The Makropulos Case, Royal Opera and Ballet, 10 November 2025

Royal Opera House

Emilia Marty – Ausrine Stundyte
Krista – Heather Engebretson
Albert Gregor – Sean Panikkar
Baron Jaroslav Prus – Johan Reuter
Dr Kolenatý – Henry Waddington
Vítek – Peter Hoare
Count Hauk-Šendorf – Alan Oke
Janek – Daniel Matoušek
Stage Door Woman – Susan Bickley
Security Guard – Jeremy White
Hotel Maid – Jingwen Cai

Katie Mitchell (director)
Vicki Mortimer (set designs)
Sussie Juhlin-Wallén (costumes)
James Farncombe (lighting)
Sasha Balmazi-Owen (video)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Jakub Hrůsá (conductor)

 

Image: The Royal Opera / Camilla Greenwell

If the Royal Opera and Ballet’s new Makropulos Case does indeed prove to be Katie Mitchell’s final opera production, we should think of it more as a culmination than a farewell. If the owl of Minerva spreads its wings only at dusk, the outlines of Mitchell’s operatic work – part, to be sure, of her broader theatrical work, but a distinctive part – may now seem clearer to us all. Rightly or wrongly, for I can lay no claim to oracular status on this or any other question, they certainly do to me following this superlative evening, dramatically and musically, in the theatre, a splendid addition to the company’s Janáček series? May we hope for a Mr Brouček, even a Šárka or an Osud? Hope dies last, as the ambiguous, even oracular, saying has it. 

And death lies at the heart of this work, as does life—as does their cyclical relationship both in Janáček’s work as a whole and this production, in turn both in its overt presentation and in its broader, metatheatrical, even symbolic frame. One might say the same of women, their role in society, and their role in opera, Mr Brouček’s Excursions the great exception, for even From the House of the Dead has one feel their absence. The Makropulos Case is centred, of course, around a great female singer, a great survivor, a woman seemingly infinitely blessed, but in reality, if not infinitely, then gravely cursed. She is literally the creation of men, in some ways figuratively too. I say ‘a woman’ and of course she is, but as such and as a human, she deserves to be named: Emilia Marty, Elena Makropulos, and the rest. (We may, if we wish, recall Kundry’s many names and incarnations. Wagner was not a feminist; to claim so would be anachronistic nonsense. But his works are not without feminist themes and, more to the point, opportunities—as well as themes and opportunities that are anything but. The same, of course, may be said of Janáček.) Mitchell takes a further step: this woman is queer, standing in no need of men, whatever the history with which she has been furnished (by them) may claim. She has fond memories; she has produced numerous ‘bastards’ with them, but now does not care for them (men or children). 

Now forty-plus = or so she claims and appears – EM seeks women on ‘dating’ apps. With a technological bent very much of our time, the opera begins, app and text message communications, courtesy of Sasha Balmazi-Owen, running parallel to, interacting with, and sometimes undercutting the work ‘itself’. Krista and Janek intend to rob her, the former (‘they/them’) ensnaring her prey 200 metres distant and securing an invitation to her hotel room. The proceeds, whose net worth Janek instantly checks online as Krista photographs them, include an eighteenth-century medallion and a rare, early twentieth-century playbill. Yet ultimately, Krista falls for EM, mesmerised as her male admirers, yet apparently feeling and sharing something deeper. Rather than absconding to Berlin with her (former) lover, she shoots him: shades of Lulu, perhaps, yet with the crucial distance that this is no blank canvas onto which male fantasies are projected. This is women in love, by women, for women.

Surtitles are contemporary English in tone, without becoming paraphrase. Additional communications fly across the ether: ‘Berlin or bust’, popular abbreviations, emojis, and so on. Like anything else, use of text messages – also here telephone calls, audio and video – can be a cliché, a gimmick, and too often is. Here, unlike in, say, Simon Stone’s tedious, extravagant, and tediously extravagant Cherubini Médée – if ever there were an opera crying out for the Mitchell touch… - or Kirill Serebrennikov’s silly Marriage of Figaro, it serves a useful dramatic purpose, both straightforwardly and more metatheatrically in its extension of live cinema to new realms in successful pursuit of Mitchell’s longstanding and, in this case, unapologetically queer subversion of the male gaze both generally and in specifically operatic guise. For when the diva comes at long last to die, she is not so much a creature of opera, but opera itself. Has the director killed the genre or let it die? More significantly, has it in its death, which may yet permit of rebirth though not artificial prolongation, at last been liberated of the male gaze. On an optimistic reading: yes, at least in part. The elixir is bequeathed to Krista as a gift of what appears to be love, but does it remain a poisoned chalice; can it be cleansed?

Janácek’s score naturally invites some degree of optimism, its increasingly rapt lyricism, orchestral motifs coalescing, combining, and expanding into something greater, brought home in wondrous, golden immediacy by Jakub Hrůsá at the helm of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. That Hrůsá is the real thing no one who has heard him will doubt, but this proved a significant achievement even by his standards, as intellectually as it was emotionally involving. The same must be said of Ausrine Stundyte’s all-encompassing assumption of the title role, rightly permitting of various readings whilst ever sure of its direction. No wonder the rest of her world lay in her thrall. All contributed something to the greater whole, showing what the world of opera can and should be. I shall note Sean Panikkar’s typically ardent, lyrical Albert Gregor, Peter Hoare’s sharply characterised Vitek, Heather Engebretson’s sparky Krista, and, in another tribute, conscious or otherwise, to the best of an opera company and its progress of time, Johan Reuter ‘moving up’ from, say, Orest and Birtwistle’s Theseus to Baron Prus, and Susan Bickley from numerous Covent Garden roles (and her ENO Dido with Mitchell) to the cameo of the Stage Door Woman. It was, though, a collaborative effort, as production, conductor, work, and any future for the genre demand.

From that ENO After Dido, Purcell’s jewel forming part of a greater theatre piece, through a Salzburg Al gran sole carico d’amore I imagine I might understand better now than I did in 2009, live cinema again offering a feminist corrective or at least enhancement to Luigi Nono’s project of telling European revolutionary experience from the standpoint of female revolutionaries,  the woman’s revenge of Written on Skin and queer love of Lessons in Love and Violence, the postdramatic feminism of The Blue Woman, and important reassessments such as her Aix Ariadne auf Naxos and Pelléas and Covent Garden Theodora, a path becomes traceable towards this Makropulos Case. Is it the end of the line? That should not really even be the question; it is certainly an important, musicotheatrically riveting contribution, one I am keen to see again, should I be able. 

Cathérine Clément notoriously described opera as the ‘undoing of women’. Perhaps, if one is extremely selective—and one treats it only in terms of libretti. Go back to Monteverdi’s Poppea or forward to Rebecca Saunders’s recent operatic debut and it seems anything but. Nevertheless, that book or at least its title remains, whether we like it or no, part of operatic discourse. Carolyn Abbate’s review said most, perhaps all, of what need be said about it. And here, as it must, that theory is realised in practice, without in any sense jettisoning necessary critique. Actually existing opera houses and their ways are, or can be, another thing. This is not in any sense intended to refer to the Royal Opera House in particular; indeed, its relatively recent, highly publicised appointment of an intimacy coordinator marked an important step forward in one respect. I know no details of the opera-world misogyny Mitchell has endured – her recent interview lies behind a Murdoch paywall – and I do not intend to speculate. What I can say is that operatic works, historical and contemporary, and performances offer greater scope for critique and, dare I say it, redemption than the day-to-day activities of any company will. This year’s greatest musical centenary, that of Pierre Boulez, reminds us of the necessary utopianism of his celebrated 1967 interview with Der Spiegel.

New German opera houses certainly look very modern—from the outside; on the inside, they have remained extremely old-fashioned. To a theatre in which mostly repertory pieces are performed one can only with the greatest difficulty bring a modern opera—it is unthinkable. The most expensive solution would be to blow the opera houses into the air. But do you not think that that might also be the most elegant solution? 

In turn, that echoes a Wagner’s diary entry from 1849.

8 May (Monday) Morning once again by roundabout route via barricades to Town Hall. At S. Anne Barricade guard shouts “Well, Mr Conductor, joy’s beautiful divine spark’s made a blaze.” (3rd perf. 9th Symphony at previous Palm Sunday concert; Opera House now burnt down. Strange feeling of comfort.

 

This latest death  will not destroy our opera houses and companies, nor even leave them peacefully to die, but should at least ask us whether that would be advisable. Is this, rather than opera as the undoing of women, then, women as the undoing and possible rebirth of opera? It might, considered in utopian fashion, constitute an act of operatic reform or revolution to be compared with the work composers such as Wagner, conductors such as Boulez, directors such as Stefan Herheim, and singers such as Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, noting ruefully and purposefully the gender balance of historical examples, whilst recalling Boulez’s own caution that, although Wagner’s Bayreuth project was in almost every respect right and necessary, it has not had the slightest effect on the day-to-day life of our benighted operatic culture. And yet, it has, for our revolutionary-reformers continue to offer a critique of patriarchy, of heteronormativity, and of capitalism many of us continue to heed. To do more than criticise, we must all play our part. The Royal Opera and Ballet has done so too, staging Janáček’s opera (incredibly) for the first time and supporting a new way forward. The Royal Opera and Ballet has done so too, staging Janáček’s opera (incredibly) for the first time and supporting, among many other things in its necessarily mixed economy, some seeds of a new way forward. 

Salzburg Festival (2) - One Morning Turns Into An Eternity, 18 August 2025

Felsenreitschule

Schoenberg: Erwartung, op.17
Webern: Five Orchestral Pieces, op.10
Mahler: Das Lied von der Erde: ‘Der Abschied’

Director – Peter Sellars
Costumes – Camille Assaf
Set designs – George Tsypin
Lighting – James F. Ingalls
Dramaturgy – Antonio Cuenca Ruiz

Aušrinė Stundytė (soprano)

Fleur Barron (contralto)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Image: Ruth Walz
Aušrinė Stundytė

'At a time when violence seems ubiquitous and the future uncertain, Peter Sellars argues that the extremes and intensity of Erwartung are not expressionist exaggerations, but instead reflect the actual experience of existential wounds. Rather than viewing the work as a portrait of a disorientated woman, the director approaches Schoenberg’s masterpiece as a lyrical poem expressing doubt, heartbreak, and hope in the face of despair.' 

My heart sank on reading these words on the Salzburg Festival website a couple of days ago. Not that I in any sense mind a production transforming, questioning, or pretty much anyth-ing a work, so long as it works, but rather that my experience of Peter Sellars’s brand of interventionism has, at least for the best part of two decades, not been entirely positive. The celebrated Harlem Don Giovanni still packs a punch; the other instalments of that 1980s Da Ponte trilogy retain their devotees. Last year’s Salzburg Gambler did no harm, if only because it worked well enough even if one missed – which I largely did – the concept. There is no need to rehearse other experiences; one should give something new a chance, or simply stay away.

Perhaps unwisely, I read Sellars’s programme synopsis immediately prior to the performance. It was of the variety, as for The Gambler last summer, in which the director outlines his vision of the work rather than the work ‘itself’: no bad thing, one might say, if one is trying to establish what the former might be (or have been). Again, I cannot say it inspired ‘hope in the face of [not quite] despair’ and it certainly coloured my initial impressions. To cut a long story short, Sellars has decided to present Erwartung as presenting a woman in search of her probably unfaithful lover, whose child she is bearing and who ‘she has reason to believe … has died under torture’, both of them being ‘part of a resistance movement’. There is much more of it, but actually I discovered – at least to me – that it did not really matter. I am not sure how much of it one would glean without reading the synopsis: the broad setting, probably, given an introduction in which two men with tablets show the woman and forest ‘trees’ that have something of surveillance towers – or is it the other way around? – to them. Beyond that, though, what one actually sees can pretty much be the basis for a more faithful – for me, more interesting – or indeed any other reading of the work. If that sort of realism helps the director, perhaps helps inspire the Woman’s movements, and so on, that need not worry us unduly. 

Whether such ‘working’ would be better left unsaid is a question one might ask, but one is not obliged to take it on board, and for the most part it does not get in the way. The stagecraft is well wrought, to my mind more in sympathy with the work. How much was Sellars and how much Aušrinė Stundytė I do not – need not – know. A boulder on which she rests for a while connected with other stagings, actual or in our minds’ eyes, including that of the recently departed Robert Wilson for Jessye Norman here in Salzburg, that bench a permanent fixture in the foyer. Lighting, shadows, and the Felsenreitschule backdrop suggest and create: for instance, crucifix shadows that might threaten or console, according to taste or situation. 

Image: Monika Rittershaus
Peter Sellars

Once past initial slight irritation, then, I found myself able to concentrate on the performance—and excellent it was too. Stundytė fully inhabited the role: Schoenberg’s and, I imagine, Sellars’s too. A true stage animal, she is – and was – a singing actress in the very best sense: not a euphemism for someone who convinces on stage but cannot sing, but rather one who uses her outstanding lyrical art to truly dramatic ends. Without undue pedantry, every move, every gesture contributed to a greater whole, whilst crucially – for this piece, perhaps, above all – giving the impression of spontaneity, of conception in the moment. Not that there was any shortage of vocal shading, of telling phrasing, of much else in more ‘purely’ musical categories, but the distinction was false and indeed never occurred. 

Guided, inspired by, and in dialogue with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Vienna Philharmonic, as musically all-encompassing a performance of Erwartung as I can recall emerged. Every orchestral flash and flicker, every transformation of timbre and harmony, every imperceptible – in some cases, well-nigh unanalysable – connection between snatches of melody to create musicodramatic form before our ears: these and much more reminded us why this is and always will be a work that presents far more than we can ever grasp in a single experience, why it will always remain one of Schoenberg’s and indeed the Western tradition’s most radical, most extraordinary works. Rarely have I felt so strongly, immediately, and unquestionably the truth of Schoenberg’s 1929 explanation: ‘the aim is to represent in slow motion everything that occurs during a single second of maximum spiritual excitement, stretching it out to half an hour.’ And yet, still it was too much to handle. The ‘resistance movement’ scenario: well, who cared, or even noticed? 

Image: Ruth Walz
Fleur Barron

And so the musical drama continued, distinct yet related, through the Webern op.10 Zwischenspiel, moments and connections of inscrutable, undeniable magic, now all too brief, yet more evidently sufficient, even (relatively) comprehensible. These were exquisite jewels, on the face of it, yet jewels that – crucially for Webern in particular – were in truth developed and developing organisms, not objects. One naturally heard what Schoenberg, Webern, and Mahler, as we moved to ‘Der Abschied’ from Das Lied von der Erde held in common, as well as what distinguished them. How much of that was conscious in Salonen’s performance, again, I do not and cannot know. There was certainly no sense of imposing anything on the music (however loaded such categories may be in an art that remains one of performance, never mere execution). There is a great deal of art in concealing art, yet Salonen and the orchestra, throughout on exquisite, burningly committed form, gave one the (flattering) impression one was discovering for oneself rather than being unduly led.  Equally apparent were Schoenbergian motivic snatches, burned in Webernian purgatory, and deftly turned into deceptive Mahlerian chinoiserie, and a broadening of time, the ‘single second’ of the ‘morning’ cited in Marie Pappenheim’s libretto transformed into a window on Mahler’s ‘eternity’. 

I had skipped over Sellars’s Mahler synopsis more quickly, so much so that it left little mark on my experience. In some senses, it seemed closer to the text; at least, it was saying farewell (to a friend) rather than doing something else completely. It remained specific, realistic, and (for better or worse) couched in what seems to me a rather dated sense of therapeutic self-realisation. But we all come to things from different standpoints and experiences; it doubtless helped him – presumably others, too – and it did not get in the way for me. There were again magical images, such as that of silhouetted flautist Karlheinz Schütz far above, birdsong beckoning Fleur Barron – and/or her friend – to the beyond. Barron’s own performance was, as you would expect, less agitated, yet an eminently worthy complement. Imbued with vocal and quasi-instrumental wisdom, it lived and breathed and brought to its culmination a related, liminal world of words, music, image, and gesture that, whatever the words in the programme, never confused sentiment and sentimentality.

Munich Opera Festival (4) - Dido and Aeneas/Erwartung, 20 July 2023

Nationaltheater

Dido/A Woman - Aušrinė Stundytė
Aeneas – Günter Papendell
Belinda – Victoria Randem
Venus – Rinat Shaham
Sorceress – Key'mon W Murrah
First Witch – Elmira Karakhanova
Members of the opera-ballet of the Bavarian State Opera – Aaron Amoatey, Erica D’Amica, Ahta Yaw Ea, Arnie Georgsson, Moe Gotoda, João da Gracia Santiago, Serhat Perhat, The Thien Nguyen

Interlude:
Paweł Mykietyn (music)
Maria Magdalena Gocał (vocalist)
Jarowsław Regulski (sound design)

Krzysztof Warlikowski (director)
Malgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Kamil Polak (video)
Claude Bardouil (choreography)
Christian Longchamp, Katharina Ortmann (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Supplementary Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Sergej Bolkhovets)
Andrew Manze (conductor)

 

Images: Bernd Uhlig

Purcell and Schoenberg: my kind of double-bill. Puritan ‘authenticity’, or whatever it is calling itself at the moment, is so all-pervasive when it comes to the seventeenth century that the fantasy has had little chance—until now. To be fair, the Frankfurt Opera last season revived ts Barrie Kosky double-bill of Dido and Aeneas and Bluebeard’s Castle, but I am not aware of any previous pairing of Dido with Erwartung. (Bluebeard and Erwartung, by contrast, is an accepted if hardly frequent match.) But is it, is it really my kind of double-bill? I think so; I cannot see why not and could certainly come up with arguments, persuasive or otherwise, in its favour. Sadly, Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production does not mark his finest hour, reducing Dido in particular to a level of almost risible banality, despite the evening’s musical virtues. That was more the case once I had read dramaturge Christian Longchamp’s brief conceptual summary in the programme than when watching, when I (more or less) simply felt baffled. 

What I initially saw was a woman notably more serious than her fun-loving companions, but who did not in any sense appear to be Queen of Carthage or any such equivalent. She stayed in a glass cabin close to a forest, apparently North American, whilst they came and went, Aeneas and Belinda apparently conducting an affair or at least having casual sex. Dido seemed to be in some danger during the second act as the Sorceress and her – his/their, since a countertenor had been cast? – entourage surrounded the cabin. She held up signs saying ‘HELP’ and ‘VAMPIRES’, so I assumed the latter to be the US popular culture equivalent to witches. That made some sense (sort of), even if I could not discern any particular motive, let alone political element. 

Once she had died, a transformational ‘interlude’ began, offering film of a voyage through an endless tunnel, some electronic music by Paweł Mykietyn, and members of the opera’s ballet corps excellent in contemporary dance. Since Dido rose at the end of that and the ‘vampires’ had been busy for much of it, I presumed she too had become a vampire and would join them. Instead, though, she went back to her cabin, which at some point had mysteriously separated into two, and with a rifle shot Aeneas and Belinda dead without feasting on their blood. Erwartung consisted scenically of Dido in that half of the cabin and a dancer in the other changing his clothes and preparing dinner, which she went over to taste but may not have cared for, since she left more or less immediately. There you have it; there was more, but I am not sure it would help to go into further detail, even if I could remember it. 

The vampire thing was, for better or worse, a red herring. It seems that much of what we saw had been in Dido’s imagination, in a concept at least verging on the misogynistic. I may as well quote Longchamp’s scenario (also given in English translation) in full; there seems little virtue to paraphrase in this case.

 

On the edge of a forest, a woman named Dido lives in a house that does not belong to her. She is a fugitive. Nothing is known about her except that she comes from far away. Her behaviour, her recurring references to very old stories, her fears suggest a psychological fragility. Past and present, reality and imaginery [sic] are so intertwined in her that one does not know whether the mysterious figures and evil spirits that appear at times inhabit the forest or her mind. Dido feels a mad, exclusive love for a man who is also a fugitive, Aeneas.

Together with two women, also uprooted, they make up this provisional community.

One evening Dido immerses [s’enfonce] into the forest or into her fantasies. 

One major problem is that very little of that may reasonably be deduced from what one sees on stage. We surely cannot be expected to have read the programme before the performance; the production team needs to do some work here. Even a verbatim projection would have helped. More fundamentally, though, to reduce the character of Dido to a ‘madwoman’, quite divorced from matters of state or any plausible substitute, is a pretty poor production concept. Dido is not unstable; she is wronged. Aeneas is not an apostle of free love. And so on. For some reason, the fourth member of this ‘community’ is, we learn from the cast list though nowhere else, is styled ‘Venus’ and assumes performance of what is left of the vocal writing. I cannot tell you what part the goddess of love is held to play in this reimagined drama. Perhaps it is just a name. Video projections of forest deer added less than nothing. And moving into Schoenberg, might we not at least have had a spot of psychoanalysis? 

Were it not for the genuinely impressive contribution by the dancers, which did, in its way, link both halves, I could not give you a single argument derived from this double-bill for trying to connect the two operas at all. The problem lay far more with the treatment of Dido than that of Erwartung. Once reduced to the level chosen for Dido and divested of its dramatic interest, the stage was literally set for the rest: strange and a genuine pity, since Warlikowski has show in productions such as his Paris Iphigénie en Tauride and his Salzburg Bassarids, as well as his work in spoken theatre, that he is perfectly capable of dealing interestingly with issues of political power and eroticism. To have a ‘mad’ woman possibly/probably imagine strange things was, sadly, nowhere near enough.

 

Aušrinė Stundytė offered a powerful, indeed extraordinary locus of musical connection and certainly did what she could with Warlikowski’s scenario, her acting evoking pity, even sympathy, in the first part, even if we did not really know why. As Dido, she was vulnerable yet proud, her English diction superb. As A Woman, Stundytė mastered Marie Pappenheim’s libretto, Schoenberg’s lightning response, and the alchemy of their combination with an ease that gripped despite, not on account of, the staging. Colour, articulation, dynamic contrast, phrasing, and so much more combined to offer as complete a portrayal as we are likely to here. Above all, and like Andrew Manze and the Bavarian State Orchestra, she treated the drama musically and not as a succession of effects.

Manze is a musician of wide and generous sympathies. From a ‘Baroque’ violinist background, he has always shown interest in earlier and different performing practices. It seemed to me that he relished the opportunity to perform Purcell with this orchestra and on this scale; it certainly sounded that way. There were a couple of odd textual decisions I did not follow, but this was a reading tender and powerful, ably supported by the excellent work of the house’s ‘supplementary’ chorus in the pit. However wide those sympathies, I doubt Schoenberg would be the first composer anyone would associate with Manze, but he did a fine job here too, very much at one with Stundytė’s approach, enabling the orchestra to present a host of voices, near-Brahmsian possibilities taking different turns with all the dramatic-psychological implications that suggests. Balance and colour were equally well projected, in what emerged as a grand operatic scena, almost an outsize accompagnato, albeit one that seemed over – as, in any performance worth its salt – in a thirty-minute flash. 

Aeneas is a dramatically thankless role, all the more so in this production, but Günter Papendell did what he could, emerging with credit. Victoria Randem greatly impressed as Belinda, her clear, stylish, yet never remotely precious soprano just the thing for the role. She can certainly act too. Key'mon W Murrah made an excellent musical case for a countertenor Sorceress in a performance of considerable dramatic verve. There was, indeed, nothing to disappoint on the musical front, and much to admire. What a pity it was to have memorable performances so sorely let down by a disappointing production.

Salome, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 4 December 2019

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Oscar Wilde (Christian Natter), Salome (Aušrine Stundytė)

Herod – Vincent Wolfsteiner

Herodias – Marina Prudenskaya

Salome – Aušrine Stundytė

Jochanaan – Thomas J. Mayer

Narraboth – Peter Sonn

Herodias’s Page – Annika Schlicht

Jews – Ziad Nehme, Michael Smallwood, Matthew Peña, Andrés Moreno Garcia, David Oštrek

Nazarenes – Adam Kutny, Ulf Dirk Mädler

Soldiers – Arttu Kataja, Erik Rosenius

A Cappadocian – David Oštrek

A Slave – Ireene Ollino

Oscar Wilde – Christian Natter

Guards – Ernesto Amico, Allen Boxer, Nikos Fragkou, Jonathan Heck, Maximilian Reisinger, Tom-Veit Weber

Hans Neuenfels (director)

Philipp Lossau (assistant director)

Reinhard von der Thannen (designs)

Kathrin Hauer (assistant stage designer)

Sommer Ulrickson (choreography)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Henry Arnold (dramaturgy)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Manipulation lies at the heart of Richard Strauss’s art. One might argue that it lies at the heart of all art; there would be a strong case to be made for that. However, there is something particular about Straussian manipulation. In some ways not dissimilar to that of Puccini—both composers are expert at pressing particular emotional buttons and having many listeners enjoy such manipulation in full knowledge that they are being manipulated—it differs in the extraordinary level of technical sophistication and, often if not always, in the nested levels of knowing reflexion-in-contrivance. Artifice is good, then: perhaps, after Nietzsche, more in opposition to ‘bad’ than to ‘evil’. For Strauss, as Salome makes abundantly clear, is no more a Christian, perhaps even less willing to admit of metaphysical transcendence, than Nietzsche, of whom he had been an avid and discerning reader.

Salome and Wilde

Manipulation lies at the heart of Salome too; it lies also at the heart of Hans Neuenfels’s production, which, having seen when new last year, I was keen to see again. What I think came across still more strongly than last time—this may just have been me—was the central character’s awakening to that manipulation and, concomitantly, to her ability to manipulate. Such was a signal achievement for Aušrine Stundytė, showing herself every inch a singing actress, throwing everything into a performance that, rightly, was not always pretty, not always to be kept within bounds, very much a force of nature: trying, testing, both winning and losing. Working with Neuenfels’s staging—for which we should also understand Reinhard von der Thannen’s striking designs, Sommer Ulrickson’s choreography, and Henry Arnold’s thoughtful and provocative dramaturgy—we saw and heard from Stundytė a Salome led to self-discovery and ultimately to tragedy not only by Strauss but verbally and visibly by Oscar Wilde himself.

The latter’s advent, first foretold in neon lights (‘Wilde is coming’) and then portrayed, offered intriguing counterpoint to Jochanaan’s foretelling of another leader (and, if you like, divine manipulator)—and was once more acted and danced in a mesmerising fashion perhaps more readily associated with Salome herself by Christian Natter. And is not the Christ of whom this John the Baptist speaks his and his alone, a product of the imagination and repressed desires of a religious fanatic, incarcerated within—visible, throughout—phallic cistern. Was not Christianity always thus: recall Nietzsche’s ‘there was only one Christian and he died on the Cross’. Other religions are, true enough to the opera, treated no more favourably. Their claims, voiced exclusively by men, seem no more plausible and, perhaps more to the point, no more relevant to the story unfolding and to human flourishing beyond that particular story, than a horoscope. Strauss’s failure to conjure up music of more than empty ‘gravity’ for references to Christ tell their own story. Who manipulates whom, and to what end?

Salome looks elsewhere, to those who might actually know her: first, yes, to Jochanaan, but ultimately, more productively, to Wilde—and thus to art, to a game that is aesthetic as much as it is sado-masochistic. The two can hardly be distinguished, and why would one try? Weimar-expressionist cabaret beckons from Wildean decadence; Wilde learns from Strauss and Salome too, ultimately adopting a leather harness in her/his/their service. Such blurring of pronouns may be read in various ways—and probably should. In art, perhaps, the mightier the plagiarism, the mightier the achievement. When Jochanaan and the eunuch Wilde seem partially liberated by adopting the corset and bustle that had once constricted the now queerer, pant-suited Princess Salome, who manipulates whom? And yet, gender as play, as game, remains a deadly one. Salome dies; Salome is killed. Patriarchy—an imperialist, orientalist patriarchy at that—wins to fight another day, to slay another woman, another queer voice and body too. Does it not always? And yet, her smashing of one—only one, yet nevertheless one—of  the Jochanaan busts, an aesthetic representations with which Wilde has incited her, remains: as powerful a moment onstage as that of her murder at the command of a tyrant-abuser.

Wilde and Jochanaan (Thomas J. Mayer)

Herod’s upholding of patriarchal norms, decadent, hypocritical subversion of them notwithstanding, was expertly conveyed in a wheedling, beyond-Mime performance from Vincent Wolfsteiner. Marina Prudenskaya’s Herodias, haughty, contemptuous, impressively controlled in her channelling of sex and gender alike, proved the perfect foil—or, better, manipulator. Thomas J. Mayer likewise offered, in post-Wagnerian marriage of word, tone, and gesture, a Jochanaan for this production, no hint—costume aside—of the ready-to-wear. Peter Sonn proved a worthy successor to Nikolai Schukoff as Narraboth. At times heart-breakingly beautiful of tone, his longing was as aesthetically exquisite as it was therefore doomed. All smaller roles were very well taken indeed, yet also formed part of a greater whole. If I single out Adam Kutny’s First Nazarene and Annika Schlicht’s Page as having made the greatest impression, that is doubtless little more than a highly merited personal reaction.

Conducting the outstanding Staatskapelle Berlin, then as now, was Thomas Guggeis. Then he made headlines by standing in at short notice for Christoph von Dohnányi. Now the field was his own and it sounded as much. From this bubbling, post-Wagnerian cauldron, anything might spill, unless someone could tame it; the battle was vividly, meaningfully rare, rather than effortlessly aestheticised after, say, Karajan.  This was not a tone-poem with words; or was it? Unleashing the fabled darkness of this orchestra’s tone to ends in keeping with and in relationship to the vision on stage, yet in no sense constricted by them, Guggeis showed, as in his recent Katya Kabanova here, a keen ear for harmony, line, and orchestral musicodramatic eloquence. Crucially, he commanded the authority to have them speak in the theatre, in the dramatic here-and-now. This is not Elektra; it is not so single-minded, so monomaniacal. There are sideways glances; aesthetic contemplation shading into sexual frustration, if rarely fulfilment; hints at alternative futures; and so on. Such were rendered dramatically—often vividly— immanent, without throwing us from Strauss and Wilde’s central trail. Or so it seemed, for in the absence of any greater metaphysical authority, how could we know?  Aesthetically the answer seemed clear, yet how could it not? Who, then, had manipulated whom?

Festival d'Aix-en-Provence (4), The Fiery Angel, 15 July 2018

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Renata – Aušrine Stundytė

Ruprecht – Scott Hendricks
Sorceress, Mother Superior – Agnieszka Rehlis
Mephistopheles, Agrippa of Nettesheim – Andreï Popov
Faust, Heinrich, Inquisitor – Krzysztof Bączyk
Jakob Glock, Doctor – Pavlo Tolstoy
Mathias Wissmann, Host, Porter – Łukasz Goliński
Hostess – Bernadetta Grabas
First Young Woman – Bożena Bujnicka
Second Young Woman – Maria Stasiak
 

Mariusz Treliński (director)

Boris Kudlička (set designs)
Kaspar Glarner (costumes)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Bartek Macias (video)
Tomasz Jan Wygoda (movement)
Małgorƶata Sikorska-Misƶcƶuk (dramaturgy)

Dancers

Chorus of the Polish National Opera (chorus master: Miroslaw Janowski)

Orchestre de Paris

Kazushi Ono (conductor)

Images: Festival d’Aix-en-Provence 2018 © Pascal Victor / artcompress

The footballing World Cup final made it unusually challenging to walk between the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume and the Grand Théâtre de Provence in time for my last Aix performance this year. Various thoroughfares were blocked as crowds gathered to watch the proceedings on screens across the city. Still, tired, overheated, and at times deafened by the noise of car horns, my friend and I made it, the journey definitely worth the struggle for this Fiery Angel. Mariusz Treliński did what he seems to do best: a ‘modernised’ yet essentially straightforward production, Boris Kudlička’s often spectacular set designs, Kaspar Glarner’s costumes, and Felice Ross’s lighting very much an integral part of that. Generally excellent vocal and stage performances offered much to enjoy and to provoke too.

 

Probably Prokofiev’s greatest opera, The Fiery Angel is, almost incredibly, based on a true story, that of Nina Petrovskaya, as told in Valery Bryusov’s Symbolist roman à clef. And yet, on the other hand, one might say it would have to be, for who on earth could invent so bizarre and seemingly incoherent a tale of demonic possession? Bryusov, again, one might say, for the tale is also invention, purporting to be a translation of a sixteenth-century manuscript, glorying in the excessive title, The Fiery Angel; or, a True Story in which is related of the Devil, not once but often appearing in the Image of a Spirit of Light to a Maiden and seducing her to Various and Many Sinful Deeds, of Ungodly Practices of Magic, Alchemy, Astrology, the Cabalistical Sciences and Necromancy, of the Trial of the Said Maiden under the Presidency of His Eminence the Archbishop of Trier, as well as of Encounters and Discourses with the Knight and thrice Doctor Agrippa of Nettesheim, and with Doctor Faustus, composed by an Eyewitness (translation, Richard Taruskin). Treliński captures that dichotomy well in some ways, less well in others. Perhaps, however, that will be the fate of any attempt to manage this unmanageable work, all the more so when it assumes operatic form.

 

His method is very much to emphasise realism until he can do no other, and to explain away or, perhaps better, account for some of the most surreal aspects, again until he can really do no other. Renata, then, is a very sad case already: a product of disadvantage of abuse, whose hallucinations, like those of many in the society around here, seem very much to be the product of narcotic substances. The charlatanry of the incomprehensible – to me, anyway – figure of Agrippa of Nettesheim is clear; or is it? How much are his multiple appearances, both to Renata and to the well-meaning if lustful Ruprecht, entirely the doing of a trip induced by their dealer, Jakob Glock? That we cannot entirely make sense of what is going on seems to me all to the good. Hallucinatory (we think) appearances of characters on all three levels of the set are far too much for any of us to take in at one setting: they are frighteningly real and yet at the same time clearly not at all real. Or some of them are, and some of them are not; we never really know. Yet is this perhaps not what might have been going on all along in the ‘original manuscript’? There is an oddly prevalent modern belief that drugs, their use and abuse, are somehow something new. Extreme, erotic ‘religious’ experiences and such causes, are anything but new, however. One only has to think of the visions of saints – who so very often had also been the basest of sinners. And so, the updating to a tawdry, flashy modern world of design hotels, sex shops, and gurus, is both true and untrue to the work – which, I think, is probably how it should be. One may make something of the knock-down Vegas walk-on parts or not, just as one might or might not in ‘real’ or ‘hallucinogenic’ life (or death).

 

Doublings are put, as if in Lulu, to excellent dramatic and not merely practical use. (If one wants ‘practical’, one might be better off opting for another opera.) Jakob Glock is also the Doctor; we think, perhaps, they are narcotic accomplices. Perhaps indeed they are, for are we quite sure that one is not an ‘actor’ – whatever that might mean in this context – and one is not? Mephistopheles and Agrippa of Nettesheim are one and the same – perhaps. Quite what we are to make of the scene in which Mephistopheles and Faust appear is in any case anyone’s guess.  Perhaps most tellingly, Heinrich, the object of Renata’s fixation is also not only Faust but the final act’s Inquisitor. There is something not only of the charlatan but, chillingly, the blind Jimmy Savile (!) to him too. Not for nothing do further visions – Renata’s, presumably, but who knows? – hark back to childhood, to gymnastic exercises, to an army of little Renatas in preparation for – well, preparation presumably for this. The notorious concluding convent orgy both does and does not happen. Is it all in her imagination, and is she now in hospital? Those expecting the acrobatic experiences of David Freeman’s celebrated Mariinsky production will be disappointed, which seems in part to be the point, but perhaps also intrigued, even moved to reflect. We do not always see and experience what we want to, however potent the drug, the magic, the God.

Prokofiev places Renata very much at the centre of the work: too much, some have said. Taruskin refers to ‘one of the reasons for the opera’s continued neglect’ beingf its unusual fixation on a single very difficult – and dramatically static – role,’ a state of affairs Prokofiev may well have rectified had he proceeded with his intended 1930 revision. I am less convinced that it is a problem, although lessening – I should not go so far as to say removal – of the novel’s autobiographical focus on Ruprecht certainly has its consequences. Whatever one thinks about the undoubted domination of the opera by the soprano in the abstract, it was surely vindicated in performance by the magnificent Aušrine Stundytė: obsessive, hysterical, and alarming, yes, but also vulnerable, human, and above all capable of expending an extraordinary range of colour, emotion, and dynamic contrast. Scott Hendricks’s Ruprecht had its moments, but he seemed less comfortable in the role. (Not that comfort is really the thing, here, I suppose.) ‘Weak’ roles are a difficult thing, of course; ask any Don Ottavio. However, I could not help think that he might have projected his own dilemma more strongly in musical terms. His Russian also seemed to me – this was confirmed by a friend who actually knew! – often quite indistinct. Otherwise, the host of bizarre characters came and went, starring as and when they could, almost all of them making strong impressions in their weird and wonderful ways. Andreï Popov, Pavlo Tolstoy, and Bernadetta Grabas, were perhaps first among equals here, but in such an ensemble piece, in such an ensemble performance, the whole proved considerably greater than the sum of its parts.

 

The other slight disappointment lay in Kazushi Ono’s direction of the Orchestre de Paris, especially earlier on. This was a fluent enough reading, which achievement deserves praise in itself, but a lack of bite in the first two acts in particular was often noticeable. Perhaps it was a reluctance to overpower the singers: surely a misguided reluctance in an opera such as this, in which so much is a manic struggle that may or may not ultimately make sense. The Polish National Opera Chorus sang splendidly, however, full of heft and far from without subtlety – except, of course, where subtlety is the last thing one wants to see or hear. Which, in this work…

 

Salome, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 17 March 2018

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Annika Schlicht (Herodias's Page), Oscar Wilde (Christian Natter), Salome (Aušrine Stundytė)

Herod – Gerhard Siegel

Herodias – Marina Prudenskaya

Salome – Aušrine Stundytė

Jochanaan – Thomas J. Mayer

Narraboth – Nikolai Schukoff

Herodias’s Page – Annika Schlicht

Jews – Dietmar Kerschbaum, Ziad Nehme, Linard Vrielink, Andrés Moreno García, David Oštrek

Nazarenes – Adam Kutny, Ulf Dirk Mädler

Soldiers – Arttu Kataja, Dominic Barbiere

A Cappadocian – David Oštrek

A Slave – Corinna Scheurle

Oscar Wilde – Christian Natter

Hans Neuenfels (director)

Philipp Lossau (assistant director)

Reinhard von der Thannen (designs)

Kathrin Hauer (assistant stage designer)

Sommer Ulrickson (choreography)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Henry Arnold (dramaturgy)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

‘These Germans: they are obsessed with sex.’ Such were the puzzling words I heard from an irate Frenchman in the queue behind me for the cloakroom at the close of this performance of Salome. Far be it to suggest that ‘the French’ might also have a reputation for an interest in such matters, but I could not help but wonder whether, if he were weary of at least implicit sexual context onstage, Salome were really the opera for him. As it happens, Hans Neuenfels’s excellent new production, provocative in the best sense, is far more concerned with the absence of sex, sexual repression, the ultimate inability to perform, and, following Oscar Wilde in particular here, the aestheticisation of such problems, than with sexual display or fulfilment. Prudishness and aversion take many forms, however, as Neuenfels also suggests.

For Wilde is placed, increasingly literally, centre stage. Not having looked properly at the cast list, let alone the programme, beforehand, I had not realised that this would be so. Instead, as intended, it gradually became clear that the actor, whose role I could not quite place, either in the work or more laterally, was Wilde himself. The neon sign, ‘Wilde is coming’, had announced it clearly enough,’ I realised – just as Jochanaan announced one who would follow him. Not that the accomplished, mesmerisingly versatile Christian Natter, in this entirely mute role, is made up to resemble the playwright: we are, let us give thanks, at a level of drama beyond the caricature of the impressionist. Eventually the green carnation gives the game away: the only instance throughout the entire evening of a colour on stage that is not black, white, or red (typically sharp, meaningfully coloured designs by longtime Neuenfels collaborator, Reinhard von der Thannen). But before that, a world of Victorian sexual repression, that of the society from which Wilde sprang, has been constructed. Its imperialism is nodded to, in very British Empire uniforms for the soldiers: let us play at governing the Middle East, with catastrophic consequences to be seen to the present day and beyond.

Jochanaan (Thomas J. Mayer), Herodes (Gerhard
Siegel), Herodias (Marina Prudenskaya)

More to the point, John the Baptist, foreteller of Christianity – perhaps, in this reading, more so than Christ himself, certainly more of a hypocritical moral fanatic – is encased in what Neuenfels calls ‘a phallus or rocket of indignation, a constant appeal to obdurate, concealed, packed away carnality. This results in a constant ban, a threat.’ The traditional cistern is gone, but as Henry Arnold, Neuenfels’s dramaturge points out, Strauss wrote to Ernst von Schuch, conductor of the first performance, that Jochanaan ‘should be understandable without a voice pipe. Maybe he could sing through a gaze veil (a hole in the wall, invisible to the audience) with his head two feet above the floor so that he sees the conductor and can sing directly to the audience. This is very important.’ Take that, alleged ‘respecters’ of ‘the composer’s intentions’. What is it that our proto-ayatollah objects to? In a sense, it does not really matter, for such things are more matters of opportunism than anything else, as the ‘religious Right’ backers of Donald Trump testify more clearly than ever. What Neuenfels opens up is the possibility of a more thoroughgoing exploration of gender and orientation. Salome herself becomes a significantly gender-bending figure, her absurd, ultra-stylised (which is, crucially, to say aestheticised) Victorian bustle transposed onto others, Wilde and Jochanaan chief amongst them. Who dresses up? Who dresses whom? With what intent?

Wilde, Salome

When Herod commands, or rather requests, ‘Dance for me, Salome’, does he too want as much of an aesthetic as a sexual experience? Do we err to distinguish the two? (Given recent reports of sexual abuse by conductors, the question seems especially relevant now.) He has his own reasons, as such ‘immoral’ rulers tend to, in many ways far less objectionable than those who loudly trumpet their ‘morality’; he is weak more than anything else, as signalled by Herodias’s theft of and refusal to return his ring of kingship. Make of that gesture, so rich in symbolism political and sexual, what you will. Meanwhile Wilde, increasingly confident, perhaps as in his play, in his denunciation of denunciation, allows his homosexuality to become clearer – and, more important still, to acquire greater dramatic agency. When he dances, as angel of death, with Salome, a game of omnisexual sadomasochism unfolds, the poet’s leather harness-corset (which?) and what he does with it speaking a thousand words (back at least as far as Neuenfels’s brilliant Salzburg Così fan tutte, a work Strauss, a true Mozart connoisseur, so adored).

But, in a world of such repression, what does one put in the place of sexual freedom? Aestheticism, of course, in Wilde’s case – and, surely, in Strauss’s too, throughout his career. Ever the student of Nietzsche rather than Wagner, Strauss believed in art above all else: indeed, perhaps only in art. Thus the constructions we place on stage, and the very constructions we make of them in our minds too, play their part in a similar game, perhaps even identical, at the very least related – depending, most likely, upon who we are, even how we feel on the night. Salome – sometimes a girl, sometimes a more progressive, perhaps older, woman with something of the caricatured lesbian to her, sometimes perhaps a surrogate for the young man Wilde, on and off stage, may be seeking – focuses her own aesthetics upon her construction of Jochanaan, who sometimes resembles what she thinks she wants, yet in other respects could hardly be more distant. The pent-up rage in which she smashes one of the multiple, ‘beautiful’ busts arranged on stage for her delectation following the dance is both a genuine act and a ‘work of art’, or at least an aspiration thereto, in itself. Has anyone learned of ‘love’ then? It seems unlikely. We have nevertheless learned a good deal about the lengths to which many of us will go in order to prevent ourselves and others from doing so.

Wilde, Salome

Thomas Guggeis, originally scheduled to conduct but one of these performances as assistant to Christoph von Dohnányi, ended up conducting them all. He did a very good job, the Staatskapelle Berlin seemingly very happy to play under his leadership. The weird musical world in which dances do not dance and non-dances do came across with considerable dramatic power. I have heard more outrageously, or at least phantasmagorically, coloured performances, but no single performance is likely in itself to respond equally to the manifold possibilities of Strauss’s score. There can be little doubt that this young conductor is a musician of great accomplishment, nor that we shall be hearing much more from him. What an opportunity, though, to have fallen to him!

Jochanaan

If tonal beauty were your thing, then Aušrine Stundytė’s Salome would most likely not be for you. Is the problematisation of such priorities, though, not one of the dramatic themes, at least possibly, of work and production? She certainly entered into the role with dramatic gusto and considerable stage presence. One heard, moreover, many more of the words, words moreover imbued with true verbal potency, than will often be the case. Thomas Johannes Mayer’s Jochanaan likewise navigated intriguingly between such polarities, offering a solution, however provisional, suited to his character and his portrayal. Looking at the royal couple from the other side of that (doubtless too) crude opposition, Gerhard Siegel and Marina Prudenskaya offered formidably sung performances, more so than one will often hear, without sacrifice to the drama. Nikolai Schukoff’s astute, enigmatic, vocally ravishing Narraboth was perhaps the single most impressive performance of all.

Narraboth (Nikolai Shukoff), Salome, Jochanan
Images: Monika Rittershaus

Indeed, at the time, one rather resented Narraboth’s being elbowed aside by Wilde – which is surely the point. And yet soon we did not, for criticism of society, his, Salome’s, and ours, becomes all the more necessary. Until the drama, musical rather than scenic, less closes than stops. It could be Wozzeck, almost, except in its aestheticism, it is anything but. Wozzeck does not die of boredom; Salome does, but whose? Patriarchy remains, but do we care - truly care, as opposed to claiming to?