Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 21 April 2019

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from the first performances, in 2015)

Hans Sachs – Wolfgang Koch

Veit Pogner – Matti Salminen

Eva – Julia Kleiter

Walther von Stolzing – Burkhard Fritz

David – Siyabonga Maqungo

Magdalene – Katharina Kammerloher

Kunz Vogelgesang – Graham Clark

Konrad Nachtigall – Adam Kutny

Sixtus Beckmesser – Martin Gantner

Fritz Kothner – Jürgen Limm

Balthasar Zorn – Siegfried Jerusalem

Ulrich Eisslinger – Reiner Goldberg

Augustin Moser – Florian Hoffmann

Hermann Ortel – Arttu Kataja

Hans Schwarz – Franz Mazura

Hans Foltz – Olaf Bär

Night Watchman – Erik Rosenius

Andrea Moses (director)

Jan Pappelbaum (set designs)

Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

‘Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding,’ sings Strauss’s Marschallin: a truth that seems to grow truer with our – at least with my – every advancing year. More prosaically, and more specifically, we might also say that openings and re-openings, constructions and reconstructions, creations and recreations, unifications and reunifications are strange things: rarely what they seem, and rarely what the fashionable, the non-critical presume them to be. Such ideas lie at the heart of Die Meistersinger: at its heart, concerned with the ongoing creation and performance of a song, within a society that has both placed such endeavour at its heart and also done its utmost to thwart the same. Perhaps all societies, at least all bourgeois societies – what could be more bürgerlich than this early modernity created and recreated by the nineteenth century? – are like that. As Schiller and Marx, Wagner too, insisted, left to his own devices, man – woman too? – will create as an artist; as all three lamented, that ‘natural’ state of affairs rarely, if ever, pertains. At best, a higher, mediated state of unity might be achieved; but how?

Such thoughts came very much to mind watching, for the first time, Andrea Moses’ 2015 production of the work. Not because it really engages with them: alas, this is a sorry piece of theatre, considered as staging. Nonetheless, the work and its traditions enabled, at least in retrospect, some manner of critique. The gravest charge against the production is its tedium, the second its hapless incoherence. (The two are not unrelated.) It seems to suggest ideas, yet they never seem grounded, never connected; its amateurism, in the worst sense, suggests what the Masters might think of Walther before he sings a note (and many of them do once he has). For the action plays out mostly as if this were the most hidebound of traditionalist stagings, albeit without either that sixteenth-century (or even nineteenth-century) ‘original’ context or a new one to put in its place. The first act takes place in something resembling a concert hall – there are apprentice ushers, or something like that, in black tie – or perhaps a corporate event, Masters’ names displayed as if sponsors. Nothing, however, makes much sense, since there is no apparent effort to explain, to criticise, to create, to recreate, and so forth. Or is it a sportsground sponsors’ lounge, competition here being the thing? Perhaps, for the second act takes place in what seems to be the backstage of a stadium. For some reason – or none – the inhabitants of Nuremberg are now in punk garb. That seems implicitly to be the reason, though surely not the intention, for their descending into a riot, in which football flags are waved. Beckmesser has meanwhile, bafflingly, squeezed himself into sixteenth-century costume. Everyone else has otherwise wandered around aimlessly, save for Walther and Eva who wrap themselves in an ever-present German flag. An Orthodox Jew walks across stage during the turmoil, untouched by and seemingly oblivious to it. I have no idea either…

The first part of the third act moves to a library: fair enough in itself, as setting for Sachs’s world chronicle, although there is no sense of how it relates to anything that has gone before, still less of who these people might be and why they might act as they do. The Festwiese scene attempts, I think, to tie things together, but not only is it too late, the message it appears to project is glib and disturbing, as well as ultimately incoherent. For the production’s origins now come more clearly to the fore. It had originally been intended that this Meistersinger should reopen the renovated eighteenth-century house on Unter den Linden. Work having fallen behind – or new work having been necessitated – that was delayed until 2017, Daniel Barenboim and the outgoing Intendant, Jürgen Flimm, then presenting a staged version of Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust’. Both ‘reopenings’, anticipated and actual – even the latter was a little false, the theatre soon closing again until December – were scheduled for Germany’s new national day, the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, which explicitly celebrates the anniversary of reunification in 1990. The first performance, it seems, took place in two parts: the first two acts on the day itself, the third the following day (the equivalent to Wagner’s Johannistag morning-after to Polterabend, I suppose).

With that in mind, one can perhaps see the celebrations by the Spree, our Pegnitz substitute, as trying, Sachs-like, to bring peace, even unity, to the revelry and violence of the night before. Alas, it is all terribly confused. Is the ‘night before’ the troubled German, past and the ‘morning after’ the here and now? If so, that makes little sense in terms of the premiere chronology; it also makes no sense of the settings, all ‘present’, if little related. The backdrop of the absurdly ‘restored’ old Berliner Schloss – ironically, a mere Potemkin façade, – suggests, however, that we are intended to reflect in such a way. Those who might have preferred a restored GDR Palast der Republik or something new will have had very different thoughts, uneasy at this banal, Disneyfied celebration of capital’s victory over socialism. (I saw the ‘new-old’ façade for the first time fully risen, whilst walking to the performance: a dispiriting sight indeed.) Seemingly as an afterthought, a few Kaiserreich flags are flown and, captured by Sachs, cast into the river. Given that the palace was the Hohenzollerns’, ‘modern’ rejection of that flag seems disingenuous. Most bewildering, though, is the appearance of two Arab ‘sheikhs’ with bodyguard. Our Master ‘sponsors’, their logos again proudly displayed, act with great solicitude to them, explaining events – would that they had to us – and caring for their needs. Have they funded the ‘event’? And if so, what might that mean? They notably leave the stage before the close, excluded or excluding themselves from the final celebration, replete with German flag. A celebration of corporate, ‘moderate’ nationalism, then, from which financially enabling non-Germans must absent themselves? Try as I might, I cannot come up with an inoffensive explanation – even should that prove to be mere cluelessness.

Faced with such irritating nonsense, I found it difficult to concentrate on the musical performances in themselves, though much was clearly admirable. Barenboim’s command of the outstanding Staatskapelle Berlin continues greatly to impress, flexibility, clarity, delight in the score’s Mozartian, conversational qualities, and a thorough grounding in Wagner’s harmonic plan unquestionably apparent. His idea of presenting an array of old Masters – some may recall a similar concept at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival to mark Brian McMaster’s farewell – was engaging. It was a delightful thing indeed to encounter and re-encounter so many great names from the past, such as Siegfried Jerusalem, Graham Clark, and Olaf Bär, all the way to Franz Mazura, due to celebrate his ninety-fifth birthday the following day. Matti Salminen’s Pogner fell into that category too, occasional instability a price well-worth paying for sheer likeability. Wolfgang Koch gave a typically thoughtful, musicianly performance as Sachs, interacting nicely with Martin Gantner’s Beckmesser, Julia Kleiter’s sprightly, sometimes radiant Eva understandably torn. Burkhard Fritz’s Walther had his moments – though they were not always happy; he kept going, though, which is something. Siyabonga Maqungo’s David and Katharina Kammerloher’s Magdalene both impressed in lively, detailed assumptions, making as much as could reasonably be expected from a difficult situation.

If, ultimately, many of these performances seemed more observed than felt, that may well have been the fault of the production – and my inability to rise above it. There will be other creations and recreations, though, other attempts to construct and reconstruct the past, present, and future. This production’s predecessor from Harry Kupfer still lingers in the mind; let us hope the next in line will prove worthier.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Die Frau ohne Schatten, 5 July 2017

Images: Wilfried Hösl
Dyer's Wife (Elena Pankratova)
and the Apparition of Youth

Nationaltheater, Munich

Emperor – Burkhard Fritz

Empress – Ricarda Merbeth

Nurse – Michaela Schuster

Spirit-Messenger – Sebastian Heleck

Barak – Wolfgang Koch

Dyer’s Wife – Elena Pankratova

Apparition of Youth, The Hunchback – Dean Power

Voice of the Falcon, Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Elsa Benoit

Voice from Above – Okka von der Damerau
The One-Eyed – Tim Kuypers
The One-Armed – Christian Rieger

The Hunchback – Dean Power

Keikobad – Renate Jett

Servants, Children’s Voices – Elsa Benoit, Paula Iancic, Rachael Wilson

Children’s Voices – Elsa Benoit, Paula Iancic, Alla El-Khashem, Rachael Wilson, Okka von der Damerau

Voices of Nightwatchmen – Johannes Kammler, Sean Michael Plumb, Milan Siljanov

Krzysztof Warlikowsi (director)

Georgine Balk (Abendspielleitung)

Malgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)

Felice Ross (lighting)

Denis Guéguin (video)

Kamil Polak (video animation

Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Children’s Chorus (chorus master: Stellario Fagone) and Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff) of the Bavarian State Opera

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Empress (Ricarda Merbeth) and Nurse (Michaela Schuster)

It was fascinating to see – and of course, to hear – Krzysztof Warlikowsi’s productions of Die Gezeichneten and Die Frau ohne Schatten on consecutive nights of this year’s Munich Opera Festival. First, and perhaps most important: both received outstanding performances, fully worthy of any festival in the world, let alone one such as this which offers both new productions and stagings from the repertory. This FroSch may have been the latter, but who would have known? There are clearly advantages to being conducted by the Music Director – not least the identity of this particular music director – but even so…

Both works offered the director considerable challenges. In the Schreker opera, Warlikowski rose admirably to the challenge of drawing out what was of greatest interest in a flawed work and, indeed, even to criticising certain of its more problematical aspects. Die Frau ohne Schatten is not without its problematical aspects either, of course, not least Hofmannsthal’s bizarre pronatalism – perhaps a staging that made more of its wartime context (or near-context) might help, but I have yet to see one – and, more broadly, the mismatch between Strauss and Hofmannsthal here. If Strauss misunderstands Hofmannsthal, though – and we should be wary of awarding priority simply on a chronological basis, especially with so complex a composer-librettist relationship as this – it is, to borrow a term from Webern and the post-war avant garde, a productive misreading.

Emperor (Burkhard Fritz), Nurse, and Empress

How does Warlikowski deal with that, in a production first seen in 2013? I am not entirely sure that he does, but it may well be that I am missing something. What he certainly does accomplish is to present a number of standpoints, which may, to an extent, like those presented in the work ‘itself’, be reconciled, or even set against each other. The world of medicalised hysteria, of the sanatorium is present, just as in Claus Guth’s production (seen at La Scala, Covent Garden, and the Berlin State Opera. Perhaps counter-intuitively, for a work in which, laboriously at times, Hofmannsthal at least seems to offer layer upon layer of symbolism, often highly referential or at least allusive, Warlikowski penetrates to a very human drama at the work’s heart. It might sound banal; perhaps in some ways it is; but why not actually present this as a drama concerning a woman, the Dyer’s Wife rather than the Empress, who wishes to have children, is pressured to renounce her desire, and then achieves what would seem to be genuine fulfilment by doing so? There are various answers to that, of course, or at least to why such a drama might be problematical; but they are not unanswerable answers.

Freud hangs less heavily over the production than he does over Guth’s, but he is there, glimpsed indeed in video projections at the end alongside a motley crew that includes (I think) Gandhi, Christ, the Buddha, King Kong, and Marilyn Monroe. (I have no idea, I am afraid; I suspect I am missing something terribly obvious, but never mind…) More overtly present is Last Year in Marienbad. Pictures from the film lead us in to the opening of the opera and accompany its course, far from obtrusively, yet offering connections should we wish to follow them. A sadness born of lack of fulfilment, perceived or otherwise, hangs over what we see – and interacts, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes less so, with what we hear. Even the Nurse seems a far more human figure than usual. There is, perhaps, loss there too, but to see her a broken woman, trying to deal with an impossible situation that is not of her choosing is fascinating: it certainly made me reconsider the role. 

Empress, Falcon(s), and Emperor

Where Ingo Metzmacher had given a commanding account of Schreker’s score the previous night, Kirill Petrenko went further still in Strauss’s score. It does no harm, of course, that Strauss is by far the greater composer and musical dramatist. But that can come to naught, or at least be severely diminished in the wrong hands. Musical performance is certainly not a matter of league tables, but I can certainly say, hand on heart, that I have never heard the opera better conducted or played. This was at the very least a musical performance to set alongside those by Christoph von Dohnányi and Semyon Bychkov at Covent Garden, and superior to any of the others I have heard. Petrenko’s ear for Strauss’s complex orchestral polyphony is second to none, not only amongst any conductor alive but any I know from recorded performances.

The similarities and differences between Strauss and Schoenberg – you will have to forgive me for having the latter very much on my mind at the moment – are as complex as their music ‘in itself’. There is, though, something here which, ironically, given Strauss’s reported remarks on Schoenberg’s score, brings Strauss closer than one might expect to the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16. Alma Mahler just could not help herself in telling Schoenberg that Strauss had said Schoenberg would be ‘better off shovelling snow’ than ‘scribbling on manuscript paper’. (What is less often reported is that he recommended the younger composer for the Mahler Foundation grant in any case. Schoenberg, unsurprisingly, never forgave him; when asked the following year for a fiftieth-birthday tribute, he responded angrily: ‘He is no longer of the slightest artistic interest to me, and whatever I may once have learned from him, may God be thanked, [I had] misunderstood.’) Petrenko is a very fine Schoenberg conductor; indeed, it was in Erwartung at Covent Garden that I first heard him. The interplay between colour, line, harmony, every changing parameter was such that I could not help but think I was hearing Strauss with somewhat Schoenbergian ears – and that was not entirely to be attributed to my own present preoccupations. The Bavarian State Orchestra was at least equally responsible: in every respect worthy of the most exalted comparisons, past or present. I do not think I have ever heard the solo cello part played with greater tenderness and yet with such a sense of where, motivically and harmonically, it is heading. Nor have I heard the full orchestra sound more thrillingly present and yet more transparent. It was not only seeing the glass harmonica in one of the boxes overlooking the pit that meant I could hear it so well.

Barak (Wolfgang Koch) and the Dyer's Wife

Vocal performances were almost equally magnificent. Burkhard Fritz greatly impressed in Berlin earlier this year, and did so again here: quite tireless and perfectly capable of riding Strauss’s orchestral wave. The Emperor is, perhaps, the best role in which I have heard of him. Ricarda Merbeth was more than his equal as his consort: as tenderly moving as, when required, imperious. She truly drew one into her particular drama, as did the Dyer and his Wife, even, as mentioned above, the Nurse. Elena Pankratova and Wolfgang Koch were also in previous casts I had seen, London and Berlin respectively. Fine though their performances had been then, Petrenko’s conducting seemed to incite them to still greater things in Munich. (The more I consider Zubin Mehta in Berlin, the more uncomprehending his conducting seems by comparison.) Theirs was at root a human, commonplace relationship, exalted by particular musico-dramatic circumstance and by musical performance into something transformative, in a sense that both Strauss and Hofmannsthal might have acknowledged. The sadness both felt could be perceived in their faces, their body language, but still more in the alchemy of stage, words, and music that is opera at its greatest – and which, with the best will in the world, a lesser composer such as Schreker could never have summoned. To her trademark malevolence in the role, Michael Schuster was here fully enabled to offer a poignancy one rarely sees and hears in the Nurse. Sebastian Heleck’s Spirit Messenger was perhaps first among equals – intelligent, deeply musical singing – amongst the ‘smaller’ roles, but there was no weak link here. Choral singing and acting were equally outstanding. Likewise those roles played by non-singing actors: the Apparition of a Youth here our first among equals, sporting an excellent line in gigolo contempt when collecting his earnings for unachieved attempted seduction from the Nurse. As had been the case in the previous night’s performance, the dramatic whole was greater than the sum of its parts – just not quite in the same way. Now how about a Moses und Aron?

Berlin Festtage (3) - Die Frau ohne Schatten, Staatsoper Berlin, 9 April 2017

Dyer's Wife (Iréne Theorin), Empress (Camilla Nylund), Barak (Wolfgang Koch)
Images: Hans Jörg Michel

Schiller Theater

Emperor – Burkhard Fritz

Empress – Camilla Nylund

Nurse – Michaela Schuster

Spirit-Messenger – Roman Trekel

Barak – Wolfgang Koch

Dyer’s Wife – Iréne Theorin
Apparition of Youth – Jun-Sang Han
Voice of the Falcon – Narine YeghiyanVoice from Above – Jane Henschel
Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Evelin Novak

Voice from Above – Anja Schlosser

The One-Eyed – Alfredo Daza
The One-Armed – Grigory Shkarupa

The Hunchback – Karl-Michael Ebner

Servants, Children’s Voices – Sónia Grané, Evelin Novak, Natalia Skrycka

Children’s Voices – Anna Charim, Verena Allertz, Konstanze Löwe

Voices of Nightwatchmen – David Oštrek, Gyula Orendt, Dominc Barberi

Claus Guth (director)

Julia Burbach (assistant director)

Christian Schmidt (designs)

Olaf Winter (lighting)

Andi A. Müller (video)

Ronny Dietrich (dramaturgy)

Dancers

Children’s Chorus (chorus master; Vinzenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopern Chor Berlin (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

Empress and Nurse (Michaela Schuster)

Claus Guth’s staging of Die Frau ohne Schatten, already seen in Milan and in London, now reaches Berlin, the Staatsoper the third of its co-producing partners. Here, I think, its psychoanalytical and, more broadly, dramatic focus is sharper, doubtless the consequence of certain reworking in the light of experience, whether by Guth or his assistants. Narrative clarity is anything but reductionist or lacking in conceptual framework, yet the danger of obscuring Hofmannsthal’s tendency towards the obscure is avoided throughout. We open with a sanatorium dumb show, a woman receiving treatment. In her dreaming, she becomes – or perhaps always has been: it does not really matter – the Empress. Dreaming is not, it should be added, a banal matter of waking up and discovering ‘it was all a dream’, almost as a way of rounding off something that could not otherwise have been rounded off; that was rather the impression gained, at least by me, in London. Here, with some sharpening up of the medical apparatus – a little more presence, perhaps, earlier in the third act would not go amiss – it comes across far more clearly as a mode of treatment. What our heroine – hysterical in more than one way, or perhaps not – undergoes is perhaps what she needs; at any rate, it is what she gets.

 

Emperor (Burkhard Fritz)

Navigation of the boundaries between reality and dream, accepting that sometimes they will remain unclear and that that is no bad thing, gains dynamic impetus through its interaction with Hofmannsthal’s idea of transformation; Ariadne auf Naxos seems to beckon, or perhaps it already has beckoned. The mythological world it continues to receive a relatively full due, echoes, however strained of The Magic Flute, heard (more to the point, seen), without overwhelming. Schmidt’s designs and Olaf Winter’s lighting come into their own here, although I could do without the strangely banal video explication. The shadows cast across the stage say far more than a projection of a pregnant stomach being rubbed. What last time I called ‘the sheer weirdness but also menacing sense of judgement emanating from a courtroom of strange creatures’, close to the end, seems perhaps more menacing in its imagined flights of fantasy than ever. Dreams and their interpretation remain indivisible. ‘Treatment’ is, moreover, not without its perils. Coming hard on the heels of the Freudian themes in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Parsifal, the staging offers much to ponder.

 

Zubin Mehta’s conducting of the score was less probing. He knew ‘how it went’, although perhaps lingered a little too much at times when the singers – and the drama – might have preferred otherwise. Compared, however, with Semyon Bychkov’s truly outstanding account at Covent Garden, as fine as anything I know on record, let alone have known in the theatre, Mehta’s reading sounded generalised. Where Strauss’s score offers a myriad of opportunities for harmonic and, still more, colouristic fragmentation and reunion, ever transforming before our ears, this was often a little dogged and, if not monochrome, less kaleidoscopic and, more generally, multivalent, than one might have hoped for. The Staatkapelle Berlin nevertheless sounded excellent, solos well taken without exception, although there were times when I wished Mehta might have allowed it more of its head – and sheer heft. I could not help but recall Daniele Gatti’s shattering 2010 Elektra in Salzburg, as well as Bychkov’s FroSch, and finding something missing.

The Nurse

The cast, though, was first-rate, just as had been the case in London. I am not sure I have heard Burkhard Fritz on better form. The physical demands of the Emperor’s part are fearsome, cruel even by Strauss’s usual tenor standards. One can readily forgive a single wayward passage for the otherwise splendid performance heard here. Camilla Nylund’s Empress could hardly have been bettered. As well acted as it was well sung, as variegated in colour and dynamic contrast as it was clean of line, this was above all a performance that had one sympathise, believe in the ‘case’ before us. I likewise do not think I have heard a better Barak than that of Wolfgang Koch. His way with words and music certainly had me sympathise with the character like never before. The dyer’s predicament was ‘real’, not merely symbolic or dreamed. Iréne Theorin’s imperious yet also deeply felt Dyer’s Wife impressed similarly, its vocal roots in the figure of Isolde but also, one felt, once we knew she had not made the diabolical agreement, in the humanity of Mozart. If Roman Trekel’s Spirit-Messenger were somewhat dry of tone, the instrument of his message, Michaela Schuster, fully lived up to the high expectations elicited by her London performance, its ambiguous malevolence heightened by the Freudian setting. With choruses, adult and children’s alike, on splendid form too, blocked as well as they sang, there was much to celebrate here indeed – even if we cannot include that disturbing pro-natalism from which we shall never quite be able to rescue the work.

Ariadne auf Naxos, Semperoper Dresden, 15 April 2014

Semperoper

Music-Master – Markus Butter
Major-Domo – Friedrich-Wilhelm Junge
Lackey – Peter Lobert
Officer – Michael Auenmüller
Composer – Barbara Senator
Tenor/Bacchus – Burkhard Fritz
Wigmaker – Matthias Henneberg
Zerbinetta – Romy Petrick
Prima Donna, Ariadne – Marjorie Owens
Dancing Master – Timothy Oliver
Naiad – Emily Dorn
Dryad – Julia Mintzer
Echo – Arantza Ezenarro
Harlequin – Sebastian Wartig
Scaramuccio – Gerald Hupach
Truffaldino – Tilmann Rönnebeck
Brighella – Aaron Pegram

Marco Arturo Marelli (director, set designs)

Dagmar Niefind-Marelli (costumes)

Staatskapelle Dresden

Omer Meir Wellber (conductor)

It is difficult for Ariadne auf Naxos to go too wrong, though Katharina Thoma managed to do so in her dreadful staging for Glyndebourne last year. That said, it remains a pleasure and an estimable pleasure at that, when it goes right, which for the most part it did here in the Straussian paradise of Dresden. Marco Arturo Marelli’s production has been around for a while – it appears on DVD, from the loving hands of Sir Colin Davis – but in no sense does it seem tired. Whilst dispensing with undue viennoserie, it is faithful to the spirit and idea of the work, set here in a modern art gallery: in many ways a more apt contemporary milieu than the musical world would be. As a friend remarked, the patron is just the sort of person who would buy a Damien Hirst. Indeed, nowadays, he would be far more likely to do that than to commission an opera. The ‘opera’ proper thus takes place on an island installation, around which the fashionable habitués of an exhibition opening night drift. (There are suitably dreadful paintings surrounding on the walls too.)  Marelli’s staging is not cynical, though; whilst there is plenty of fun to be had concerning the ghastliness of modern patronage, it is not overdone, and one of the joys of the production is also to see how some spectators, not least a lady next to whom Zerbinetta seats herself for part of her big aria, respond to the proceedings, and in some cases partake in Hofmannsthal’s – and Strauss’s – transformation. Personenregie, designs, and concept alike work well, both in theory and in practice. In that respect, it is worth mentioning that the Komparserie does an excellent job throughout. I did not care for the Composer’s running off with Zerbinetta at the end: far better to have that Prologue Augenblick as just that, but by the same token, it is a directorial indulgence that can be lived with.

 

The Staatskapelle Dresden is of course the Strauss orchestra par excellence, at least as much as its cousin in Vienna. Whether one thinks of Böhm, Kempe, Thielemann, or others, it would be difficult not to think of a favourite Strauss recording made here. Here the orchestra was on fine form throughout, variegated of tone, responding to the manner born to Strauss’s quicksilver transformations of colour and harmony. Conductor Omer Meir Wellber proved an estimable Kapellmeister: not necessarily fashioning new insights, but permitting the score’s delights to speak for themselves, and Strauss’s line to develop unimpeded. For something really special here, we may return to Sir Colin – his bust proudly on display here at the Semperoper – on DVD.

 

There was an excellent sense of company: apt in this of all works. Not all of the singing may have matched great assumptions of the past – has it ever matched Karajan’s recording? – but one could hardly expect that. Marjorie Owens proved a graceful, often moving Ariadne: a few falterings here and there, but nothing serious. Burkhard Fritz offered a little too much in the way of Tenor bluster, hectoring at times, but one can readily incorporate that into the work’s metatheatricality. If Barbara Senator’s Composer was less individual of tone than of stage presence, there was nothing too much to complain about either. Romy Petrick’s Zerbinetta was a joy: precise, lovable, and touching at those tender moments too. Equally impressive was a fine female trio of Naiad, Dryad, and Echo: Emily Dorn, Julia Mintzer, and Arantza Ezenarro. Their fabulous costumes were matched by assured singing and acting, offering quite the model of an Ariadne performance.

 

Bayreuth Festival (1) - Parsifal, 11 August 2012

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Amfortas – Detlef Roth

Titurel – Diógenes Randes
Gurnemanz – Kwangchul Youn
Parsifal – Burkhard Fritz
Klingsor – Thomas Jesatko
Kundry – Susan Maclean
First Knight of the Grail – Arnold Bezuyen
Second Knight of the Grail – Christian Tschelebiew
First Squire – Julia Borchert
Second Squire – Ulrike Helzel
Third Squire – Clemens Bieber
Fourth Squire – Willem van der Heyden
Flowermaidens – Julia Borchert, Martina Rüping, Carola Guber, Christiane Kohl, Jutta Maria Böhnert, Ulrike Helzel
Contralto solo – Simone Schröder

Stefan Herheim (director)

Heike Scheele (set designs)
Gesine Völlm (costumes)
Ulrich Niepel (lighting)
Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach (dramaturgy)
Momme Hinrichs, Torge Møller (video)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Philippe Jordan (conductor)

I had not seen this coming. As a veteran – if hardly by hard- or even medium-core Bayreuth standards – of two previous performances of Stefan Herheim’s production of Parsifal (2008 and 2011), I found myself nevertheless quite taken aback by how much, especially during the first act, I fancied I was seeing for the first time. Some of it I suspect I was, for not only does the Bayreuth Festival pride itself upon its Werkstatt (workshop) concept, in which productions will develop from year to year, Herheim’s questing, dialectical directorial approach especially lends itself to such reinvention – as, of course, does Wagner’s dramaturgy and compositional method, not the least of his legacies for twentieth- and twenty-first-century serialism. Convinced as I was that there had been a shift of emphasis, at least, looking back upon other early reports, I suspect that this was at least as much a matter of my approaching the staging differently, for whatever reasons, partly relative familiarity no doubt, but perhaps not just that. Herheim’s multi-layered, almost geological, method is not dissimilar to Wagner’s own, which helps explain the extraordinary ‘fit’ between the two artists. This production needs to be seen many times, and now, at last, it can be, since this very performance was being filmed for broadcast and DVD release. Yours truly might even be seen upon it, when the mirror is held up to the Festspielhaus audience; let us hope not.

The German historical-political and  Parsifal-reception levels of the production are by now celebrated. (I have written about them at some length in previous reports.) If anything, I felt them underplayed during the first act, though that may, as I said, have been more a matter of my personal reception. At any rate, what took me aback on this occasion was the depth of what I shall call the psychoanalytical level to the staging.  Indeed, such was the overwhelming experience of the latter that I started to feel in some respects a little disappointed, protective of my earlier experiences, almost a loyalist to what I imagined, rightly or wrongly, to have been Herheim I and II, rather as if I were an Old- or even New-Bayreuth loyalist, missing my Wieland Wagner, Hans Knappertsbusch, or earlier. Herheim III began to seem a meta-production, as much a re-imagining of its earlier incarnations as of Parsifal itself. Dreams and childhood come to the fore, also, just as intriguingly, religious experience and its psychopathology. (Remember Nietzsche and Thomas Mann?) The third scene in particular, with its priest, incense – Nietzsche’s accusation of Wagner bowing before the Cross re-examined – and, most shockingly, circumcision of the infant who may or may not ‘be’ a young Parsifal, offers almost as much food for thought as Wagner’s own Feuerbachian inversion of the elements. (That alone ought surely to disqualify the absurd custom, still observed in certain conservative circles, of pious refraining from applause.)

The violence of the deed of circumcision could hardly have been more topical, given the recent legal controversy over infant genital mutilation in Germany; and yet, it also pointed to something older, deep-seated, and of course very much part of the Rezeptionsgeschichte strand: the question of whether anti-Semitism is expressed in Wagner’s drama. Amfortas’s cry of pain – incidentally, or rather far from incidentally, he now seems far more central to the act, indeed to the drama as a whole, arguably more so even than Parsifal – jolted us from our complacent ‘knowledge’ of the work, and also pointed forward to Kundry’s scream of laughter. Christ, whatever Wagner may have hoped, must also have undergone the procedure. Detlef Roth’s commanding assumption of the role of Amfortas, still more impressive than in earlier years, undoubtedly assisted in this transformation of emphasis. What is the relationship between Amfortas and the young Parsifal, whom we see or think we see at various stages? Does the latter imagine the former, indeed the drama as a whole, in at least some sense? That is too easy an answer, and is complicated by the retelling of German history, but it is a questioning strand nevertheless. Notably, Gurnemanz addresses the boy Parsifal at the end of the act. Even the video despatch of young men to war (the Great War) seems as much a product of twisted familial relations – consider the inculcation of patriotism in English as well as German schools – as of great power politics.

Kundry as governess – as well, earlier and later, as Herzeleide – adds a creepy, nursery, Turn of the Screw-like aspect to the story, especially when, therafter, the grown Parsifal possesses her on the bed that is both setting for and generative of so much of the action. It is there, of course, that the child is born, literally centre stage, the delivery itself a powerful moment, as well as intricately linked to the various stages of childhood, adolescence, adulthood, dotage, and death, both personal and political, we witness enacted. The enactment on stage of Amfortas’s wounding during Gurnemanz’s narration at first seems a little too literal, but psychoanalytical implications and consequences, some mentioned above, soon manifest themselves, so that one realises that such development and consideration of such development are actually a good part of the point. The late-nineteenth-century (Mann’s ‘bad nineteenth-century?’) setting suggests, amongst other things, a family saga: Buddenbrooks spiced with Nietzsche.

Much of that, however, was, at least for me, called into question by the second act, in which the political reasserted itself with a vengeance. The delicious representation of the Flowermaidens as orderlies and flappers – is that not just what they are? – retains its dramatic power, as well as firmly putting us in the inter-war period. (I say firmly, but of course, time passes as the act does.) And yet, a reminder that the various levels of interpretation are anything but distinct is offered by a greater keenness of manipulation when it comes to Kundry’s acts: above all, what she tells Parsifal. She is in turn being manipulated by Klingsor, of course, but perhaps so many of us are understandably now influenced by feminist readings, that we feel uncomplicatedly sympathetic. It is salutary to be reminded that this rose of Hell – the rose very much part of the staging’s imagery – has, despite her plight, agency of her own. That is surely more feminist than to consider her purely as a victim. And the similarity of costume between her and Klingsor, both in Weimar cross-dressing travesty, reinforces the need both have for each other, the Hegelian master-slave dialectic reimagined. The final scene remains electric, the unfurling of swastikas and coming of Bayreuth’s and Germany’s darkest years truly shocking. Judging by the disgruntled noises from some members of the audience – it should hardly surprise that ‘conservative’ critics of searching productions would feel discomfited by a reminder of their ideological kinship – it remains an absolute necessity too. An interval walk around the outdoor exhibition of Verstummte Stimmen (the ‘silenced voices’ of Jews ill-treated by the Festival) reinforced the point: rightist ‘Wagnerians’ are not merely deluded; they are and always have been extremely dangerous. (Ironically, the only figure treated unjustly is Wagner himself, in which the questionable claim that anti-Semitism is expressed in the dramas is trotted out uncritically.) I could not help but think of the ongoing controversy concerning Amélie Hohmann’s refusal to release correspondence between Winifred Wagner and Hitler. Whatever one might think of Katharina Wagner as director, at least she seems willing to open up the festival to necessary historical criticism.

Which leads me into the third act, with Herheim’s attack upon – or rather, display, which allows the audience to attack – the disingenuous New Bayreuth plea, signed by Wieland and Wolfgang, and displayed on stage, as Wagner himself is hidden behind Parsifal’s childhood wall, that politics be banished from the Green Hill. (It actually speaks well of Wolfgang, whatever one may think of many of his acts, that he permitted this criticism to be staged; he was always, however, a friend to directors, even if he lacked directorial ability himself.) The post-war period is initially one of devastation, and improves little, if at all, whatever the mendacious ideology of the Wirtschaftswunder. Perhaps the point of ultimate hope comes when a star briefly appears in the sky, wonderfully touching, though what does it signify? The coming of a (false) messiah? A simple, childlike pleasure? Nothing that can be put into words? It certainly rings truer than the gaudy coloured lights that seem to signal Parsifal’s descent into the realm of the (lifestyle?) guru. If anything, politics seem to stand still more starkly at the heart of the final scene. Parsifal is Lohengrin’s father, though the extent to which that is a red herring may be debated. Here, however, the problematical nature of charismatic leadership seems to follow on closely, especially from Hans Neuenfels’s production, which I shall see again soon, as well of course from the precedent of Siegfried. It is noteworthy that Parsifal is not one of the trio we see at the end, presumably hastening us to an uncertain future; instead, we find ourselves in the hands of Gurnemanz, Kundry – no, she does not expire – and a young boy. Or is he Parsifal, and has the whole drama been a dream, or in the case of its German historical setting, the ultimate nightmare? There is certainly no solace to be had from the despicable bickering politicians of the Bundestag, the Federal Republic’s flag draping Titurel’s coffin, yet Parsifal seems to have offered at best a dead-end, maybe even a touch of snake oil. (From Carole Caplin to Blair?) Amfortas, like Siegfried, seems to have gained in dignity through death. Nihilism, as Nietzsche would doubtless have had it, or Wagner’s lifelong anarchism, as I would?

Musical performances are more mixed in quality, though as I have already mentioned, Roth’s Amfortas has continued to grow in strength. Kwangchul Youn, whom I have previously found a little dull, exhibited a far stronger musico-dramatic presence, and an intriguingly ambiguous one. Who is this narrator, and is he to be trusted? Susan Maclean was perhaps a little too wild on the vocal side. It could hardly be said that her Kundry is beautiful of voice, and a little more refulgence would not at times have gone amiss, but there can be no doubting the dramatic commitment of her portrayal. Thomas Jesatko’s Klingsor is by now perhaps leaning a little too much towards camp: his first ‘furchtbarer Not’ sounded a little too caricatured to chill. Again, however, this is very much a stage assumption that one is unlikely to forget. (Perhaps it is just that I have become too accustomed to it.) Burkhard Fritz’s Parsifal marked a great improvement upon last year’s metallic Simon O’Neill. It may not be the most profound account one will hear, but his tone is secure and possessed of considerable mellifluence. One could hear pretty much all of his words too, which was certainly not the case with his Kundry. Smaller parts were cast from strength. Not only Diógenes Randes’s unearthly Titurel but even the knights and squires shone, and that was not just a matter of perceptive direction from Herheim with respect to their presentation as individuals drawn from the mass to be briefly highlighted. Choral singing, under Eberhard’s direction, was as excellent as we have come to expect, but that achievement should never be overlooked.

The only significant drawback related to Philippe Jordan’s conducting. I have heard much worse in Wagner – and alas must do so regularly in London – but this seemed a work-in-progress in a less happy sense than Herheim’s production, particularly when considered in contrast to Daniele Gatti’s work in previous years. Jordan lacked a sense of ritual, crucial to the first and third acts. That is not a matter of speed, but of steadiness, of feeling and communicating the inner pulse. Jordan seemed less an equal partner to Herheim, as Gatti certainly had done, than provider of a sound-track (ironically, given his father’s appearance on Hans-Jürgen Syberberg’s film.) There was some interesting highlighting, alla Barenboim, of woodwind lines, though brass, especially during the opening Prelude, could occasionally be a little shaky. In general, though, the orchestral playing itself was superb. The interpretation seemed, however, as though it needed time and experience to settle. For instance, intriguingly Karajan-like steely moments seemed to bear little relation to the rest of what we heard. I hope, again, that I am not becoming too wedded to a particular interpretation, in this case Gatti’s; I do not think I am, given the variety of accounts, both recorded and in the theatre, I have admired.  But it is necessary to remain on one’s guard.

This, I have little doubt, will prove one of the most necessary opera DVDs since the release on the new medium of the Boulez-Chéreau Ring. If only the casting had been a little more consistent, and if only Gatti had still been conducting. And yet, perhaps one message of this increasingly unsettling staging is that the search for perfection is not only chimerical but catastrophic.

First interval, third call, with apologies for the unsteadiness of hand...