Lohengrin, Vienna State Opera, 1 May 2025

Henry the Fowler – Günter Groissböck
Lohengrin – Klaus Florian Vogt
Elsa – Camilla Nylund
Telramund – Jordan Shanahan
Ortrud – Anja Kampe
Herald – Attila Mokus
Brabantian nobles – Wolfram Igor Derntl, Thomas Köber, Panajotis Pratsos, Jens Musger
Pages – Daliborka Lühn-Skibinski, María Isabel Segarra, Charlotte Jefferies, Viktoria McConnell

Directors – Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabito
Designs – Anna Viebrock
Lighting – Sebastian Alphons
Assistant set designer – Torsten Köpf

Vienna State Opera Chorus

Extra Chorus, and Choir Academy (chorus director: Thomas Lang)

Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Stage Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images: © Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Gottfried (member of the Wiener Opernschule), Elsa (Camilla Nylund)

Lohengrin has sometimes been described as Wagner’s ‘Italian opera’. I do not hear it that way myself, thinking rather that if such a thing were to exist, it would be with a pronounced Teutonic accent in the guise of Das Liebesverbot. For me, if one is to classify in this way at all, Lohengrin marks Wagner’s fond farewell to German Romantic opera. However, if I remember correctly, Christian Thielemann said during his time in Dresden he subscribes to the ‘Italian’ conception of the work, and for the first time, I found myself hearing it as a valid, indeed convincing reading (it not the only one). The lyricism, orchestral and vocal, of Thielemann’s reading – and there was no doubt here that this was Thielemann’s Wagner – swept along, even enveloped spectators and artists alike, not at the expense of harmony, timbre, and other musical parameters, but as arguably the guiding force in their interaction. Transitions were very much of a piece with the conception outlined in a fascinating programme note in which the conductor characterised Lohengrin as ‘Wagner’s first truly though-composed work’. 

It can be otherwise understood – arguably was by Wagner himself, in a letter to Schumann – but the point is that the conception compelled and convinced. The Vienna orchestra, which clearly adores playing with him, was not only a willing participant, but also, it would seem, an inspiration in this particular conception. I had the sense that, like a Wagner conductor of old – naming no names for now – this was his ‘Vienna’ Lohengrin, whilst his Berlin or Dresden version of the work might be quite different. Indeed, it marked quite a contrast with what I heard from him at Bayreuth in 2019, almost entirely for the better. Viennese strings glowed, woodwind spoke with a magic born in Mendelssohnian forest, yet turned somewhat phantasmagorical, and brass thrilled and threatened by turn or in tandem. This was no Bruckner orchestra-as-organ, insofar as the cap fits in that case, but there was as ever no denying the conductor’s virtuosity in leading it as an organist of sorts, less in bending it to his will as allowing wills to merge in coherent collaboration. And of course, the orchestra sounded as it never could emerging from a covered pit. 

Interestingly, it was not only Thielemann and the orchestra whom we had also seen and heard in the previous week’s Parsifal; it was the five most prominent soloists and the outstanding chorus too. Only a sharply characterised Herald from Attila Mokus had not been heard in connection with the swan-knight‘s Monsalvat father. This was quite a Wagner ensemble, by any standards, Bayreuth’s included, headed again by Klaus Florian Vogt. If Lohengrin were the role with which Vogt made his name, I felt if anything his Parsifal had proved a little stronger. This was still a tireless performance, though, with precisely the timbral quality that continues to divide opinion. Vogt can certainly act too, even when lumbered as here with a deeply unflattering wig. 

Henry the Fowler (Günther Groissböck),
Lohengrin (Klaus Florian Vogt)

Camilla Nylund’s Elsa was anything but a portrayal-by-numbers; she entered wholeheartedly into the stage concept at work here, on which more soon, initially rousing our suspicions and engaging our compassion in apparent contrition. Anja Kampe’s Ortrud was similarly complex and uniquely fiery, a portrayal very much her own, yet marking her a worthy successor indeed to the likes of Waltraud Meier (my first, at Covent Garden in 2003) and Petra Lang. Jordan Shanahan and Günther Groissböck brought both ambiguity and clarity to their roles as Telramund and King Henry. No praise could be too high for the contribution of an augmented Vienna State Opera Chorus, trained by Thomas Lang: harmonically grounded, agile on stage, and as gleaming of tone where required as the orchestra. Partners in crime, as it were—and with Thielemann too, his shading of the chorus at the close of the first act astonishingly variegated and quite unlike any performance I have heard before. 

For the somewhat odd conception, or part-conception of this new production from Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito was of a crime scene. Or, as designer Anna Viebrock described it in the programme: ‘We’re not telling a story of salvation, we’re making a thriller. This criminalistic perspective alone takes us way beyond the horizons of expectation.’ Since we pretty much witnessed Elsa disposing of her brother Gottfried during the Prelude to the first act, there was nothing much of a crime to be solved, and indeed everything turned out just as we might have expected. Leaving the ‘criminalistic perspective’ on one side and turning to the broader dramaturgical standpoint, there was a considerable amount to be gleaned from the ‘basic premise … [of] “Elsa did it”’. 

Ortrud (Anja Kampe)

Immediately distrusting her and Lohengrin, engaging more sympathetically perhaps with Telramund and Ortrud was an enriching experience not only dramatically but musically too, the flick of that switch having one hear not only them but at times the orchestra differently too. The broader portrayal of a time of political instability in which religion – less so, theology – appeared to take on a sinister German-Protestant hue and, needless to say, play a deeply sinister role was full of historical resonance, without being pinned down to specific reference. If the production concept seemed strongest in the first act, somewhat running out of steam by the third, the level of musical excellence was such that it was difficult to mind too much. Ultimately, here was a Lohengrin that demanded to be heard and was worth seeing too.

Arabella, Vienna State Opera, 22 April 2025

Images © Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Zdenka (Sabine Deveilhe), Arabella (Camilla Nylund)

Count Waldner – Wolfgang Bankl
Adelaide – Margaret Plummer
Arabella – Camilla Nylund
Zdenka – Sabine Deveilhe
Mandryka – Michael Volle
Matteo – Michael Laurenz
Count Elemer – Norbert Ernst
Count Dominik – Martin Hässler
Count Lamoral – Clemens Unterreiner
Fiakermilli – Ilia Staple
Fortune Teller – Juliette Mars
Welko – Michael Wilder
Djura – Jin Hun Lee
Jankel – Thomas Köber
Room Waiter – Wolfram Igor Derntl
Gamblers – Oleg Savran, Aljandro Pizarro-Enríquez, Jens Musger

Director – Sven-Eric Bechtolf
Set designs – Rolf Glittenberg
Costumes – Marianne Glittenberg

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Martin Schebesta)

Vienna State Opera Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Matteo (Michael Laurenz)

Arabella is a difficult work to bring off. It requires performances and a staging of such quality that it can only really work at a certain level of house or festival. With Mozart, there is of course similarly nowhere to hide, yet his operas can work very well – often better – with young performers in smaller houses. This, if not more difficult, is at least differently difficult, perhaps akin to Mozart heard not only via Wagner but also via the golden age of Viennese operetta, less musically than verbally and dramatically—and with the particular sophistication not only of Strauss but of Hofmannsthal to reckon with too. All of that is whisked together in a confection that must retain its lightness of touch, not at the expense of depth yet so as to reveal it, and with the unavoidable knowledge and difficulty that Hofmannsthal’s work was incomplete, incompletable here, if only because Strauss, that most demanding of dramaturges (as director Sven-Erik Bechtolf observes in an interesting programme interview), would not, from respect for his deceased colleague, permit otherwise. It is not, thank God, a ‘vehicle’ in the sense of a work of few intrinsic merits, which gets trotted out to appease the vanity of a certain star singer and her – almost always her – fans. It can sometimes feel, even be treated, as though it were, though—not least since it seems to be a work in which there is little for the director to ‘say’ other than to let it play. Letting that happen is no easy thing, of course, but it rarely seems to call for, or indeed benefit from, overt interventionism or deconstruction. Tobias Kratzer, in what is probably the most illuminating staging I have seen, for Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, did permit himself a telling, timely twist, but his is probably the exception that proves the rule. 

Bechtolf has only one major intervention, one so commonplace now that it barely registers as such, save when one reflects why it might have been done and what it might have accomplished. That is, he and his designers Rolf and Marianne Glittenberg update the action to the time of composition, around 1930. I may have been sceptical about this beforehand—and to an extent still am: not because I object in principle, but rather because the work’s particular literary and dramaturgical fragility seems to militate against it, not entirely unlike updating, say, Nestroy, a Hofmannsthal play, or, for that matter, Sheridan. There are losses, I think, for such a comedy of manners. Seeing it as a companion piece, say, to Dostoevsky’s – or even Prokofiev’s – Gambler would doubtless offer illumination. What one gains, though, is first not being lost in nostalgia for a ‘beautiful nineteenth century’. Whatever nostalgia one might feel – do we not all? – for the time of updating, finely accomplished, it is already necessarily tempered by consciousness of that updating, of complication and even disjuncture. We all enjoy looking at ‘Weimar culture’, broadly understood, anyway, do we not? That permits some light-worn allusions to a gender fluidity crucial to the opera, as well as to opera more generally, without making them the point. Goodness knows, we need humanity in that respect right now, and perhaps they tell more clearly or at least differently than was ‘originally’ the intention, whether of Strauss, Hofmannsthal, or Bechtolf. 

Fiakermilli (Ilia Staple) and friends

Second and perhaps more important, one senses, inevitably with a hindsight that can seem written in, a foreboding, a fear of the future that distinguishes it from, say, operetta or indeed Der Rosenkavalier. Whether one entirely buys the argument or not does not really matter. It forms the basis for a largely convincing home, doing what Bechtolf sets out to do: perform rather than deconstruct the work, drawing out characters in whom he evidently believes. If it occasionally feels a touch tired around the edges, a little too reliant on the performers to bring it to life, then that is only to be expected of a production first seen in 2006. It is indeed the lot of any repertory system, one that has permitted this to be the fifty-sixth performance of this staging to date, as indeed has the staging itself. (Imagine that for Arabella in an Anglophone house!) Not every night can or should be a premiere. That provokes its own confrontation with memory, nostalgia even. The world was far from perfect then, yet compared to 2025, one can be forgiven a slightly fond backward glance, all the more to remind one of the present. Q.E.D., one might say. 

It never gets in the way of ‘the music’ either; indeed, it seems to permit it largely to speak as anyone with genuine interest in the work would probably wish. Christian Thielemann has lived with it some time, as of course has the Vienna State Opera. I was about to say that it showed, and it arguably did, but not in the sense of Mahlerian Schlamperei, of routine, but rather in a similar respect that freed rather than constricted. Rarely if ever with Thielemann does one sense resting on laurels. Occasionally, if more in Wagner than in Strauss, I have wondered whether he might actually have benefited from making less of an attempt to do things differently, though the urge to rethink and recreate can only be lauded. Here, however, there was approach neither to Scylla nor to Charybdis. The legendary golden warmth of the Vienna strings was to be enjoyed, not narcissistically but for its musicodramatic import, yet there was also a heightened sense, perhaps especially from the woodwind, that this was a work ‘of its time’, partaking in its own way of a neoclassicism that after all Strauss had presaged in Ariadne auf Naxos, arguably in Rosenkavlier too. Line was beyond reproach, again not in a marmoreal sense, but as part of a living performance that engaged with the past without being consumed by it. Meistersinger-ish counterpoint in lighter, Viennese hue created and played with memory before our ears. 

Arabella, Mandryka (Michael Volle)

Much the same should be said of a fine cast. Camilla Nylund offered every virtue, musically and dramatically, in a performance of the title role rooted in a a complexity not always present in even the most finely sung performances. That is not to say it was a reassessment as such, but rather one, as with the performances around her, that acknowledged the instability of Arabella’s upbringing, rendering the ultimate, rich beauty of her response all the more moving. If Michael Volle has given a mediocre performance, I have not been present; it was certainly not to be witnessed on this occasion. Mandryka’s pride, even vanity, as well as his more admirable qualities were the hallmark of what was again an uncommonly rounded portrayal. Sabine Deveilhe presented a Zdenka both likeable and troubled, completed by and also completing (at least for now) Michael Laurenz’s excellent Matteo, sung in a ringing tenor unfazed by Strauss’s demands. Wolfgang Bankl and Margaret Plummer conveyed, in tandem with the production, a couple who want the best, not only for themselves, yet seem incapable of acting to achieve that—at least without external guidance. Hofmannsthal’s text was used to the full here, as it was by all. Ilia Staple’s Fiakermilli was faultless vocally and as cabaret. The smaller parts were all vividly characterised, Juliette Mars’s Fortune Teller included. She did, after all, foretell what came to pass, a lightly fatalistic point made by her reappearance at the close, descending the staircase which Arabella and Mandryka had just ascended. Once more, Q.E.D.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Tristan und Isolde, 3 August 2024

Festspielhaus

Tristan – Andreas Schager
King Marke – Günther Groissböck
Isolde – Camilla Nylund
Kurwenal – Olafur Sigurdarson
Melot – Birger Radde
Brangäne – Christa Mayer
Shepherd – Daniel Jenz
Steersman – Lawson Anderson
Young Sailor – Matthew Newlin

Director – Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson
Set design – Vytautas Narbutas
Costumes – Sibylle Wallum
Dramaturgy – Andri Hardmeier
Lighting – Sascha Zauner

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

Images: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Almost uniquely amongst operas (dramas, if we prefer), Tristan und Isolde resists conceptualisation, even much in the way of framing. Perhaps not uniquely, but to a greater extent than any other. Any attempt to make Tristan ‘about’ anything other than what it is intrinsically about seems doomed to fail. I continue to live in dread of the director who decides it is somehow ‘about’ immigration, Covid, or anything pertaining to the phenomenal world. So many, distrusting or simply uninterested in music, seem incapable of sensing what it is concerned with. 

Put frankly, if you are uninterested in music, you should leave Tristan well alone. Its action is interior; the exterior is largely back story. For Wagner at his most Schopenhauerian, in aesthetics as much as ontology, the striving of the Will is the action, to which music – not opposed to, but as drama – as its representation comes closer than any other art form or means of expression. It is the music drama in which least would be lost if words and staging were discarded. In reality, of whatever kind, that how we listen to it, even when convinced otherwise. At a certain point in the Act II love-duet, it becomes difficult, even impossible, to have the words, fascinating, complex, and telling though they may be, register in one’s consciousness. Whether we call this the world of the noumenon, of night, of Dionysus, or of Tristan, we as well as the lovers are – or should be – there and not in its phenomenal, diurnal, Apollonian, operatic equivalent. 

All very well, you may say, but we do have words, we do have singers, we do have staging. Indeed we do, and they – singers and staging, in a sense words too – must work within these realities, these artistic truths. That need not be a problem; art thrives upon constraint of one sort or another. (Ask Wagner’s antipode, Stravinsky.) Too often, though, directors do not, perhaps cannot, since they seem to have little sense of what this work is actually concerned with, still less that it seemingly cannot be wrenched to be concerned with anything else. A signal feature of Bayreuth’s new Tristan, which I saw in its second performance, is that Thorliefur Örn Arnarsson seems to grasp this, in theory and in practice, and moreover to grasp that this does not negate but rather invites his work as director. There are cases, I think, in which he might go further in this direction in paring down the extraneous – is there a better model than Wieland Wagner here? – but this makes for a very good start and, following so many misfires, whether in Bayreuth or elsewhere, comes as a great relief. 

Nietzsche wrote a good deal of arrant nonsense about Wagner, often deliberately so, yet in calling Tristan the opus metaphysicum, he was on the mark. Only a couple of stagings I have seen, by Dmitri Tcherniakov and Peter Konwitschny, have offered serious challenge to that and Konwitschny in considerably more circumscribed fashion; they are destined, I suspect, to remain exceptions. Anarsson’s production treads on safer ground, neither without reason nor without advantage Moreover, there is to Anarsson’s work and to that of his collaborators, not least the outstanding Semyon Bychkov as conductor, a sense not only of the noumenal but of the aesthetic. 

Ship enthusiasts will find themselves well catered for. Not only the first act but the entire drama has a ship as its setting. Vytautas Narbutas’s set designs evoke this powerfully, suggestively, and without clutter—save, in the second act, where the clutter is the point. Ropes mostly do the trick in the first act, whose abiding visual motif is Isolde’s billowing wedding dress, also suggestive of sails. The words displayed – and just as much, concealed – on it from Wagner’s poem tell their own story, especially as she attempts, with varying success and perhaps intent, to free herself from it. Anarsson sees no reason actually to visualise the love potion, knowing that it is simply a symbol, not a cause. I have no especially strong feelings either way on that in principle; it is merely an external manifestation. It felt slightly odd, though – I realise this may seem somewhat at odds with what I say above – as did the onset of what seemed like a realistic fight between Tristan and Melot at the end of the second act, Melot wielding a sword, only for its outcome to happen seemingly spontaneously. Those objects and acts of the day perhaps benefit, if less strongly than their counterparts in the Ring, from some sort of visualisation.

The second act moves to the inside of the ship, seemingly its core: the core, one might say, of what action there may be. Its décor is fascinating, suggesting a lumber room strewn with objects that may in some sense have led us – which is to say Wagner, the work, those performing and otherwise experiencing it – there. Caspar David Friedrich’s presence is doubtless inevitable, and will at least evoke recognition, though part of me feels it is time to give his more celebrated images, like those of Monet and Klimt a while ago, a period of rest. The broader, unaggressive deconstruction of ‘civilisation’, western and perhaps eastern too, forms a captivating backdrop for the stage and ultimately the ‘real’ action. Cleared of that baggage, moved to a different part of (presumably) the same ship, the third act unfolds in a ‘later’, barer environment. It already feels too late, which in the most obvious if not necessarily the deepest sense, it is. Lighting, or rather its lack, throughout seems intended both to accentuate but also to develop the contrast between night and day. It reminds us that these are not operatic characters; the point is not necessarily to observe them minutely. There are greater forces – ultimately, one great, overwhelming force – at work.

Following the crude lack of direction, balance, and tuning brought to us two nights earlier by Oksana Lyniv in the covered pit, Bychkov’s work sounded like aural manna from heaven. He knew how to work with the theatre and its particular characteristics; beyond that, he knew the workings and expressive possibilities of Wagner’s score and communicated them in a reading that often took its time, especially in the second act, yet never dragged. The opening of the first-act Prelude – and its echo, towards the end of the act – sounded more beautifully hushed than I can recall, yet in no sense narcissistically; this was expectant, apparently imbued with knowledge, albeit knowledge that could not yet be imparted, of where the music would head, of what dramatically, in the fullest sense of the world, was at stake in melody, dissonance, and their consequences, always, if sometimes only just, within a tonal framework. That was the story, in which intensification of string vibrato could play as important a role as overwhelming orchestral climax. Bychkov did not hold back; his is not Wagner that defers to the voice, nor to anything other than its own musicodramatic requirements. He nonetheless helped liberate the voice’s expressive potential, even when vocal realities fell short of the ideal.

I did not feel that so strongly as a couple of people I have spoken to since, and wonder how much of that might be ascribed to seating in the theatre (as well, perhaps, as to aesthetic priorities). Seated at the back of the stalls, I may have benefited from the healing balm of the Bayreuth acoustic. That said, Andreas Schager’s Tristan, for stretches of the performance possessed of many of this Heldentenor’s familiar qualities, also experienced difficulties. Balance in the second-act duet was sometimes awry with Camilla Nylund’s Isolde, who at times also seemed stretched, if more in control of her part. A degree of abandon is, of course, no bad thing; Schager’s performance, however, came into and went out of focus a little too often and became strangely disjunct in the third act, as if the effort to sing more softly, to offer a more variegated reading, made it more difficult to maintain his line at all. 

Christa Mayer’s Brangäne was, by contrast, everything it should have been: warm, sustained, intelligent, and as well as integrated as any orchestral line. Günther Groissböck’s snarling Marke seemed to be making a play to come across as more cruel, even vindictive, than one might expect; this emerged as something of a work-in-progress. If a little bluff, even gruff at times, Olafur Sigurdarson had what it took for Kurwenal. The smaller roles were all well taken, Birger Radde’s ambivalent Melot, Daniel Lenz’s sweetly sung Shepherd, and Matthew Newlin’s clear-toned Sailor all standing out, whilst taking their place in the greater ensemble. The latter was ultimately what mattered and which, shortcomings aside, made this a satisfying and often moving whole.

Die Frau ohne Schatten, Semperoper Dresden, 27 March 2024

Evelyn Herlitzius (Die Amme), Miina-Liisa Värelä (Baraks Frau), Komparserie;
all images © Semperoper Dresden/Ludwig Olah

Emperor – Eric Cutler
Empress – Camilla Nylund
Nurse – Evelyn Herlitzius
Spirit-Messenger – Andreas Bauer Kanabas
Barak – Oleksandr Pushniak
Dyer’s Wife – Mina-Liisa Värelä
Apparition of Youth – Martin Mitterrutzner
Voice of the Falcon – Lea-ann Dunbar
Voice from Above – Christa Mayer
Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Nikola Hillebrand
The One-Eyed – Rafael Fingerlos
The One-Armed – Tilmann Rönnebeck
The Hunchback – Tansel Akzeyebek
Children’s Voices – Nikola Hillebrand, Sofia Savenko, Lea-ann Dunbar, Stephanie Atanasov, Dominika Škrabalová, Michal Doron
Servants – Bryndis Gudjonsdottir, Sofia Savenko, Dominika Škrabalová

Director – David Bösch
Set designs – Patrick Bannwart
Costumes – Moana Stemberger
Lighting – Fabio Antoci
Video – Falko Herold, Patrick Bannwart
Dramaturgy – Johann Casimir Eule

Children’s Chorus (director: Claudia Sebastian-Bertsch) of the Semperoper Dresden
Chorus (director: André Kellinghaus) of the Semperoper Dresden

Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Christian Thielemann (conductor)  

Dresden opened its week-and-a-half Richard Strauss-Tage with David Bösch’s new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, premiered a few days previously, then as now under Christian Thielemann’s baton and with an excellent cast. By the very nature of the work, it tends to attract, if not quite only then preponderantly, fine performances; its forces imply a season highlight or festival outing. That said, it has attracted a variety of directorial approaches, some more convincing than others. At the least convincing extreme stands Christof Loy’s arrogant, disdainful, absurdly reductive effort for Salzburg, also conducted (outstandingly) by Thielemann. I am not sure I have seen a production of anything that engaged less with the work in question—although, to give Loy his due, he imperiously announced that he would not, since he did not care for it. Otherwise, some will heighten the work’s ritualistic tendencies, perhaps at expense of its complex symbolism. Some will adopt a Freudian approach. Some – many would say this was true of the work – will prove more perplexing than anything else. Bösch’s has something of these tendencies, whilst for the most part telling the story as clearly as any I can recall.

Oleksandr Pushniak (Barak)

 

That is far from a bad thing, especially in a work of this complexity, though it immediately raises the question: ‘whose story? Hofmannsthal’s or Strauss’s?’ What, if I am understanding correctly, Bösch does suggest is a contest between two worlds, not so much those of the born and unborn, as between heaven and earth, fantasy and reality, even sleep and waking. Set designs, costumes, and lighting create and contribute to this: a silken world of sheets and dreams leading, via a grim, even grimy portal, to the workshop-cum-living quarters of a modern-day dyer – washing machine and all – and his wife. And so, when both couples are transformed by their trials, so as to find a world of greater happiness in the third act, it is not only one of procreation, but of broader fulfilment, acceptance, and happiness. When all threatens to collapse into bathos with the Emperor and Empress welcoming children who seem to have wandered in from a school play, it is (at least for me) rescued by this broadening of focus. Hofmannsthal’s central ‘message’ – it is surely not the only one, but I do not think we can simply ignore it either – is of course a troubling one to many of us. We can understand it more broadly in terms of valuing life at a time when so many were being lost in the Great War, but we cannot convert it entirely into that. Like it or not, pronatalism is there; so is decided inequality between the sexes; so is heteronormativity; so are many things in which many of us no longer believe. If the two couples meeting again ‘on earth’ as friends for a few drinks might seem banal, then something needs to be done here, and there are surely worse alternatives. 

There are powerful moments: as when – perhaps unconsciously echoing Wagner’s Die Feen, for whose belated first performance the young Strauss acted as assistant conductor – the Dyer’s Wife picks up a baby (doll) and casts it into grisly oblivion. At the beginning of the third act, a television-watching Barak living a separate, miserable existence from his wife in separate, separated rooms, told a powerful tale simply and with great human sympathy. Although I have not seen the film, I could not help but wonder whether flooding the stage with pink – in general, coloured lighting was a great strength – was a reference to the fantasy worlds of Barbie and Ken. A selection of beautiful, youthly, apparently identical apparitions from which the Dyer’s Wife could choose was a nice touch: consonant also with a clue in the libretto. I was not wild about the appearance onstage of a giant falcon, though the kitsch seemed knowing. Likewise some of the video imagery seemed to me superfluous, though I am doubtless speaking as much of my own taste as anything more definite. It is difficult to imagine anyone finding nothing here to spark egngagement, just as doubtless many of us will have our cavils. (The idiot booing at the close was presumably an exception.) Literally breaking up the scene, the turn to ‘reality’ itself a bourgeois fantasy, is a crucial moment, returning us to the ambiguous world of the Nurse, who tellingly also seems broken by the experience. What might have been unduly reductive proves ultimately to question itself – and us – too.

Camilla Nylund (Die Kaiserin) 

What surprised me was how different Thielemann’s reading seemed from that Salzburg performance. Perhaps on account of the oft-noted ‘narrowness’ of his repertoire, which can be exaggerated, he is rarely a conductor to step twice in the same interpretative river. Where once he had gloried in the full throttle of Strauss’s huge orchestra, now he was far more sparing in unleashing it. This was a highly lyrical account, in the outstanding, never-erring Staatskapelle Dresden at least as much as onstage. Much might have been chamber music, though there was also a greater affinity, not unlike Kirill Petrenko in Munich, albeit softer, more soloistic, with the harmonic world of Schoenberg’s Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16. It is here, surely, that Strauss comes closest to Schoenberg, as opposed to vice versa (ironically, given what by now he was saying about the composer to whom, not so long before, he had proved commendably generous). If I missed something of the extraordinary, grinding dissonance Thielemann conjured in his Vienna Philharmonic recording of the Fantasy on themes from the opera, I always do. Here, like the Dyer and his Wife, he had different fish to fry. 

There was an almost Karajan-like sense of line to the performance as a whole, characterised by enormous variation in tempo as well as dynamics. I do not think I have ever heard the close of the first act so beautifully, wondrously drawn out: luminous and, in context, both otherworldly and worldly. It seemed to capture musically the clash between Hofmannsthal’s message, via the Nightwatchmen’s words, and Strauss’s scepticism, adopting that ‘beautiful’ yet, through his Nietzschean materialism, strangely empty ‘holiness’ Strauss tends towards when setting anything approaching the Christian (or even transcendental). One might think of Salome’s John the Baptist here, or a song such as Allerseelen. Yet I found it deeply moving, albeit intriguingly as if it were delivered in a dream-like moment of temporal suspension and/or manipulation. The closed of the second act, often a thrilling, even terrifying climax, here seemed to function more as a summary of what had already happened, the Nurse’s ‘Übermächte sind im Spiel’ delivered in kind. Musical dramaturgy, then, was often unusual, yet never arbitrary. Thielemann had clearly considered his approach carefully.

 

 

Miina-Liisa Värelä (Baraks Frau), Evelyn Herlitzius (Die Amme), Camilla Nylund (Die Kaiserin), Tilmann Rönnebeck (Der Einarmige), Oleksandr Pushniak (Barak), Tansel Akzeybek (Der Bucklige), Rafael Fingerlos (Der Einäugige), Kinderchor der Semperoper Dresden

Vocal performances were, of course, part and parcel of all the above, and suggested similarly careful casting in a combination of celebrated exponents and newer comers. I cannot recall hearing an Emperor less strained than Eric Cutler. This doubtless had something to do with Thielemann’s new penchant for orchestral softness and lyricism, but also surely reflected Cutler’s own, more bel canto approach. It put me a little in mind of Boulez casting Chris Merritt in Moses und Aron. His relationship with the Empress, Camilla Nylund, was unquestionably a real one: no mere representation of something symbolic. Nylund rarely if ever disappoints; nor did she here, in a wonderfully human portrayal, that held in reserve great vocal power when called upon, yet impressed equally in more sensitive mode. One might say much the same of Oleksandr Pushniak as Barak and Mina-Liisa Värelä as the Dyer’s Wife, their acting equally impressive—and moving. As for Evelyn Herlitzius, her voice instantly recognisable, her total dramatic commitment hardly less so, I doubt there are many artists who have sung both this and the Dyer’s Wife. This, though, was unquestionably a world and a character she could completely inhabit. Andreas Bauer Kanabas made a strong impression as the Spirit-Messenger. Choral and ensemble parts were all very well taken. There was no weak link, but rather a multitude of musical, dramatic, and musicodramatic strands one could follow: not necessarily so as to answer any questions, but rather to pose a few more. In this work, there are too many conflicts for resolution ever to be an option.

Evelyn Herlitzius (Die Amme)

Der Rosenkavalier, Semperoper Dresden, 3 April 2023

Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg – Camilla Nylund
Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Peter Rose
Octavian – Sophie Koch
Herr von Faninal – Markus Eiche
Sophie – Nikola Hillebrand
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Daniela Köhler
Valzacchi – Aaron Pegram
Annina – Christa Mayer
Police Officer – Tilmann Rönnebeck
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Florian Hoffmann
Faninal’s Major-domo – Jürgen Müller
House Servant – Holger Steinert
A Notary – Matthias Henneberg
A Landlord – Kevin Conners
A Singer – Pavol Breslik
A Milliner – Katerina von Benningsen
A Vendor of Pets – Andreas Sauerzapf
Leopold – Yevgen Bondarenko
Lackeys – Jun Seok Bang, Norbert Klasse, Ingolf Stollberg-da Silva, Matthias Beutlich
Waiters – Markus Hansel, Max Hebeis, Andreas Heinze, Thomas Müller
Three noble orphans – Ofeliya Pogosyan, Mariya Taniguchi, Justyna Olów
Lerchenauschen – Alexander Födisch, Wooram Lim, Thomas Müller, Mirko Tuma, Werner Harke, Holger Steinert
Hairdresser – Mario Kretschmer
Mohammed – Ricardo Garcia Heine

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)
Christoph Schubiger (designs)
Jessica Karge (costumes)
Torsten Schäfer, Jan Seeger (lighting)
Hella Bartnig (dramaturgy)  

Children’s Choir of the Semperoper Dresden

Dresden State Opera Chorus (chorus director: André Kellinghaus)

Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Cornelius Meister (conductor)

Images: © Semperoper Dresden/Klaus Gigga

One more step back towards operatic ‘normality’, at least in Germany for me: a performance of Der Rosenkavalier with its large cast, no sign of (anti-)social distancing, and as yet no sign of a Covid-themed staging. (We know they are coming: the masks, the ventilators, the Tristan love-duet via Microsoft Teams, the Downing Street ‘Abba parties’; let us enjoy their absence while we can.) My reunion with characters one fancies one knows so well they might be personal acquaintances took place in Dresden, at the Semperoper, in a production by Uwe Eric Laufenberg I saw previously in 2014. It does not seem so long, as the Marschallin would understand all too well. 

First seen in 2000, it is, like most of us after the last few years, somewhat looking its age. In 2014, I thought it had belied its years. Whether that says more about me or the production, I do not know: perhaps a bit of both. Updating a century-and-a-half or so does no harm, though it perhaps makes no particular point either other than visualising the distances and anachronisms in which Strauss and Hofmmansthal deal. There are puzzling details, for instance: why does Octavian wear a black tie with evening tails? And there are, I think, a few changes, with some overlap. The peculiar treatment of Mohammed is no more, though he remains unusually evident, only not to appear at all at the close, Ochs’s ‘children’ taking his place. None of that is of particular importance, though, and issues not only of the male gaze – complicated, of course, in a world of cross-dressing – but also of publicity remain strong. The Marschallin’s relation to the latter world is, appropriately, more old-fashioned, her levée remaining much as it ‘should’, whereas chez Faninal, with its touch of Hollywood new money, the Presentation of the Rose is a choreographed photoshoot. Paparazzi or their equivalent even scale the building to gain an ‘exclusive’ picture of Octavian and Sophie ‘in private’. The Italians straddle both worlds. 

A notable change this time was the conductor. Christian Thielemann was due to have conducted the performance once more, but withdrew, replaced with Cornelius Meister. If the performance were less razor-sharp than last time, I suspect that was more down to rehearsal time and the vagaries of standing in than anything else. The first act seemed at times to drag, but the second two were well proportioned and full of incident. Moreover, the first-act Prelude can rarely, if ever, have made its intentions, here frankly post-Tannhäuser, more immediately apparent. If you did not feel the earth move, you must not have been listening. Indeed, Meister’s somewhat Wagnerian way with much of the score, gently yet tellingly contradicting lazy assumptions of a volte face after Elektra, brought ready human warmth and motivic integrity in equal measure. The Staatskapelle Dresden, effortlessly at home in this music since its premiere, brought a multitude of colours born of, yet never bogged down in, tradition.

 

Camilla Nylund’s warmth as the Marschallin, especially in the first act, sounded similarly inspired, or at least in sympathy. She became steelier in the third act, often thrillingly so, in triumphant, only part-tragic, reassertion of her authority. She, after all, may and probably should be understood to direct her own opera—and certainly did so here. Sophie Koch, also Octavian in 2014, seemed a little more out of sorts. In many ways, it was a very good performance, yet it was one that left one thinking this may be a role she, like Octavian with his recent past, should now leave behind, her voice having changed considerably in the meantime. Nikola Hillebrand made for a highly impressive Sophie: not only less unsympathetic than often, but more multi-dimensional, on the cusp in so many ways. Peter Rose, another 2014 veteran, gave another highly accomplished performance as Ochs. He knows the role inside out and can play with it, the language in particular assimilated as if he were speaking it spontaneously, yet he takes nothing for granted. His boredom with the Italian singer, here in an utterly outstanding cameo by none other than Pavol Breslik, was as much a joy to watch as last time. Casting was throughout from depth, everyone contributing something. Christa Mayer’s Annina was a class act indeed, having one wish for more. Markus Eiche’s Faninal was similarly, if differently, well observed. Yes, something approaching normality was back, though not without regard to the special quality of the operatic moment.

Bayreuth Festival (3) - Lohengrin, 11 August 2019

Festspielhaus

Henry the Fowler – Georg Zeppenfeld

Lohengrin – Piotr Beczala

Elsa – Camilla Nylund

Friedrich von Telramund – Tomasz Konieczny

Ortrud – Elena Pankratova

King’s Herald – Egils Silins

Brabantian Nobles – Michael Gniffke, Tansel Akzeyebek, Marek Reichert, Timo Riihonen

Yuval Sharon (director)

Neo Rauch, Rosa Loy (designs)

Reinhard Traub (lighting)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

The origins of this production of Lohengrin, first seen at last year’s Bayreuth Festival, are interesting and unusual. Alvis Hermanis, an avowed ‘conservative, and proud of it’ – for which, as usual nowadays, we should read something considerably more extreme – had been due to direct the new production. Hermanis withdrew in 2016, to little sadness from the rest of the world, yet nevertheless bequeathing the Festival a serious headache. By that time, work on the designs by the New Leipzig School artists, Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy, was already far advanced. Yuval Sharon, as incoming director, was presented with a greater challenge than simply directing a new production of Lohengrin (and, incidentally or otherwise, being the first American director to work at Bayreuth). He had to formulate and put into practice his own production, using designs intended for another production.

Watching the dress rehearsal last year – I did not see a public performance, and thus did not write about it – I saw a productive tension, an immanent critique, which fascinated me: broadly, and thus misleadingly, politics pitted against fairy-tale, not unlike the work itself. It was doubtless in some respects still a work-in-progress: every production, every performance is. It made me think, though, and I was greatly looking forward to seeing it again this year, to seeing how it had progressed, hoping that the cracks, the fissures, the contradictions would have provocatively deepened. Alas, that did not seem to have been the case; if anything, the production seemed to have reconciled itself to the designs. Perhaps it is too much to ask of a staging that the two can continue to struggle like that, especially when performers have their own imperatives. I genuinely do not know and it may have been entirely my own fault, but I must confess that, to my great sadness, I missed a good deal of what I saw and gleaned last year.

At first, this was not apparent. Indeed, the first act engenders considerable expectancy (at least on my part!) It comes across, or at least did to me, in painterly fashion: a Romantic fairy-tale world, slightly frozen – so blue, so very blue! – from which things can and must progress. It is, then, waiting for Lohengrin; as are we all. When he comes, he ignites the world. He brings electricity, literally as well as figuratively. Is this the beginning of the route from an early-modern Brabant to socialism, a short-circuit, as it were? If so, only fitfully – and that, this time, does not necessarily seem to be a deliberate undercutting. Instead, the critique seems to halt, even to vanish, in the second act, not helped at all by Christian Thielemann’s sometimes interminable scenic-route reveries. At times, other than marshalling of the forces onstage, little else comes across. There is more in the third act, though even that seems considerably less bold. Lohengrin tying Elsa up comes across more as pretty choreography than a deadly game of sado-masochism. And the hints at green politics, culminating in a bizarre, if intriguing green Gottfried, do not come across nearly as strongly as they might. Ortrud’s rightful oppositional status – what if she is right, seems to be the question – is likewise considerably less clear. It is a pity, since I remain convinced that there is potentially much to be admired here. Perhaps 2020 will sharpen things up.

Thielemann’s conducting proved variable. Like the production, he was stronger in the first and third acts, although, as in his Tristan the night before, there was no doubting his extraordinary ability to have the superlative Bayreuth Festival Orchestra do whatever he asks of it. Speed, or otherwise, was not in itself the problem: indeed, speed is only a part, often a relatively unimportant part, of what we really mean by ‘tempo’. The listlessness and at times the self-regard we heard in the second act most certainly was. A little study of Wagner’s essay, Über das Dirigieren, might help. There were magical moments, magical passages, yet sometimes – only sometimes – they came at the expense of musico-dramatic momentum.

There was much to admire from the cast. A few vowels aside, Piotr Beczala’s Lohengrin approached the ideal. ‘Italianate’ might be a lazy way to describe his phrasing, but I hope it will be understood for what it is, in the very best sense. Not that it came at the expense of words, far from it. Beczala’s golden tone could be relished in and for itself, but that would have been to miss an acutely, astutely dramatic portrayal, one I should dearly love to hear again. Camilla Nylund’s Elsa had the occasional rocky moment in the first act, but hers was likewise an intelligent, committed, and beautifully sung performance. Tomasz Konieczny and Elena Pankratova offered similarly intelligent, highly musical portrayals of Telramund and Ortrud, although the latter’s diction occasionally left one having to fill in verbal gaps for oneself. Georg Zeppenfeld never, in my experience, disappoints; that is no reason to take singing such as that for King Henry for granted. Egils Silins’s Herald likewise compelled attention and admiration. So too, last but not least, did the outstanding performances of the Bayreuth Festival Chorus, vocal heft, stage versatility, and verbal comprehensibility all second to none.

Still a work-in-progress then? Doubtless. However, whatever work may remain to be done here – there is always work still to be done – we may give thanks that this was not an Alvis Hermanis production. Catastrophes such as his Vienna Parsifal and, perhaps still more, his Salzburg Liebe der Danae warn of what might have been.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 10 August 2019

Festspielhaus

Hans Sachs – Michael Volle

Veit Pogner – Günther Groissböck

Kunz Vogelgsang – Tansel Akzeybek

Konrad Nachtigall – Armin Kolarczyk

Sixtus Beckmesser – Johannes Martin Kränzle

Fritz Kothner – Daniel Schmutzhard

Balthasar Zorn – Paul Kaufmann

Ulrich Eißlinger – Christopher Kaplan

Augustin Moser – Stefan Heibach

Hermann Ortel – Raimund Nolte

Hans Schwarz – Andreas Hörl

Hans Foltz – Timo Riihonen

Walther von Stolzing – Klaus Florian Vogt

David – Daniel Behle

Eva – Camilla Nylund

Magdalena – Wiebke Lehmkuhl

Night Watchman – Wilhelm Schwinghammer

Helga Beckmesser (Harpist) – Ruth-Alice Marino

Barrie Kosky (director)

Rebecca Ringst (set designs)

Klaus Bruns (costumes)

Franck Evin (lighting)

Regine Freise (video)

Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

As a Wagner scholar, one becomes wearily accustomed to the most arrant nonsense being spoken and written about him and his work. The so-called ‘popular imagination’ – usually nothing of the sort, instead a carefully manufactured commercial view – will stop at literally nothing in its hunt for grievances. The actual problems Wagner’s work presents us with are far more important, far more interesting, but no matter. Perhaps worst of all is the pseudo-– very pseudo- – ‘literature’ that has been the bane of discourse concerning Wagner since at least the 1850s. It sells books, makes its way into newspapers; alas, it now makes its way onstage too. If only Barrie Kosky had been given a Wagner reading list by someone who knew what (s)he was talking about. Presumably his dramaturge, Ulrich Lenz, should bear some responsibility here; if his programme note is anything to go by, he surely does. Moreover, when we reach Kosky’s own note, we read the following extravagant claim, swiftly moving from the tendentious to the Ken-Russell-fantastical: ‘Wagner transforms medieval blood libel and reinvents it into 19^th[-]century music libel. Jews used to drink the blood of Christian children but now they drink the blood of German culture. And for this crime, for this act of “Crimes against Culture”, Beckmesser must be expelled from Nuremberg. Rather like those little Jewish figures in the anti-Semitic 1930’s [sic] board game “Juden raus!”’ 

Where to start? Where does Wagner say that Beckmesser is expelled from Nuremberg? Wagner’s stage direction reads ‘Er [Beckmesser] stürzt wütend fort und verliert sich unter dem Volke.’  He dashes off in fury, then, and disappears into the crowd. He has been humiliated, yes, in a fashion that may contain disturbing traces of anti-Semitism but which ultimately owes more to Shakespeare’s Malvolio and to Wagner’s earlier comedic villain in Das Liebesverbot: Friedrich, hypocritical German viceroy of Sicily, permitted likewise to lose himself during that work’s carnival finale. He has certainly not been expelled, let alone on the grounds of drinking blood, metaphorical or otherwise. No, let us not bother: it is not worth it. No one ever listens; it is always easier – ironically, as in the case of anti-Semitism, Wagner’s own certainly included – to blame the ‘other’, in this case a manufactured Wagner of lies, half-truths, and the odd fact taken out of context. In any case, whatever the misunderstandings – let us try to be charitable here – presented in such talk, it is always possible that something dramatically engaging might result.

Does it? Alas not. Familiarity may have blunted somewhat the offence of this Meistersinger (first reviewed here) onstage, but that is the best one can say for it. Whether that offence spring from ignorance or dishonesty is arguably beside the point. So, however, are the production and its underlying ideology. Moreover, it remains irredeemably glib, surely a very odd standpoint if one actually believes the things Kosky claims to, punctuated as it is by reams of slapstick and trademark silly dances. (And no, Chaplin is not a helpful comparison here: not even slightly.) Still, notwithstanding a few boos for Kosky on a surprise curtain call, most of the audience seemed to love the ‘entertainment’ placed before it. Interpolation of all-too-predictable campery will usually elicit wild applause from a good few. Doubtless others will flatter themselves that they were made to think. I doubt, though, that they could tell us how.

Once more, then to Wahnfried. It is not an original idea, but many things are not. What is ‘original’ – some might prefer ‘disingenuous’, ‘misleading’, or perhaps something stronger – is to present Die Meistersinger as somehow having originated there, in 1873, as part of an invented incident from Wagner’s life when he supposedly bullied Hermann Levi into kneeling and genuflecting. Wagner sometimes treated Levi appallingly, quite inexcusably; sometimes he treated him otherwise. What on earth that has to do with Die Meistersinger I do not know, given that he completed it in 1867. So all the alleged documentary evidence beamed onstage – including a temperature for the day, which some in the audience found side-splittingly hilarious – is untrue. It is not quite presented as ‘true’, of course, or at least it might be argued that it is not; it is difficult, however, to avoid the implication that it is so even then, still less when the production later becomes explicitly an attempt to put Wagner in the dock, on trial. No evidence for permitted: only (largely) manufactured evidence against.

A weird play of confused, confusing identities ensue, in which not only does Wagner become both Hans Sachs and Walther – in a sense, of course, that is fair enough, if a little restricting – but Liszt becomes Pogner, giving away his daughter, Cosima/Eva. Why, then, is Levi/Beckmesser – yes, I am afraid so – also wooing Cosima? Hans von Bülow, maybe, even Nietzsche, but Levi? The Masters have to be made to loathe Beckmesser from the start, although the words and music tell us quite differently. Why? Because, in the typical circularity of so much writing on Wagner and anti-Semitism, Beckmesser is an unattractive character, doing unattractive things, and therefore must be… well, you know the rest. He therefore ends up the victim of a pogrom at the close of the second act, replete with gigantic, horrifying, Völkische Beobachter caricature of a Jew. None of it makes any sense, because none of it ever seems either to have been thought through or properly prepared. At the moment any difficult question arises, one can always have another silly dance, or zoom in on a Nuremberg courtroom in, you guessed it, 1945. Even better, do both. Why choose?

Goodness only knows who ‘Helga Beckmesser’, onstage harpist for Beckmesser’s attempted rendition of the Prize Song, is supposed to be. She can hardly be his wife, given that he is attempting to woo Eva, or Cosima, or whomever the poor woman is supposed to be; unless, that is, Beckmesser nurses aspirations to bigamy, which seems an eccentric way to work towards his rehabilitation. ‘Helga’ seems actually to be dressed like Helga from the 1980s BBC sitcom, ’Allo, ’Allo! but perhaps that is just a coincidence. I hope it is, at any rate. At least much of the second act is played out with greater theatrical awareness than last time, Wahnfried clutter providing a backdrop, rather than Sachs and Beckmesser simply sitting in a green space inside a courtroom. That is a definite improvement, but the concept, if we may call it that, remains beyond questionable.

Musically, there was much to admire. Philippe Jordan’s conducting was fluent and inobtrusive (the opposite of the production, one might say). He handled the massive orchestral and choral forces with great skill; they responded with all the excellence one should expect from Bayreuth. This was probably the best Wagner I have heard from him, perhaps because he responded so keenly to the affinities with Mozart. I was put in mind of Georg Solti, shortly before his death, speaking of recognition that much in this work should be conducted as if it were Così fan tutte. Michael Volle’s Sachs was as magisterial as ever: word, tone, and gesture an object lesson to all. So too, in different vein, was Johannes Martin Kränzle’s keenly observed Beckmesser. Their chemistry was a wonder to behold. Klaus Florian Vogt’s assured Walther and Camilla Nylund’s lively Eva were beautifully complemented by similarly excellent, yet contrasting, performances from Daniel Behle as David and Wiebke Lehmkuhl as Magdalena. The relationship between the two couples might justly have been described, in line with Jordan’s conducting, as Mozartian. Günther Groissböck’s Pogner was similar impressive, the guild at whose head he stood cast from commendable depth.

As for the production, Wagner and his works will survive; they survive worse most days. It does not follow that they should have to.