Messiah, Komische Oper, 21 September 2024

Hangar 4, Tempelhof Airport

Images: Jan Windszus Photography

Soprano – Julia Grüter
Mezzo-soprano – Rachael Wilson
Tenor – Julian Behr
Bass – Tijl Faveyts
Woman – Anouk Elias

Director – Damiano Michieletto
Set designs – Paolo Fantin
Costumes – Klaus Bruns
Choreography, co-director – Thomas Wilhelm
Dramaturgy – Mattia Palma, Daniel Andrés Eberhard

Choral Soloists and Project Chorus of the Komische Oper (chorus director: David Cavelius)

Orchestra of the Komische Oper

George Petrou (conductor)

Many of Handel’s dramatic oratorios seem to cry out for staging, although they present certain difficulties in doing so, above all regarding how to direct the chorus. Messiah is, of course, a different beast: contemplative rather than dramatic, without real characters, and so on. It also needs little ‘help’, so familiar is it both to audiences and performers, even in an age that has long since turned away from choral society performance for much Handel. It does receive stagings from time to time, though. ENO’s 2009 effort, unintentionally comical at times – film of people running up and down a Liverpool Street escalator for ‘All we, like sheep’ – did not augur well. That, however, need not damn other attempts, and given the success of the Komische Oper’s season-opening staging of Henze’s Raft of the Medusa last year at Tempelhof, I was keen to see what similarly augmented forces, including a community choir, might make of Messias, as it was billed, albeit sung in English.

 

Musically and from the standpoint of the occasion, there was indeed much to admire. The community chorus and extras all did very well; there was little, if anything, to hear that would have suggested these were not professional singers. It was moreover, a welcome and excellent thing, in these days of Messiah parsimony, to see and hear a performance that built on rather than childlishly rejected the great oratorio tradition of the later-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, without going to Crystal Palace extremes (fascinating though that would have doubtless have been to experience). The point is not, of course, that any one way is ‘correct’ and other ways ‘incorrect’; such categories have nothing to do with performance, let alone with humanity. But that there should be room for all, or at least for many, is a good thing to be celebrated, and the experience ‘on location’ at Tempelhof was a splendid one, which will likewise surely have attracted many more in the audience than would have attended an opera house performance. This first night appeared to be sold out; there is no reason to think that others will not be. 

The soloists too were excellent, the presence of a variety of light accents (yet perfect English) only a reminder of the universality of the work and, of course, of Handel’s own ‘dual nationality’, as we now might call it. (That his English naturalisation required an Act of Parliament should offer a standing rebuke to all those who have put, and continue to put, barriers in the way of free movement of fellow human beings. Musicians and academics know this as well as many.) The quartet worked well together, vocally and on ‘stage’, whether singing alone or (occasionally) duetting. Julia Grüters finely spun soprano line and Rachael Wilson’s richly coloured mezzo offered character (in the non-dramatic sense) and contrast, as well as much textual illumination. So too did the effortlessly stylish tenor Julian Behr, imploring and resolute as required, and bass Tijl Faveyts, warmly compassionate yet precise. Joined by the astonishingly athletic actor Anouk Elias – more than one lap of the vast performing space accomplished with ease – cast and choral collaborators made for a fine team. In such a space, one simply has to tolerate the use of microphones; it is, as they say, what it is.

 

The Orchestra of the Komische Oper offered warm, stylish playing too. I could not help but feel that conductor George Petrou missed at least a couple of tricks in not using larger forces. The very small ensemble (even by contemporary standards) was vastly outnumbered by the singers: a practice with little, if any, historical warrant and which made little sense in an airport hangar. He might even have gone for ‘additional accompaniments’, be they Mozart, Prout, or (one can dream) Beecham. Moreover, some choral tempi went simply too fast for the assembled forces, 400 in choral sum, causing noticeable, avoidable discrepancy. That said, despite an Overture that suggested Petrou wished the performance to be over before it had begun, other tempo decisions were more sensible, permitting creditable variety, without becoming sluggish. There is no single text for the work; here, Petrou (I presume) offered a winning combination of familiar and (slightly) less familiar numbers. The great closing choruses to the second and third parts evinced proper Handelian grandeur and uplift, although not of the physical variety in the ‘Hallelujah’ chorus, which this Englishman abroad rather missed. And we were spared, thank goodness, the ‘B’ section of ‘The Trumpet shall sound’.

Damiano Michieletto’s production concept was doubtless well intentioned. In a sense, that was the problem. I am not sure it ultimately worked any better than Deborah Warner’s hazy notion of ‘community’ for ENO, but Michieletto’s choice was one of those frustrating things that almost puts itself beyond criticism on account of sensitive content. Meshing Messiah with the story of Brittany Maynard, an American campaigner for assisted suicide, did not for me accomplish anything much either for her story – doubtless worthy of dramatic treatment in its own right – or for that of the Son of God. It made me aware of Maynard’s plight, but beyond that sentimental voiceovers, scenes of hospital scans, and perhaps worst, ‘Christian’ campaigners (no others, be it noted) against her cause seemed straightforwardly out of place. 

Messiah may not be a dramatic oratorio but it certainly has a narrative; paying at least some attention to that would not seem an unreasonable place to start in staging it. Moreover, the relative latitudinarianism of its theology stands miles away from the heartless fundamentalism of the American ‘religious right’, which in any case has little influence here in Europe. Adopting so hostile an attitude towards Christianity, as if it were not as multivalent as humanity itself, is not only all too easy a path in a secular, liberal society; it also sells Handel, Charles Jennens, and the extraordinarily rich performing history of their work miserably short. Quite why it began to rain at the end, the chorus having changed into plant-like green, I do not know, though the message of resurrection in general sat oddly with Michieletto’s concept. Such is the strength of Messiah, though, that many proper and possible messages could nonetheless be heard and felt.

Jenůfa, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 7 January 2024

Grandmother Buryja – Hanna Schwarz
Kostelnička Buryja – Rosie Aldridge
Jenůfa – Vida Miknevičiūtė
Laca Klemeń – Stephan Rügamer
Števa Buryja – Pavol Breslik
Foreman – Grigory Shkarupa
Jano – Victoria Randem
Barena – Adriane Queiroz
Mayor – David Oštrek
Mayor’s Wife – Natalia Sckrycka
Karolka – Maria Kokareva
Herdswoman – Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Auntie – Rebecka Wallroth
Voices – Olga Vilenskaia, Ben Bloomfield

Director – Damiano Michieletto
Revival director – Marcin Łakomicki
Set designs – Paolo Fantin
Costumes – Carlo Teti
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti

Choreography – Thomas Wilhelm  

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Axel Kober (conductor)

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere, with different cast)

Damiano Michieletto’s 2021 production of Jenůfa, now receiving its first revival, offers a relatively straightforward retelling of the story without prettifying or sentimentalising. Paolo Fantin’s set designs are stark: semi-transparent, enabling one to see, as in a small rural community, most of what is going on, whilst still maintaining some degree of secrecy. This is a world of violence and poverty, and so it feels, whilst avoiding undue specificity: the level of abstraction is such that the message need not be restricted to any one milieu. That enables a degree of symbolism, perhaps not entirely unlike Olivier Tambosi’s 2001 Covent Garden production (my first, with Bernard Haitink and Karita Mattila no less).

Ice/water is central to Michieletto’s conception. There is something icy to the walls, but more fundamentally, not unlike Tambosi’s giant boulder, although the other way up, an iceberg descends from the ceiling or sky. It hems in the action to varying extents, according (I assume) to the emotional and broader dramatic temperature. Števa hacks a block of ice to pieces, with violence shocking both in itself and in its childishness, when he has been rejected for conscription. Jenůfa’s child is buried and preserved in the ice too, of course, that discovery provoking the final reckoning and thus enabling the advent of some limited hope and here, literally, sunlight for Jenůfa and Laca. And its melting provides a downpour to punish, symbolically at least, the Kostelnička. The community, arguably the true villain here – Števa is too weak to deserve such billing – is represented by a few actors, whose shifting shape and role say most of what needs to be said. We can fill in the gaps, bring something to the table ourselves, or simply watch things ‘straight’. Whether the chorus’s placing, largely offstage, was at least in part a response to pandemic restrictions, I do not know, but it works, perhaps paradoxically, to enhance the onstage claustrophobia.

 

Choral singing was good, although coordination with stage and pit sometimes went awry. Indeed, conductor Axel Kober’s coordination of his different forces often left something to be desired, the opening seriously awry, both in that respect and concerning balance of orchestral lines. By and large, Kober gave a good enough impression of the score without penetrating deeper. The Staatskapelle Berlin responded in kind, often more than that. But where the musical action should erupt, forcing itself into our consciousness as a literal matter of life or death, Kober seemed largely content to offer an accompaniment to scenic action: involving enough, but an accompaniment nonetheless. There was little sense, at least from the orchestral direction, of the composer’s speech rhythms determining line and form (surely a crucial argument for preferring Janáček in the original Czech). 

The cast did a better job in that respect and others. Vida Miknevičiūtė seems very much to be a soprano of the moment, unable to put a foot (or note) wrong. Her assumption of the title role proved no exception: no mere victim, but a somewhat headstrong young woman, who made choices of her own as well as suffering those of others. Here was to be heard a definite command of the composer’s writing and its dramatic implications, as well as stage presence and collegiality. The same could be said of her colleagues, Rosie Aldridge a compassionate yet broken Kostelnička, Hanna Schwarz still an estimable force as Grandmother Buryja. Pavol Breslik skilfully trod a tightrope as Števa, keenly alert to the character’s contemptible weakness, whilst maintaining allure and vocal security. Stephan Rügamer’s Laca grew in stature as Števa receded from our – and Jenůfa’s – consciousness. Sterling work was done in the smaller roles, Maria Kokareva’s Karolka, Natalia Sckrycka’s Mayor’s Wife, and Victoria Randem’s Jano shining examples for me. There was fine ensemble work here, in which it was rightly difficult to distinguish between singing and acting.

Salzburg Festival (6) - La bohème, 18 August 2012

Grosses Festspielhaus

Rodolfo – Piotr Beczala

Mimi – Anna Netrebko
Marcello – Massimo Cavalletti
Musetta – Nino Machaidze
Schaunard – Alessio Arduini
Colline - Carlo Colombara
Benoît – David Fersini
Alcindoro – Peter Kálmán
Parpignol – Paul Schweinester
Parpignol (Artist) – Steven Forster
Customs Sergeant – Liviu Gheorghe Burz
Customs Officer – Michael Wilder
Hawker – Martin Müller

Damiano Michieletto (director)
Paolo Fantin (set designs)
Carla Teti (costumes)
Martin Gebhardt (lighting)
Kathrin Brunner (dramaturgy)
Nikos Lagousakos (choreographical assistance) 

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)

Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Chorus (chorus master: Wolfgang Götz)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Daniele Gatti (conductor)
 

Images: Salzburg Festival/Silvia Lelli

It is difficult to speak with excessive enthusiasm of the programming of a Salzburg Festival that included both Carmen and La bohème, though it would subsequently be redeemed in part by a staging of Die Soldaten. That said, La bohème proved more successful in almost every way than the relatively disappointing Carmen seen earlier in the week.

 

Above all, this was a triumph – perhaps predictable, but none the less worth of mention for that – for Daniele Gatti and the Vienna Philharmonic. This was the first time during this year’s Festival in which I had heard the VPO on top form – though it would not be the last. The comparison may be odious but it made me realise quite what had been missing in the Welsh National Opera performance I had heard in June. Wagnerisms abound, of course, but it takes a great conductor truly to relish them like this and to transmute them into something quite personal to Puccini. Harmony and orchestration are really what is most interesting about the composer’s work, however naggingly memorable some of his melodies might be. Gatti presided over an orchestral performance comparable to his Salzburg Elektra a couple of years ago, the sheer depth of tone resounding throughout the Grosses Festspielhaus as impressive as the shimmering, translucent beauties of Puccini’s more modernistic passages. Pacing was irreproachable, permitting the story and, most important, the score to unfold as they would, rather than imposing an irrelevant external framework upon them; unity was thereby enhanced rather than detracted from.

 

Mimi (Anna Netrebko)

The cast was first-rate too. Piotr Beczala has often sounded too Italianate, indeed too Puccini-like, in much of the repertoire in which I have heard him; this is clearly where he is most at home. The odd moment at which I thought less might have been more aside, there was nothing for which to reproach him here and much to laud. If ultimately Rodolfo is hardly the most interesting of roles, Beczala did what he could with it, dynamic range and shading especially noteworthy. Likewise, unsurprisingly, for Anna Netrebko’s Mimi, a star turn if ever there were one. Netrebko truly inhabited the role, both more generally and with particular reference to Damiano Michieletto’s production too. Many of the more celebrated opera singers in this repertoire might have disdained a production that failed vulgarly to flatter them ; Netrebko relished the contemporary setting and the emphasis upon Mimi as disadvantaged. Her voice was in excellent repair, soaring gloriously above the equally glorious orchestra. I had not come across Nino Machaidze before, but her sexy, intelligent Musetta made me hope that I shall do so again soon. Massimo Cavalletti’s Marcello put not a foot wrong; nor indeed did any member of the ‘supporting’ cast. Choral singing was of the highest standard throughout – an often overlooked aspect, crucial to a successful performance of this opera.

 

Rodolfo (Piotr Beczala) and Mimi

In a sense, there was nothing especially radical about Michieletto’s production, though given what most houses present for La bohème, one could say that even the very fact of moving the action to the twenty-first century shows a thirst for adventure. (In this of all operas, there is surely an imperative, albeit incessantly flouted, to rid a staging of every last ounce of sentimentality.) Costumes alone, designed with flair by Carla Teti, would doubtless have had self-appointed ‘traditionalists’ spluttering: a good in itself, though hardly enough. Designs were splendid: spectacular in a good rather than vulgar-Zeffirelli sense. The Paris street and metro map that unfolded from time to time was really rather fun. Act Three’s sense of an urban, frozen wasteland, replete with obligatory burger van, was chilling, in more than one sense.  Yet the production had subtler virtues too, foremost amongst which should be accounted the space it permitted one to question the work and assumptions one might hold about it. Whilst I cannot (yet?) bring myself quite to accept the metatheatrical claims made for the opera by some, however much more interesting they might make it, there was to be discovered here, even if this were not the director’s intention, an indictment of the selfishness of youth. Where Michieletto spoke of celebration, it was equally possible, and indeed in my case more so, to recognise from experience the shallow posing and disingenuousness of student-style declarations of love, purpose, and principle. Mimi became a more interesting victim, or perhaps better, the circumstances that brought about her fate became sharpened, without turning the opera into something that it was not. I wonder how this will be received in Shanghai, with whose Grand Theatre this is a co-production.