Rusalka, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 4 February 2024

Rusalka – Christiane Karg
Prince – Pavel Černoch
Foreign Princess – Anna Samuil
Vodník – Mika Kares
Ježibaba – Anna Kissjudit
Gamekeeper – Adam Kutny
Kitchen Boy – Clara Nadeshdin
Nymphs – Regina Koncz, Rebecka Wallroth, Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Huntsman – Taehan Kim

Director – Kornél Mundruczó
Designs – Monika Pormale
Lighting – Felice Ross
Video – Rūdolfs Baltiņš
Choreography - Candaş Baş
Dramaturgy – Kata Wéber, Christoph Lang

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Robin Ticciati (conductor)

Images:  Gianmarco Bresadola
Rusalka (Christiane Karg)

Director Kornél Mundruczó comes like a breath of fresh air to unsettle our conceptions of Dvořák’s penultimate and, by some way, greatest opera and thus to do precisely what the material demands; or rather, it comes as something bitterly stale, menacing, even poisonous to accomplish what fresh air on its own might not be able. It is certainly refreshing, though it should not be, to have a production that takes class seriously as a form of social distinction, a social barrier, though ultimately it will go beyond that, re-engaging with the opera in all its strange tragedy and tragic strangeness. By grounding itself in the here and now, but also a here and now our society largely wishes to ignore, it challenges, but it challenges further and with brilliant theatricality by the course subsequently taken. 

Rusalka – not strictly her ‘name’, but it is all we have, and ‘the rusalka’ or even ‘the sprite’ would seem unduly pedantic – lives in a shared, ground-floor Berlin apartment, a WG or Wohngemeinschaft, her flatmates the other three nymphs and Vodník (if you prefer, the Watergoblin). She does not fit in with, or has grown distant from, her female flatmates at least; they are so much more laid back, fun-loving, quite happy in their less-than-ideal home of disrepair. Theirs is a working class, it seems, the bourgeoisie simply cannot stomach, however much it might claim to act in its name. But nor, any more, can Rusalka, at least since she has seen signs of the life – above all, the Prince – upstairs. In his modern penthouse with balcony and views across the city including, yet far from restricted to the Fernsehturm and the Rotes Rathaus, he and his appallingly grotesque group of friends, the Foreign Princess (his ex-) included, have ‘made it’. They know each other inside and out, as it were; they probably even vote Green. 

Rusalka, Prince (Pavel Černoch), Gamekeeper (Adam Kutny),
Kitchen Boy (Clara Nadeshdin), and Ensemble

One can see why she would like to escape to that other world, embodied in an attractive, trendily dressed mysterious (to her, though not to us) stranger. For one thing, other than the drugs that may or may not be Ježibaba’s stock-in-trade (what is that fascinatingly beyond-good-and-evil or just-plain-evil neighbour doing?) she is hardly spoilt for choice in alternative paths. Needless to say, an actually existing working-class young woman is the most shocking sight of all to the Prince’s friends and they work immediately to exclude her, the Foreign Princess going all out to rekindle those embers until the culpably weak yet more sympathetic Prince succumbs. No wonder the two sides cannot communicate, at least not until it is too late. For it is important to recognise that Rusalka fits in on neither side of this social divide. She only discovers – and this is entirely faithful to the work – where she might have done far too late. There is, again as in the work, a sort of tragic communion in that the Prince realises too late; he can only do what is right (for him, as much as ethically) by surrendering his life, which, movingly he does. 

In a programme interview, Mundruczó says he kept thinking of Kafka when working on the opera: doubtless a surprising reference for some of us, the Prague connection, albeit intergenerational, notwithstanding. But that may be to fall for outdated ‘national’ histories of music. Why not, after all? It certainly comes into his own in the third act here, where the action transfers less to a house than a cellar of horrors. Having returned to Ježibaba, been scorned and perhaps even poisoned, Rusalka leaves behind the world of social realism in which we imagined we should remain until the end and morphs into an impossible creature, part human, part goodness knows what, although it is perhaps not coincidental that its black suggests the colour of refuse and its disposal. One can and perhaps should read that in social and environmental ways; after all, what could be more of a social issue, what could hit the working class harder, than the destruction of the planet? But the aesthetic is actually quite different; one can read it for ‘meaning’ in that way, but the vision seems to lie beyond that: something spellbinding, from which one wishes to avert one’s eyes in horror at the agony Rusalka is experiencing, yet cannot. It is more filmic than theatrically Gothic, I think, but that choice seems a deliberate decision, again, judging from the interview, to attempt to reach younger audiences with different frames of reference. Whatever one might think of that – I am not sure I am the target audience here – for me it works. It truly unsettles and actually leads us to reconsider clashes between ‘natural’ and ‘human’, or ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ worlds very much as the work does—yet which can become lost if the setting is too folk-like. A sort of deformed, already-dead tree-in-plastic has grown, suffocating and perhaps literally trashing all that approach it.

Rusalka, Prince, Third Nymph (Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein)

Fairy tales, told properly, are dark, even sick, not through a sort of tired, bourgeois exhibitionism – that might be better left upstairs in the deceased Prince’s apartment – but because they tell of dreams, fantasies, delights, and horrors. They are not of the sanitised, commercial world of Disney, but come from a place of sex, violence, and more. The mirror they hold up is truthful because it is distorted, not despite that distortion. This production recognises such twisted truths and turns them into a drama at least implicit in Dvořák’s –and Jaroslav Kvapil’s – work and world. It may predate Freud and Kafka, but it is not without connections and even presentiments. I have nothing at all against a production presenting a single-minded view of a work, incorporating more current concerns, and so on. The work, whatever it may be, will survive. But a particular point of interest here is that the director does not impose a framework, even a related conceptual framework, on the work, but rather presents such a related framework as a way in to experience or re-experience the very strangeness of the work ‘itself’. 

For Dvořák progresses in this score too; even in so late a work as this, written after (!) Pelléas et Mélisande, he does not rest on his laurels. If those laurels are too folk-like for some early on – their loss, but there is no accounting for taste – then they surely will not be by the third act. For me, conductor Robin Ticciati and the superlative Staatskapelle Berlin came truly into their own in this act, opening up a range of post-Wagnerian language and emotion, not just or even principally emotion, extending beyond what I have heard from Ticciati previously (save, perhaps, at Glyndebourne for the dramaturgically unfortunate Ethel Smyth opera, The Wreckers). Not that there was anything wrong with what he did earlier. I initially found it a bit hard-driven, but came to realise that this was probably as much a reading developed in tandem with the production as a conception ‘in itself’ of the score. Lack of what might be thought of as sentimentality – not necessarily so, but that is arguably another matter – was the point. It was not cold, but nor was it a kitsch (or readable as such) tale of forest life. 

Rusalka, Ježibaba (Anna Kissjudit)

The same might be said of performances from an excellent cast, only more so, for there was some singing of ravishing warmth—but not only of that. Making her role debut, Christiane Karg not only traced the journey(s) proposed by composer, librettist, conductor, director, and more; she was instrumental in creating them. Occasionally during the first act, I wondered whether she might be a little under-powered, and perhaps there were a few first-night nerves there, but this was more, I think, a matter of wise marshalling of resources and dramatic trajectory. In many ways, I liked the way the Song to the Moon did not become a stand-alone aria and indeed related strongly to the music surrounding it, but I can well imagine some not having done so. Whatever one’s position on that – mostly a matter of personal preference – this Rusalka grew in stature through shocking experience, a tragic heroine to remember for the denouement. 

There was tremendous acting on her part too. Pavel Černoch’s Prince was similarly, if differently, involving. Despite it all, and partly on account of twin vocal intelligence and beauty, one could not help but like him, and again shared his ultimate tragedy at the close. Mika Kares’s Vodník also grew as his character – and the truth that character told – increasingly gained our sympathy. Anna Samuil offered glamour and refulgence – just the thing – for the Foreign Princess. Anna Kissjudit’s already horrible Ježibaba became all the more splendidly, horrifyingly so on her return, just as the production demanded, without sacrifice to more ‘traditional’ vocal values. Smaller roles and choral parts were all well taken, all contributing to a greater musicodramatic whole. 

As for the audience member who not only booed the end of the first act, but through his failure to stop – I am trying to be polite – seemed determine to prevent the second from beginning, what part of that whole troubled him so much? And why?

Carmen, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 7 March 2020

  

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Micaëla (Christiana Karg) and chorus members

Carmen – Anita Rachvelishvili

Don José – Michael Fabiano

Escamillo – Lucio Gallo

Dancaïro – Jaka Mihelač

Remendado – Ziad Nehme

Moralès – Adam Kutny

Zuniga – Jan Martiník

Micaëla – Christiane Karg

Frasquita – Alyona Abramova

Mercédès – Serena Sáenz

Lillas Pastia – Klaus Christian Schreiber

Martin Kušej (director)

Herbert Stöger (revival director)

Jens Kilian (set designs)

Heidi Hackl (costumes)

Reinhard Traub (lighting)

Children's Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (chorus director: Vincenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Like stagings of any opera – Elektra almost an exception – Carmens vary, though perhaps not so much as they ought. I have seen a few: from those that do not even to try (Francesca Zambello and her donkey, Aletta Collins for the embarrassing nadir of vapidity) to brilliant, interrogative reimagination (Dmitri Tcherniakov), via a valiant yet strangely tedious attempt to recreate (Barrie Kosky) and a relatively straightforward updating that yet remained on a dramatic knife-edge (Calixto Bieito). Not until now, however, had I seen Martin Kušej’s 2004 Staatsoper Unter den Linden production.

Situated omewhere between Bieito and Tcherniakov, albeit closer to the former, it holds up very well, especially when conducted by Daniel Barenboim, who knows it of old and offers, so it seems, a reading of this rather than a generic Carmen. There is little, thank God, of the picturesque here. In a production that put me in mind somewhat of his 2003 Don Giovanni (Salzburg), Kušej, like Barenboim, presents a dark, large-scale tragedy, in which even moments of interiority, emerging painful in their loneliness, seem defined by a grander canvas of the implacable. It stands a world away from the work’s opéra comique origins, which may concern some. All the worse for them; so, after all, are we. The question is whether it works, and it does. In that respect, I recalled another Salzburg Mozart production, Claus Guth’s 2006 Figaro. It sounds, disregarding as it does so much of what we might consider ‘essential’, as though it should not work, at least on paper, yet it does, having one reassess both the work internally and its place in a broader scheme of theatrical drama.

That fatal relationship between internal and external may indeed be understood to lie at the heart of this staging. A soldier faces a firing squad as the curtain rises: a daily occurrence or a foretelling of something unique? There is no need to choose, any more than there will be later when Carmen reads her cards, ostensibly with other the gypsies, yet actually alone, physically and psychologically, at the front of the stage. Jens Kilian’s elemental designs and the harsh environment – more Lorca than Mérimée? – in which they appear to be situated sometimes revolve to reveal something beneath or beyond, albeit through eyes we may wish or claim were not ours, yet unquestionably are. There is something pornographically joyless, recalling the director’s Don Giovanni, to the couplings that ensue when soldiers – and we – penetrate the hitherto mysterious factory. There will be along, whether at Lillas Pastia’s, in the mountains, or at the final bullfight. That is not to deny, but rather to heighten, the extent of violence at work, whether implicit or explicit, externalised or sublimated. Much of what unfolds may be ‘just’ something to do. Better than doing nothing? Perhaps: it is difficult to say; this does not seem to be a world given to reflection. We ask what Wagner means by love all the time; why not, at least on occasion, what Bizet does too?

Don José (Michael Fabiano), Carmen (Anita Rachvelshvili)

Nietzsche’s clarion call, ‘il faut méditerraniser la musique’, to exalt the sunny physicality of Carmen over the northern, décadent idealism of Wagner and worse, his disciples, comes ironically to seem the height of sentimentality, a typically German exaltation of ‘the south’ and evasion of the much-vaunted truth. Myth, instead, returns, a cold, hostile chorus, at least in external terms, not only participating in the action but holding it to scrutiny. Masks at the last invite the full, Attic horror we deluded ourselves was not really involved. Perhaps Wagner was right after all; at the very least, his tragic forebears seem to have been. The circle ultimately is closed, Carmen closing as it had begun; Don José faces a firing squad. The curtain falls, catharsis denied.

Carmen

If it would be a gross exaggeration to call Barenboim’s conducting of Carmen Wagnerian, such exaggeration may point, circuitously, in the right direction. Everything was not frenetic; all was not, in the banal sense, merely ‘colourful’. There was at times something almost glacial to the work’s progress, in recognition of bolder claims and connections. There was space – and this was not only, or even principally, a matter of speed – for reflection, for questioning, for self-interrogation. Savage turns, sometimes yet not always pretty on the surface, could then register with the bite they deserved. With the Staatskapelle Berlin playing at the height of its powers, resonances which rarely if emerge were able to do so. At the opening of the third act, for instance, truly exquisite horn playing, tone and phrasing clear as they was warm, momentarily had me imagine, if not a Mahlerian vista, then of an attempt to summon one up. It was not that playing or conducting in any sense suggested Mahler, let alone ‘sounded like’ such music, but rather that this was not a performance delimited by self-imposed constraint; it was open to what we, as well as it, might bring to the work. I realised that Berio’s play with Spanish Boccherini, Quattro versioni originali della ‘Ritirata notturna di Madrid’, was closer to the mark; rather it soon became so. We were not so very distant, then, from Seville after all. The scale and cruelty, however, of the musicodramatic canvas, or rather the cruelty that could develop within, was the point, mirroring, intensifying, even inciting what unfolded onstage.

Frasquita (Alyona Abramova), Moralès (Adam Kutny), Carmen, Lillas Pastia (Klaus Christian Schreiber),
Mercédès (Serena Sáenz) 

Much unfolded courtesy of Anita Rachvelishvili in the title role. Her lower register must be heard to be believed: not only its tonal richness, but also what she accomplishes with it. Hers was a magnetic, thoughtful, and far from lazily conventional performance from beginning to end. Likewise Michael Fabiano’s typically committed Don José. Christiane Karg’s Micaëla was perhaps not best served by the concerns of the staging, yet beguiled anyway. The chorus, inexplicably booed by one audience member behind me, was excellent in every respect, a good few of which would not always be called upon in a production of Carmen; likewise the large cast of extras. Jaka Mihelač, Ziad Nehme shone remarkably as Dancaïro and Remendado, whether in stage or vocal presence. Only Lucio Gallo’s woolly Escamillo seriously disappointed, more a minor Sopranos character than a virile toreador. If not every cast member’s French language and style perfect, it would be curmudgeonly to say more than that; the dramatic whole outweighed any minor shortcomings. A Carmen, then, to make one think; there are all too many others for those who would rather not.

VSO/Harding - Schumann, Scenes from Goethe's Faust, 22 November 2015

Konzerthaus, Vienna

Szenen aus Goethes Faust, WoO 3

Faust, Pater Seraphicus, Dr Marianus – Christian Gerhaher

Gretchen, Una poenitentum – Christiane Karg
Mephistopheles, Böser Geist – Alastair Miles
Marthe, Sorge, Magna Peccatrix – Christina Landshamer
Mangel, Maria Aegyptica, Mater Gloriosa – Gerhild Romberger
Noth, Mulier Samaritana – Jennifer Johnston
Schuld – Anna Huntley
Ariel, Pater Exstaticus – Andrew Staples
Pater Profundus – Franz-Josef Selig
Eine Büßerin – Elisabeth Erhenfellner
Chorus soloist – Michael Sachsenmaier

 Vienna State Opera Youth Chorus (chorus master: Johannes Mertl)

Wiener Singakademie (chorus master: Heinz Ferlesch)

Vienna Symphony Orchestra

Daniel Harding (conductor)

 

I have had to wait a long time to hear Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s Faust ‘live’, since, as an undergraduate, buying a second-hand copy of Britten’s recording. Perhaps there has been a London performance since I have become a regular concert-goer; if so, I have not noticed it. Quite why is baffling. It is, by any standards, a fine work, perhaps not so ‘individual’ as the Schumann we know from the piano music and songs, although perhaps that is as much a matter of our conception of ‘individuality’ as anything else. There is certainly ‘originality’ – that most Romantic of constructs, but a construct to which we all, if we are honest and not absurdly modish, remain rightly in thrall – in much of the orchestral writing, which whatever its kinship with the work of other composers, could hardly ever, perhaps could never, have been written by anyone else. Yes, it requires a good few soloists and a chorus, but so do many other works. And if Goethe notoriously told Eckermann that Mozart would have had to compose his Faust, then Goethe was notoriously wrong about all manner of things musical.

Comparisons more odious than usual presented themselves early on, given that I had heard Bernard Haitink and the Chamber of Orchestra just two nights earlier. Nevertheless, if Daniel Harding’s brisk way with the Overture, at least initially, was not how I hear it in my head, it had its own justification, and he showed himself perfectly willing to yield, rather beautifully, for the more ‘feminine’ – forgive the gendered language, but it is surely apt in this of all cases – music. A contrast between Faust and Gretchen was clearly being set up, both in work and in performance, and yet something in common too: in typically nineteenth-century terms, Eve was created from Adam’s rib. I need not labour the point by saying too  much about Robert and Clara. In any case, female voices are far from neglected as the work proceeds, Schumann almost careless in his requirements. And so, after that rather Harnoncourt-like opening, I had no quarrel, or even query, with Harding’s tempi. There was plenty of ebb and flow, and if there might sometimes have been more colour in the Vienna Symphony Orchestra’s response – not to mention a few too many fluffs in the brass department – there was good playing throughout, excellent in the more vigorous sections and often beguiling in the more ‘poetic’, sensitive passages. Choral singing was excellent throughout, too, both from the Wiener Singakademie, large in numbers yet lithe and lively, and from the young singers from the Opernschule der Wiener Staatsoper, winningly seraphic. The Dies irae passages properly chilled, yet without melodrama; musical values were always to the fore.

The solo singing was for me the highlight. Since he had the lion’s share of it, it is hardly surprising that I should mention Christian Gerhaher first and foremost. The beauty of his vocal delivery was matched to a tee by the acuity of his verbal response. These were clearly words that meant a great deal to him – they do, surely, to any German – but nothing was taken for granted. Gerhaher was not ‘just’ singing Goethe; he was singing Schumann’s Goethe. His shading and phrasing were such as one might have expected in a performance of Dichterliebe. There was, moreover, Faustian defiance, when called for; and drama worthy of the stage – if unstageable – in Faust’s death. Gerhaher’s roles in the Third Part were carefully differentiated; now he was one soloist among many. And those other soloists were an impressive bunch too; there was not a weak link in the cast. Christiane Karg offered a well-judged match of vocal refulgence and drama, again always founded in the text. Andrew Staples sounded every inch a Tamino in his roles, Schumann’s fantastic writing for Ariel benefiting from a meltingly Romantic evocation in vocal and instrumental terms. Alastair Miles proved a stentorian Mephistopheles, and Christina Landshamer a perky, intelligent soprano. Franz-Josef Selig sounded as his usual, beneficent self: always more than welcome. Ensemble writing was always well attended to, balances permitting Schumann’s lines to tell both contrapuntally and harmonically.

 

 

This is a work we need to hear far more often, but this was a good occasion on which to start. Like many, I really have not the slightest idea what Goethe meant by his ‘ewig-Weibliche’ panacea, and probably should rather keep it that way, but Schumann’s unexpectedly – even when one knows it – non-soaring conclusion offers, if not a solution, then, after the splendidly blazingly writing beforehand, a welcome deflection. That, moreover, was how it sounded here.

.

 

Salzburg Festival (3): Karg/Martineau - Wolf, Montsalvatge, Duparc, Ravel, Hahn, Koechlin, Poulenc, and Barber, 11 August 2015

Mozarteum

Wolf – Kennst du das Land; Mir ward gesagst, du reisest in die Ferne; Mein Liebster singt am Haus im Mondenscheine; Mein Liebster ist so klein; Ich ließ mir sagen und mir ward erzählt; Ich hab’ in Penna einen Liebsten wohnen; Sagt, seid Ihr es, feiner Herr; In dem Schatten meiner Locken; Klinge, klinge, mein Pandero

Montsalvatge – Cinco canciones negras
Duparc – L’Invitation au voyage
Ravel – Cinq mélodie populaires grecques
Hahn – Lydé; Vile potabis; Tyndaris
Koechlin – Chanson d’Engaddi, op.56 no.1; La Chanson d’Ishak de Mossoul, op.84 no.8; Le Voyage, op.84 no.2
Poulenc – Voyage à Paris; Montparnasse; Hyde Park; Hôtel
Barber – Solitary hotel; Sure on this shining night

Christiane Karg (soprano)

Malcolm Martineau (piano) 

 

One of the most tiresome clichés of contemporary life, and the competition is stiff, is that of the ‘journey’. It perhaps reached its bathetic nadir – I say ‘perhaps’, since I cannot claim to have read the book – in the title of Tony Blair’s autobiography. (Yes, Tony: what really matters most about the invasion of Iraq is how it affected you and your ‘journey’.) How refreshing it was, then, to have an intelligently programmed recital which presented an array of different journeys, actual and anticipated, in excellent performances from Christiane Karg and Malcolm Martineau.

We began with Wolf and specifically with Goethe (not, one suspects, artists with whom our beloved ex-Prime Minister has spent much time). There was nothing of the warm up – how could there be? – to Kennst du das Land? Karg sang as if reaching out – not, I hasten to add, in the sense of a Blairite ‘journey’ – towards the land where lemons blossom, Martineau’s piano part offering Lisztian urgency. On the level of small detail – slightly lingering upon ‘Geliebter’, ‘glänzt’ whispered almost as Schwarzkopf were reborn – and the longer line, with all its increasing dramatic urgency, this seemed to me a model performance. Mir ward gesagt, du reisest in die Ferne, first of the Paul Heyse settings, sounded as continuation and foil in equal measure. The spirit of Chopin’s mazurka pervaded Mein Liebster singt am Haus im Mondenscheine, whilst performative wit, especially to the ending, brought smiles, inward and outward, in Mein Liebster ist so klein. Moving from Italy to Spain, Sagt, seid Ihr es, feiner Herr, sounded imbued with the spirit of the dance. Again, a knowing smile, visible and audible, characterised the final ‘Ach nein!’

Xavier Montsalvatge’s Cinco canciones negras proved a revelation to me: expressing the voice, it seemed, of a Catalan Poulenc. The habanera rhythm of the opening ‘Cuba dentro de un piano’ offers scope, fully realised, for rhythmic play with word endings. Karg and Martineau seemed equally in their element. Rhythmic flexibility and intriguingly ‘different’ harmonies were the order of the day in the ensuing ‘Rhythmus der Habanera’. Karg’s delicious pianissimo singing was the abiding memory of ‘Canción de cuna para dormer a un negrito’. The set reached a wonderfully lively conclusion in ‘Canto Negro’.

Duparc’s L’Invitation au voyage initiated a series of French songs in the second half, the performance striking just the right note of invitingly French post-Wagnerism. The varying moods of Ravel’s Cinq melodies populaires grecques were unfailingly captured, verbal detail impressively present yet unexaggerated. Piano rhythms were flexible where necessary, insistent where necessary. Reynaldo Hahn, I am afraid, is a composer to whom I am yet to respond; the three Etudes latines we heard seemed very well performed, but as music, I found them little more than pleasant. Charles Koechlin offered something far more interesting. Chanson d’Engaddi emerged very much with a personal ‘voice’, its spare quality leading one in, especially with such varied vocal colourings, to the Schoenbergian harmonies of La Chanson d’Ishak de Mossoul.

 

Poulenc is so often at his finest in song, and so he proved again here. Voyage à Paris plunged us immediately into a world of unmistakeably Parisian urbanity, Montparnasse offering a sad foil of solitude, hinting at the world of La Voix humaine: those harmonies, that tristesse… Hyde Park again made me smile: surely the point, whilst the passing time – a Parisian Marschallin, perhaps – of Hôtel cast its own melancholy spell. The programme concluded with two songs by Samuel Barber. Karg’s vocal shading and her understated sadness had Solitary Hotel linger in the memory for some time.

Der Rosenkavalier, Semperoper Dresden, 14 December 2014

Semperoper

Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg – Anja Harteros

Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Peter Rose
Octavian – Sophie Koch
Herr von Faninal – Adrian Erőd
Sophie – Christiane Karg
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Christiane Kohl
Valzacchi – Thomas Ebenstein
Annina – Christa Mayer
Police Officer – Peter Lobert
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Simeon Esper
Faninal’s Major-domo – Tom Martinsen
A Notary – Matthias Henneberg
A Landlord – Dan Karlström
A Singer – Yosep Kang
A Milliner – Nadja Mchantaf
A Vendor of Pets – Mert Süngü
Leopold – Dirk Wolter
Lackeys – Ingolf Stollberg, Andreas Keinze, Jun-Seok Bang, Matthias Beutlich
Waiters – Rafael Harnisch, Torsten Schäpan Norbert Klesse, Thomas Müller
Three noble orphans – Jennifer Porto, Emily Dorn, Christel Loetzsch
Lerchenauschen – Alexander Födisch, Michael Wettin, Thomas Müller, Mirko Tuma, Werner Harke, Holger Steinert
Mohammed (‘The little Moor’) – Amala Boashie

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Christoph Schubiger (set designs)

Jessica Karge (costumes)

Chorus of the Saxon State Opera (chorus master: Wolfram Tetzner)

Members of the Children’s Chorus of the Saxon State Opera

Staatskapelle Dresden

Christian Thielemann (conductor) 

 

A superlative evening! Above all on the musical side, Christian Thielemann’s conducting having been the initial attraction for me in the first place, but with an intelligent staging too, which quite belied its years. Uwe Eric Laufenberg was announced as director of the new Bayreuth Parsifal after I had arranged to attend this performance, but since I was unfamiliar with his work, this proved a subsequent attraction. What, if anything, this 2000 staging might tell us about a 2015 Parsifal remains to be seen, but, quite in contrast to reports I had heard (‘boring’, ‘conventional’, etc.), this proved, if not the equal of Harry Kupfer’s Salzburg production this summer, then a more than acceptable alternative. When one recalls in horror Munich’s perpetual ‘revival’, if only in name, of an Otto Schenk production long past its sell-by-date, now at long last set to be pensioned off, Laufenberg offers almost the height of radicalism.

 

The staging of the Prelude seems to me a miscalculation, and an embarrassing one at that. Strauss makes it perfectly clear the sort of thing that is going on. We have little need to see the Marschallin and Octavian gingerly undressing each other (though not very far) and disappearing under the sheets. It certainly is not raunchy; instead, we appear stranded in a no-man’s-land – literally, I suppose – between ‘tastefulness’ and The Benny Hill Show. Things improve thereafter, however. Perhaps the most impressive developmental aspect is the way in which the sense of time, or better of times, creeps upon us, becomes more complicated – just as in the work itself. The Marschallin and Octavian might well be where they ‘should’ be, in Maria Theresa’s Vienna, or rather in Hofmannsthal’s intricate construction thereof, which is not to be confused, nor is it intended to be, with the ‘real thing’, or Ranke’s wie es eigentlich gewesen. As the first act progresses, however, it gradually becomes clearer that we are, or have progressed, some time later than we had suspected. Is it the nineteenth century, the period of those Johann Strauss waltzes Richard sublimated? It seems as though it might be, and then, through costumes and actions, we realise that we are actually a little later. The time of composition? Yes, perhaps. Ah no, in the second act, in Faninal’s strenuously ‘beautiful’, up-to-date palace, we realise that we are probably a little later still. The Marschallin, of course, lives in a more well-worn establishment, with truer, or at least more ancient, pedigree, still living, more or less, though perhaps not entirely, the life she imagines, we imagine, her eighteenth-century self having lived. At least when at home; the third act deepens historical understanding further. Octavian seems to understand his life similarly when with her, but proves more likely, aristocratic pride notwithstanding, to be influenced by his surroundings; after all, he is young and easily swayed.

 

The latest – that is, for the interwar years – ‘media’ techniques are employed in Faninal’s Faustian bargain: cameramen record the event, but have to be prevented, with limited success, by his Major-domo, the characterful Tom Martinsen. It is not as if the years have actually passed; this is not Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal. However, we appreciate the construction of past and present, so long as we pay attention both to the general and the specifically scenic. Moreover, we are certainly made aware, without having the point unduly hammered home, that the media attention paid to Sophie is very much an aspect of that heterosexual male gaze which excites itself with the cavorting of three women in the first place. That is not, of course, to say that others cannot find much to interest them too in those relationships, but rather to remind ourselves of the ‘norm’ on which both work and production seem predicated. The special prominence granted Mohammed, listed in the programme as ‘der kleine Mohr’ seems odd, though. He is kept as something akin to the Marschallin’s pet, and the racial overtones – especially when all the other children were so clearly of ‘Germanic’ appearance – unsettle without evident reason.

 

It is an impressive but far from obtrusive frame, then, in which the specific action unfolds. The success of that action is doubtless, especially at this remove from the original production, to be attributed more to the efforts of those on stage than to the production ‘itself’, but the latter does no harm. Anja Harteros proved well-nigh perfect as the Marschallin. Her grace and conviction were married to an alluring tone that yet did not preclude subtle verbal nuance. One believed in her – and felt with her. Sophie Koch’s Octavian is of course a very well-known quantity, but seemed reinvented for the occasion, keenly responsive to others on stage, eminently plausible in his/her various guises. Christiane Karg’s Sophie was a far more interesting character than one generally encounters; normally, my reaction is likely to tend towards irritation at least at her vacuity. Not so in Karg’s case; there was clearly ambition here, on the part of both singer and character. There was also clearly instant attraction – perhaps the production overdoes this? – between her and the rose-bearing count. Adrian Erőd’s Faninal was dry-toned to start with, but gained in vocal lustre thereafter, offering throughout a detailed portrayal, whether musically, verbally, or on stage. Peter Rose’s Ochs was simply wonderful: a buffo portrayal, yes, but a portrayal born of deep musico-dramatic intelligence, evidently gauging and creating the moment as it presented itself. His way with Hofmannsthal’s text lay beyond reproach. His impatience during the resumption of the Italian Singer’s aria offered a masterclass in silent stage presence. No one disappointed and most of the ‘minor’ roles strongly impressed, not least Yosep Kang’s ardent Singer and Thomas Ebenstein and Christa Mayer as the other ‘Italians’, both more obviously characters than caricatures.

 

Thielemann’s conducting was perhaps the finest I have ever heard in this work; so was the playing of that great Strauss ensemble, the Staatskapelle Dresden. The openings to the first two acts were perhaps surprisingly, though far from inappropriately, vigorous, Octavian’s – and Sophie’s – youthful impetuosity to the fore. But the flexibility with which Thielemann held and developed Strauss’s line was something truly to savour. Likewise the colour, depth, and allure of the orchestra, which Thielemann played with virtuosity and understanding that respected the score and yet beyond it into the truest of performative ‘interpretation’. Caesuras that might on paper sound as if they would disrupt instead increased our anticipation, the longer line somehow maintained. There was doubtless an element of theatricality, even of showmanship, but born of a deep knowledge of ‘what works’; to steal from Strauss’s operatic future, La Roche himself might have approved. Strauss’s materialistic development-cum-rejection of Wagner’s orchestral metaphysics was demonstrated, experienced far better than words could ever hope to do. This was a Greek Chorus that answered, perhaps after Goethe as much as Nietzsche, to no gods above. Our life, as the opera and its performance made clear, was here on earth, in the present – and yet it was also somewhere else and in the past that had made that present, even if that past had never actually been present. Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding…

 

Salzburg Festival (1) - Orfeo ed Euridice, 13 August 2010

Grosses Festspielhaus

Images: © Hermann und Clärchen Baus

Orfeo – Elisabeth Kulman
Euridice – Genia Kühmeier
Amore – Christiane Karg

Dieter Dorn (director)
Jürgen Rose (designs)
Tobias Löffler (lighting)
Ramses Sigl (choreography)
Hans-Joachim Ruckhäberle (dramaturgy)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Thomas Lang)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Riccardo Muti (conductor)


I have occasionally debated with myself which work would open my fantasy new regime at Covent Garden: the one where Donizetti and Verdi are banished for ever more, where the demands for ‘star’ singers are simply ignored, where ‘corporate hospitality’ is banished still further away than L’elisir d’amore, where we have some modern equivalent to the eminently sensible proposals presented by Wagner to the King of Saxony. Busoni’s Doktor Faust perhaps? Still a front runner, not least on account of its continued absence from so many stages, London included. An Orfeo would have to be a serious contender, too, though, not least on account of its foundational myth of the power of music. The question is which – and despite various other fine works (later in the opening season?), it would have to come down to Monteverdi or Gluck. The former’s Orfeo, the first great opera, has as pressing a claim as any, but so does Gluck’s astonishing reform opera: a statement of intent not unlike that with which the new regime would begin. Moreover, Gluck seems barely more popular than Busoni with those who hold the reins of programming power.

Fortunately, Riccardo Muti, following a period of dissatisfaction with Salzburg opera under Gérard Mortier’s regime, is once again a fixture at the Festival, and Muti has long been an ardent advocate of Gluck. His live recording of Iphigénie en Tauride from La Scala is certainly the finest of the work in question and perhaps the finest of any Gluck opera. Muti now conducts his first Gluck opera in Salzburg, the first staged Orfeo ed Euridice since Karajan's more than half a century ago, in 1959. (John Eliot Gardiner conducted concert performances in 1990.) Though Muti’s Gluck remains blissfully, even defiantly, free of modish ‘period’ concerns, there was nothing routine to this reading: quite different from either his Milanese performances or indeed his New Philharmonia recording.

This must be ascribed in part to the presence of the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit. Its golden sweetness is quite unlike that of any other orchestra, especially when playing for a favoured conductor, as here. This was a more Mozartian Gluck than one often hears, or indeed has heard from this particular conductor: tender and seductive, as Orpheus should be. The VPO’s fabled strings were of course crucial in this respect, but likewise its Orphic harp, those melting horns – sterner when necessary – and, not least, its truly magic flutes. The size of the orchestra was neither small nor especially large, but seemed just right for the Grosses Festspielhaus. (Another, especially cretinous, aspect of fundamentalist criticism is furious insistence upon particular sized forces, irrespective of the venue and acoustic.) The harpsichord (Speranda Spaccucci), contrary to reports I had read, was audible throughout. I am unconvinced that this is necessary, but it was interesting to note that some writers must have decided beforehand that they would not be able to hear the continuo, and therefore did not – or so they claimed. Muti’s tempi obeyed no particular pattern, taking their cue instead from the requirements of the drama: on occasion, though only on occasion, daringly slow, especially during heightened sections of recitative, but the music never dragged. The overture had me slightly worried: rather hard-driven, à la Toscanini¸ but that was a single exception.

This performance was fortunate too in its singers. The Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus sang excellently throughout: intelligible, implacable, imploring. Genia Kühmeier was a beautifully toned Euridice and Christiane Karg a winning Amore: not at all irritating, which it is sadly necessary to note. It was, however, quite rightly Elisabeth Kulman’s Orfeo, along with the orchestra, who was the true star here. Kulman’s richly instrumental tone, redolent of the chalumeaux Muti perhaps surprisingly elected to use, acted both as Orpheus’s voice and his lyre. Detailed attention to words heightened rather than detracted from her often heartrending delivery of the vocal line. Che farò senza Euridice?’ sounded not as if it were merely that aria, but as a crucial part of the drama, prepared by recitative; though the voices are very different, the performance that most readily sprang to mind was that of Dame Janet Baker. (Her recording under Raymond Leppard remains the safest first choice, though there is always Furtwängler…)

Dieter Dorn’s production is often attractive, not least when it comes to Jürgen Rose’s costumes and the arresting images of Hades, with which the second act opens. It is difficult, however, to discern any especial view of the work: fine, up to a point, since it is perfectly capable of speaking for itself, but a little disappointing. Where the production really falls down is in the ballet scenes. They present a potential problem, but there is no need for them to fall as flat as the final one in particular does. A ballet would have done fine; one might have considered it the obvious option for ballet music… Instead, we have a tedious working out of what seems to be ‘how the story just told is relevant today’. It is not suggested that the power of music might be at work, but rather that we should all work through our problems and live with each other as best we can. The tedious ‘movement’ resembles the sort of thing one might see in primary schools: a pity.

Muti being Muti, we certainly do not hear the bravura aria that often closes the first act (stage-stopping, but perhaps not even by Gluck at all, and out of keeping with the reformist ethos), nor even the Dance of the Blessed Spirits. It is the Vienna version we hear. I see no problem in principle with performing a wisely assembled composite edition, but there is an integrity to Gluck’s first version that is justification enough. It was a brave and good decision to perform the work without an interval. We did not even hear applause until the end.

Please do not take as written the a priori criticisms of Muti’s Gluck from ‘period’ fanatics; they could have composed – and perhaps did – their fatwas before hearing the performances, as tiresomely predictable as a newspaper column from a Polly Toynbee or a Simon Heffer. These critics will never be satisfied until any semblance of humanity has been extracted from Baroque, Classical, and even much later music. To treat this foundational musical drama as music, and not as an exercise in pseudo-archaeology has become, astonishingly enough, a rare thing indeed. Only a conductor of Muti’s standing would dare do so today. The rewards reaped are rich indeed.