Salzburg Festival (7) - The Makropulos Case, 25 August 2011

Grosses Festspielhaus





Images © Walter Mair/Salzburg Festival

Emilia Marty – Angela Denoke Dr Kolenatý – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Vítek – Peter Hoare
Krista – Jurgita Adamonytė
Albert Gregor – Raymond Very
Jaroslav Prus – Johan Reuter
Janek – Aleš Briscein
Hauk-Šendorf – Ryland Davies
Chambermaid – Linda Ormiston
Conscientious Objector performing Community Service – Peter Lobert

Jin Ling – Sasha Rau
Mary Long – Silvia Fenz
Anita Stadler – Anita Stadler

Christoph Marthaler (director)
Anna Viebrock (designs)
Olaf Winter (lighting)
Joachim Rathke (associate director)
Malte Ubenauf (dramaturgy)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)


My feelings about The Makropulos Case, or perhaps more accurately, my feelings during and after a performance of the work, remain somewhat in flux. Janáček does not pull the heartstrings so consistently as in some of his other works, but of course the coldness of E.M. is part of his point – and, by all accounts, she is treated far more sympathetically than in Karel Čapek’s play. Even more so than, say, Jenůfa or Katya Kabanova, the vocal writing is conversational, the composer’s restraint admirable, even awe-inspiring: there is no more playing to the gallery here than in Pelléas – well, little more. The orchestra, then, plays its role as Wagnerian Greek Chorus. And yet, occasionally, I find that I am missing something: the question is whether that something missing is deliberately absent, whether, again, it is the dramatic point. And more so than those earlier Janáček masterpieces, rather like From the House of the Dead, I find myself reflecting afterwards, and for quite some time afterwards, on what is at stake in the drama. It is, then, an opera that makes one think, but perhaps only truly moves at the end, in the final peroration, both vocal and orchestral, when one finds that very same cyclical affirmation of life in death the composer voices in The Cunning Little Vixen, and arguably as in the earlier cited tragedies too.

Christoph Marthaler’s fine production of Katya Kabanova originated in Salzburg, before making its way to Paris, where I saw it earlier this year. I half expected to see The Makropulos Case similarly transposed to a joyless post-war East European setting, but in many respects, the setting (splendidly designed by Anna Viebrock) is rather ‘traditional’: there is certainly nothing for ‘traditionalists’ to complain about. Unless, that is, one includes the new material with which Marthaler introduces the work: a spoken reflective conversation, not without humour. Themes that will be explored during the work, most obviously the shortness of one’s allotted years, and what alternatives there might be, are adumbrated, without overstaying their welcome. (At least I thought so, though some in the audience seemed restless.) It would seem that there is some degree of reinstatement from Čapek’s play, but I shall leave delineation of that to those better informed. (I wish that I were…) There is even humour, as there is in the opera, concerning the ways of opera singers. Otherwise, one sees a court room, as one would expect, and pretty much in ‘period’, though the voguish practice of employing the same set for each act does lead to confusion: a court room is a bit of an odd place for Marty to succumb to Prus. (Doubtless we are not supposed to understand it that way, but it is a bit odd.) Other touches to either side of the principal room work better. A railway waiting room nicely suggests transience. Whilst I can imagine that some would be irritated by the depiction of a care home – replete with Zivildienstleistender (conscientious objector performing community service: no, I am not making this up) – on the other side of the stage, it aptly suggests the alternative to EM’s immortality. And therefore, as I said, really does make one think: given society’s present treatment of the elderly and infirm, it is by no means clear that one would not give elixir a try. If Christopher Alden’s ENO production probably made more of an immediate (stylish) impression on me when I saw it the first time, it began to irritate the second time around; it is probably fair to say that Marthaler’s production has made me think more, especially after the event. One would hardly expect Marthaler to play the work for laughs, and we can be grateful that he does not.

Angela Denoke performs estimably in the title role. It would be possible to castigate infelicities of tuning, for this, as one might have expected, was a performance very much in the ‘singing actress’ mould. However, such faults seemed to matter little, given the burning heat of her performance. Indeed, one could understand them, even if they were not intended this way, as contributing to the drama between aspiration to perfection and the frailty of flesh. Denoke held the vast stage of the Grosse Festspielhaus as her own, and rightly so. She was in every respect preferable to ENO’s Amanda Roocroft, though Cheryl Barker, on the first London run, was perhaps equally fine. I am rather surprised, however, to report that the other parts were more consistently cast in London (despite, of course, the gross handicap of singing in translation). Peter Hoare, for instance, was a much stronger Gregor than Salzburg’s dry-sounding Raymond Very; curiously, Hoare here movingly sang the role of Vítek. Aleš Briscein and Johan Reuter also just about stood out, though I have heard both singers to greater effect elsewhere. For there was a touch of anonymity to the general company, a surprising sense of routine, not to be exaggerated, but equally not the most memorable of Salzburg performances.

Esa-Pekka Salonen’s conducting of the Vienna Philharmonic proved somewhat disappointing. Though there were times when the orchestra sounded predictably gorgeous – and, unlike some, I really do not mind that in Janáček – one also had to reckon with a few too many loose threads, whether in terms of smudged and even missed entries, or a general lack of rhythmic bite, such as Sir Charles Mackerras and Sir Richard Armstrong both brought to the score in London. The VPO certainly can play this music; it did so memorably for Mackerras, amongst others. Here, however, it sometimes sounded as if Janáček were new and slightly unwelcome territory. Salonen seemed unwilling or unable to control the orchestra as he might have done, indeed perhaps to be still less in sympathy with Janáček’s music, the score somehow meandering aggressively, at least until the final act. Lack of tautness and indeed of formal perception went hand in hand with a tendency to play with loud indifference. Perhaps that is unduly harsh, but I expected great, or at least very good, things, and did not hear them. To my surprise, then, it proved to be Marthaler’s night rather than Salonen’s, though it was at least as much Denoke’s.

Bayreuth Festival (5) - Tristan und Isolde, 4 August 2011

Festspielhaus, Bayreuth

Isolde – Iréne Theorin
Brangäne – Michelle Breedt
Tristan – Robert Dean Smith
King Marke – Robert Holl
Kurwenal – Jukka Rasilainen
Melot – Ralf Lukas
Shepherd – Arnold Bezuyen
Steersman – Martin Snell
Sailor – Clemens Bieber

Christoph Marthaler (director)
Anna-Sophie Mahler (revival director)
Anna Viebrock (designs)
Malte Ubenauf (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Peter Schneider (conductor)

Over the past few years, I have seen and heard a good few performances of Tristan und Isolde. Only one has satisfied in terms of stage direction, namely that of Harry Kupfer for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. Before that, I have to go back to the late Herbert Wernicke’s intelligent, abstract – and generally unloved – production for Covent Garden. Some found Christof Loy’s successor production more ‘radical’, but for me it exemplified a failure that lies at the heart of so many stagings of the work, an inability to understand that humility here is a necessity rather than a mere virtue. The necessity, if I may repeat my words concerning Kupfer’s production, is ‘to do very little, not something that comes easily to many directors. And by saying “do very little,” I do not suggest reliance upon a superficial, empty minimalism, for, at the same time, something must be done. A concert performance could certainly work, up to a point, and would be vastly preferable to most of what is put before us, but staging nevertheless makes all the difference. Perhaps it is because, in Tristan, Wagner came closest to the Attic tragedy he so revered, that straightforwardness seems the only viable course here. (A production with masks might be an “idea” with potential.) There is no point in suggesting that Tristan is “about” anything other than what it is about, which might sound tautological and probably is, but it is certainly the case that some productions, profoundly unfaithful to a work, can succeed in turning it into something else. This does not seem to be the case with Tristan.’ Nietzsche was often wrong about Wagner, but he had the measure of Tristan, speaking not only of its ‘voluptuousness of Hell’, and needing to handle it with gloves, but of Wagner’s ‘opus metaphysicum’. If Tristan does not seem the most dangerous work of art ever created, one that could, as Wagner feared, drive audiences mad were it to be accorded a good performance, than something has gone terribly wrong; it has been diminished to no good end.

Christoph Marthaler does not irritate so much as Loy (at least we do not have Kurwenal and Brangäne mauling each other behind the curtains) or indeed as Claus Guth (for Zurich), but like them, he essentially transforms a metaphysical drama into a bourgeois drama. Part of the problem with all three directors, and indeed many others, would seem to be a lack of interest in Wagner’s music. What might work if Wagner had simply produced a spoken text rarely does so when one is dealing with a music drama. For in Tristan above all other works, it is the music that has priority, sometimes even chronologically, but more importantly in metaphysical terms. We are not really dealing with individual psychology, but with the catastrophic surging of Schopenhauer’s Will – or at least of something close to Schopenhauer’s conception of that primal force of energy (not to be confused with human will as generally, indeed properly, understood). Wagner is not the only guide to his œuvre, but he is surely worth and occasional hearing. It probably therefore ought to interest directors that, when providing his own summary in 1859, he did not even mention an ostensibly important phenomenal event such as King Marke’s act of forgiveness. The action, Wagner implies, is not really of this phenomenal world at all, but metaphysical. Even Tristan’s agonies go unmentioned on the way to ‘redemption: death, dying, destruction, never more to waken!’ (Erlösung: Tod, Sterben, Untergehen, Nichtmehrerwachen!)

What we have from Marthaler are instead three scenes of resolutely anti-metaphysical, anti-Romantic drabness, in which a story of undoubtedly damaged human beings. (I cannot comment on what difference, if any, Anna-Sophie Mahler’s revival direction made to Marthaler’s original conception; though the latter is available on DVD, I have not seen it. ‘Marthaler’, then, should generally be considered as shorthand for something that may or may not have been more complex.) Now no one in his right mind would deny that Tristan and Isolde are damaged human beings, but the question is whether that is the point of the drama, or, if you like, whether it is a point that may be made credibly in a production of the drama, a production that does not become merely reductive and deny Tristan its musico-dramatic power. I am not sure that a case has been made. The first act takes place in what appears to be an especially ‘institutional’ care home for the elderly. (Perplexingly, the central protagonists look younger in subsequent acts.) The décor could not be more depressing, doubtless a tribute to Anna Viebrock’s designs, if not to the Konzept. Certain forms of obsessive behaviour manifest themselves, for instance Tristan and Kurwenal’s odd hand movements, and the turning upside down and back up again of chairs. There is an almost Beckettian feel of waiting for Marke – who does not, in defiance of Wagner’s directions, turn up at the end of the act. Meanwhile, Wagner’s music tells a different story. Marthaler seems not so much to set his production against Wagner as simply not to have any interest in him.

The second act remains in the home, but the 'lovers' have smartened up a little and Marke’s visit finally does occur and the lovers have smartened up a little. True to apparent intent, he resembles Isolde’s beleaguered carer. In a nice touch, though, he buttons up her coat, the only sign that there may have been any feelings, let alone deeds, of passion. Tristan does not proceed even as far as that. We are told, perhaps correctly, that geriatric sex is all the rage; this did not seem worth the effort. Lights flicker on and off, presumably a nod to the distinction between Light and Day. Isolde points at them with the air of one suffering from mental affliction. Kurwenal very slowly makes his way around the multitude of light switches, to no avail. Is the problem that the home did not enlist the services of a decent electrician? There is one further moment of genuine dramatic power, when Melot, having grabbed Marke’s penknife, the stabbing having occurred – as it should, Tristan compelling Melot to stab him – Melot places it back in Marke’s hands. More chilling moments like that and the anti-metaphysical might have had more going for it, though I suspect the action would merely have seemed cluttered.

Then it is off to the hospital bed for the third act. Tristan’s bed is a peculiar thing: at one point it rises up, apparently by itself, to permit him to wander around. Problems with the lights follow him around, it seems. After Isolde’s arrival, whatever it is Kurwenal thinks – or claims – is happening, is not. Melot and company remain standing at the back of the stage. It might have made more sense if they had never arrived. At the end of her Verklärung, Isolde attains some sort of union with Tristan by covering herself with the bed sheets he has vacated. It has taken a long time for something not very interesting to happen. By contrast, what could be of more interest than what is probably the single most staggering operatic score ever written?

How did the score sound then? Peter Schneider did not scale the heights, but nor did he plumb the depths. Much as one might have expected then, except that he elicited a true ‘Bayreuth’ sound from the predictably magnificent orchestra, more so than any other conductor I heard in this run. Schneider’s experience with the acoustic clearly helps greatly. Unity was achieved during the second act by playing almost everything at a uniform tempo: better than arbitrary changes, I suppose, but remembering what Böhm, let alone Furtwängler, managed, I could not help but feel this was too easy a solution, and not a little dull. Still, I have heard far worse in Tristan, and Schneider certainly did not deserve to be booed.

In the context, I was astonished, though relieved, that Robert Dean Smith did not receive such a barrage. At his best, he was dull and inexpressive – though so, one might say was the production – but there were times when he struggled to be heard against Isolde, let alone the orchestra. It was unclear to me whether Kurwenal bringing him a glass of water during the cruel monologue was part of the production or a response to vocal problems; however, I am told that an earlier performance had been similarly underpowered. Another disappointment was the gruff, sometimes crude Kurwenal of Jukka Rasilainen. Michelle Breedt had her moments as Brangäne, but suffered from a few intonational difficulties. Thank goodness, then, for the excellent Isolde and Marke. Robert Holl breathed as much humanity as the production permitted – and probably a good deal more – into a carefully, yet never pedantically, enunciated portrayal, which understood that words and music come together with irresistible alchemy. Would that Marthaler had achieved the same realisation. Iréne Theorin’s Isolde sometimes threatened to eat Tristan for breakfast, but that was not her fault. If there was not the same degree of verbal engagement that Nina Stemme brought to the part at Covent Garden, nor the bitter sarcasm of a Birgit Nilsson, Theorin presented a majesty and an emotional honesty that reaped their own rewards. She proved as tireless as the part demands, a signal achievement in itself.

Katya Kabanova, Opéra national de Paris, 1 April 2011

Palais Garnier

Katerina Kabanova – Angela Denoke
Marfa Kabanicha – Jane Henschel
Varvara – Andrea Hill
Boris Grigoryevich – Jorma Silvasti
Vanya Kudrjas – Ales Briscein
Tikhon Ivanich Kabanov – Donald Kaasch
Saviol Dikoy – Vincent Le Texier
Kuligin – Michał Partyka
Glacha – Virginia Leva-Poncet
Feklucha – Sylvia Delaunay
Woman – Marie-Cécile Chevassus
Man – Ulrich Voss

Christoph Marthaler (director)
Joachim Rathke (co-director)
Anna Viebrock (sets, costumes)
Olaf Winter (lighting)
Thomas Stache (choreography)
Stefanie Carp (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Patrick Marie Aubert)
Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris
Tomáš Netopil (conductor)


For the third and last of my operatic nights in Paris, I remained with the Opéra national de Paris, but moved across town from the Bastille to the Palais Garnier, famously ‘in the style of Napoleon III’. Christoph Marthaler’s production of Katya Kabanova was on the menu. The Paris Opera had not staged Katya until as recently as 1988, in Götz Friedrich’s production, though the Belgrade Opera (!) had presented it in 1959 at the Théâtre des Nations, and the Opéra-Comique had offered a French-language version in 1968. Marthaler’s production was first staged at the Salzburg Festival in 1998, and came to the Palais Garnier in 2004, moving from one Gérard Mortier stronghold to another; it is encouraging to note that Nicolas Joel has not turned his back on every aspect of Mortier’s rule. It is also worth noting that it took Mortier to bring The Cunning Little Vixen to the Paris Opera: I saw the first, rather wonderful production only three years ago! The longtime neglect of Janáček, whether in France, Britain, or elsewhere, is truly baffling, yet it persists, giving all the more reason to be thankful for this Katya.

Images: Christian Leiber

I am not sure why Marthaler’s production has been performed at the Garnier rather than the Bastille; Friedrich’s, apparently, moved to the latter on revivals. Whether this were the intention or no, the contrast between the Garnier’s preposterously lovable extravagance – music almost seems beside the point – and the mise-en-scène was stark indeed. I can hear some readers groaning at the mere mention of a drab Eastern European apartment block, here powerfully evoked by Anna Viebrock’s set designs, but the test is whether the setting works. For the most part, I think, it does. The original Ostrovsky play, The Storm, and the opera are both set in a mid-nineteenth-century Russian provincial town, but the ‘provincial’ is more to the point than the ‘mid-nineteenth-century’, and even that could, I imagine, readily be translated into the suburban. The closed moral world of the apartment block’s inhabitants and their hypocrisy are searingly portrayed, choral hymn singing emanating and visible from one of the flats above. Indeed, one of the great virtues of this production is a chance to observe some of the goings-on elsewhere, whether from the ‘virtuous’, the potentially sympathetic (the violin soloist, not in the orchestra, but practising at his window), or the drunk (comedian, Ulrich Voss, whose shouting and staggering at the beginning of the third act will not have been to all tastes). Their uniform turning away as Katya’s torment moves her toward suicide is simple, powerful, and terrifying. There is, perhaps loss in that we never reach the Volga, yet claustrophobia is heightened by Katya drowning herself in the block’s courtyard fountain. I also found it a little confusing that characters exited through what appeared to be a wardrobe (this is hardly Narnia!), but not to worry.

Tomáš Netopil led the orchestra with considerable verve, although tension was not always maintained as it might be. The sheer orchestral delight and dramatic fervour of a conductor such as Sir Charles Mackerras is not his – yet. Angela Denoke was suffering from some ailment, according to an announcement made prior to the performance. I should never have been able to tell, for hers was a powerful portrayal indeed. Katya’s goodness shone through, yet never in an unbelievable way; one also knew that this was a woman, and a woman with needs. I believed in every word and every note she sang. Andrea Hill and Ales Briscein make for a winning couple as Varvara and Kudrjas, bright of tone and manner, though Varvara’s dancing threatens to irritate after a while, however much it may be intended dramatically to distinguish her from the stifling ‘morality’ of her environment. Not every performance was so impressive, though. Donald Kaasch passed muster as Tikhon, but sometimes sounded vocally as opposed to dramatically weak. (It did not help, moreover, that he looked more like the Kabanicha’s husband than her son.) Jorma Silvasti’s Boris lacked necessary allure: one needs to have some sense of what might attract Katya to him.

However, as so often, the Kabanicha threatened to steal the show, yet creditably did not quite do so. What a truly appalling character she is! We do not, it is true, know what has made her like that; whether it was something akin to what Katya herself suffers must remain speculation, though one cannot help but wonder. Be that as it may, her viciousness seems almost unparalleled in all opera. Jane Henschel quite made the character her own, no mere caricature, all the more malicious for presenting a properly sung portrayal. Interestingly, she will be singing Mrs Sedley at Covent Garden later this season: the more vicious the society... Her outdoor exhibitionism with Vincent Le Texier’s nasty Dikoy points up the hypocrisy nicely; she knows exactly what she was doing when she waves at the neighbours. Once they have withdrawn to her apartment, a quick spurt from the water fountain suggests that all is over as quickly as one might expect. The selfishness of the character is almost ritually enhanced by periodic retreats into her bedroom, where she will turn on the television or listen to the radio, eat some chocolates, lie down on the bed, and play with a squeaky toy. Production and performance work in tandem.

I was in two minds as to the delivery via loudspeakers of the choral singing at the end being. The effect was alienating, but I am not quite sure that gain outweighed loss. More importantly, however, I was profoundly moved by the performance as whole, once again marvelling at what a masterpiece this is. Marthaler will soon be directing more Janáček, in the guise of The Makropulos Case at this year’s Salzburg Festival, a production to which I look forward greatly. For those interested, his production is available (with Denoke and Henschel) on DVD; I have not seen the performance.