Parsifal, Vienna State Opera, 8 April 2026

Images: © Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn

 

Amfortas – Gerald Finley
Gurnemanz – Franz-Josef Selig
Parsifal – Klaus Florian Vogt
Klingsor – Werner van Mechelen
Kundry – Jennifer Holloway
Titurel – Matheus França
Younger Parsifal – Nikolay Sidorenko
Squires – Florentina Serles, Daria Sushkova, Andrew Turner, Adrian Autard
First Knight of the Grail – Carlo Osuna
Second Knight of the Grail – Alex Ilvakhin
Flowermaidens – Ileana Tonca, Mariia Zherebiateva, Anna Bondarenko, Ilia Staple, Jenni Hietala, Isabel Signoret

Director, designs, costumes – Kirill Serebrennikov
Lighting – Franck Evin
Assistant director – Evgeny Kulagin
Assistant designer – Olga Pavliuk
Assistant costume designer – Tatina Dolmatovskaya
Video and photography – Aleksey Fokin, Yurii Karih
Fight coordinator – Ran Arthur Braun
Dramaturgy – Sergio Morabito
Actors

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Thomas Lang)
Vienna State Opera Orchestra
Axel Kober (conductor)

More by happy accident than design, my Easter Monday Rheingold in Salzburg was followed only two evenings later in Vienna by Parsifal from the same director, Kirill Serebrennikov. Whilst the former marked the first instalment, if the third performance, of a new Ring, the latter was the final performance in a revival of a production first seen in 2021 and reviewed here at its first revival last year. My thoughts on the production largely remain similar to 2025, though there will doubtless have been small changes, given a largely new cast, Klaus Florian Vogt the only singer to reprise a principal role. I shall doubtless also have seen different things and reacted differently to what I saw, so I shall recapitulate, without reading my former review, before proceeding to those performances. Conductor Axel Kober remained in the pit, as of course did the Vienna State Opera Orchestra, although how many players will have been the same I do not know. 

Serebrennikov’s role as a film as well as stage director is, as in Das Rheingold, apparent throughout. In this vision of Monsalvat correctional facility (the ‘l’ given by a cross) we are made to think and feel, if not quite as Wagner would have had us do – how can we ever know? – then in a way certainly preferable to any moribund attempt to imitate, the threadbare letter mistaken for the spirit, just as the ‘l’ Cross has almost vanished when we (and the characters) return for the third act to a building and institution that remains even after its initial purpose has died. So far, so Wagnerian one, might say, penetrating in historical decay at least to the essence of this Grail community tale. In some ways, this is Kundry’s tale: she as photojournalist documents the regime and its hardships, writing a lengthy investigative (exploitative?) story for the glossy magazine ‘Schloss’ managed by Klingsor, which may or may not contribute to institutional demise. 

The question of gaze is interesting: there is clearly something strongly homoerotic to the film visions not only of the young Parsifal (Nikolay Sidorenko) revisited or remembered by his later self (Vogt also on stage, a ghost who sings). ‘Er ist schön, der Knabe!’ as Klingsor cannot help but admit. Whether the prison activities, physical training, ‘play’ wrestling and all, themselves partake in such homoeroticism will partly be a matter for the beholder. There is, however, no question in the case of the swan, another young inmate who approaches the inexperienced Parsifal on film, only swiftly to be felled, his body taken away by guards whose relationship to the prisoners, not least old lag and tattoist Gurnemanz, is anthropologically fascinating if occasionally narratively tricky. Lingering shower shots as the pure fool cleanses himself tell one tale, which may or may not be concluded by filmic resurrection for the swan (a prison nickname perhaps?) at the close. 

But we should not forget that, if Gurnemanz is Wagner’s narrator, Kundry is in many ways Serebrennikov’s. Not only do prisoners act up for her, young Parsifal learning to flex his biceps in imitation of others by the time of his release from what seems to have been a week-long sentence, days recorded on the film, at the close of the first act. But she is photographer and writer, clearly a more serious as well as successful figure than fashionista Flowermaidens who get nowhere with their lust, when young Parsifal comes to the office, ritually stripped and bashful, to be reclothed in tighty whitie Calvin Kleins and still tighter black leather trousers. Kundry has her way beyond Wagner’s kiss, if not the whole way, whilst the older Parsifal, powerless to intervene in a past that is past, attempts to save his younger self. So the gaze represented, arguably embodied too, extends beyond the homoerotic, even beyond the queer, to the female too. Whatever names we may wish to accord this or these, such orientations and identities stand(s) in opposition to singular, heteronormative patriarchy, here a quasi-monastic prison in itself. Notably, there is no Voice from Above at the end: it is Kundry herself, less released by death than released by life. 

Kober’s conducting was largely brisk and no-nonsense. It was less overtly an ‘interpretation’ than many might conductors might give, though in so complex a score there is unquestionable art in giving the impression of letting it and the wonderful Vienna orchestra speak for themselves. If there were times when greater variation in tempo on both micro- and macro-levels might have been desirable or at least interesting, there were great dynamic range and considerable timbral variety – if not that of, say, a Barenboim – to the orchestra doing what it does best. The chorus was outstanding – surely outstandingly trained too – throughout; it would be tempting to take that for granted, but its marriage of precision and heft was not the least of the evening’s achievements. 

Vogt and Sidorenko gave tireless, complementary performances as Parsifal, their interaction and non-interaction moving as well as suggestive. Hearing Vogt in this role almost inevitably summons memories – for those who have heard it anyway – of his Lohengrin, an historico-genealogical layering that is fruitful if not necessary. This Parsifal must play the game we play yet retain freshness on the way to experience, far from the only instance of work and production gaining in turn from their interaction. Some dislike Vogt’s voice – excessively, I cannot help but think – but that is surely neither here nor there. He reminds us that he is justly a major artist in this repertoire, has been for many years, and shows no sign of going anywhere yet. Jennifer Holloway will sing Adriano in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus’s first ever Rienzi this summer. Her Kundry was well acted, well sung, increasing in overt confidence in fine parallel with Serebrennikov’s concept. Franz-Josef Selig could not reasonably be faulted as Gurnemanz, marriage of words and music an object lesson. The greater ambiguity, even occasional malevolence, of the character in this production was subtly suggested without caricature. Gerald Finley’s Amfortas made a similarly intelligent impression, unquestionably founded in and at ease with Wagner’s words and their changing meaning. Werner van Mechelen made his mark not only as Klingsor but as this Klingsor, Smaller roles were all well taken, often illuminatingly so. Like Kundry, probably Parsifal too, Wagner’s Bühnenweihfestspiel again found itself released by the new life staging and performances can and did impart.

Parsifal, Vienna State Opera, 23 April 2025

Images:© Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Parsifal (Nikolay Sidorenko and Klaus Florian Vogt)

Amfortas – Jordan Shanahan
Gurnemanz – Günther Groissböck

Parsifal – Klaus Florian Vogt
Klingsor – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Kundry – Anja Kampe
Titurel – Ivo Stanchev
Younger Parsifal – Nikolay Sidorenko
Squires – Anita Monserrat, Juliette Mars, Andrew Turner, Nathan Bryon
First Knight of the Grail – Devin Eatmon
Second Knight of the Grail – Alex Ilvakhin
Flowermaidens – Ileana Tonca, Mariia Zherebiateva, Anna Bondarenko, Celine Mun, Jenni Hietala, Isabel Signoret

Director, designs, costumes – Kirill Serebrennikov
Lighting – Franck Evin
Assistant director – Evgeny Kulagin
Assistant designer – Olga Pavluk
Assistant costume designer – Tatina Dolmatovskaya
Video and photography – Aleksey Fokin, Yurii Karih
Fight coordinator – Ran Arthur Braun
Dramaturgy – Sergio Morabito

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Thomas Lang)

Vienna State Opera Orchestra

Axel Kober (conductor)

 

Kirill Serebrennikov’s Vienna Parsifal, seen first in April 2021, receives a revival fully justifying the praise it garnered four years ago. Like Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Unter den Linden staging, it has a Russian quality to it, once again bringing to mind Dostoevsky (and Nietzsche’s confrontations with him and with Wagner), albeit in quite a different way. Here is not the world of the Old Believers but The House of the Dead: recalling, if only coincidentally, Frank Castorf’s move from the Ring not to Parsifal but to Janáček’s opera as a surprising, yet illuminating pendant. Well conducted by Axel Kober, in the best performance I have heard from him, with the Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Chorus, and a fine cast, this knocked spots of Bayreuth’s two recent, sorry encounters with the work written for its theatre. On a first acquaintance at least, Serebrennikov’s production marks an important contribution to Parsifal’s production history post-Stefan Herheim, whose Bayreuth staging continues, like Patrice Chéreau’s Ring, to divide others into worlds of ‘before’ and ‘after’. 

Video homes in on a remote, forest monastery, or I thought so initially. It is actually a prison. If it would be silly to say they are the same thing, the two certainly have something in common, as prison does with all manner of institutions and greater societies, all the more so when we deny that it does. As an Anglican cleric might have it, ‘we are all, in a very real sense, prisoners,’ and of course we are. Serebrennikov, notoriously, was himself when his art contravened the diktats of Putin and Russian Orthodoxy’s fascism. The way such societies constitute themselves internally and in relation to their governors is anthropologically revealing; all manner of rules, customs, comradeship, and expectations build up in complex interaction, masking, abetting, and inciting violence, increasingly so when, like all institutions, they stray from their founding purpose. Prisoners are thrown out by guards for a beating from prisoners. Gurnemanz is an intermediary, a political even, certainly at times a financier, paying a guard to look the other way. His leadership capacity involves tattooing fellow prisoners: a rite of initiation and doubtless of hierarchy too. Ritual become ritualism, as in the writing on the wall, sometimes in blood: ‘Durch Mitleid wissend, der reine Tor, harre sein’. Sometimes it takes an external intervention, a novice who does not know where he is, even who he is, to accomplish what is required—though that will be easier said than done. 

Gurnemanz (Günther Groissböck)

But that is to get slightly ahead of ourselves—not unreasonably, given the production does, presenting the first and second acts from the standpoint of an elder Parsifal, embodied in the singer (in this case, Klaus Florian Vogt), those acts’ stagework mostly – save for illuminating moments of interaction through memory – by the outstanding, highly physical acting of Nikolay Sidorenko. Violence is rife, and video enables us to home in further, observing and feeling the wounds, of which Amfortas’s is but the most egregious example, for ourselves. Like St Thomas, one might say—or like all manner of other instances, if one prefers. Kundry visits as a photographer, though one who seems also to know the rules, perhaps closer to guiding principles than others, though her photography, as becomes increasingly clear, is not only a matter of record but also of exploitation, glamourising what – and whom – should not be glamourised; such, however, is our society, and such is unquestionably the world of most of its journalism. Surveillance is part and parcel of that—and is of course an unmistakeable component of life in prison. The troubling death of another prisoner, relayed on video – though should we trust its (edited?) testimony? – equates, we think, to that of the swan. There is certainly a terrible beauty to the close-ups and a frank, border-line repellent insistence on our (homoerotic) gaze. There is ultimately no objectivity at the human level, least of all when we claim there is.

More broadly, narration may be necessary, whether via Kundry, Gurnemanz, or the elder Parsifal; yet it can, as we all know, be highly unreliable. That, as Herheim acknowledged, this has aesthetic and specifically musical implications, is clear both in Serebrennikov’s theory and practice. ‘It is Wagner's compositional and dramaturgical perspective of memory in Parsifal,’ he acknowledges, 

… from which I developed my scenic concept: An adult man of my age remembers the young man, almost still the lad he once was. For us, Wagner's music emerges from the inner movement of the protagonist and is set in the context of a scenic experimental arrangement. Parsifal is overtaken or overwhelmed by his memories, sometimes he gets lost in them. He discovers the repressed. The break in time between the first two acts and the third led me to tell the story of the mature Parsifal in a flashback, as it were, which takes us through the events of the first two acts until we arrive in the narrator's present in Act 3. In all three acts, there is what I understand to be a sacred or mystical encounter between Parsifal then and Parsifal now. It is important for me to emphasise that I have created a poetic space of memory in which - just as in our memories - there can be contradictions and in which different levels can overlap or replace each other as if in a cross-fade.

Passing of time, so fundamental to Wagner and more broadly to drama itself, is key to the unfolding of the first, most complex (here) act, as well as to its relation with the second and third. A more wholesome, more necessary ritual, that of breakfast, of breaking bread, enables its religious-theological counterpart, seemingly understood or at least capable of understanding in Wagner’s own Feuerbachian terms, to engage in that passing, to speed things up (in fruitful counterpoint, even dialectic, with the score. The latter days of Parsifal’s week of incarceration, demarcated by video, pass more quickly, then, than those at its beginning. 

Parsifal, Kundry (Anja Kampe)

At that act’s close, there is no ‘Voice from Above’; it is Kundry herself, returned to capture the moment visually, for which Parsifal has now learned to pose, flexing muscles so as to make his way in a world both old and new. Klingsor’s world, attached (even physically as well as conceptually) to that of the prison, is that of a glossy, fashion magazine: one with pretension, no doubt, that it tells a ‘story’ with its images—and indeed with the copious words seen on screen, of Kundry’s article to date. It is not finished, though, and he compels her to return to it, to continue her work with Parsifal. (And why not, one might ask; surely prison and its conditions require reporting on. Doubtless they do, but by whom, and to what end?) The Flowermaidens, part of this world and dressed accordingly, do their bit, but it is of course only Kundry who will succeed, her (Klingsor’s) exploitation of the released prisoner every bit as disconcerting, as inciting to voyeurism, as what we saw earlier on film. Stripped, ritually yet trivially, and not knowing where to turn, desperately trying to cover what is both his humiliation and his sexuality, Parsifal, now clad – captured, in more than one sense – in fresh underwear and the tightest of leather trousers, must fulfil his side of a bargain in which he does not know the stakes, indeed to which he can hardly be said to have consented in the first place. But is that not generally the case with bourgeois contracts? (Recall the runes of domination on Wotan’s spear, or the ’terms of employment’ in a hellish factory.) Parsifal, then, is reborn, in typically ‘religious fashion’, but it is sour, straightforwardly wrong. This is, after all, the ‘rose of Hell’, replete with serpent for Parsifal on film to model. The design of the black T-shirt he is eventually permitted to don doubles up as that for the headscarves of forced memories of Herzeleide. Such is the plan. In this struggle, part of which is the vain attempt of the older Parsifal to help his younger self, predestination must play its part, as always it must in narration if it is to be narration at all. 

Parsifal and Kundry

Both worlds, in any case intimately connected, come together in the third act, as they do in the work ‘itself’. In an intriguing twist, the ‘swan’ prisoner appears to come back to life, though again the question must be asked as to whether we should believe what we are told. We arguably have no choice, and that may be the problem. Rather as Christ might come down from the Cross in Gurnemanz’s narration, that is our current lot, shaped by memory and experience. In related fashion, we are reminded that performance, whatever ideological ritual-literalists may tell you, will always offer a dialectic between fidelity and infidelity. If not quite to the extent of the deeply faithful Herheim, there is also much, doubtless for many a surprising degree, that was faithful to stage direction. I cannot remember, for instance, the last time I saw an actual chalice raised on stage, yet here it i. Unless I was missing something – quite possible with so much going on, on different levels – Titurel is not seen onstage, though the recent tendency, contra Wagner, has been to render him visible.

Amfortas (Jordan Shanahan)

All this would be as naught without performers able to bring the vision to life and to contribute much of their own. Jonas Kaufmann sang the title role in 2021. It is difficult to think of an exponent – at least one who can sing it – more different vocally from Kaufmann than Vogt. Both, however, are excellent actors as well as singers, and Vogt’s compassionate retelling and participation, very much progenitor-to-Lohengrin, would surely have satisfied even his vocal detractors. Parsifal’s words – and notes – rang forth with admirable clarity and connection, their intermittent unworldliness not only a feature but a dramatically productive one. Anja Kampe’s Kundry, similarly engaged but in a very different way, was admirable too, adapting chameleon-like to changing circumstances whilst nonetheless remaining herself. Jordan Shanahan gave a rich-toned yet vulnerable, deeply human portrayal of Amfortas, ever founded in Wagner’s text. As Gurnemanz, Günther Groissböck was more active participant than often one sees and hears, but also perhaps more changed by the experience.

Kober’s musical direction likewise accentuated ‘fidelity’. It was not a reading to give rise to thoughts of ‘his’ Parsifal, as might, say, Thielemann’s or Rattle’s. There is room for both, and in reality there is a spectrum as in staging. At any rate, this gave the impression of releasing both the outstanding Vienna orchestra and Wagner’s score to do their dramatic work, alert to the latter’s melos and its demands in tandem with the staging, but also enabling them to arise. The depth of orchestral sound was a joy, though never a joy merely in itself; again, it always sounded dramatically founded. There were a few strange balances, in particular with respect to lower brass, though that may have been an oddity of the acoustic more than anything else. Choral singing was similarly outstanding throughout, a vital contributor to and participant in a drama that should – and here did – become more mysterious with every retelling.

In that, surely, Parsifal unites, whatever its heterodoxy, the human and the divine. As Janáček wrote above the score of his final drama, From the House of the Dead, ‘In every creature, a spark of God!’

Jenůfa, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 7 January 2024

Grandmother Buryja – Hanna Schwarz
Kostelnička Buryja – Rosie Aldridge
Jenůfa – Vida Miknevičiūtė
Laca Klemeń – Stephan Rügamer
Števa Buryja – Pavol Breslik
Foreman – Grigory Shkarupa
Jano – Victoria Randem
Barena – Adriane Queiroz
Mayor – David Oštrek
Mayor’s Wife – Natalia Sckrycka
Karolka – Maria Kokareva
Herdswoman – Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Auntie – Rebecka Wallroth
Voices – Olga Vilenskaia, Ben Bloomfield

Director – Damiano Michieletto
Revival director – Marcin Łakomicki
Set designs – Paolo Fantin
Costumes – Carlo Teti
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti

Choreography – Thomas Wilhelm  

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Axel Kober (conductor)

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere, with different cast)

Damiano Michieletto’s 2021 production of Jenůfa, now receiving its first revival, offers a relatively straightforward retelling of the story without prettifying or sentimentalising. Paolo Fantin’s set designs are stark: semi-transparent, enabling one to see, as in a small rural community, most of what is going on, whilst still maintaining some degree of secrecy. This is a world of violence and poverty, and so it feels, whilst avoiding undue specificity: the level of abstraction is such that the message need not be restricted to any one milieu. That enables a degree of symbolism, perhaps not entirely unlike Olivier Tambosi’s 2001 Covent Garden production (my first, with Bernard Haitink and Karita Mattila no less).

Ice/water is central to Michieletto’s conception. There is something icy to the walls, but more fundamentally, not unlike Tambosi’s giant boulder, although the other way up, an iceberg descends from the ceiling or sky. It hems in the action to varying extents, according (I assume) to the emotional and broader dramatic temperature. Števa hacks a block of ice to pieces, with violence shocking both in itself and in its childishness, when he has been rejected for conscription. Jenůfa’s child is buried and preserved in the ice too, of course, that discovery provoking the final reckoning and thus enabling the advent of some limited hope and here, literally, sunlight for Jenůfa and Laca. And its melting provides a downpour to punish, symbolically at least, the Kostelnička. The community, arguably the true villain here – Števa is too weak to deserve such billing – is represented by a few actors, whose shifting shape and role say most of what needs to be said. We can fill in the gaps, bring something to the table ourselves, or simply watch things ‘straight’. Whether the chorus’s placing, largely offstage, was at least in part a response to pandemic restrictions, I do not know, but it works, perhaps paradoxically, to enhance the onstage claustrophobia.

 

Choral singing was good, although coordination with stage and pit sometimes went awry. Indeed, conductor Axel Kober’s coordination of his different forces often left something to be desired, the opening seriously awry, both in that respect and concerning balance of orchestral lines. By and large, Kober gave a good enough impression of the score without penetrating deeper. The Staatskapelle Berlin responded in kind, often more than that. But where the musical action should erupt, forcing itself into our consciousness as a literal matter of life or death, Kober seemed largely content to offer an accompaniment to scenic action: involving enough, but an accompaniment nonetheless. There was little sense, at least from the orchestral direction, of the composer’s speech rhythms determining line and form (surely a crucial argument for preferring Janáček in the original Czech). 

The cast did a better job in that respect and others. Vida Miknevičiūtė seems very much to be a soprano of the moment, unable to put a foot (or note) wrong. Her assumption of the title role proved no exception: no mere victim, but a somewhat headstrong young woman, who made choices of her own as well as suffering those of others. Here was to be heard a definite command of the composer’s writing and its dramatic implications, as well as stage presence and collegiality. The same could be said of her colleagues, Rosie Aldridge a compassionate yet broken Kostelnička, Hanna Schwarz still an estimable force as Grandmother Buryja. Pavol Breslik skilfully trod a tightrope as Števa, keenly alert to the character’s contemptible weakness, whilst maintaining allure and vocal security. Stephan Rügamer’s Laca grew in stature as Števa receded from our – and Jenůfa’s – consciousness. Sterling work was done in the smaller roles, Maria Kokareva’s Karolka, Natalia Sckrycka’s Mayor’s Wife, and Victoria Randem’s Jano shining examples for me. There was fine ensemble work here, in which it was rightly difficult to distinguish between singing and acting.

Parsifal, Deutsche Oper, 21 April 2014

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Amfortas – Bo Skovhus

Titurel – Tobias Kehrer

Gurnemanz – Hans-Peter König

Parsifal – Stefan Vinke

Kundry – Evelyn Herlitzius

Klingsor – Bastiaan Everink

Knights of the Grail – Burkhard Ulrich, Andrew Harris

Esquires – Siobhan Stagg, Christine Sidak, Paul Kaufmann, Alvaro Zambrano

Flowermaidens – Siobhan Stagg, Martina Welschenbach, Katarina Bradic, Elena Tsallagova, Christina Sidak, Dana Beth Miller

Voice from Above – Dana Beth Miller

Philipp Stölzl (director)

Mara Kurotschka (co-director)

Conrad Moritz Reinhardt, Philipp Stölzl (set designs)

Kathi Maurer (costumes)

Günther Kittler (video)

Ulrich Niepel (lighting)

 Chorus, Men of the Extra Chorus, and Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus masters: William Spaulding, Christian Lindhorst)

Opera-ballet and Statisterie of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin, Axel Kober (conductor)

 

Philipp Stölzl’s Deutsche Oper production of Parsifal replaced Gotz Friedrich’s offering from 1998 last season; I was able, in a feat of Wagnerian dedication unusual even for me, to see it revived just three days after Leipzig’s Good Friday staging of the Bühnenweihfestspiel. The opening might have made still stronger an impression on Good Friday: a depiction of what might be considered the work’s foundational myth, the Crucifixion, as the first-act Prelude offered musical and philosophical explanation as to why it might have been necessary – or, alternatively, why, in Michael Tanner’s analysis, following that of Robert Raphael, it might be necessary to stop Christ ascending the Cross. In a sense, Stölzl concurs; in a sense he does not. It might be necessary, but in the sorry consequences lain out, there is no chance of accomplishing such a need, whether symbolised by Parsifal or otherwise. What we see is one of the most accomplished and indeed extreme stagings I have yet witnessed from a school which, doubtless partially but not entirely unreasonably, understands Monsalvat as a religious community that has gone horribly, in this case irredeemably, wrong. In this Hell-on-Earth – is Hell not where Christ Himself sojourned before rising on Easter morning? – of religious fanaticism, lascivious, Opus Dei-tinged relish is taken in self-chastisement prior to continual re-enactment of deicide. Unable to look beyond the tableaux vivants which just about keep the community alive, its members re-present kitsch, yes, but deadly kitsch. Carl Dahlhaus's observation regarding the action's characterisation by 'inclination towards ritual and tableau' reveals, perhaps obsessively but certainly with conviction, a darker side indeed.

 

Stölzl’s creation is not merely anti-Christian, more anti-religious, perhaps with respect both to organised religion and to transcendence. The Flowermaidens are initially more geological than blooming, seemingly hewn from the rock of Klingsor’s Tora Bora-like lair, before their brief moment of colour. Likewise, Kundry’s burqa-clad appearance – interestingly, quite unsensationalised – makes its point before her unveiling. All the while, the second act proceedings, perhaps an Orientalist ‘other’ to the sick ritualism of Monsalvat, are haunted by the sacrifice of a comely knight who has, perhaps tired of his moribund community, repeated Amfortas’s temptation and fall. Even when the would-be Crusader Parsifal is acclaimed, Resurrection never comes. At the moment of what would be healing, Amfortas impales himself upon the proffered spear: a way out, perhaps, but not that envisaged either by the Church or by Wagner. Perhaps Stölzl heeds John Deathridge’s warning of resolution in 'high-minded kitsch'. It is not how we should always wish to experience the work, and the redemption of redemption, above all in music, achieved by, Stefan Herheim is unavailable in a staging that pursues one concept single-mindedly rather than having them dialectically interact as Wagner himself did. There is room for both.

 

Axel Kober led the fine Deutsche Oper Orchestra, which put not a foot wrong, in an honest, sensitive account, which, if it neither scaled the Boulezian dramatic heights nor plumbed the Gattian religious depths, told Wagner’s musical story well. Stefan Vinke’s proved untiring in the title role, though there were times when his vocal stridency proved a little too much. If the Knights had compared his tone with the warmth and humanity of Hans-Peter König’s Gurnemanz, they might have decided to enthrone the latter instead. Evelyn Herlitzius offered a duly committed performance as Kundry; her vocal wildness might have benefited from taming earlier in the second act, for there were undeniable passages of questionable intonation, but her wounded-animal reaction to Parsifal’s rejection offered a great musico-dramatic experience. Bo Skovhus’s detailed attention towards music, words, gesture, and their interaction was highly to be commended as Amfortas. Moreover, Tobias Kehrer made more of a mark than many as a deep-voiced Titurel. Knights, esquires, and Flowermaidens were of a consistently high standard, a credit to the company as a whole, likewise the truly excellent singing from William Spaulding’s chorus, its movement blocked with equal excellence. This was a Parsifal demanding both to be seen and to be heard.

Oper Leipzig's new season, 2010-11

The renaissance of Oper Leipzig under its new director of productions, Peter Konwitschny, seems set to continue. The season 2010-11 will witness no fewer than seven new productions. Fifty years to the day since the opening of the Leipzig Opera House on 9 October 1960, the same work, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, by Leipzig’s greatest son, will mark the anniversary in a new production from Jochen Biganzoli, and conducted by Axel Kober. Konwitschny continues his Gluck cycle with Iphigénie en Aulide, conducted by Paulo Carignani, and brings two other new productions to Leipzig: Così fan tutte and Elektra. General Music Director, Ulf Schirmer will conduct the latter, as well as concert performances of Die Walküre. Other new productions are of Hänsel und Gretel, conducted by Schirmer again (director: Birgit Eckenweber), the first ever stage production of Deutsches Miserere by Bertolt Brecht and Paul Dessau, from director Dietrich Hilsdorf, and the first European performance of the children’s opera, Die arabische Prinzessin, with music from the short-lived Juan Crisostómo de Arriaga. Revivals to note are another Konwitschny production, Eugene Onegin, Willy Decker’s Tristan und Isolde, conducted by Kober, Parsifal, under Schirmer’s baton, and La Rondine. The Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra plays for all performances.

A full schedule may be found by clicking here.

Die Frau ohne Schatten, Deutsche Oper, 13 December 2009

Photo: Marcus Lieberenz im Auftrag der DEUTSCHEN OPER BERLIN
(Kaiserin: Manuela Uhl; Amme Doris Soffel; Geisterbote: Stephen Bronk)

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

The Emperor – Robert Brubaker
The Empress – Manuela Uhl
The Nurse – Jane Henschel
Barak – Johan Reuter
The Dyer’s Wife – Eva Johansson
The Spirit-Messenger – Stephen Bronk
Voice of the Apparition of Youth – Yosep Kang
Voice of the Falcon, Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Hulkar Sabirova
Voice from Above – Katharine Tier
The One-Eyed – Simon Pauly
The One-Armed – Hyung-Wook Lee
The Hunchback – Paul Kaufmann
Maidservants – Hulkar Sabirova, Heidi Stober, Julia Benzinger
Children’s voices and unborn voices – Hulkar Sabirova, Heidi Stober, Julia Benzinger, Stephanie Weiss, Fionnuala McCarthy, Katharine Tier
Guards’ voices – Ben Wager, Lucas Harbour, Krzysztof Szumanski, James J. Kee

Kirsten Harms (director)
Bernd Damovsky (stage and costume designs)
Andreas K.W. Meyer (dramaturge)
Christian Baier (artistic production manager)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: William Spaulding)
Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: Dagmar Fiebach)
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin
Axel Kober (conductor)

I had previous reason to admire Axel Kober’s conducting in the Leipzig Opera’s marvellous triple-bill of Schoenberg’s one-act operas, Moderne Menschen. Arguably every bit as great a challenge, Die Frau ohne Schatten proved just as successful under Kober’s baton. Well shaped and with a clear sense of the structure, this was a reading which, if it did not quite match the sensational account I heard a good few years ago from Christoph von Donhányi at Covent Garden, had nothing to fear from most recorded competition, and was certainly superior to Gustav Kuhn in Paris. There were a few shaky moments, especially during the first ten minutes or so, when it sounded as though the orchestra was settling down, and occasionally afterwards from the brass. On the whole, however, the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper proved fully equal to Strauss’s demands. The sheen of its strings, sometimes more Viennese, sometimes darker – rather like Strauss’s score, one might say – and the character of its woodwind section were especially worthy of mention. Whatever Strauss’s notorious criticisms of Schoenberg’s Op.16 Orchestral Pieces, they did not sound so very far away. For, poised between the previous sound-worlds of Elektra and Rosenkavalier, with something of the Alpine Symphony about it, and possessed of a magical, fantastical expressionism very much of its own, one of Strauss’s most truly extraordinary scores was truly able to resound. If the grinding dissonances immediately prior to the final resolution were not nailed in quite the way one hears on Christian Thielemann’s Vienna recording of the orchestral fantasy, I have never heard anyone else, even Karl Böhm, achieve that – and a purely orchestral performance is a different matter in any case. This was a distinguished musical account.

The singing, however, was considerably more variable. Robert Brubaker’s Emperor improved as time went on, though his tendency to sharpness and indeed to shouting was never quite surmounted. Strauss wrote a cruel part, but there it is. Brubaker, however, was vastly preferable to Eva Johansson as the Dyer’s Wife. Awkward on stage, she managed the right notes from time to time, the right vowels even less so. She also exhibited a curious tendency – certainly more curious in her part than his – simply to stand and shout. Manuela Uhl occasionally struggled as the Empress, but an announcement had been made concerning her indisposition; in any case, she more often proved perfectly equal to the composer’s demands. Given the circumstances, this was a creditable assumption. Jane Henschel was predictably fine as the Nurse – what a wonderful, ambiguous role this is – but such excellence should not be taken for granted. Strange links with the spirit world were very much in evidence in her portrayal. Johan Reuter’s fine form as Barak might also have been expected, but again, remains equally worthy of praise. Carefully observant of words and music, he penetrated to the lovable heart of the dyer’s character.

Intendant Kirsten Harms’s production did not seem quite to add up. There was nothing especially wrong with it, and Bernd Damovsky’s stage designs were often rather striking, but I am not sure that someone relatively unfamiliar with what can sometimes seem a rather baffling drama would have found a way in here. Robert Wilson in Paris could perhaps be judged to have over-simplified Hofmannsthal’s layers of symbolism, though I rather enjoyed that production. Taking more of a ‘line’, almost any line (within reason), might not have been a bad idea in this case, though. The work benefits from a degree at least of help. Still, there was a great deal to savour from the conductor, orchestra, and much of the singing. Die Frau may have its flaws, but there are sections as great as anything Strauss wrote, music that was here largely heard to considerable advantage.

Schoenberg, 'Moderne Menschen' triple-bill, Leipzig Opera, 20 April 2008

Oper Leipzig

Moderne Menschen: Eine Schönberg-Trilogie

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Axel Kober (conductor)

The musical world’s debt to Leipzig Opera cannot be gainsaid. Even Erwartung is hardly over-exposed, whilst stagings of Die glückliche Hand and Von heute auf morgen are rarer than gold-dust. Moreover, to perform all three of Schoenberg’s one-act operas was not merely a magnificent declaration of intent; it also paid off in artistic terms. Though I might entertain reservations concerning certain aspects of the staging, these should not detract from the enterprise itself, which also included a Schoenberg exhibition at the opera house. Each of the operas was presented separately, with a different cast and production team. Conductor Axel Kober and the fearless Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra were common to all three. One can debate about whether the works might have benefited from a common approach; there are valid arguments on either side. Given that they were performed under the single heading, Modern Menschen (‘Modern People’), deriving from the final line of Von heute auf morgen, there would have been something to be said for a more single-minded treatment, but let us not worry too much on that score. I am delighted to see that Leipzig Opera’s dedication to the cause will continue; next season, the trilogy will be revived as part of the house’s permanent repertoire. Many more celebrated companies should be put to shame.

Von heute auf morgen

Der Mann – Wolfgang Newerla
Die Frau – Hendrikje Wangemann
Sänger – Timothy Fallon
Die Freundin – Susanna Anderson

Das Kind – Johannes Gosch, Jonathan Lauch, Maximilian Friedrich, Ruben Bestfleisch, Johannes Ruß, Ilkja Kafanke, Andre Kafanke, Johannes Gramsee, Thomas Beck, Patrick Koglin
Der Gasmann – Björn Bachmann, Roman Schulze, Christoph Schubert

Immo Karaman (director)
Fabian Posca (co-director)
Kaspar Zwimpfer (designs)
Marie-Louise Walek (costumes)

Von heute auf morgen is, by any standards, an historically important work: the first twelve-note opera. Yet how often does one have the opportunity to hear it, let alone to see it staged? It is more than historically important, too, a far better work than many that refuse to leave our stages. One may smile at Schoenberg’s desire, influenced by the success of the Brecht-Weill Threepenny Opera, to write a popular ‘hit’, but as Hanns Eisler remarked, the subject matter and the words evoke ‘a mundane operetta’. The music, however, as Eisler went on to say, is, of the future, in spite of Schoenberg’s intentions, but this tension rendered the apparent banality of the text ambiguous and ultimately presented ‘a kind of apocalypse on a family scale’. One of the work’s most persuasive interpreters, Michael Gielen, has rightly referred, again suggesting that this was far from Schoenberg’s intention, to the ‘horror music’ of the ‘subconscious of the bourgeoisie’.

This came to the fore, though not didactically so, in Oper Leipzig’s production. The banality of bourgeois existence was nicely portrayed on stage, in what was a vaguely updated setting. A nice touch was the initial conveyor-belt of household goods: important to this mode of existence in one sense, yet utterly unimportant and indeed ‘fashionable’ in another. For Schoenberg’s intentional ire is directed against the vapidity of fashion, a just object of anyone’s ire. And so there was no attempt to dignify the Friend and the Singer. Their fashionable contempt for ‘old-fashioned’ existence was worse than the object of their contempt.

All four of the singers impressed in their roles, whose vocal difficulties are of course considerable. Such difficulties are perhaps intensified by the need to continue in ‘light’ vein. The principal couple, played by Wolfgang Newerla and Hendrikje Wangemann, bear the brunt of this pressure. That they never seemed to tire and remained impeccably in character, albeit changing character, throughout is a tribute to their artistry. Susanna Anderson and Timothy Fallon were convincing siren voices for the fashion, which changes ‘between today and tomorrow’, although I wondered whether the latter might have been a little more alluring and/or heroic. The Child underwent various incarnations, from small to strapping. (I am not quite sure why.) Each of his incarnations handled his notated rhythms well. The three – again, I do not know why – images of the gasman had little to do other than display their chiselled physiques as bait for the unhappy Woman, but they could hardly be faulted in that respect.

The orchestra was excellent throughout and was securely led by Axel Kober. The gleaming Bauhaus-like constructivism of Schoenberg’s score is not generous to second-rate performance, let alone worse, but there was no chance of that here. There was a fine sense of continuity, and one felt duly overwhelmed – and in definite need of a drink – by the canonical ‘horror’ quartet in which the opera culminates.

Die glückliche Hand

Der Mann – Matteo de Monti

Members of the Leipzig Opera Chorus
Stefan Biz (chorus master)

Eine Frau – Meylem González
Ein Herr – Roman Schulze

Carlos Wagner (director)
Daphne Kitschen (designs, costumes)
Tom Baert (choreographer)

Die glückliche Hand is anything but ‘light’, even in the somewhat ironic sense one must adopt when speaking of Schoenberg. It is, however, I think, ultimately a more ingratiating work, an Expressionist masterpiece of the highest order. Schoenberg’s fanatically detailed instructions for staging, many concerned with an almost Scriabin-like music of colours, present a difficulty for any director. Carlos Wagner elected to ignore the colours, or rather to present many of them as words above the stage, although on stage he actually followed quite a few of Schoenberg’s directions. In the programme, he defended this course by speaking of creating a ‘world of symbols’ from his own subconscious, to respond to that of Schoenberg. I have no especial problem with this, but I wondered whether, in a work so rarely staged, it might have been worthwhile to present at least some of Schoenberg’s colours. As it was, we found ourselves on the moon, and with a football theme replacing the Schoenbergian jewellers’ workshop.

Matteo de Monti was a good, if not outstanding, ‘man’, as the only vocal soloist. There was nothing wrong with his portrayal, but it lacked the flawed artistic heroism that Schoenberg at least saw as so crucial. The six men and six women from the Leipzig Opera Chorus were superb, for which credit should also go to Stefan Biz. Positioned unseen behind the audience, there was a wonderful spatial effect, which offered an intriguing substitute for our colour deprivation. The orchestra sounded magnificent, revelling in the heights and depths of Schoenberg’s expressionism, once again securely guided – and rather more than merely guided – by Kober.

If I had doubts – though doubts rather than opposition – concerning the production, it should be added that Carlos Wagner’s Personenregie was faultless. One witnessed this as much in the non-singing ‘extras’ as the Man himself. Meylem González and Roman Schulze (previously a Gasman) proved themselves fine actors and commendably athletic too. Members of the Faculty of Sports Science at the University of Leipzig were able to display their footballing skills, joined by Schulze, who seemed just as much at home in this respect.

Erwartung

Die Frau – Deborah Polaski

Sandra Leopold (director)
Tom Musch (designs, costumes)

Erwartung also received a fine performance. Anything remotely acceptable in the role of the Woman will be a tour de force, and this was no exception. I did not feel that Deborah Polaski brought quite the knife-edge dramatic charisma to the role that I heard a few years ago from Inga Nielsen at Covent Garden, but this was also doubtless partly attributable to the differing concerns of the production. It would be unreasonable, to put it mildly, to expect pitch-perfection here, but I noted a number of slips. Balanced against that, Polaski was admirably secure of tone and certainly could act.

We appeared to be in some sort of studio confessional, the Woman of course having lost her lover. She appeared to be recording herself, for at least part of the time, although it was not clear why she was in the studio. Was she being held, on trial, mad, etc.? There is much that is unclear in Schoenberg’s original, and indeed that is much of the point, so we should not concern ourselves too much with precision. There was a creditable sense – shared between production and performance – of increasing madness and hopelessness. Once again, the orchestral contribution was first-class, as was Kober’s direction. That marvellous sense of athematic splintering and refraction was powerfully caught, but so was the underlying sense of direction through which one of Schoenberg’s most miraculous score continues to cohere, whilst breathing the air of all manner of other planets.

More controversial was the ending. Disrupting what Walter Benjamin would have called the ‘aura’ of the work, Sandra Leopold decided to have Polaski play back part of the recording she had made, which we heard – in recorded form. I thought that this worked rather well, and offered an interesting response – intentionally or otherwise – to the lack of finality in the score. (This is a lack of finality arising from the very nature of the very writing, so my words should not in any sense be considered as an adverse criticism.) Certainly, no one seemed to mind in Leipzig, although I can imagine that more conservatively-minded audiences might well do so. On the other hand, they would probably have stayed away in the first place from Schoenberg, even a century on.

I am not sure that I emerged from this trilogy any the wiser concerning the Child’s question at the end of Von heute auf Morgen – ‘Mama, what are modern people? – but perhaps that is the point. Maybe there is no single thread binding us together at all. Schoenberg would probably have dissented, but no more than Wagner was he always the surest guide to his own work. The crucial thing here is that Oper Leipzig gave us the rarest of opportunities to consider such questions.