – even if this should not be how one would always wish to hear it – into something approaching a musico-dramatic scena. Again, Wagnerian harmonic echoes in the orchestra were well conveyed. Orchestral warmth, including delectable solos on flute (Samuel Coles) and violin (Tihámer-Visontay) was a hallmark of Allerseelen, though arguably it dragged a little. Cäcilie, however, sounded reinvigorated, from the magnificent wash of orchestral sound with which it opened onwards. Denoke’s operatic experience was put to good use in communication of meaning, though her intonation was not always spot on. Zueignung was offered as an encore; if one could not help but long for a Jessye Norman or a Gundula Janowitz, one could still appreciate the musical and verbal acuity of Denoke’s account. What a pity, then, that a vulgar audience member saw fit to bawl ‘Bravo!’ before the orchestra had ceased to resound!

 

Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony is an extraordinarily difficult piece to bring off, partly on account of the great performances from the past that retain their hold in our memories, individual and collective, partly on account of the stature the work has accrued in our general cultural consciousness, partly on account of its intrinsic performative difficulty: there are so many awkward ‘corners’ to navigate, even before one begins to consider vexed questions of meaning. (Of course, to separate score and meaning is already to fall short; the latter is not somehow something to be ‘applied’ once the notes are there. A still worse course is somehow to pretend that there is no meaning; that this is just a collection of notes, a superior sewing-machine pattern.) Nelsons’s first movement did not start off badly at all. There was nothing objectionable –today, alas, that itself is almost a mark of distinction – save for his strange reluctance to give full due to the first pause of the opening motif, both at the opening and upon its every recurrence. (One can still observe a distinction between the first paused note, a minim, and the second, a minim tied to a second minim, without sounding peremptory, as here.) Everything was well executed and there was highly creditable depth once again to the Philharmonia’s sound. Formal concision certainly came across. And yet, there never quite seemed to be enough at stake; there was little sense of struggle, and Beethoven without struggle really is not Beethoven at all. The coda was excitable rather than awe-inspiring, that initial wrench to the tonic minor barely registering. Once again, podium hyperactivity began to irritate; I could not help but wish for a little of the sobriety of Wolfgang Sawallisch, to whose memory this concert was dedicated.

 

Some unfortunate woodwind slips – much to my surprise – marred the slow movement early on. Nelsons’s overly-moulded direction of the opening cello-section solo made for somewhat uncomfortable listening too, despite commendably rich cello tone. Ultimately, this proved to be episodic, harking back to the Strauss performance; the longer line was not maintained as it might have been. It was not too grievous and indeed there was a sense of real dignity to some of the episodes, but with Furtwängler, Klemperer, Kleiber, Boulez, Barenboim, et al. in the back of one’s mind, it was difficult not to wish for more. A barrage of coughing ensued once the movement had concluded, offering odd preparation for the scherzo.  It was really rather fine first time around: implacable, defiant, mysterious. Above all, it was harmonically grounded. The hushed reprise suffered a little from imperfect balancing, though one could ‘fill in the gaps’ aurally without too much ado. The transition to the finale was not helped by a further outbreak of bronchial terrorism; it nevertheless promised much.

 

Unfortunately, that sublime moment of arrival was blunted by a lack of gravity, excellence of orchestral playing notwithstanding. Nelsons once again proved too excitable. His basic tempo, whatever the dreary empirical ‘truth’ of the metronome, simply sounded hasty. Rejoicing was more suggestive of an end-of-term party than musico-metaphysical victory or presumed victory. There were fine moments, but moments alas are not enough. Without the greater whole, the heavens will not be stormed and shivers will not be sent down the spine. Despite this relative disappointment, I shall not give up hope yet that we might one day hear a fine Beethoven Fifth from Nelsons; perhaps it is just too early. A little reading of Wagner’s wonderful essays, On Conducting and Beethoven, would do no harm in the meantime. Better still, he – and we – should listen to Furtwängler.

Salzburg Festival (7) - The Makropulos Case, 25 August 2011

Grosses Festspielhaus





Images © Walter Mair/Salzburg Festival

Emilia Marty – Angela Denoke Dr Kolenatý – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Vítek – Peter Hoare
Krista – Jurgita Adamonytė
Albert Gregor – Raymond Very
Jaroslav Prus – Johan Reuter
Janek – Aleš Briscein
Hauk-Šendorf – Ryland Davies
Chambermaid – Linda Ormiston
Conscientious Objector performing Community Service – Peter Lobert

Jin Ling – Sasha Rau
Mary Long – Silvia Fenz
Anita Stadler – Anita Stadler

Christoph Marthaler (director)
Anna Viebrock (designs)
Olaf Winter (lighting)
Joachim Rathke (associate director)
Malte Ubenauf (dramaturgy)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)


My feelings about The Makropulos Case, or perhaps more accurately, my feelings during and after a performance of the work, remain somewhat in flux. Janáček does not pull the heartstrings so consistently as in some of his other works, but of course the coldness of E.M. is part of his point – and, by all accounts, she is treated far more sympathetically than in Karel Čapek’s play. Even more so than, say, Jenůfa or Katya Kabanova, the vocal writing is conversational, the composer’s restraint admirable, even awe-inspiring: there is no more playing to the gallery here than in Pelléas – well, little more. The orchestra, then, plays its role as Wagnerian Greek Chorus. And yet, occasionally, I find that I am missing something: the question is whether that something missing is deliberately absent, whether, again, it is the dramatic point. And more so than those earlier Janáček masterpieces, rather like From the House of the Dead, I find myself reflecting afterwards, and for quite some time afterwards, on what is at stake in the drama. It is, then, an opera that makes one think, but perhaps only truly moves at the end, in the final peroration, both vocal and orchestral, when one finds that very same cyclical affirmation of life in death the composer voices in The Cunning Little Vixen, and arguably as in the earlier cited tragedies too.

Christoph Marthaler’s fine production of Katya Kabanova originated in Salzburg, before making its way to Paris, where I saw it earlier this year. I half expected to see The Makropulos Case similarly transposed to a joyless post-war East European setting, but in many respects, the setting (splendidly designed by Anna Viebrock) is rather ‘traditional’: there is certainly nothing for ‘traditionalists’ to complain about. Unless, that is, one includes the new material with which Marthaler introduces the work: a spoken reflective conversation, not without humour. Themes that will be explored during the work, most obviously the shortness of one’s allotted years, and what alternatives there might be, are adumbrated, without overstaying their welcome. (At least I thought so, though some in the audience seemed restless.) It would seem that there is some degree of reinstatement from Čapek’s play, but I shall leave delineation of that to those better informed. (I wish that I were…) There is even humour, as there is in the opera, concerning the ways of opera singers. Otherwise, one sees a court room, as one would expect, and pretty much in ‘period’, though the voguish practice of employing the same set for each act does lead to confusion: a court room is a bit of an odd place for Marty to succumb to Prus. (Doubtless we are not supposed to understand it that way, but it is a bit odd.) Other touches to either side of the principal room work better. A railway waiting room nicely suggests transience. Whilst I can imagine that some would be irritated by the depiction of a care home – replete with Zivildienstleistender (conscientious objector performing community service: no, I am not making this up) – on the other side of the stage, it aptly suggests the alternative to EM’s immortality. And therefore, as I said, really does make one think: given society’s present treatment of the elderly and infirm, it is by no means clear that one would not give elixir a try. If Christopher Alden’s ENO production probably made more of an immediate (stylish) impression on me when I saw it the first time, it began to irritate the second time around; it is probably fair to say that Marthaler’s production has made me think more, especially after the event. One would hardly expect Marthaler to play the work for laughs, and we can be grateful that he does not.

Angela Denoke performs estimably in the title role. It would be possible to castigate infelicities of tuning, for this, as one might have expected, was a performance very much in the ‘singing actress’ mould. However, such faults seemed to matter little, given the burning heat of her performance. Indeed, one could understand them, even if they were not intended this way, as contributing to the drama between aspiration to perfection and the frailty of flesh. Denoke held the vast stage of the Grosse Festspielhaus as her own, and rightly so. She was in every respect preferable to ENO’s Amanda Roocroft, though Cheryl Barker, on the first London run, was perhaps equally fine. I am rather surprised, however, to report that the other parts were more consistently cast in London (despite, of course, the gross handicap of singing in translation). Peter Hoare, for instance, was a much stronger Gregor than Salzburg’s dry-sounding Raymond Very; curiously, Hoare here movingly sang the role of Vítek. Aleš Briscein and Johan Reuter also just about stood out, though I have heard both singers to greater effect elsewhere. For there was a touch of anonymity to the general company, a surprising sense of routine, not to be exaggerated, but equally not the most memorable of Salzburg performances.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s conducting of the Vienna Philharmonic proved somewhat disappointing. Though there were times when the orchestra sounded predictably gorgeous – and, unlike some, I really do not mind that in Janáček – one also had to reckon with a few too many loose threads, whether in terms of smudged and even missed entries, or a general lack of rhythmic bite, such as Sir Charles Mackerras and Sir Richard Armstrong both brought to the score in London. The VPO certainly can play this music; it did so memorably for Mackerras, amongst others. Here, however, it sometimes sounded as if Janáček were new and slightly unwelcome territory. Salonen seemed unwilling or unable to control the orchestra as he might have done, indeed perhaps to be still less in sympathy with Janáček’s music, the score somehow meandering aggressively, at least until the final act. Lack of tautness and indeed of formal perception went hand in hand with a tendency to play with loud indifference. Perhaps that is unduly harsh, but I expected great, or at least very good, things, and did not hear them. To my surprise, then, it proved to be Marthaler’s night rather than Salonen’s, though it was at least as much Denoke’s.