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

Prinzregententheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Musikfest Berlin (4) – Gerhaher/BPO/Petrenko: Xenakis, Illés, Hartmann, and Kurtág, 14 September 2023

Philharmonie

Xenakis: Jonchaies
Márton Illés: Lég-szín-tér (world premiere)
Hartmann: Gesangsszene
Kurtág: Stele

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Now this is what I call a programme. To have Xenakis and Kurtág on the same programme from the Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko was extraordinary enough, yet together with a new piece from Márton Illés and Karl Amadeus Hartmann’s final work, the latter involving Christian Gerhaher as soloist, this would surely have been the envy of any hall and audience in the world; it certainly should have been.

Iannis Xenakis’s Jonchaies, premiered in 1977 by the Orchestre National de France and Michel Tabachnik, may have been receiving its first performance by the Berlin Philharmonic, but it was a performance of security, commitment, and understanding belying any local novelty. The upward string sweep, not the last arresting string opening of the evening, sounded as if an aural concrete sculpture, turned by a giant butterknife. Loneliness and excitement in the landscape painted – I may as well continue this excess of metaphors – evoked not so much another world as a world in another solar system, even galaxy. As percussion joined, this seemed to be a Rite of Spring without spring, and perhaps even without a rite. Whatever it was, it mesmerised, complex yet above stark and elemental. Wind entered almost imperceptibly, yet one knew when they were fully there. This was a performance that grabbed one by the throat and never let one go, to make Stravinsky and even the sirens of Varèse, here trumped by Berlin trombones in woolly mammoth mode, appear well-nigh fainthearted by comparison.    

Illes’s Lég-szín-tér, roughly a scene, setting or colour space for air, is the latest in a series of such ‘scenes’, this instalment commissioned by the Stiftung Berlin Philharmoniker and financed by the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung. In three short movements, it displayed an almost classical command of form. Not that there was anything formulaic or indeed backward-looking to it, but rather it sounded as natural and at home in itself, and indeed as concise, as a Haydn symphony (which might have made a splendid alternative bedfellow). In any case, the swarming string opening to this marked it out as a nice pairing with the Xenakis, though the strings were far more quickly joined by the rest of the orchestra in a first movement that was at times almost pretty, or at least delicate—though perhaps anything would be when compared with Xenakis. Accordion (Teodoro Anzellotti) here and elsewhere made its presence felt too. Indeed, at times, the string section almost sounded as if it were a giant version of that instrument. If there were something of the scherzo to that movement, that impression was still stronger in the second, which occasionally in texture, rhythm, and harmony suggested an affinity – I do not think it was more than that – to Messiaen. Throughout, the orchestra and Petrenko traced its contours as expertly as if it were a repertoire piece. The third movement opened with more string music, led by Amihai Grosz on slithering solo viola, from whom the lead was taken and dispersed. This was a movement of very different character, coming across as a necessary response to the first two, the pace of harmonic change considerably slower. Its understated, witty sign-off too was not the least virtue in a work and performance that again, albeit in different ways from Xenakis, never failed to hold one’s attention. 

Hartmann’s Gesangsszene was for me just as much a revelation. I suspect some readers will know it; I have the impression it is, or at one point may have been, more often heard in German- than English-speaking halls. If so, that is a great pity, for this setting of words from Jean Giraudoux’s Sodom et Gomorrha (in German translation) is unquestionably the real thing: powerfully moving, a fitting, if sadly incomplete, culmination to a career of honour as well as great compositional craft. I am not sure it is not the finest thing I have heard from Hartmann, though I have probably heard far too little in total. Certainly, it is difficult to imagine superior performances than those heard from Gerhaher, the BPO, and Petrenko, ideally paced and voiced. A lengthy introductory orchestral section opened with a flute solo of great quality (both as writing and in Sébastian Jacot’s supremely involving performance). One might call it Schoenbergian or post-Schoenbergian, I suppose, yet it never sounded ‘like’ anything other than itself. The orchestral writing that developed again might have put me in mind of Berg, a veritable labyrinth, yet always clear of purpose, but it did not. Here was captivating drama without a stage and, indeed, to start with, without even a voice. When Gerhaher entered, recitative-like, my immediate thought, apart from following his crystal-clear diction and pitching, was that we really ought to hear him soon in Busoni’s Doktor Faust. That moment is approaching, if someone will offer it; it came as little surprise to learn the piece was written for Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. This is a different kind of warning, though, one for the atomic age, with a different, still more immediate sense of the apocalypse, and that shone through—as surely it did for Hartmann at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Death unquestionably hangs over proceedings, yet there is no self-pity, but rather dignity, the dignity of a lifetime of resistance. When Gerhaher came to speak the final words, their setting prevented by Hartmann’s death, it was a tribute to what we had heard that they seemed very much part of the same musical performance. If only our ‘leaders’ would learn; if only they would even listen. 

György Kurtág’s Stele was an earlier BPO commission, from the Claudio Abbado years (1994, when the composer was in residence), and it has been conducted by at least two others here in the meantime, Simon Rattle and Bernard Haitink, prior to this outing under Petrenko. Rattle once likened it to ‘a gravestone on which the entire history of European music is written’, and so it sounded here, a fitting aesthetic pendant to Hartmann, and just as moving in its way. In three short movements, like the Illés piece, its opening reference to the third (arguably to any) Beethoven’s Leonore Overture was as unmistakeable as it was properly enigmatic. There is memorialisation here, to be sure, yet to what end? The path taken is certainly different, not un-Webern-like. The agitation of the second movement fairly terrified, like a Mahlerian nightmare fashioned by the ghost of Webern and quite without the vistas of a better world with which Mahler might have cruelly consoled and disappointed us. Perhaps Beckett, bearing in mind Kurtág’s past and future, is present already, another ghost at the feast. For an almost dizzying array of paths opened up, without prejudice to the sole direction taken. Webern, if anything, seemed still stronger a presence in the third and final movement, without the slightest hint of imitation. Here the mode, as it were, was that of the Funeral March, though the sense of Klangfarbenmelodie sounded, if anything, more Schoenbergian. It was as simple as it was complex, returning us in a way to Xenakis, and vice versa. And how the rests, the silences, told, as musical as any sound.

Wozzeck, Royal Opera, 19 May 2023

Royal Opera House

Wozzeck – Christian Gerhaher
Marie – Anja Kampe
Captain – Peter Hoare
Doctor – Brindley Sherratt
Margret – Rosie Aldridge
Drum Major – Clay Hilley
Andres – Sam Furness
First Apprentice – Barnaby Rea
Second Apprentice – Alex Otterburn
The Fool – John Findon
Soldier – Lee Hickenbottom
Tenor Solo – Andrew Macnair
Marie’s Son – Jonah Elijah McGovern

Deborah Warner (director)
Hyemi Shin (set designs)

Nicky Gillibrand (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Kim Brandstrup (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Images: Tristram Kenton
Andres  (Sam Furness), Wozzeck (Christian Gerhaher)

Thirty years ago, in Sheffield, a teenage schoolboy saw his first opera in the theatre. It was Wozzeck, directed by Deborah Warner for Opera North. Quite an opera with which to begin, you might say, and indeed in many ways it was, yet why would you wish to begin with something that was not ‘quite an opera’? He knew a little more, though not much, opera not having been part of his childhood or more general homelife, nor indeed of his schooling. Plus ça change… By that time, he had just begun to explore the operas of Mozart, those you might expect: Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute. He had also, slightly clueless, speculatively bought a reduced, ‘historic’ recording of Tristan und Isolde from WH Smith and had watched a video, kindly lent by his music teacher, of Die Meistersinger. That, however, was it. He had not yet knowingly listened to music of the Second Viennese School, though that also was suddenly about to change. It is no exaggeration to say that those hundred minutes in the Lyceum Theatre changed his life. 

From 1993 to 2023: an avid (if, born perhaps of that initial experience, selective) opera-goer travelled across another English city for the first night of a new production of Wozzeck, also directed by Deborah Warner, now for the Royal Opera. Full circle? Not really; nothing ever is. Our protagonist has, for better or worse, had numerous experiences, music, dramatic, emotional, and intellectual, since; he is certainly no longer a boy. Yet Wozzeck, which for him ever since has had at least as strong a claim as any to be the single greatest opera of the twentieth century, exerts, if anything, a still greater fascination and admiration, certainly a greater love, than it did then, born of three decades of living with it. How, then, would Warner II fare in circumstances both old and new?

Truth be told, if you spend your time in Wozzeck thinking about a previous production or performance, something has gone wrong (either with you, what is onstage, or both). I did not. In any case, comparisons either with Warner’s first staging or with when I had previously heard Antonio Pappano conduct the work (twenty-one years ago for Keith Warner’s then-new production, in Pappano’s first season at Covent Garden) would largely be meaningless, given the vagaries of memory and my lack of a written record. Deborah Warner in 2023 does not seem to me especially to take a view or standpoint, at least not exclusively. This is not a Wozzeck that (over-)emphasises the brutality of military life and war, or expressionist experimentalism, or any one thing, though many such things are present. The action is already taking place as we take our seats, soldiers (an excellent troupe/troop of actors) relieving themselves in various ways, cleaning up, doing very much what soldiers do in barracks. That establishes an expectation of realism which is not entirely fulfilled, but rather is supplemented, so that as the action develops, as different standpoints are afforded by the work (and probably its creator), we have opportunity to take them too. Everything takes place more or less where one might expect, but there are always refreshing touches of set design, costume, lighting, or detailed Personenregie – let alone the musical performances – to enable us to take a fresh look and listen. The drama unfolds, with great immediacy, yet always it feels that this is ultimately Wozzeck rather than ‘Deborah Warner’s Wozzeck’, whether that feeling, even that possibility, be a fond illusion or otherwise. Different settings for different scenes – no fewer than fifteen of them – present themselves without fussiness or fetishisation: this is a light, enabling, generous realism that can shade almost imperceptibly into other, complementary aesthetics as required. Credit is surely due both to the design team and to the Royal Opera House’s technicians and actors, who accomplished this feat with such apparent ease. Rehearsal surely paid off.

 

Slightly stylised trees, Cross-like, hint at Wozzeck’s fate, albeit without redemption, but also at a natural world beyond that neither knows nor cares, yet in some sense frames tragedies that lie in stark contrast, being entirely the creation of man. There remains a Romantic desire to escape this miserable world, even if only to Berg’s family estate (Berghof) in Carinthia. Like so much else, though, it is not possible. The blood-red moon and the black, unfathomable lake dominate our vision and consciousness as natural and human boundaries. And finally, in that ultimate, heartbreaking scene of horror: the child turns to the wall in front of which the other children have just been playing, to see painted on it the news they have so cruelly, carelessly delivered. His mother is dead. He turns around and walks off, alone. The drama stops, silence cruelly denied by some idiot’s premature applause—but even that could not quite break the punch to the solar plexus. 

Much of that is, of course, a musical punch. Pappano really seems to be at his best right now. Shortly after thinking his Turandot perhaps the best I had heard from him, I found this Wozzeck at least close to equal, and in ways that surprised me. Without wishing to play that game of illusory comparisons, however tempting, I found this an infinitely more engaging experience than in 2002. Often quite extraordinary orchestral precision, for which one must of course above all credit the orchestra itself, laid bare the framework of closed forms in themselves, their multifarious musical procedures objects of an almost yet not quite Neue Sachlichkeit fascination, but also showed them to be the engines of a dramatic progression that, however Wagnerian it may often sound, is at least as much an alternative to Wagner’s method. There were wrenching, late-Romantic passages, of course, precisely where one would need and expect them, but this was also a musical drama that prefigured Hindemith, Weill, perhaps even Berg’s own teacher, Schoenberg. This was not always a Wozzeck that rose from the bass line, though sometimes it did, but it hinted more than usual at Berg’s later writing, whilst also suggesting an earlier, almost Mendelssohnian Romanticism. Like Warner’s production, it afforded different standpoints, without sounding merely sectional. 

I have been fortunate to see some extremely fine Wozzecks in those years since my first encounter (Andrew Shore on that first encounter included). Christian Gerhaher’s thoughtful, collegial approach, placing himself and his character at the dramatic hub, gaining meaning as much from interaction with colleagues as from his considered yet apparently spontaneous way with the text, has nothing to fear from any of them. His performance, worlds away, as is proper, from the beauties of his celebrated Wolfram, was yet equally well judged. Indeed, I wonder whether it heralds a new chapter in his career. For now, though, it will more than do in and of itself.

Wozzeck, Marie (Anja Kampe)

There was splendid chemistry with his Marie, Anja Kampe. I was about to say ‘we tend…’, but should really only speak for myself: I tend often somewhat to overlook the tragedy of Marie’s death, so overwhelmed am I by that of Wozzeck. Here I felt greater parity, doubtless a matter of Warner’s Personenregie but also of Kampe’s portrayal. (It is more or less impossible for an outsider to distinguish between the two.) This important corrective was brought into further relief by Anna Picard’s excellent programme note on ‘Maria and her World’, whose closing words seem very much to refer to what we saw and heard: ‘She is no Kundry. Neither is she a Judith or the hysterical Woman in Marie Pappenheim and Arnold Schoenberg’s monodrama, Erwartung. Her murder is not dressed up as a form of release for Wozzeck or a point of debate. It is simply a domestic tragedy of a very ordinary, and ever modern, kind.’ Which also brings us back to Gerhaher’s Wozzeck, for his very haplessness – what art lay in that – also contributed to that very non-release, felt (at least by me) more emphatically than I can recall.

Captain (Peter Hoare), Wozzeck

All in the cast contributed to the greater dramatic (and musical) whole, so much as to suggest unusually fruitful close collaboration between all concerned. Sam Furness’s Andres surprised me, not least because I often find myself wondering where the role went, thinking it smaller than I had expected. Not here: this was a character sympathetic to Wozzeck who yet had his own story to tell. Likewise Rosie Aldridge’s spirited Margret, whose spot in the second tavern scene almost had time stand still as the world disintegrated around her. Peter Hoare’s Captain and Brindley Sherratt’s Doctor made a sharply etched pair: guilty, yet not guilty, like all in the world we saw. Well, perhaps not quite all, for it is difficult to find any grounds to absolve the Drum Major, here given an appropriately nasty, bullying, yet finely sung performance by Clay Hilley. William Spaulding's Royal Opera Chorus was on outstanding form too. 

What, then, should a Wozzeck accomplish? There can be no definitive answer, no more than for any artwork in performance. Different productions, different performances, different audiences will all render such categorical statements in vain. If I have learned one thing over the past thirty years, it will be that. That said, if one does not emerge from a performance convinced that it is one of the greatest of all operas – ranking beyond that is a mere parlour game – it will have been in vain. My first experience was not; nor, emphatically was this: a searing and strangely refreshing Wozzeck, which I hope and intend to revisit soon.

Gerhaher/Huber - Holliger, Wolf, Schumann, and Schoeck, 12 February 2023

Wigmore Hall

Holliger: Elis
Wolf: Abendbilder
Holliger: Lunea
Schumann: Vier Husarenlieder, op.117
Schoeck: Elegie, op.36: ‘An den Wind’, ‘Herbstgefühl’, ‘Verlorenes Glück’, ‘Das Mondlicht’, ‘Herbstentschluss’, ‘Welke Rose’
Schumann: Sechs Gedichte von N. Lenau und Requiem, op.90

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Gerold Huber (piano)

Any recital from Christian Gerhaher is likely to be special; offering a range of quite unusual repertoire, Heinz Holliger’s Lunea written for and dedicated to Gerhaher, this was no exception. It opened, though, with a rare solo spot for Gerhaher’s long-term collaborator, pianist Gerold Huber, and early (1961, revised 1966) Holliger. Gerhaher reading the three Georg Trakl texts on which Elis’s three short piano pieces, ‘Verkündigung des Todes’, ‘Todesangst und Gnade’, and ‘Himmelfahrt’, are based, even providing his own English translation for the programme sheet. Strikingly post-Schoenbergian harmony characterised the first, though its musical gestures worked differently. The soundworld of the second sounded later, more post-Webern, if you will, indeed surely marked by Holliger’s contemporary study with Boulez, albeit with a Germanic accent. ‘Himmelfahrt’, as its name might suggest, seemed in some sense both to reconcile and to go beyond. These aphoristic nocturnes emerged pregnant with emotion, gesture, and – who knows – perhaps ‘meaning’ too. 

Hugo Wolf’s Abendbilder (again early, 1877) followed, without a break. In context, the piano prelude to the first of the three sons sounded Romantically consoling, yet not unrelated: an excellent starting point for our Wolfram von Eschenbach, sorry Gerhaher, to sing, the sincerity as well as beauty of his delivery striking from the outset, likewise command of detail without pedantry. All three Nikolaus Lenau ‘pictures’ rightly formed part of a greater whole, whilst happily going on their own, sometimes pastoral, ways. It was difficult not to marvel at the different shades and colours of Gerhaher’s voice, poetically deployed, an sinking wanness as the sun set (‘Bald versinkt die Sonne’, an example in point. Shades of Schumann and Liszt in language and performance contextualised without overwhelming.

We remained with Lenau for Holliger’s Lunea, written from 2009-10, though only premiered at Zurich’s Opera House in 2013 (also venue five years later for the premiere of Holliger’s opera of the same name, featuring Gerhaher, reworking these settings ‘like chorales in a Bach Passion’). Notably more gestural than what we had previously heard, it yet remains – and, in performance, remained – within the noble Lied tradition. Twenty-two Lenau sentences and a short poem, ‘Einklang’, in memory of Johann Baptist Mayrhofer form a striking cycle that must surely have won the composer new admirers here in London. Gerhaher’s acuity of verbal and musical response seemed ideally suited. That range of colour was now married to a greater range of general delivery, sometimes unabashed song, sometimes recitation, often somewhere in between; extended piano techniques such as bowing the strings acted similarly. Searching melismata unsettled, lit up, even amused, as instances of wordpainting (‘Ein Tropfen im Stein’) worked something like their traditional magic of recognition. Wonderfully nomadic harmony illuminated Lenau’s Wüstenwanderer, prior to that neo-Schubertian postlude of ‘Einklang’.  

I struggle to find Schumann’s Lenau Husarenlieder among his more compelling work, but they received stylish, commanding performances, with a fine degree, where required, of Schwung. Rhythms were well-pointed, and Gerhaher, rightly, I think, permitted a word-driven approach. A selection of six songs from Othmar Schoeck’s Elegie, four to texts by Lenau, Gerhaher imparted a strong sense, even in the others’ absence, of its character as a whole, yet equally individual character to individual songs. Musical process was clear, courtesy above all of the piano, in ‘Das Mondlicht’. The performance as a whole was subtly surprising: no shocks, yet deeply satisfying provided one offered musical attention.

The final Schumann set showed the composer, at least some of the time, the recapturing the infinitely touching spirit of his youth. Gerhaher and Huber offered plenty of variety in the opening, strophic blacksmith’s song, but it was the ensuing ‘Meine Rose’ that played on the heartstrings. Was that perhaps a sense of Schumann influenced by Wagner, or simply memories of Gerhaher’s Wolfram? At any rate, it brought tears to my eyes. So too did the sense of youthful anticipation in ‘Die Sennin’, whilst ‘Einsamkeit’ and ‘Der schwere Abend’ both turned from disquieting ambiguity to ultimate sadness. The final ardour of the strange ‘Requiem’, offered us flame that flickered both in defiance and reconciliation, perhaps like the Lied tradition’s persistence unto Holliger (and beyond?) ‘Zweifeldner Wunsch’ from Schoeck’s Elegie made for a fitting encore, concluding and continuing a line of subtle questioning.

Gerhaher/Huber - Schubert, 1 December 2022

Wigmore Hall

Sei mir gegrüsst, D 741
Dass sie hier gewesen, D 775
Lachen und Weinen, D 777
Du bist die Ruh, D 776
Greisengesang, D 778
Schwanengesang, D 957

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)

Gerold Huber (piano)

This memorable Schubert from Christian Gerhaher and Gerold Huber opened with five settings of Friedrich Rückert, well chosen and ordered. Sei mir gegrüsst’s opening piano lilt was taken up just as keenly by Gerhaher, signalling a meeting of musical minds and practice. From the very outset, one might readily have taken dictation, verbal and musical, so clear was every aspect of the performance, that clarity never a goal in itself but means to an expressive end. Unity and variation in an initially strophic setting that then sets out along new paths were equally apparent, inspiring and comforting in similar measure. The almost Lisztian sensibility of Dass sie hier gewesen offered nice contrast, the set’s culmination in a declamatory, richly expressive Greisengesang calling Fischer-Dieskau to mind. No more than anywhere else, though, did one size fit all, a silvery, surprisingly tenor-like reading of Du bist die Ruh finely complemented by Huber’s voicing of harmony and counterpoint. 

Seven Schwanengesang settings of Ludwig Rellstab took us to the interval. The ‘Bächlein’ of ‘Liebesbotschaft’ set the scene and underlay it, in figurative as well as locational terms. A deeply touching ‘Kriegers Ahnung’ took in several moods, not least the proto-Wagnerian; likewise the later ‘In der Ferne’, its world-weariness prefiguring Wagner’s Dutchman, the final stanza deeply—in more than one sense—ambiguous, whispering breezes performing their magic whichever way they or fate chose. Gerhaher’s ardent ‘Ständchen’ really felt like a serenade, in essence and progress, ‘Aufenthalt’ a tragic pendant from the world of Winterreise. The pounding of the protagonist’s heart as the high treetops swayed in the wind had us feel altitude and grief alike. ‘Abschied’, the last of the set, effected after ‘In der Ferne’ a perfect transformation of mood, in a reading both animated and detailed, yet never remotely fussy. 

Six Heine settings followed the interval. A darkly resolute ‘Der Atlas’ offered a fascinating study in pride. ‘Ihr Bild’ proved duly haunting, nothing taken for granted, the miracles of Schubertian modulation heard as if for the first time; likewise the composer’s major/minor oscillation. Prefiguring ‘Die Stadt’ and its chill wind, we found ourselves once again emphatically post-Winterreise. ‘Der Doppelgänger’ went further still, as it must, technically in its ghostly withdrawal of vibrato and much else, yet also emotionally in its defiance. This, quite properly, marked the climax to the entire recital. After that, ‘Die Taubenpost’ worked its charms to perfection, a delightful, lingering goodbye.

Prohaska/Gerhaher/Bushakevitz - Wolf, Mörike-Lieder, 30 June 2022

 

Wigmore Hall

Verborgenheit; Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchen; Das verlassene Mägdlein; Lied eines Verliebten; Bei einer Trauung; Ein Stündlein wohl vor Tag; Zitronenfalter im April; In der Frühe; Er ist’s; An den Schlaf; Im Frühling; Auf einer Wanderung; Um Mitternacht; Peregrina I; An eine Aölsharfe; Peregrina II; Begegnung; Denk’ es, o Seele!; Auf ein altes Bild; Auf eine Christblume I; Schlafendes Jesuskind; Auf eine Christblume II; Karwoche; Seufzer; Wo find ich Trost?; An die Geliebte; Gesang Weylas; Der Tambour; Die Geister am Mummelsee; Der Jäger; Nixe Binsefuss; Der Feuerreiter; Lied vom Winde. 

Anna Prohaska (soprano)
Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Ammiel Bushakevitz (piano)

A decidedly superior Liederabend, in terms of verse, musical setting, and performance. Hugo Wolf remains a connoisseur’s composer: slightly perplexing, perhaps, but then there is no playing to the gallery, no folkish dalliance, nothing that might strain toward the evidently popular. This is song born above all in verse and perhaps, especially for a non-German audience, that will never vie with the more obvious, which is not to say lesser, charms of Schubert or even Schumann. Be that as it may, it is difficult not to imagine Wolf—and Eduard Mörike—gaining a few converts among audience members who may initially have been attracted by the starry pairing of Anna Prohaska and Christian Gerhaher. Many, the present writer included, will have been equally impressed by the performances of the sensitive, comprehending pianist Ammiel Bushakevitz. 

There is all manner of ways to programme such a selection, most with something to recommend them. This was intelligently ordered to provide coherence and contrast without didacticism. Gerhaher’s opening Verborgenheit came recognisably from the Wolfram we know and love, albeit definitely song rather than opera, even in the more dramatic second stanza. Wolf’s Lisztian harmonies were relished by Bushakevitz, again setting up expectations and prospects for subsequent development. A breathless (in mood, not technique!) Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens introduced Prohaska in impetuous contrast, her subsequent Das verlassene Mägdlein offering piano (and pianist) the opportunity for something more Wagnerian, whilst the Lied eines Verliebten that followed gave Gerhaher a counterpart to that Liebesleid, in neo-Schubertian vein. Moving from a love-song to a wedding, Prohaska was able to ‘tell it as it is’ in a sardonic Bei einer Trauung: ‘Denn leider freilich, freilich, keine Lieb’ ist nicht dabei’. Whether there were a note of bitterness here remained fruitfully ambiguous.

Ambiguities arising from the text, be that verbal, musical, or both were frequent, whether in the complex, ambiguous peace with which Gerhaher and Bushakevitz left us at the close of Um Mitternacht, the day now ended, the springs murmuring on. We heard—and felt—eery darkness, progressing to relative light (Gerhaher, In der Frühe), which led in turn to a spring-like Er ist’s (Prohaska), full of life, even hope. Though commendably detailed, as Wolf performances must surely be, there was no missing the wood for the trees; this was a pictorialism of the spirit rather than mere tone-painting. Wolf—and his interpreters—could be ardent too: take Gerhaher’s ecstatic climax in Peregrina I, the invitation to ‘consume us both in fire’ and to partake of the ‘chalice of sin’ followed by a splendid pianistic afterglow. Haunted, rich in potential meaning, Gerhaher’s Auf ein altes Bild, which opened the second half, was nicely open to interpretation, as if ‘reading’ that old painting itself. 

Shaping of individual songs, whether short or ballad-like (e.g. Prohaska’s Der Tambour and Die Geister am Mummelsee) was a particular strength; likewise their integration into a greater recital whole. Phrasing, such as that of Prohaska and Bushakevitz, in a beautiful Zitronenfalter im April, told without exaggeration. Variety within unity was certainly present between, but in many respects also within, songs. Bushakevitz knew where to lean into dissonances, for instance in the extraordinary, brief Seufzer (‘Sighs’). Harp-music, verbally explicit in An eine Äolsharfe, and implicit in Gesang Weylas, offered another set of strings to the pianist’s bow. A final trio that brought other-worldliness (a post-Mendelssohn Nixe Binsefuss, Prohaska), urgent vehemence and much else (Gerhaher), and windswept virtuosity (Lied vom Winde, Prohaska) was shaped at least as much by Bushakevitz as his partners: truly collaborative music-making.

Gerhaher/Huber - Brahms, 12 December 2021

Wigmore Hall

Neun Lieder and Gesänge, op.32; Vier ernste Gesänge, op.121; Meine Lieder, op.106 no.4; Geheimnis, op.71 no.3; Die Mainacht; op.43 no.2; Treue Liebe, op.7 no.1; Lerchengesang, op.70 no.2; Acht Lieder und Gesänge, op.59: ‘Regenlied’, ‘Dein blaues Auge halt so still’, ‘Mein wundes Herz verlangt’; ‘Nachklang’; Auf dem Kirchhofe, op.105 no.4; Von ewiger Liebe, op.43 no.1; O kühler Wald, op.72 no.3; Herbstgefühl, op.48 no.7; Die Kränze, op.46 no.1

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)
Gerold Huber (piano)

Christian Gerhaher singing Brahms: it promised much and, if anything, delivered still more. This was a song recital as finely planned as it was executed, as thoughtful as it was moving. Ably supported by his pianist Gerold Hubert, not only did Gerhaher, by any standards one of the greatest singers of our age, give a masterclass in Lied-performance; he also showed quite how much his artistry has developed over the past few years. This is neither a musician to rest on his laurels, nor one to do something different for the sake of it; rather, with a quiet confidence and questing born of intelligence, sensitivity, and hard work, he led us to believe this was certainly the best way, perhaps the only way, whilst leaving open the door for other possibilities in subsequent reflection. 

Much nonsense is spoken about Brahms's songs. Some would have them all too similar, but then they might say the same about the composer’s symphonic works. Look, listen beneath the surface and you will divine a whole universe as distinctive and as varied as that of Schubert or Schumann. The first half offered bold programming in itself. If you place the op.32 songs and the Four Serious Songs there, do you run the risk of upstaging whatever comes afterwards? Perhaps, but if so, that risk was averted, by construction and performance of a second half that related to, extended, and contrasted with what we had heard, with where Brahms had travelled already beyond mere death. Moments of Romantic wonder, of a divine spark that actually makes life worth living even if it lies within rather than beyond this world, found themselves retrospectively bathed in light as well as further darkness. Gerhaher and Huber took seriously, as well they might, Brahms the Bible-loving agnostic as one of the nineteenth-century’s most intriguing theologians. Mortality may, after all, be a blessing, not a curse. The German Requiem may already have told us that, but these songs, from both before and after, told us more.

Indeed, the structure of Brahms’s songs in this context came to represent an intricate jigsaw of response significantly more than a musical momento mori. We could hear that in the Platen songs of op.32, just as in the Biblical texts of op.121; but we could hear it just as well, if differently, though a glass, less darkly, in the Schubertian flight of the early Treue Liebe. op.9, Gerhaher sensing and voicing inheritance without ever needing to underline. Echoed, with greater maturity, in the birdsong of op.70 no.2, Lerchengesang, barriers between natural and metaphysical worlds dissolved. Other connections were to be heard, of course, again subtly pointed, as much by Huber as by Gerhaher: the strangely comforting and disquieting intimations of the G major Violin Sonata in ‘Regenlied’ and ‘Nachklang’ from the op.59 set, the latter tellingly followed by ‘Auf dem Kirchhofe’ from a decade-and-a-half later, haunted by the most celebrated Passion chorale of them all—and thus by Johann Sebastian Bach, perhaps via Mendelssohn. There was autumn, of course, and something more final too, but there was spring. Gerhaher’s verbal inflection, ear for colour, and fine aesthetic judgement in declining ever to exaggerate were very much what was needed. 

Where sometimes, a little while ago, I had begun to wonder whether his increased experience of opera—who can forget his Tannhäuser Wolfram?—was leading him to privilege sheer beauty of tone over other aspects of his art, here the thought never entered my mind. The comparison is odious, but from the opening of ‘Wie raft ich mich auf’, it was Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau who came to mind. Sounding like Fischer-Dieskau was not the point, although more than once I fancied Gerhaher did. This rather represented a renewal of lyric art from the spirit of verse, a renewal that seemed, however incidentally, both to pay homage and to reimagine these songs once again on terms that were both theirs, Gerhaher’s, and ours. A rare evening indeed.

Wozzeck, Bavarian State Opera, 23 November 2019

Nationaltheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Wozzeck – Christian Gerhaher

Drum Major – John Daszak

Andres – Kevin Conners

Captain – Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke

Doctor – Jens Larsen

First Apprentice – Peter Lobert

Second Apprentice – Boris Prýgl

Fool – Ulrich Reß

Marie – Gun-Brit Barkmin

Margret – Heike Grötzinger

Marie’s Child – Alban Mondon

Lad – Jochen Schäfer

Soldier – Markus Zeitler

Andreas Kriegenburg (director)

Harald B Thor (set designs)

Andrea Schraad (costumes)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Zenta Haerter (choreography)

Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

It would be an extraordinary, even an unimaginable Wozzeck that failed to move, to chill one to the bone. This was certainly no such Wozzeck; Marie’s reading from the Bible, Wozzeck’s demise, the final scene with their son and the other children: all brought that particular Wozzeck combination of tears and horror. At its heart, in every sense, lay Christian Gerhaher’s Wozzeck, Gun-Brit Barkmin’s Marie, and their child, touchingly sung by Alban Mondon.

I have heard some fine Wozzecks over the years; Gerhaher must surely rank alongside the finest. He has been selective in his opera roles; it would, however, be an over-simplification verging on distortion to say that he is more at home in the concert hall. Wozzeck is, of course, a very different role from his fabled Tannhäuser Wolfram and is surely the sterner dramatic test, perhaps especially for someone with so heartbreakingly beautiful a voice. Or so it might seem on first glance, but Gerhaher is an artist at least as celebrated for intelligence and humanity. His way with words, music, and gesture too simply had one believe that this was the character he was playing. Verbal nuance without pedantry, attention to musical line without a hint of self-regard, harrowing facial expression that demanded our sympathy: yes, this was a compleat Wozzeck. Barkmin’s Marie, equally well sung (and spoken), equally sympathetic, made for a fine complement indeed. Through her artistry one felt her hopes as well as her devastation, her pride as well as her capacity for love. Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke’s Captain, John Daszak’s Drum Major and Jens Larsen’s Doctor skilfully trod the line between character and caricature, no mean feat in a production that often called upon them to accentuate the grotesque. Kevin Conners as Andres and Heike Grötzinger as Margret impressed too, carving out their own dramatic potentialities, even as we knew them no more likely to succeed than the opera’s central couple. Cast from depth, this was a fine Wozzeck for singing-actors.

Hartmut Haenchen’s conducting proved efficient most of the time, albeit with a few too many discrepancies between sections of the orchestra as well as between orchestra and pit. To be fair, there were also passages—often the interludes—in which all came together to offer something considerably more than that. Haenchen’s reading was not for the most part, however, one to offer any particular revelation. He clearly knew ‘how it went’, yet the post-Wagnerian orchestra as dramatic cauldron had its juices emerge only fitfully.

Andreas Kriegenburg’s production seemed conceptually a little unsure of what it was trying to achieve. Straddling the divide between Expressionist grotesquerie—some arresting images there—and social realism—with a curious twist of Brechtian image, not dramaturgy—is a perfectly reasonable strategy. Communication of how the two might intertwined proved more elusive. Updated to what seemed to be more or less the time of composition, the production left no doubt of the gross injustice and poverty pervading the world in which these events took place. I could have done without all the splashing round in the lake below. Kriegenburg often scored, however, in particular dramatic touches: above all, the acts of Wozzeck’s son, keen to learn from his ill-fated father: watching, listening. and in some cases, acting, as when this evidently wounded child broke his mother’s heart by painting the accusation ‘Huren’ (‘whore’) on her wall. All was lost, then: a moment of devastation. Already we knew what fate, or rather society, had in store not only for Wozzeck and Marie, but for their child too. ‘Wir arme leut’…

Gerhaher/Huber - Mahler, 23 September 2019

Pierre Boulez Saal

Mahler: Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen

Mahler: Des knaben Wunderhorn: ‘Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht’, ‘Ablösung im Sommer’, ‘Ich ging mit Lust durch einen grünen Wald’, ‘Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen’, ‘Rheinlegendchen’, ‘Der Schildwache Nachtlied’, ‘Lied des Verfolgten im Turm’, ‘Das irdische Leben’, ‘Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz’’, ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’

Mahler: Kindertotenlieder

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)

Gerold Huber (piano)

Christian Gerhaher in Mahler was always likely to prove special. Thus it was here at the Pierre Boulez Saal, if anything still more so than an identical programme – I think – at the Wigmore Hall in 2014. At any rate, these were no repeated performances; in many respects, they proved quite different, bearing no trace of the routine.

Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen opened with Gerold Huber on piano nervous (in a good way!) and agitated, full of detail, Gerhaher surprisingly wan of tone (also in a good way: interpretatively, not by default). The sadness of that first song’s final stanza sounded still more sorrowful, even desolate, both in tone and tempo: ‘Denk’ ich an mein Leid! An mein Leide!’ A forthright ‘Ging heut’ morgen über’s Feld’ followed, Gerhaher closer to Fischer-Dieskau than I can recall, not least on repeated, ironic references to ‘eine schöne Welt’, Mahlerian alienation strongly to the fore. Recent performances of Wozzeck (also forthcoming, in Munich) seemed to have left their mark on a final, hallucinatory stanza. Would his ‘happiness’ now begin? No, no: that could never bloom for him. The vehemence, even rage, of ‘Ich hab’ ein glühend Messer’ again brought Fischer-Dieskau to mind; so too did attention to detail, if not the detail of that detail. Different colourings applied to cries of ‘O weh!’ offered progression without fussiness. Mockery, hallucination, and much else seemed to have developed from previous songs, whilst retaining their specific imperative and character in this. Memories of late Schubert haunted the final song: Winterreise  and Schwanengesang in particular. They were memories, though, mediated through and through. Here were not only smiling through tears, warmth that could not warm: they knew themselves to be such.

A selection of Wunderhorn songs spanned the interval: different in mood and implication, of course, yet possessed of similar virtues in detail without pedantry. Bachian coloratura in ‘Wer hat dies Liedlein erdacht’, ironic sympathy in ‘Ablösung im Sommer’ both lightly suggested a continuation of that fateful, necessary alienation that haunts Mahler’s music and summarises its modern lot. A leisurely stroll – much to take in, all the better at such a tempo, as would also be the case in ‘Zu Straßburg auf der Schanz’’ – through the green wood of the following song prepared the way for affinity and contrast in ‘Um schlimme Kinder artig zu machen’ and ‘Rheinlegendchen’. The prisoner in the tower sang freely, freshly, Gerhaher fully rising to the challenge of two ‘characters’ without caricature. ‘Die Gedanken sind frei’ (‘thoughts are free’) proved a final line rich with summative ambiguity. If Huber perhaps underlined specific figures too much in ‘Wo die schönen Trompeten blasen’, in danger of losing overall line, Gerhaher’s infinitely touching contribution more than made up for that.

Presaged in ‘Das irdische Leben’, Kindertotenlieder took matters further – and what a work with which to close! What a performance too. The different vocal colours in a single line such as ‘Als sei kein Unglück die Nacht gescheh’n!’, a line that yet remained very much a line, set the scene for a performance that moved through a profound musicality that had no need for histrionics, for anything externally applied. That ability to express all manner of verbal and emotional nuances without disruption to line was just as apparent in the sadness and regret, moving towards yet never quite attaining bitterness, of the second song too. Words were throughout permitted to chill through the bitter-sweetness of music. Was the hallucinatory conclusion to the final storm, repose ‘as if in their mother’s house’, enlightenment or delusion? In a formal sense, it must be the former, yet performance quite rightly left room for doubt. ‘Urlicht’ as encore brought lengthy, unfortunate, and deeply unsettling telephone disruption; and yet, finally, comfort and resolution.

Munich Opera Festival (4) - Parsifal, 31 July 2018

Nationaltheater

 

Parsifal (Jonas Kaufmann) and the Flowermaidens
Images: Ruth Walz

Amfortas – Christian Gerhaher

Titurel – Bálint Szabó

Gurnemanz – René Pape
Parsifal – Jonas Kaufmann
Klingsor – Wolfgang Koch
Kundry – Nina Stemme
First Knight of the Grail – Kevin Conners
Second Knight of the Grail – Callum Thorpe
Squires – Paula Iancic, Annika Schlicht, Manuel Günther, Matthew Grills
Flowermaidens – Golda Schultz, Selene Zanetti, Annika Schlicht, Nolevuyiso Mpofu, Paula Iancic, Rachael Wilson
Voice from Above – Rachael Wilson
 

Pierre Audi (director)

Georg Baselitz, Christof Hetzer (set designs)
Florence von Gerkan, Tristan Sczesny (costumes)
Urs Schönebaum (lighting)
Klaus Bertisch, Benedikt Stampfli (dramaturgy)
 

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

Bavarian State Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

  

And so, this year’s Munich Opera Festival and this year’s Bavarian State Opera season came to a close with everyone’s favourite Bühnenweihfestspiel, Parsifal, in the final outing this time around for Pierre Audi’s new production. With a cast of dreams, an orchestra of distinction conducted by Kirill Petrenko, not to mention a world-class opera chorus, what could be not to like? Nothing for much of the audience, it would seem. Alas, for me it proved a grave disappointment, for which the responsibility must either lie with me, Audi, or both of us.

Amfortas (Christian Gerhaher) and members of the chorus

I am not sure I have ever seen a production of Parsifal so lacking in – well, anything. Goodness knows one can argue about what this work is about, what its problems might be, what its extraordinary virtues might be, even what it might be made to be about, and so on and forth. Goodness knows directors can come up with execrable concepts or execute their concepts, good or bad, less than well. I speak from the bitter experience of having attended a good few, not least the present Uwe Eric Laufenberg farrago at Bayreuth, which somehow manages both to be intensely offensive in its Islamophobia and unbearably boring. Audi, however, seems to have no discernible thoughts about it whatsoever. I almost have nothing beyond that to say, so shall keep the rest of this very short. Its selling point – to some, anyway – seems always to have been designs by the strangely overrated visual artist, Georg Baselitz. They struck me as very much in keeping with what else I have seen from Baselitz; if you like to look at this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you would have liked to look at. The first act, all of it, is set in a forest. For some reason, the knights take off their outer clothes to reveal unflattering fattish naked suits, which suggest a degree of androgyny, although that suggestion seems later – by the Flowermaidens – to be refuted. The second act is barely staged at all, yet without any of the virtues of a concert performance. The third act returns to the forest. The end. To think that this succeeded a production by Peter Konwitschny beggars belief.

Parsifal and members of the chorus

Yet so oppressive are the designs, for that is really all the production can be, so different is the experience from a concert performance, that much very good – although not, I think, quite so good as many seem to have thought – musical work went largely to waste. Petrenko’s conducting was excellent, although it never seemed to me to dig so deep as, say, the work of a Barenboim or indeed, in days not so very distant, a Haitink. Still, there could be no real complaints either with Petrenko or his orchestra. His tempi in the first act, at least earlier on, felt relatively swift; I have no idea whether they actually were. Yet they never felt rushed; his was a fleet, at least slightly Boulezian conception, until it was not. For there was plenty of space, well taken, to manage the work’s ebb and flow – whilst seeming, and doubtless to a certain extent, being managed by the work’s ebb and flow. Interestingly, the opening of the third act, its Prelude in particular, sounded more anguished than anything in the second. If only some of the pain implied for Parsifal’s wayfaring had been otherwise reflected in the staging. This was certainly a reading that developed and, by any standards, marked a fine debut run in the work.

One oddity: I do not think I have heard such feeble Grail bells. According to the programme, however, this was a special instrument modelled by the Bayreuth piano company, Steingraeber, after the instrument used at the 1882 premiere. If so, the Meister was – not for the first time, nor even for the last – surely mistaken. The Bayreuth bells we know from, say, Karl Muck’s 1927 recording, in their 1926 design pack sound to my ears more impressive in every way. Or maybe I am just too wedded to what I think I ‘ought’ to hear.

Kundry (Nina Stemme) and Parsifal

 

Singing was certainly distinguished, although it was really the Amfortas and, perhaps more oddly, the Klingsor who stood out for me. Christian Gerhaher has recently, surprisingly, seemed more at home in opera than in Lieder, and so it was here. His fabled beauty of tone was never an end in itself but put to sweet, agonising dramatic work – alongside the fascinating suggestion, apparent in his eyes if nowhere else on stage, of a crazed, ecstatic religious visionary. Could that not have been the director’s concept, if he had no other? It would certainly have opened up all manner of possibilities. Wolfgang Koch’s way with words, music, and their combination marked him out as an uncommonly excellent Klingsor – even if Klingsors rarely disappoint. Again, one learned much simply from observing his facial expressions. Jonas Kaufmann offered lovely moments, lovely passages, and a great deal of verbal acuity too in his assumption of the title role. However, his voice really did not sound as I recall it from not so long ago; there were times when it sounded not only strained but worn. Let us hope that this was just an off-day (a highly relative off-day). He and Nina Stemme as Kundry were certainly not helped by Audi’s non-production. I am not entirely convinced that this is Stemme’s ideal role, but it is surely not unreasonable for us to adjust our expectations according to a particular artist’s abilities and conception. Something a little wilder either on stage or in voice, or ideally both, would not have gone amiss, but again there were no grounds for true complaint. Likewise with René Pape’s Gurnemanz. His beauty of tone remains, yet there is now far more of a sense of verbal response than once there was in his singing. If Parsifal, then, is for you primarily, even exclusively, about singing and more broadly about musical performance, you would have experienced something undoubtedly special. If, however, it needs to be for you a drama too, I cannot imagine your response would have been so very different from mine.