Hercules, Komische Oper, 3 March 2024

Hercules – Brandon Cedel
Dejanira – Paula Murrihy
Iole – Penny Sofroniadou
Hyllus – Caspar Singh
Lichas – Susan Zarrabi
Priest of Jupiter – Noam Heinz
Choral soloists – Martin Fehr, Taiki Miyashita

Director – Barrie Kosky
Designs – Katrin Lea Tag
Dramaturgy – Zsolt Horpácsy, Johanna Wall
Lighting – Joachim Klein
Assistant director – Tobias Ribitzki

Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper (director: David Cavelius) 

Orchestra of the Komische Oper

David Bates (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Dejanira (Paula Murrihy), Lichas (Susan Zarrabi)

Handel’s ‘musical drama’ – an interesting term, though we can sometimes make too much of such things – Hercules has never proved especially popular. The composer’s public at the time and for a long while after tended to prefer his Biblical oratorios. Since the revival and, latterly, the craze for his Italian opere serie, they have ruled the roost. Semele, another ‘musical drama’, ‘after the manner of an oratorio’, has fared better since its modern stage revival in Cambridge in 1925. Handel never intended it to be staged, though the librettist (William Congreve) and original composer (John Eccles) had. It perhaps comes closest to Hercules, whose first staging was also in 1925 – the very beginning of the modern Handel revival – though in Münster. Whilst perhaps not the most compelling, dramatically, of all Handel’s works, Hercules, to a libretto by the Anglican clergyman Thomas Broughton, is certainly not the least either. This new production from Berlin’s Komische Oper affords a valuable opportunity, certain shortcomings notwithstanding, for news audience to see and hear it for themselves—many doubtless for the first time, the present writer included. 

In a programme interview, Kosky tells how and why he has long found Handel’s oratorios, to which he reasonably assimilates Hercules, more compelling than his operas. Me too, though we seem to stand nowadays in a minority. One question presented by staging the oratorios (broadly considered), though, relates to how to treat the chorus. Its dual role in participation and commentary dates back to Attic tragedy, of course, as well as holding an obvious point in common with Bach’s Passions. There remains the question of how to stage this, especially when the chorus is being asked to sing some notably difficult music conceived for singers standing with their scores rather than darting around the stage. (Insofar as the Italian operas have ‘choruses’ at all, the music is far simpler, and in general we might consider them simply to be the cast coming together.) One needs an excellent chorus, of course, which was certainly the case. Its singers and their director, David Cavelius, deserve much praise; audience appreciation was rightly enthusiastic on the opening night. Kosky involved them directly in the action where required, including a disturbing scene of largely implicit violence when Iole is brought home (for Hercules, not for her) as spoils of war. There is also mesmerising choreography for the reflective role in which singing and movement combine to evoke and perhaps even provoke the deadly jealousy forming in Dejanira’s fevered imagination.

 

Chorus and Dejanira

For, as Kosky points out, Handel focuses everything not on Hercules but on his wife, Dejanira. ‘Everyone is constantly talking about Hercules,’ as is typical for a hero, or an idea of a hero, ‘but all one sees is one theme – and that is jealousy, which the chorus also sings about at a central point. What is jealousy, what does jealousy do, what is fantasy, what is projection, what is reality? Dejanira spins herself through jealousy into madness,’ in her obsessional belief, quite unfounded, that her husband has deserted her for the foreign princess Iole. Kosky’s suggestion that Broughton probably read Othello strikes me as eminently plausible, and certainly makes its way in here, with a good touch too of Ovid. This unfolds in an unsparing visual environment, situated at the dramatic trisection of antiquity, its eighteenth-century revisitation, and our twenty-first-century revisitation of both. Glaring light and whiteness impart a sense of nowhere to hide. We may not wish to watch at times, but we must—just like those taking part. Katrin Lea Tag’s designs here play a crucial role; indeed, one cannot imagine the action without them. A statue of Hercules, ever present, make Kosky’s point about constant reference when the drama is not really ‘about’ Hercules at all.

Dejanira, Hercules (Brandon Cedel)

We knit our own heroes, Dejanira to extremes, and in this respect Paula Murrihy’s performance must be accounted a striking success. Murrihy has much to do and not only did it very well indeed, but functioned, as she must, as the dramatic lynchpin. As Hercules, Brandon Cedel has a somewhat thankless part, but presented it with conviction and due collegiality, doing just what was required of him to have the apparently strange focus of the drama work. Kosky has an inventive solution, which tightens the bonds of family loyalty further, to the question of the role of the messenger Lichas. Handel made it an oddly large role; that is, oddly, until one knows that it was on account of the popularity of its creator Susanna Cibber. For revivals, it was cut. Kosky elects to make the herald, always sung by a woman, Hercules’s younger sister. It works well, I think, and helps make sense of something that can otherwise seem a little odd. Susan Zarrabi’s heavily accented performance might have been a little much for some English speakers, but it was certainly animated and dramatically committed; we should remind ourselves that German- and Italian-speakers face similar distractions frequently. Penny Sofroniadou’s Iole was beautifully, sparklingly sung, with just as keen an eye and ear for drama, her initial, well-nigh regal disdain for Hyllus, Hercules’s son, duly wounding. Caspar Singh offered a subtle, often moving performance of that difficult role: very much in his father’s shadow, his mother’s too, in need of space to become his own person. The small role of the Priest of Jupiter was well taken by Noam Heinz, from whom I shall likewise be keen to hear more. 

Hyllas (Caspar Singh), Dejanira, Lichas

The one significant drawback for me was David Bates’s direction of the orchestra. Clearly intent on making it sound as little like a modern orchestra as possible – in which case, why use one? – Bates often sounded as if he were presenting a caricature of rebarbative ‘early musicking’. Not only was there no longer line; there were barely orchestral phrases at all, which made for a peculiar contrast with such excellent singing. If it was, alas, too much to hope for even the slightest manifestation of string vibrato. The orchestra doubtless did as it was asked, but lunging extremes of tempo only highlighted the strange assumptions underlying Bates’s performance. Quite how we have backed ourselves into a corner where all manner of explorations are permitted on stage, yet a single, highly questionable idea of ‘correctness’ (or otherwise) in instrumental performance is all that can be allowed, I really do not know. One can only hope that, some day, wiser, more humane counsels will prevail. There are certainly far more alluring Handel performances on period instruments, let alone the all too rare occasions when more properly ‘modern’ readings are permitted.

Hercules, Hyllus

It would doubtless be an exaggeration to describe Hercules as an ‘Anglican work’, but it chimes well enough with a broadly Christian yet latitudinarian outlook. If part of the reason for the work’s ‘failure’ – it received only two performances in its initial run at the Haymarket – was, as has been claimed, its lack of moral and spiritual uplift, then it is tempting to conclude the audience was not paying as much attention as it might. From a modern standpoint, it might all seem a bit clean, the deus ex machina in need of questioning or undercutting. Kosky does not opt to do so too overtly, letting the work speak largely for itself. Yet in continuing his focus on Dejanira, for whom this is certainly not a happy ending, one can continue, as it were, to hear her pain, renewed and intensified by the sounds of rejoicing that surround her.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Don Giovanni, 23 July 2016

Nationaltheater, Munich

Don Giovanni – Erwin Schrott

Commendatore – Ain Anger
Donna Anna – Albina Shagimuratova
Don Ottavio – Pavol Breslik
Donna Elvira – Dorothea Röschmann
Leporello – Alex Esposito
Zerlina – Eri Nakamura
Masetto – Brandon Cedel
Old Man – Ekkehard Bartsch

Stephan Kimmig (director)

Katja Haß (set designs)
Anja Rabes (costumes)
Benjamin Krieg (video)
Reinhard Traub (lighting)
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra
James Gaffigan (conductor)

All told, this was probably the best Don Giovanni I have seen and heard. Judging opera performances – perhaps we should not be ‘judging’ at all, but let us leave that on one side – is a difficult task: there are so many variables, at least as many as in a play and a concert combined, but then there is the issue of that ‘combination’ too. At any rate, whilst not every aspect might have been the ‘very best ever’ – how could it be? – all was of a very high standard, and much was truly outstanding. I even began to think that the wretched ‘traditional’ Prague-Vienna composite version might for once be welcome; it was not, yet, given the distinction of the performances, the dramatic loss was less grievous than on almost any other occasion I have experienced.

 

If Daniel Barenboim’s Furtwänglerian reading in Berlin in 2007 remains the best conducted of my life, there was nothing whatsoever to complain about in James Gaffigan’s direction of the score. It was certainly a far more impressive performance than a Vienna Figaro last year, which led me to wonder how much was to be ascribed to other factors, not least the truly dreadful production; perhaps, on the other hand, Don Giovanni is just more Gaffigan’s piece. The depth and variegation of the orchestral sound was second, if not quite to none, than only to Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin. This was far and away the best Mozart playing I have heard in Munich. Even if the alla breve opening to the Overture were not taken as I might have preferred, and certain rather rasping brass concerned me at the opening, I find it difficult to recall anything much to complain about after that; nor do I have any reason to wish to try. Tempi were varied, well thought out, and above all considered in relation to one another. Terror and balm were equal partners: on that night in Munich, we certainly needed them to be.

 

This was, I think, Stephan Kimmig’s first opera staging, first seen in 2009. I shall happily be corrected, but I am not aware of anything since. If so, that is a great pity, for the intelligence of which I have heard tell in his ‘straight’ theatre productions – alas, I have yet to see any of them – is certainly manifest here. There are, above all, two things without which an opera staging cannot survive: a strong sense of theatre and a strong sense of intellectual and dramatic coherence. Equally desirable is, of course, at least something of an ear for music, and coordination between pit, voices, and stage action seemed to me splendidly realised too.

 

A perennial lament of mine concerning Don Giovanni productions concerns refusal or inability to understand it as a thoroughly religious work. Here, there is certainly some sense of sin; its relationship to atheistic heroism is, just as it should be, complex. And the reappearance of the Commendatore and (excellent) chorus at the end, some, including the Stone Guest himself, in clerical garb, reminded us, without pushing the matter, that authority is at least partly religious here. There are other forms of authority too – Don Ottavio’s ever-mysterious reference to the authorities perhaps intrigues us more than it should, or perhaps not – and they are also represented: military berets, business suits, and so forth. A libertine offends far more than the Church; and of course, the Church as an institution has always been many things in addition to Christian (to put it politely).

 

Katja Haß’s set designs powerfully, searchingly evoke the liminality of Da Ponte’s, still more Mozart’s Seville. The drama is not merely historical, although it certainly contains important historical elements. But above all, there is a labyrinth – one I am tempted to think of as looking forward to operas by Berg, even Birtwistle, perhaps even the opera that Boulez never wrote – in which all manner of masquerading may take place. Social slippage and dissolution – above all the chameleon-like abilities of the (anti-)hero – need such possibilities, which are present here, in abundance, in a setting that both respects traditional dramatic unities and renders them properly open to development. A warehouse, containers revolving, opening and closing, changing and remaining the same, provides the frame. Yet we are never quite sure what will be revealed, languages of graffiti transforming, never quite cohering, Leporello’s catalogue – and, more to the point, its implications – foreseen, shadowed, recalled. There is butchery – literally – to be seen in the carcasses from which the Commendatore emerges. There is glitzy – too glitzy – glamour in the show Giovanni puts on to dazzle the peasantfolk; but it does its trick, coloured hair and all.

 

And there is an Old Man, observer and participant, sometimes there, sometimes not. Everyman? The nobleman, had he outstayed his welcome, not accepted the invitation? He is clearly disdained, even humiliated (what a contrast, we are made to think, almost despite ourselves, between his naked body and the raunchy coupling – or more – around him). That is, when he is seen at all: and that is, quite rightly, as much an indictment of the audience as of the characters onstage. Part of what we are told, it seems, is that this is a drama of the young, who have no need of the elderly. Not for nothing, or so I thought, did Alex Esposito’s Leporello exaggerate his caricatured sung response to Giovanni’s elderly women.

 

It is, then, an open staging: suggestive rather than overtly didactic. In a drama overflowing with ideas, that is no bad thing at all. Coherence is, whatever I might have implied above, always relative; the truest of consistency will often if not always come close to the dead hand of the Commendatore. For this was a staging that had me question my initial assumptions: again, something close to a necessity for intelligent theatre. (I assume that the bovine reactions from a few in the stalls were indicative of a desire for anything but.)

 

If religion lies at the heart of the opera, too little acknowledged, perhaps at least a little too little here too, then so does sex. Sorry, ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’, but there you have it; this really is not an opera for you, but then what is? Don Giovanni and Don Giovanni ooze – well, almost anything and everything you want and do not want them to. They certainly did here, which is in good part testament to this superlative cast. Erwin Schrott’s Giovanni may be a known quantity – I have certainly raved about it before, more than once – but it was no less welcome and no less impressive for that. ‘Acting’ and singing were as one. He held the stage as strongly as I have ever seen – which means very strongly indeed – and his powers of seduction were as strong as I have ever seen – which means, as I said… His partnership with Esposito’s Leporello was both unique and yet typical of the dynamically drawn relationships between so many of the characters on stage. Leporello was clearly admiring, even envious of his master; their changing, yet not quite, of clothes and identities was almost endlessly absorbing its erotic, yet disconcerting charge. Esposito brought as wide a range of expressive means to his delivery of the text as any Leporello, Schrott included, I remember. Their farewell was truly shocking, Giovanni picking up his quivering servant from the floor, kissing him for several spellbinding seconds, then wiping his mouth clean on his sleeve and spitting contemptuously on the floor. It was time finally to accept the Commendatore’s invitation, issued with grave, deep musicality by the flawless Ain Anger.

 

I had seen Pavol Breslik as Don Ottavio before. There could have been no doubting the distinction of his performance in Berlin, under Barenboim, although neither artist was helped by the non-production of Peter Mussbach. Here, however, Breslik presented, in collaboration with the production, perhaps the most fascinating Ottavio I have seen – and no, that is not intended as faint praise. This was a smouldering counterpart to Giovanni, unable to keep his hands off Donna Anna, and frankly all over her during her second-act aria. Their pill-popping – he supplied the pills – opened up all manner of possibilities, not least given the frank sexuality of their, and particularly his, reactions. The beauty of Breslik’s tone, silken-smooth in his arias, added an almost Così fan tutte-like agony to the violent proceedings. In Albina Shagimuratova, we heard a Donna Anna of the old school: big-boned, yet infinitely subtle, her coloratura a thing of wonder. Combined with the uncertainty of her character’s development – again, most intriguingly so – this was again a performance both physically to savour and intellectually to relish.

 

So too was that the case with Dorothea Röschmann’s Donna Elvira. Her portrayal – Kimmig’s portrayal – would certainly not have pleased, at least initially, those for whom this is in large part a misogynistic work. (It seems to me that they misunderstand some, at least, of what is going on, but that is an argument for another time, and I am only too well aware that it is not necessarily a claim that I, as a man, should be advancing anything other than tentatively.) Downtrodden, yet beautifully sung, in the first act, she nevertheless came into her defiant own in the second, above all through the most traditionally operatic of means: sheer vocal splendour. What a ‘Mi tradì’ that was!

 

Eri Nakamura gave the finest performance I have heard from her as Zerlina, seemingly far more at home in Mozart than when I heard her at Covent Garden. This was a Zerlina who both knew and did not know what she was doing – as a character, of course, not as a performance. And finally, Brandon Cedel’s portrait in wounded, affronted, unconscious yet responsive masculinity proved quite a revelation: I do not think any Masetto has made me think so much about his role in the drama. Nor can I think, offhand, of any Masetto so dangerously attractive – again, like Ottavio, in some sense an aspirant Giovanni, but one still more incapable of being so. Morally, of course, that is to the character’s credit – but in this most ambiguous of operas, and in this most fruitfully ambiguous of productions, one was never quite sure.