Carmen, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 7 March 2020

  

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Micaëla (Christiana Karg) and chorus members

Carmen – Anita Rachvelishvili

Don José – Michael Fabiano

Escamillo – Lucio Gallo

Dancaïro – Jaka Mihelač

Remendado – Ziad Nehme

Moralès – Adam Kutny

Zuniga – Jan Martiník

Micaëla – Christiane Karg

Frasquita – Alyona Abramova

Mercédès – Serena Sáenz

Lillas Pastia – Klaus Christian Schreiber

Martin Kušej (director)

Herbert Stöger (revival director)

Jens Kilian (set designs)

Heidi Hackl (costumes)

Reinhard Traub (lighting)

Children's Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (chorus director: Vincenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Like stagings of any opera – Elektra almost an exception – Carmens vary, though perhaps not so much as they ought. I have seen a few: from those that do not even to try (Francesca Zambello and her donkey, Aletta Collins for the embarrassing nadir of vapidity) to brilliant, interrogative reimagination (Dmitri Tcherniakov), via a valiant yet strangely tedious attempt to recreate (Barrie Kosky) and a relatively straightforward updating that yet remained on a dramatic knife-edge (Calixto Bieito). Not until now, however, had I seen Martin Kušej’s 2004 Staatsoper Unter den Linden production.

Situated omewhere between Bieito and Tcherniakov, albeit closer to the former, it holds up very well, especially when conducted by Daniel Barenboim, who knows it of old and offers, so it seems, a reading of this rather than a generic Carmen. There is little, thank God, of the picturesque here. In a production that put me in mind somewhat of his 2003 Don Giovanni (Salzburg), Kušej, like Barenboim, presents a dark, large-scale tragedy, in which even moments of interiority, emerging painful in their loneliness, seem defined by a grander canvas of the implacable. It stands a world away from the work’s opéra comique origins, which may concern some. All the worse for them; so, after all, are we. The question is whether it works, and it does. In that respect, I recalled another Salzburg Mozart production, Claus Guth’s 2006 Figaro. It sounds, disregarding as it does so much of what we might consider ‘essential’, as though it should not work, at least on paper, yet it does, having one reassess both the work internally and its place in a broader scheme of theatrical drama.

That fatal relationship between internal and external may indeed be understood to lie at the heart of this staging. A soldier faces a firing squad as the curtain rises: a daily occurrence or a foretelling of something unique? There is no need to choose, any more than there will be later when Carmen reads her cards, ostensibly with other the gypsies, yet actually alone, physically and psychologically, at the front of the stage. Jens Kilian’s elemental designs and the harsh environment – more Lorca than Mérimée? – in which they appear to be situated sometimes revolve to reveal something beneath or beyond, albeit through eyes we may wish or claim were not ours, yet unquestionably are. There is something pornographically joyless, recalling the director’s Don Giovanni, to the couplings that ensue when soldiers – and we – penetrate the hitherto mysterious factory. There will be along, whether at Lillas Pastia’s, in the mountains, or at the final bullfight. That is not to deny, but rather to heighten, the extent of violence at work, whether implicit or explicit, externalised or sublimated. Much of what unfolds may be ‘just’ something to do. Better than doing nothing? Perhaps: it is difficult to say; this does not seem to be a world given to reflection. We ask what Wagner means by love all the time; why not, at least on occasion, what Bizet does too?

Don José (Michael Fabiano), Carmen (Anita Rachvelshvili)

Nietzsche’s clarion call, ‘il faut méditerraniser la musique’, to exalt the sunny physicality of Carmen over the northern, décadent idealism of Wagner and worse, his disciples, comes ironically to seem the height of sentimentality, a typically German exaltation of ‘the south’ and evasion of the much-vaunted truth. Myth, instead, returns, a cold, hostile chorus, at least in external terms, not only participating in the action but holding it to scrutiny. Masks at the last invite the full, Attic horror we deluded ourselves was not really involved. Perhaps Wagner was right after all; at the very least, his tragic forebears seem to have been. The circle ultimately is closed, Carmen closing as it had begun; Don José faces a firing squad. The curtain falls, catharsis denied.

Carmen

If it would be a gross exaggeration to call Barenboim’s conducting of Carmen Wagnerian, such exaggeration may point, circuitously, in the right direction. Everything was not frenetic; all was not, in the banal sense, merely ‘colourful’. There was at times something almost glacial to the work’s progress, in recognition of bolder claims and connections. There was space – and this was not only, or even principally, a matter of speed – for reflection, for questioning, for self-interrogation. Savage turns, sometimes yet not always pretty on the surface, could then register with the bite they deserved. With the Staatskapelle Berlin playing at the height of its powers, resonances which rarely if emerge were able to do so. At the opening of the third act, for instance, truly exquisite horn playing, tone and phrasing clear as they was warm, momentarily had me imagine, if not a Mahlerian vista, then of an attempt to summon one up. It was not that playing or conducting in any sense suggested Mahler, let alone ‘sounded like’ such music, but rather that this was not a performance delimited by self-imposed constraint; it was open to what we, as well as it, might bring to the work. I realised that Berio’s play with Spanish Boccherini, Quattro versioni originali della ‘Ritirata notturna di Madrid’, was closer to the mark; rather it soon became so. We were not so very distant, then, from Seville after all. The scale and cruelty, however, of the musicodramatic canvas, or rather the cruelty that could develop within, was the point, mirroring, intensifying, even inciting what unfolded onstage.

Frasquita (Alyona Abramova), Moralès (Adam Kutny), Carmen, Lillas Pastia (Klaus Christian Schreiber),
Mercédès (Serena Sáenz) 

Much unfolded courtesy of Anita Rachvelishvili in the title role. Her lower register must be heard to be believed: not only its tonal richness, but also what she accomplishes with it. Hers was a magnetic, thoughtful, and far from lazily conventional performance from beginning to end. Likewise Michael Fabiano’s typically committed Don José. Christiane Karg’s Micaëla was perhaps not best served by the concerns of the staging, yet beguiled anyway. The chorus, inexplicably booed by one audience member behind me, was excellent in every respect, a good few of which would not always be called upon in a production of Carmen; likewise the large cast of extras. Jaka Mihelač, Ziad Nehme shone remarkably as Dancaïro and Remendado, whether in stage or vocal presence. Only Lucio Gallo’s woolly Escamillo seriously disappointed, more a minor Sopranos character than a virile toreador. If not every cast member’s French language and style perfect, it would be curmudgeonly to say more than that; the dramatic whole outweighed any minor shortcomings. A Carmen, then, to make one think; there are all too many others for those who would rather not.

Prince Igor, Met Opera Live, 1 March 2014

Cineworld, West India Quay

Prince Igor – Ildar Abdrazakov

Prince Galitsky – Mikhail Petrenko
Vladimir Igorevich – Sergey Semishkur
Skula – Vladimir Ognovenko
Yeroshka – Andrey Popov
Yaroslavna – Oksana Dyka
Polovtsian Maiden – Kiri Deonarine
Konchakovna – Anita Rachvelishvili
Ovlur – Mikhail Vekua
Khan Konchak – Štefan Kocán
Yaroslavna’s Nurse – Barbara Dever
Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, set designs)
Elena Zaitseva (costumes)
Gleb Filhtinsky (lighting)
Itzik Galili (choreography)
S Katy Tucker (projection designs)

Metropolitan Opera Chorus (chorus master: Donald Palumbo)

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Gianandrea Noseda (conductor)

 

Of the three Met Opera Live broadcasts I have seen, this was far and away the best. No one, I assume, would speak of it quite in the same breath as Boris Godunov or Khovanschina, but one cannot but think of it in relation to them, especially to the latter, its libretto by Vladimir Stasov, who also created the scenario from the original epic for Borodin to write his own text.

 

The only real adverse criticism I have relates to that ‘positioning’ within Russian opera. Gianandrea Noseda conducted very well on the whole; the Met Orchestra sounded on excellent form throughout, again quite the best I have heard it in any of these broadcasts. One could imagine its magnificent fullness of tone reaching even the farthest-flung reaches of that vast barn in which the company is stranded. However, though this was certainly far preferable to the sub-Toscanini Beethoven I have heard from this conductor’s baton, there were sections, especially earlier on, in which the music veered too close to soft-centred Verdi (or, if you like, to Ruslan and Lyudmila). On a crude ‘Russian’ scale, surely it should at the very least sound on the Mussorgsky- rather than on the Verdi-side of Tchaikovsky. Otherwise, Noseda, who, it seems, had compiled the edition employed in tandem with the director, Dmitri Tcherniakov, shaped the musical drama well, only occasionally driving too hard, and investing the final act in particular with a pessimistic historical weight that brought us back to the world of Khovanschina. The chorus, here of course allotted a huge role, sang – and acted – with exemplary commitment throughout, and not just in the celebrated Polotsvian dances. (What an effect they must have had on French listeners when Diaghilev had them performed in 1909!) Chorus master, Donald Palumbo must share a good deal of the credit for that.

 

I am no Borodin scholar, so am more than a little wary of pontificating about, or even delineating, the new ‘version’ we heard. Briefly, then – and I shall happily be corrected – we seem to have been given an edition in which the order of Borodin’s first two acts is reversed, allegedly with some justification in the composer’s intentions, a little-used version of Igor’s third-act monologue, and brings in at the close music from Borodin’s contribution to the composite, also incomplete Mlada, not to be confused with Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera-ballet of the same name and to the same libretto (!) Already things are becoming far too complicated for me. (For a short summary of earlier performing versions, I recommend looking at Richard Taruskin’s New Grove article upon the opera. And for the textual issues relating to this particular version, Zerbinetta’s review is well worth a read, as it is for her review itself.) The ending for me remains a problem: the opera seems more to stop rather than to conclude, but even here, Tcherniakov’s conception of Igor’s internal struggle is suggestive. Taruskin’s summary of the work as ‘a magnificent farrago, a smorgåsbord from which all listeners and critics seem to find some morsel to their taste’ seemed in this context to under-appreciate its virtues. But maybe that was a measure of my naïveté in this repertoire. Certainly the remark made by the composer in a letter, cited by Taruskin at the end of his article, rang true:

Curiously enough, all the members of our circle seem to come together on my Igor: from the ultra-innovatory realist Modest Petrovich, to the hyric-dramatic innovator César Antonovich [Cui], to the martinet with respect to outward form and musical tradition Nikolay Andreyevich, to the ardent champion of novelty and power in all things, Vladimir Vasil’yevich Stasov. Everyone is satisfied with Igor, strongly though they may differ about other things.

Tcherniakov’s typically thoughtful direction played no small part in that outcome – though I am a little surprised that it did not cause a riot at this most reactionary of major houses. (Perhaps it was easier to do something interesting in a work not so many of the audience would have known, or indeed which the more reactionary elements in a typical audience would not have attended? Or maybe, just maybe, excellent direction opened their eyes and ears, in which case three cheers to them as well as to production and performances!) Tcherniakov places much of the action (earlier twentieth-century) in what seems to be a dream world, and which is clearly no mere fantasy. Or rather, it is a fantasy in which we are complicit, orientalism and all, Tcherniakov’s treatment pointing to and indeed working out out one of the potential problems with the score: a musical as well as a critical move. Following a chilling, militaristic Prologue – does Russian historical drama ever fail to be relevant to our present? – Igor falls at the opening of what is now the first act, video footage illustrating the fate of ‘our’ boys on the battlefield. (I suspect the projections would have registered more strongly in the theatre, a cinema broadcast not being the ideal mode of presentation. We got the idea, though.) The Polotsvian world thus becomes Igor’s dream – and ours. Sickly eroticised choreography as well as personified, characterised temptations of the flesh question our Orientalist fantasies as well as those of the Khan’s ‘guest’. A spectacular poppy field prompts thoughts both of opium and of Flanders carnage. Quite whether the second and third acts are ‘real’ or not remains in question. The relatively conventional – knowingly so –setting for the political machinations at Igor’s court in the second act suggest reality as well as Mussorgskian realism. But we question, as indeed we do in the third act, to what extent this world and the need for Igor’s return are the prince’s own construction. Shades, then, of Rienzi and countless other charismatic heroes, are suggested, but the audience is treated in adult fashion, prompted to make up its own mind, to make its own way through what may or may not be more than Taruskin’s ‘smorgåsbord’. This, undoubtedly, is opera as drama – as my clearly-impressed mother, seeing her first cinema broadcast of opera, commented afterwards.

 

In the title role, Ildar Abdrazakov was superb, doing more than anyone could reasonably have asked of him. Neither musical nor dramatic commitment – in reality, and even in ‘high definition’ reality, they were as one – could be faulted, in a tireless performance, both troubling and moving. Mikhail Petrenko brought shades of his controversial Hagen to the role of Prince Galitsky: what a deliciously devious villain he can be! As Yaroslavna, Igor’s Penelope, as it were, Oksana Dyka offered a dignified portrayal, conflicted yet ever true, both to husband and to her people. Anita Rachvelishvili, whom I had thought sadly miscast as Covent Garden’s Carmen,  was here utterly in her element as the embodiment of Oriental temptation, Konchakovna. There was gravedigger-style mendicant humour from the accomplished Skula and Yeroshka of Vladimir Ognovenko and Andrey Popov, a beautifully-sung and –acted Nurse from Barbara Dever, a nicely menacing Khan Konchak from Štefan Kocán, and much more: not, for me at least, a weak link in the cast, and Tcherniakov’s detailed direction paid enormous dividends in every case.

A sprawling, problematical epic, then, was revealed through performances and staging alike to have more than enough worthy of salvage. Borodin’s unfinished opera – here fascinatingly, if not always quite convincingly, finished by others – emerged as a wayward yet honoured successor to the masterpieces of Mussorgsky. This co-production with the Dutch National Opera demands a DVD release.

Carmen, Royal Opera, 16 December 2013

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

 

Moralès – Ashley Riches

Micaëla – Verónica Cangemi
Don José – Roberto Alagna
Zuniga – Nicolas Courjal
Carmen – Anita Rachvelishvili
Frasquita – Simona Mihai
Mercédès – Rachel Kelly
Lillas Pastia – Caroline Lena Olsson
Escamillo – Vito Priante
Le Dancaïre – Adrian Clarke
Le Remendado – Stuart Patterson
Guide – Jean-Baptiste Fillon

Francesca Zambello (director)

Duncan Macfarland (revival director)
Tanya McCallin (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Arthur Pita, Sirena Tocco (choreography)
Mike Loades, Natalie Dakin (fight director)

Actors, Dancers

Royal Opera Chorus and extra chorus (chorus director: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

 

Alas, a depressing evening, of which the worst culprit was for once perhaps not Francesca Zambello’s West End musical ‘approach’ to Bizet’s opéra comique. Zambello’s production does its job, I suppose, in as non-intellectual a way as you could imagine: something for those for whom Miss Saigon is a little too challenging. But, except for the inappropriate scale – which, to be fair, is a problem large houses will always struggle to overcome – it does not really get in the way. The donkey – ‘Polyanne the donkey, supplied by John McLaren and Linda Chilton of Island Farm Donkey Sanctuary – still walks on for no discernible reason, yet it had, or seemed to have, the intelligence and grace to look as bewildered by its appearance as we were. As for the absurd Madonna – this is no probing of Spanish religious practice, but, as with Zambello’s Don Giovanni, an appearance that remains at the level of mere religious tat – it continues to be wheeled on too, remaining stationary whilst a priest blesses Escamillo and Carmen. And why does the fourth act’s opening chorus continue to be omitted? (It surely ought to offer the director plenty more dubious opportunities for display.)

 

I shall not go on, for that, as I said, was not really the greatest problem. Daniel Oren, I am afraid to say, offered what must be a serious contender for the title of worst conducting I have endured in a major house. (I am tempted to delete the word ‘major’, so atrocious were the results.) The first act came off worst of all. After a blithe and bouncy opening – one could see him, blithely bouncing, too – the rest of the Prelude ground to a halt. Yet that was nothing compared to the disjunctures between pit and stage, the inability to maintain any tempo whatsoever – and certainly not on account of judicious rubato – and the apparent lack of rehearsal throughout. Indeed, it sounded as though Oren had never seen the score before, let alone rehearsed it. The orchestra occasionally sounded good on its own terms, but one could hardly blame it for times when it seemed less than wholly committed. I should be tempted to describe Oren’s contribution as hack work, were that not a gross libel to hacks across the world. If anything, his conducting was even worse than it had been in Robert le diable. I cannot imagine why the Royal Opera continues to engage him; it is not as if there is a shortage of conductors for a work such as Carmen.  Constantinos Carydis did a fine job last time around, in 2010, but it would be difficult to know where to start with a list of possibilities.

 

In that context, it is, I think, wise to be charitable to the singers as well as to the orchestra. That said, and all allowances made, it was anything but a vintage evening in that respect. Nicolas Courjal was the sole surviving cast member from 2010. What I wrote then applies with at least equal force now: he ‘made a more virile impression as the lieutenant, Zuniga, than either of the two principal men’. For Roberto Alagna, as Don José, was sometimes wildly out of tune and proved in general, especially before the interval, coarse in his delivery. At best, he sounded as if he were singing Puccini in French. Vito Priante was better as Escamillo, though there was nothing especially memorable to his assumption, which might well have fared better in a smaller theatre. (The horse, of course, does not help.) Anita Rachvelishvili has an attractive voice, but it was difficult to feel that it was right for the role. Not only was her French unidiomatic, but vocal strength was very much tied to the lower end of her range; I could not help but wonder whether she would have been happier singing Tatiana, or even Olga. It did not help, moreover, that she looked more like Escamillo’s mother than lover; the moment when she awkwardly sat upon Don José was unfortunate in every respect. Verónica Cangemi had her moments as Micaëla; indeed, her third-act aria was the only time at which I was remotely moved. Nevertheless, there were too many moments of vocal harshness. Two Jette Parker Young Artists  made excellent impressions in smaller roles, however: the Moralès of Ashley Riches and Rachel Kelly’s Mercédès both had one looking forward to hearing more from them. Next time, all being well, in a more involving production and with a conductor who at least approaches a level of basic competence…