Munich Opera Festival (2) - Of One Blood, 28 June 2026

 

Nationaltheater

Production images: Monika Rittershaus

Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England – Johanni von Oostrum
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots – Vera-Lotte Boecker
Female Consorts I-IV – Seonwoo Lee, Mirjam Mesak, Lotte Betts-Dean, Meg Brilleslyper
Female Consort V, Jane Kennedy – Freya Apfellstaedt
Male Consort I, Lord Darnley – Michael Butler
Male Consort II – Joel Williams
Male Consort III, Rizzio – Andrew Hamilton
Male Consort IV, Scottish Lord I – Armand Rabot
Male Consort V, Scottish Lord II, Executioner – Pawel Horodyski
Solo harpsichord – Mahan Esfahani

Director – Claus Guth
Set designs – Etienne Pluss
Costumes – Ursula Kudrna
Sound design – Bob Scott, Sven Eckhoff
Lighting – Michael Bauer
Choreography – Sommer Ulrickson

Dramaturgy – Yvonne Gebauer, Lukas Leipfinger
Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Christoph Hell)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

I remember, as a schoolboy, reading in a newspaper about ‘The Hecklers’, a pair of composers with highly reactionary aesthetics, who objected so strongly to Harrison Birtwistle’s Gawain that they protested against its revival at Covent Garden. I would hear Gawain at a subsequent revival, as a student, and be swept off my feet. But at the time, I recall being puzzled by the idea that one would protest against something being performed simply because one did not like it, or even because one thought it not very good. I did not know much about the repertoire of opera houses at the time, but the idea that they were overloaded with new, or even modernist, work was patently absurd. I was equally puzzled, at the end of this performance of Brett Dean’s new opera Of One Blood, to hear loud booing from certain quarters of Munich’s Nationaltheater, when the composer, librettist Heather Betts, and (I think) director Claus Guth came onstage. It was not a premiere, so their appearance was slightly unexpected, if welcome. Could people who had contentedly, so it seemed, sat through two acts of a new opera have felt so strongly about its music – it could, I suppose, have been its libretto, or even its staging – that they felt they must bellow farmyard noises in an attempt to drown out applause? If they had not liked the opera, or had considerable criticisms of it, fair enough, but what was it that had led them to such a display? It was neither a mindlessly reactionary nor a vigorously avant-garde work; it was well crafted, well performed, and well directed. Would not refraining from applause – as, I am sure, many of us have done on occasion – have been enough? I am afraid reflection has left me none the wiser, but the experience was unsettling and has continued to be, not least from concern for those at the sharp end of that strange, bullying response.

 

The phrase ‘of one blood’ refers to a phrase Mary (Stuart), Queen of Scots used in a letter to her cousin and antagonist – historical and, here, dramatic – Elizabeth I, here ‘Elizabeth Tudor’: ‘We be both of one blood, of one country, and in one Island’. In their communications and other sixteenth-century sources lie the seeds of Betts’s libretto, assembled and constructed after the manner of many a dramatic confrontation between the two. Betts is a visual artist: an interesting case for a librettist in terms of scene-setting, for instance the opening and close of the work in contemporary or perhaps, in Guth’s staging, a future Westminster Abbey, in whose Henry VII/Lady Chapel the two queens lie at opposite ends, at the command of their mutual successor, James VI and I, who also commissioned their tombs. That struck her when visiting, as it might anyone, but its visual element seems to have been especially important to the librettist dramaturgically, focusing the action and the way it plays out, thereby also influencing the staging, as well as providing elements of a solution for the perennial problem of what to do in a drama concerning the entwined lives of two central figures who never met. Contriving an occasion on which they did is a common solution; it is good to welcome an alternative to the fold, in an intriguingly clinical white setting, albeit beneath a hint of English Perpendicular Gothic (which tilted at one point, perhaps as a reflection of changing fortunes and/or danger). 

And so, we see the two queens act separately in the beginning, later appearing partly at the same time in their own halves of the stage, with ‘consort’ retinues – I was puzzled before realising the word was intended musically rather than maritally – so as to react one another’s words and deeds, coming tantalisingly close, yet never quite meeting. Tellingly, their union in duet, as opposed to ‘written’ dialogue, takes place when both are offstage. There are oddities to the libretto, or at least features I did not understand: the archaic ‘-eth’ third-person singular is employed, yet we hear ‘will’ rather than ‘wilt’ with thou. It all serves its purpose well enough, though—and perhaps such inconsistencies, if inconsistencies they be, are simply reflections of a language that has always been in change. Titles were used not simply to convey but, at certain points, to add to the libretto, including indication of place, such as Richmond Palace, Holyrood, or of course Fotheringhay Castle.

Collaboration between husband and wife librettist (their daughter one of Mary’s excellent consort) seems to have been fruitfully close. What comes ‘first’, whether chronologically or aesthetically, is ever a fraught question in any such relationship, but there were no obvious signs of tension and many of complement. Likewise between them and Guth, the extraction of both tombs for cleaning and their return at the end an interesting element of the aforementioned framing rather than contrast or contradiction. A low opening pedal – electronic rather than acoustic, I think – sounds, Rheingold-like yet -unlike, the musical beginning, subsequent scraping noises, like a dental implement writ large, partaking of the drama and ushering in the Bayerische Staatsorchester, here on excellent form under Vladimir Jurowski’s wise, invigorating direction. Two worlds, then, collided and coincided in more ways than one: multidimensional yet bilateral dramatic conflict, one might say. This was further layered in the Elizabethan scenes with harpsichordist Mahan Esfahani onstage. Few if any harpsichordists have done more for new music than Esfahani; here his role once again bridged divides between old and new, his instrument inciting orchestral and electronic material, and on at least one occasion – if my ears did not deceive me – prefigured in the ‘purely’ electronic material of the very opening. The dramatic possibilities of such time travel were manifold—perhaps all the better for being left to us not necessarily to resolve but to ponder, and thus to engage as active dramatic participants.

Similarities with Berg – first a chord close to Wozzeck, then broader harmonic fields – suggested themselves to my ears at the opening of the second act, but I am not sure this was so much influence as my ears making sense of a new harmonic world with music I knew. More fundamentally, the expertise and artistry with which both acts, of roughly equal length, were planned and realised was striking, still more so in the second (perhaps a matter of my having become more at home with the work). In that, the role of the equally excellent chorus was apparent: first liturgical, in Westminster Abbey, but changing its role, like the Greek chorus so as both to comment and participate, in acclamation, rebellion, and more. 

In what was perhaps an inevitable nod to or at least coincidence with Donizetti, coloratura featured in both queens’ lines, but there was far more to them than that, especially as brought so vividly and sympathetically to life by Johanni von Oostrum and Vera-Lotte Boecker. Amongst the rest of a very fine cast, I might put in a word for Michael Butler’s feckless Darnley and Pawel Horodyski’s Executioner, but this was emphatically an ensemble performance as well as one of warring queens. Designs and choreography were stylish and suggestive throughout. Maybe our hecklers disliked the black coals of ruin that occupied much of the second-act stage, before being swept away by restoration workers in the present/future. I am grasping at straws, though. Who knows? Ultimately, who cares?

Applause from the premiere: Geoffroy Schied

 

The English Cat, Bavarian State Opera, 25 January 2026

Cuvilliés-Theater

Lord Puff – Michael Butler
Arnold – Daniel Vening
Mr Jones, Judge, Mr Fawn – Zhe Liu
Tom – Armand Rabot
Peter – Samuel Stopford
Mr Keen, Defence Counsel, Parish Priest – Dafydd Jones
Minette – Seonwoo Lee
Babette – Meg Brilleslyper
Louise – Iana Aivazian
Miss Crisp – Elene Gvritishvili
Mrs Gomfit – Nontobeko Bhengu
Lady Toodle – Jess Dandy
Mr Punkett, Prosecution Counsel – Bruno Khouri
Betty – Lucy Altus

Director – Christiane Lutz
Set designs – Christian Andre Tabakoff
Costumes – Dorothee Joisten
Lighting – Benedikt Zehm
Dramaturgy – Olaf Roth

Bayerische Staatsorchester
Katharina Wincor (conductor)

Images: Geoffroy Schied

For an opera derived from a French novel (Honoré de Balzac) by an English playwright (Edward Bond) and a German composer (Hans Werner Henze), The English Cat has had an appropriately international and multilingual performance history. Its 1983 Schwetzingen Festival premiere was given in German translation, followed by French translation at Paris’s Opéra Comique the following year, only the year after that finally being given in Bond’s English at Santa Fe. Brexit-Insel (as it then, blessedly, was not yet) had to wait until 1987 before it was given at the Edinburgh Festival, finally coming to London only in its revised version in 1991, that revision having first been given at Henze’s own Montepulciano festival the year before. And that is before one comes to the undeniable Brechtian influence on Bond’s writing; Henze’s multifarious musical influences, often though far from always German; or indeed his flight – political, aesthetic, and sexual – from an oppressive, even repressive Federal Republic of Germany south across the Alps to Italy, settling outside Rome with his beloved partner Fausto Moroni; or his apartment in Knightsbridge…

‘So what?’ one might ask. Apart from intrinsic interest, it perhaps helps provide justification for the Bayerische Staatsoper’s decision, surprising nowadays, to present the opera in its German version by Ken Bartlett as Die englische Katze. Henze’s English-language works have a performance history of their own of being given in German versions: The Bassarids, for instance, also given in German in Munich in 2008, and the first of Henze’s collaborations with Bond, We Come to the River, having a tradition of being given in translation in Germany. For a native English speaker, it was a matter of regret. Bond’s brilliant use of language cannot help be but missed. But I suspect much of the Cuvilliés-Theater audience also gained something in translation. Hearing an English text in Germany, moreover, arguably imparted a little sense of a German composer, however good his English, responding to an English libretto.

Is there, as Henze feared, a mismatch between English and German comedy? Perhaps, but if so, I think that fruitful as much as fateful, whilst noting he felt he had never quite found the right form or version for the work. As for the talented performers onstage from the Staatsoper’s Opera Studio young artists’ scheme, I am sure they could have sung it any language or none. Theirs was a splendid company effort, as clearly was their direction: led musically by Katharina Wincor and scenically by Christiane Lutz and her resourceful production team. And to see it in the magnificently rococo Cuvilliés-Theater – scene to, among other things, the premiere of Idomeneo in 1781 – suggested a little the premiere of this different, yet not entirely un-Mozartian opera buffa at the still-smaller-in-capacity Schlosstheater in Schwetzingen.

Henze recalled in his memoir Bohemian Fifths that, on receiving the libretto from Bond and reading it to his ‘assembled household’ at Marino, he had found it ‘quite different’ from his first encounter with something closer to the original, a dramatisation by Geneviève Serrault for a company of Argentinian actors. It was ‘far more witty, far more relevant in terms of social criticism. It could have been subtitled L’argent fait tout …. It was no longer a fairy-tale play but a Victorian comedy of manners.’ Alas about half of what Bond had written had to be cut, but so far as Henze was concerned, those essential qualities remained. They also did here, I think, in what we saw and heard. The vegetarian-cat Royal Society for the Preservation of Rats was certainly laid bare in all its respectable bourgeois hypocrisy, an additional (I think) murder presented at the opening, both to parallel the later killing of Tom and to present the background to Lord Puff seeking election as president. There was a vacancy because he and his fellow cats had created one. I can understand why they were not presented visually as cats, although the orphaned mouse Louise had more of her animal nature to her. It might all have seemed a bit too close to, well, Cats. Something was lost, I think, not least in post-Brechtian alienation, although the libretto reminded us who they ‘really’ should be, as did a select few acts, such as Minette’s mode of walking on the roof. It also seemed a pity to lose a stronger sense of the other animals: when it came to Tom’s trial, the counsel for defence as dog, members of the jury as birds, and so on. Perhaps, though, there was wisdom in not wanting to turn this into a Cunning Little Vixen sequel. Moreover, both the mercenary nature of the sanctimonious society’s reality and the contrast with true love and humanity (or whatever the correct term would be) from the naive Minette and the smitten Tom were clear and meaningful.

That was, of course, due in no small part to the excellence of their portrayals onstage. Seonwoo Lee and Armand Rabot made for an excellent pair of lovers, complemented in a not-quite-triangle as product of social coercion and expectation by Michael Butler’s Lord Puff. Lee’s coloratura was spot on: sparkling, precise, and expressive in a fashion reminding us of Henze’s love for Mozart. Rabot struck a fine balance between evident sincerity and lingering doubt that the tomcat’s motivation might have been otherwise; much the same might be said of Meg Brilleslyper as Minette’s astute sister, Babette. There was a sense of something better to Butler’s Lord Puff, but also an acceptance that it would never win out. His scheming nephew Arnold was well captured by Daniel Vening. Iana Aivazian’s Louise made the stage her own at the end, showering herself in money, albeit with fine musical, if not political, values. She had learned, after all, from her protectors. Throughout the dizzyingly varied succession of solos, ensembles (the trio between Minette, Tom, and Babette especially moving) and interludes, a focused drama emerged: cut, yes, but with sensitivity and intelligence. There was no weak link in a cast that was greater than the sum of its parts.

Henze’s expressive compositional method – something, I think, to be heard, not merely analysed – also shone through in the vibrant, committed playing of the Bayerische Staatsorchester under Wincor’s incisive yet affectionate direction: not least the relationship between counterpoint and harmony which clearly owes something to Mozart and still more to his love for Mozart. One can hear or at least in some way sense the workings of the note rows, as one might in Berg or Schoenberg, and it is both not entirely the point but also not entirely not the point. Berg perhaps also comes to mind in the closed forms, although they are more overtly ‘closed’: ‘lots of little songs,’ as Henze put it. He would recall Bond having advised him when writing the music ‘to think less of Gilbert and Sullivan [!] and more of Mozart,’ a key stimulus to formulating its harmonic world. Echoes of other music and, more importantly, their collaboration and confrontation also bubbled to the fore.

Only Henze, surely, could come up with the idea of a ‘Courante’ between the sixth and seventh scenes of the second act, that refers both to ‘a visual idea of the tubes and pipes through which London’s sewage is discharged with enormous force into the Thames,’ and to ‘William Byrd’s Coranto, which I allow to come to the surface out of this flood of water – the same flood of water that will soon carry poor dead Minette out into the North Sea.’ I missed some of that detail, some of that city specificity onstage – maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner – but any production has choices to make, and I return to the point that London and England would not necessarily have been foremost in the minds of many in the audience. Weill complemented the residue of Brecht; disconcertingly Brittenesque string halos of love; elements of earlier Henzes from Boulevard Solitude to Pollicino; the Prinz von Homburg’s unresolved conflict between Schoenberg and Stravinsky; anxiety of influence in the direction of Richard Strauss: these and more combined, but in a duly personal as well as eclectic fashion whose ultimate message was piercingly yet humanly imparted. More Henze in Munich and elsewhere please—and not only in this, the composer’s centenary year.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Pénélope, 21 July 2025

Prinzregententheater

Images: Bernd Uhlig
Pénélope (Victoria Karkacheva)

 

Pénélope – Victoria Karkacheva
Ulysse – Brandon Jovanovich
Euryclée – Rinat Shaham
Eumée – Thomas Mole
Cléone – Valeria Eickhoff
Mélantho – Seonwoo Lee
Alkandre – Martina Myskohild
Phylo – Ena Pongrac
Lydie – Eirin Rognerud
Eurynome – Elene Gvritishvili
Antinoüs – Loïc Félix
Eurymaque – Leigh Melrose
Léodés – Joel Williams
Ctésippe – Zachary Rioux
Pisandre – Dafydd Jones
Shepherd – Nicolas Bader
Ulysse double – Stefan Lorch
Pénélope double – Teresa Sperling
Archer – Daniela Maier

Director – Andrea Breth
Designs – Raimund Orfeo Voigt
Costumes – Ursula Renzenbrink
Lighting – Alexander Koppelmann
Dramaturgy – Lukas Leipfinger, Klaus Bertisch

Vocalensemble ‘LauschWerk’ (chorus director: Sonja Lachenmayr)
Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Susanna Mälkki (conductor)

 

Pénélope, Ulysse (Brandon Jovanovich and Stefan Lorch)

Fauré’s only opera Pénélope was premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo in March 1913, moving to the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées only two months later. It has fared incommensurably less well with posterity than the Stravinsky ballet that had its premiere there later that month. The opera is no Rite of Spring, of course, yet what is? In an excellent new production for Munich directed by Andrea Breth and conducted by Susanna Mälkki, Pénélope emerged as an opera quite undeserving of its neglect, intrinsically and by comparison with more than a few ‘repertoire works’, especially from the previous century. What we heard should also have confounded some lazy preconceptions about the composer. 

Breth’s production is a typically serious piece of theatre, which grapples with the highly untheatrical nature of the work and, to my mind, largely succeeds. A fellow musicologist friend I met at the performance pointed to its place in a specifically French conception of drama dating back at least as far as Corneille and Racine, in which little happens onstage in terms of stage action, almost all unfolding through words, I am sure he is right. The classical unities are also certainly observed. I thought also, inevitably, of Pelléas et Mélisande, though the relationship between Fauré and Debussy was not an easy one. They certainly shared contexts and influences and neither cared for operatic display, to put it mildly, but ultimately this was probably more correspondence than anything else. 

In any case, Breth’s mixture of realism and ritual, the latter founded in doubles for characters, but also ways of acting (in more than one sense), proved compelling and fitting, removing any doubts that this might be an oratorio or something else masquerading in operatic guise. Characters processed, imitated, took their time, and just occasionally acted hurriedly—in keeping with the work yet not bound by it. Opening action during the Prélude presented an elderly man guiding a woman in wheelchair to view museum exhibits, stark yet broken. This Pénélope and Ulysse framed the action and in some sense presaged it, three suitors, ready for action, later removing their shirts and adopting the poses of those statues. There was, then, a circularity that came into conflict with yet also helped form the drama literary and staged. What we saw and heard played with time and involved characters and audience in reception of myth and opera alike. 

When revenge came, economic presentation unmistakeably evoking the rural hinterland of Ithaca, before closing in once again on the palace, it lacked nothing in brutality, suitors treated as replacement pieces of meat for those they would have served at the banquet. It was clear and direct, like the work itself, meaningfully adding to rather than merely doubling or indeed contradicting it. If the conclusion struggled to convince – two people in front of me talking through the closing bars did not help – then that is more a problem with the work. A hymn to Zeus is one way of rounding things off, I suppose, but something a little more ambiguous or indeed human might have worked better. That is not what we have, of course. One might sense Breth undercutting things with the frozen, tableau dimension to what we see at the close, or one might not. Perhaps that was the point. 

Susanna Mälkki’s direction of excellent orchestra, chorus, and cast was similarly sympathetic and comprehending, with work and staging alike. One sensed, rightly or wrongly, that musical and stage interpretation had developed in tandem. Where there was a light sense of Götterdämmerung’s Gibichung decay onstage, perhaps even a stylised Gallic return for Salome/Salomé, so was there in the music, Mälkki knowing what was and was not Wagnerian in Fauré’s method and soundworld, the latter more than one might expect, though far from all. Likewise with Debussy. Orchestral lines developed differently, of course, at times not unlike Fauré’s chamber music; vocal lines emerged woven like Pénelope’s shroud, again showing consciousness that, whilst there were unsurprisingly aspects in common with the composer’s songs, this was not a song cycle writ large but an opera.    

Victoria Karkacheva and Brandon Jovanovich made for a compelling central pair, musically and dramatically conceived in utmost sympathy with work and staging. There was a deep connection between the two expressed in words, music, and gesture, that did not shy away from darker aspects of fate and revenge, without being merely consumed by them. Rinat Shaham’s nurse Euryclée offered an exquisite, chalumeau-like voice of wisdom and recognition. The similarly faithful shepherd Eumée received compelling characterisation from Thomas Mole. A duly nasty yet individual set of suitors received what it deserved yet offered much vocal pleasure in the meantime. Loïc Félix’s ringing Antinoüs, Leigh Melrose’s typically compelling Eurymaque, and Joel Williams’s subtle Léodés especially noteworthy (to me). But there was no weak link in the cast. The evening’s success relied throughout on collaboration—acted as well as sung, for which Stefan Lorch and Teresa Sperling as doubles for Pénélope and Ulysse and Daniela Maier gymnastically stringing the latter’s bow must also be credited. 

Comparisons with Monteverdi’s Il ritorno d’Ulisse in patria are near inevitable for the opera-goer, yet are not especially helpful. What would not pale slightly at least in its shadow? If only we lived in a world in which comparisons with Dallapiccola’s Ulisse were meaningful. Perhaps one day. In the meantime, this excellent staging and these equally excellent performances can well stand for themselves. They may just prove a milestone in this opera’s unlucky reception history.

Munich Opera Festival (1) - Die Liebe der Danae, 19 July 2025

 

Nationaltheater

Image: © Geoffroy Schied

Jupiter – Christopher Maltman
Merkur – Ya-Chung Huang
Pollux – Vincent Wolfsteiner
Danae – Malin Byström
Xanthe – Erika Baikoff
Midas – Andreas Schager
Four Kings – Martin Snell, Bálint Szabó, Paul Kaufmann, Kevin Conners
Semele – Sarah Dufresne
Europa – Evgeniya Sotnikova
Alkmene – Emily Sierra
Leda – Avery Amereau
Four Watchers – Bruno Khouri, Yosif Slavov, Daniel Noyola, Vitor Bispo
A Voice – Elene Gvitishvili

Director, choreography – Claus Guth
Set designs – Michael Levine
Costumes – Ursula Kudrna
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti
Video – rocafilm
Dramaturgy – Yvonne Gebauer, Ariane Bliss

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Christoph Heil)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Sebastian Weigle (conductor)

© Monika Rittershaus

For what continues to be considered an ill-fated rarity, Die Liebe der Danae has had several outings over the past couple of decades or so. I have seen three productions before this, two admittedly at its Salzburg Festival ‘home’ and none in Britain, though Garsington staged it a little before my time in 1999. (A recording, under the late Elgar Howarth, remains available.) Claus Guth’s Munich production, first seen earlier this season in February, is the Bavarian State Opera’s fourth. Rudolf Hartmann directed it twice; his first, 1953 version travelling on a company visit to the Royal Opera House, which has neglected to present it since. Hartmann’s 1967 production was designed by Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, no less, whilst 1988 saw a new version from Giancarlo del Monaco. With Rudolf Kempe, Joseph Keilberth, and Wolfgang Sawallisch conducting respectively, some of those occasions will surely have been fondly recalled by some in the Munich audience this time around. Nearly forty years on, though, it was time for something new. Perhaps ironically for an opera concerned in part with the baleful influence of gold, little expense would seem to have been spared. I wish, then, I could have felt greater enthusiasm, especially prior to the third act, for what I saw—and to some extent heard. 

Guth’s production opeened before the work with Danae posing for a photo shoot. Following a number of poses and loud clicks, the music could begin. The action played out exclusively in a penthouse with views of skyscrapers and the odd helicopter (as when Midas arrives). Pollux was dressed as a caricatured Donald Trump, silly hair, red tie, and overweight. His first appearance was enough to elicit laughter, which is fair enough: it was, for once, an amusing joke, but that was it really. Nothing was done with the identity beyond a love (common to all characters, it would seem) for the crass vulgarity of dictator-chic gold. That may have been a cause for relief given the impending shower of gold and indeed the question of Pollux’s relationship with his daughter Danae, but it ultimately seemed a bit cheap. (Perhaps that was the point.) And so, it continues, golden appearance clearly a sham, although the particularly trashy get-up of Jupiter as Midas is not without unfortunate connotations of Jimmy Savile, at least to a British viewer. 

© Geoffroy Schied

For the third act, everything changed—as, in a way, it should. The bubble had burst, though the physical devastation suggested war rather than a ‘mere’ credit crunch. (One might well argue that the two cannot be so readily separated. Indeed. But that probably needs to be shown rather than merely assumed or elided.) The drama that apparently truly interested Guth – up to a point, one cannot blame him – could commence in these new circumstances and one could actually begin to relate to the characters. In that, Guth’s conception was seemingly matched by a more committed performance from conductor Sebastian Weigle. They were doubtless following prevailing opinion; faced with the proverbial revolver to the head, who would not preserve the final act over the preceding two? But we are not—and perceived or actual imbalance is surely all the more reason to ask how we might elevate the latter. I am sure no one intended to reinforce (relative) critical opprobrium, but the first act in particular came across as often merely expository and, worse, expository of things that did not appear to have much in the way of consequence later on. If there was in Guth’s case unquestionably a guiding intelligence to the whole, contrast of ‘before’ and ‘after’ very much the thing, a little more sense of why we might care about these people and the situation they were in would have done no harm. 

Did we need, though, Juno to wander around above the stage without doing anything of obvious import? Having that higher level was not a bad way of emphasising difference between gods and humans—and of showing in which guise Jupiter should be understood at which time. Yet beyond that, I ended up regretting Strauss had not written a part for the goddess, perhaps in wry homage to Handel’s Semele, which, given his profound knowledge of all manner of musical history, he must have known. Merkur’s dancing above – that of everyone else too – is best forgotten, suffice to say that, having tried his hand at choreography, Guth would be well advised to stick to the day job. 

© Monika Rittershaus

If it was interesting and in itself moving to see at the close film of old Munich and of Strauss walking in his garden, presumably at Garmisch, they nonetheless suggested a certain abdication of responsibility. Danae was written for Salzburg, not Munich, and never received its full premiere in Strauss’s lifetime precisely because he wished it to take place across the reinstated border. Whilst we can look for traces of the composer in the work, it is also not obviously ‘about’ him, even a fictionalised him. It is not Intermezzo and it is not obviously laced with one of Strauss’s greatest musicodramatic gifts: irony. In the end, though, the story had been clearly enough told, as it has been on all occasions I have seen the work—and this was in every way preferable to the unconcealed racism of Alvis Hermanis for Salzburg in 2016. 

To my surprise, Weigle proved less flexible than he had in an excellent reading at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper in 2016. If orchestral playing was more or less beyond criticism in itself – and the conductor doubtless merits some credit for that, but it was difficult to avoid the Bayerische Staatsorchester would have played with exemplary clarity, balance, and heft no matter what. The problem, rather, lay with Weigle’s reluctance or inability to let the score flow. Especially earlier on, too much emerged as unrelentingly loud. There is extraordinary variegation in the score, much of which had been more successfully presented in Berlin—and it needs a helping hand or two to draw it out. The difference may have been in part a matter of acoustics, but it is surely part of the conductor’s job to deal with that. I cannot recall feeling quite so bludgeoned in the Nationaltheater before. The third act, like Guth’s, was considerably more successful. Earlier on, lack of Straussian sweep tended to draw attention to the infelicities of Joseph Gregor’s libretto: something a fine performance can readily have one forget. 

© Monika Rittershaus

Volume issues extended to some singing too; again, this was surely at least in part Weigle’s task to moderate. As Midas, Andreas Schager was particularly in need of some restraint. Schager is, of course, an extraordinary Heldentenor. It seems churlish to cavil, given long years we endured when no one could sing Siegfried and few if any could master other Wagner roles. Here, he proved indefatigable as ever and also showed himself perfectly capable of softer, more sensitive singing in the third act. A little more shading elsewhere would nonetheless have been welcome. Another near-impossible role, arguably more so, is that of Jupiter, in which Christopher Maltman’s recent forays into heavier roles, Wotan included, fully justified themselves. Maltman despatched the lower, darker reaches of the role, movingly indeed and with echoes of the latter god’s farewell to Brünnhilde, whilst attaining rich and ringing clarity at the top, to suggest an almost Kaufmann-like tenor. In the title role, Malin Byström proved agile, fearless, and – important, this – rather likeable. Hers may not be the largest of voices, but she knew what to do with it and did it well. Smaller roles were all well taken, as were the choruses. Special mention should go to the quartet of ‘elder’ ladies, amusingly portrayed in sex-and-shopping mode and beautifully sung by Sarah Dufresne, Evgeniya Sotnikova, Emily Sierra, and Avery Amereau. 

As for my reservations, perhaps it is time to accept that this is a very difficult work to bring off. Not every attempt will be entirely successful, any more than it is with, say, Der Rosenkavalier or Salome. Passing slowly yet surely into the repertoire would not be the worst of things, far from it.

Munich Opera Festival (3) - Pelléas et Mélisande, 22 July 2024

Prinzregententheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Pelléas – Ben Bliss
Mélisande – Sabine Devieilhe
Golaud – Christian Gerhaher
Arkel – Franz-Josef Selig
Geneviève – Sophie Koch
Yniold – Felix Hofbauer
Doctor – Martin Snell
Shepherd – Pawel Horodyski

Director – Jetske Mijnssen
Set design – Ben Baur
Lighting – Bernd Purkrabek
Choreography – Dustin Klein
Dramaturgy – Ariane Bliss

Projektchor der Bayerischen Staatsoper (director: Franz Obermair)
Bayerisches Staatsorchester
Hannu Lintu (conductor)

Nine years ago, in this same theatre at this same festival, I saw Munich’s previous Pelléas et Mélisande: a staging by Christiane Pohle which I greatly admired, but  everyone else seemed to loathe. I am tempted to say ‘failed to understand’, but let us move on—to its successor, directed by Jetske Mijnssen. Perhaps it was not the best time to see this, only a fortnight after encountering Katie Mitchell’s feminist rethinking of the work in Aix, in its first revival. For me, there is nothing especially wrong with Mijnssen’s staging. It does pretty much what one would expect of a Pelléas, save perhaps for presenting a greater realism in place of its Symbolism.

In that lay my doubts. Not that there is anything wrong with that in principle; far from it. Yet without a change of perspective, or some other such idea, the point remained elusive: not in the sense that Pelléas can, must remain elusive, but rather suggesting an extended bourgeois parody of Tristan und Isolde, with which it of course has much in common. That would be a point of view, though not necessarily one I should be inclined to pursue (imagining nonetheless with a wry smile what Nietzsche, in Case of Wagner mode, would have made of Pelléas). What I think Mijnssen is getting at, suggested by her final act – in which the castle, whose rooms whether in the forest, by the stagnant pool, or elsewhere have provided the setting for all that has gone before, is stripped to its foundations – is a psychological claim that we are all ultimately like Mélisande, not least in our inability to know one another. Presumably the wooden boards relate also to the forest we never really see.

Following a realistic if sparing portrayal of early-twentieth-century costumes, furniture, and so on, Arkel’s words ‘C’est un pauvre petit être mystérieux comme tout le monde’ offer the backdrop for the entirety of this act. Having moved from a (beautifully danced) ball for the first scene, to this hospital bed for the close, often viewing Pelléas’s sick father in his bed, the tragedy encompasses all of us in a metaphysical sense far from untrue to the work. The observation – and execution – of Golaud’s chess game with his son Yniold, and Yniold’s resort to playing with his toys, perhaps as a way of trying to understanding what is happening, including a similar sweeping of the board and pieces, are suggestive and accomplished. Golaud’s striking of Yniold likewise offers a powerful moment.

Much else, especially with water – seen as rainfall as we enter the theatre, yet otherwise relegated until the close to a long, thin ‘pool’ at the front of the stage – seems to sit a little awkwardly between two stools. That the pools are more evident in the final scene, presumably closing in on the very foundations – in more than one sense – of castle and family is another good idea. But Pelléas’s reappearance – a ghost, a dream, or an actual reappearance? – to show Mélisande her child seems to come less from an alternative dimension than from an alternative production or concept. Perhaps I am missing something, given what seems in many ways an intelligent attempt to construct a whole from what is viewed, curtain falling after every scene, as a quasi-filmic succession of dramatic fragments.

An effort to construct a greater whole in theatrical time from quasi-modernist fragments, as opposed to starting with a whole and carving detail from it, seemed also to characterise Hannu Lintu’s way with Debussy’s score. At its best, Lintu’s direction conjured a wonderful translucency from the Munich orchestra; it did not want for dark malevolence when called for, either. My principal reservation related to what seemed – I am unsure whether it actually was – for scenes, perhaps acts too, to slow during their course. No one wants to rush through Pelléas, of course, quite the contrary; yet there were occasions when I felt momentum was in danger of being lost. This may, however, have been as much a matter of pauses between scenes on account of scene rearrangement, especially before the fifth and final act. By the same token, losing oneself in the forest is surely part of the musical experience, perhaps all the more so when we never really see it.

There are doubtless many ways to sing Mélisande, yet during her performance, Sabine Devieilhe had me convinced hers was, if not quite the only one, then the best. Her ease of communication, not only in the French language but in Debussy’s musical style, was effortlessly communicated for all to hear; it was simply as if she were speaking, and as clear as if that were the case too. Moreover, Devieilhe’s delivery of the text seemed indivisible from dramatic situation and imperative. French is a notoriously difficult language to sing; it would be difficult, unsurprisingly, to claim that all in the cast managed with such ease. Sophie Koch’s excellent Geneviève was of course an exception, leaving us to long for more.

That said, no one made a bad job of it either, and an age of ‘international casts’ brings advantages and disadvantages. Christian Gerhaher’s Golaud was unquestionably a fine, brutal character study. Some will doubtless have taken more to his hectoring way (at times), but it was rooted in his conception of Golaud’s sadism. Gerhaher showed the courage not to try to endear his character to anyone, without in any sense rendering him one-dimensional. To that, Ben Bliss’s boyish, mellifluous Pelléas proved an excellent foil, vocal and scenic communication offering ample justification for Mélisande’s preference. The dark ambiguity of Franz-Josef Selig’s Arkel cast due shadow over all. Last but far from least, Felix Hofbauer gave an outstanding performance as Yniold: not ‘for a boy’, but for anyone. As impressively acted as it was sung, this treble’s performance offered yet another feather in the cap for the ever-lauded Tölz Boys’ Choir. So in many respects, the fragments did add up to more.

Munich Opera Festival (5) - Tristan und Isolde, 21 July 2023

Nationaltheater

Tristan – Stuart Skelton
King Marke – René Pape
Isolde – Anja Kampe
Kurwenal – Wolfgang Koch
Melot – Sean Michael Plumb
Brangäne – Jamie Barton
Shepherd – Jonas Hacker
Steersman – Christian Rieger
Young Sailor – Liam Bonthrone

Krzysztof Warlikowski (director)
Malgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Kamil Polak (video)
Claude Bardouil (choreography)
Miron Hakenbeck, Lukas Leipfinger (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Johannes Knecht)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Lothar Koenigs (conductor)

Images: Wilfried Hösl
Tristan (Stuart Skelton) and Isolde (Anja Kampe)

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Tristan, first seen two years ago, marking an end to Nikolaus Bachler’s intendancy, is on first sight at least, a puzzling affair. There are ideas, certainly, though quite how they connect, let alone cohere, lay largely beyond me. They seemed, moreover, to bear precious relation to this most treacherous of works, perhaps the most resistant of all operas—if one may call it an opera at all—to intervention from without. Its action is almost entirely interior, and directors forget (or fail to realise) that at their peril. The only production I have seen to take a fair shot at divesting Tristan of its metaphysics was Dmitri Tcherniakov’s for the Berlin Staatsoper in 2018, though I seem to have been largely alone in responding positively to its provocations—and had, I admit, to do a considerable amount of reading against the grain. 

Strange mannequins were seen first in the opening Prelude. Was there some sort of cyber-intent here? Perhaps, but if so, again I am at a loss as to what or why. A whole family of them, puppets added to the two original actors, joined Tristan at his table in Kareol. It was presumably a metaphor for something, or perhaps Warlikowski just liked the look of them. If we were entering the world of the posthuman, it was a tentative entry that appeared to be revoked. 

Isolde

Malgorzata Szczęśniak’s designs were not entirely dissimilar to Tchernaikov’s. A luxury ship, albeit in darker wood, served for the rest too, including what seems during much of the first act also to be some sort of treatment facility, Brangäne as nurse. These are damaged people, I suppose, as Christoph Marthaler at Bayreuth insisted on telling us (without saying anything else much), but who was who and why they were doing what they were doing to whom often eluded him. Quite why the Sailor, for instance, was being blindfolded and abused as he was for much of the act, before abruptly disappearing and never being seen again, I could not tell you. I liked the keen sense of the hunt, both in scene and costume design, in the second act; that framed very nicely what transpired on stage. An alternative action unfolded on film, though, in which Isolde made her way to a hotel room, eventually joined by Tristan. Whatever their motive, it was not a night of passion that unfolded, but rather a bit of pacing, sitting, and lying down. I do not think this was to send up the plot; Carry on Tristan did not seem either to be the intention or the result, but I am not entirely sure. 

The lovers were together at the end on film, having necessarily died separately onstage. (Whether Isolde dies at all should be an open question, but anyway...) I assume this was some sort of greater reality, or maybe it was ‘just’ a fantasy, though in that case, whose? For if the words Isolde sings are delusional, a sort of locus classicus of what George Steiner diagnosed –as, ironically, had Wagner and Nietzsche – as Christianity’s death blow to the tragic impulse, her ‘transfiguration’ (Verklärung) has wonders, to put it mildly, of its own. A couple lying chastely and smiling at each other on a hotel bed, having attempted suicide and perhaps (who knows?) about to die, has fewer if any such wonders to offer. I realise this may be a reference to Lars von Trier’s Melancholia, yet in itself, so what? The extraneous does little good in Tristan and, for the most part, simply gets in the way. Contemporary directors may view metaphysics with suspicion, yet to tackle this work they should do it the courtesy of treating its claims seriously before denying them. If loneliness were Warlikowski’s ultimate guiding concept, and I think it may have been, surely he cannot have been suggesting Tristan or what ‘happens’ in it offered some sort of cure?

 

Tristan and Isolde

Musically, we were on firmer, coherently moving ground. Eight years ago, Waltraud Meier sang farewell to Isolde  in this theatre, in Peter Konwitschny’s far more single-minded production. Anja Kampe proved every inch her successor. I have never heard anything but excellence from her; this Isolde, imperious, tender, and almost every shade in between, proved no exception. She had a grand manner when called for, but it was part of her portrayal, not a singer’s persona; words, music, and gesture were married in properly Wagnerian harmony. As Tristan, Stuart Skelton certainly had heft, yet he offered here, to an unusual extent for this role, an interiority founded on verbal detail and consequent colouring. Perhaps one missed a little of the soaring intensity of some Tristans, but one cannot have it all—and, with some, one has precious little at all. This was rare compensation. René Pape’s King Marke was as fine a performance as I have heard from him. There has never been any doubting the beauty of his voice, but the portrayal seemed to have gained depth, not only in his way with words but his mournful, steadfast stage presence too. Jamie Barton’s Brangäne was sincere, communicative, richly resonant. Wolfgang Koch’s Kurwenal offered a sardonic bite otherwise only really experienced in Kampe’s Isolde. From the rest of the cast, all roles well taken, Sean Michael Plumb’s Melot was vocally bright, even vivid, in a performance having one wish he had more to sing. Liam Bonthrone’s Sailor offered a clarity in song Warlikowski denied him conceptually.

Tristan and King Marke (René Pape)

The Bavarian State Orchestra played with a mastery born of years’ immersion in this score and Wagner in general that must have been apparent to all. There are doubtless several ways to be ‘right’ here; prescription is neither necessary nor desirable. But there was no doubting that this was one of them, the Munich strings dark yet glowing, fundamental in more than one sense to the mysterious surging of the Schopenhauerian Will. Lothar Koenigs’s quietly confident leadership of the performance proved impressive in cumulative effect. One did not notice a conductor’s personal ‘ideas’ about the score; one fancied one simply heard the score, whose power built until the end of each act left one reeling. How much more powerful this might have been with a stronger staging, we cannot know, but there was enough Wagner here to satisfy any listener.

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.