Die Frau ohne Schatten, Semperoper Dresden, 27 March 2024

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

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

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

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

Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Christian Thielemann (conductor)  

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

Oleksandr Pushniak (Barak)

 

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

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

Camilla Nylund (Die Kaiserin) 

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

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

 

 

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

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

Evelyn Herlitzius (Die Amme)

Die lustigen Weiben von Windsor, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 3 October 2019

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Frau Fluth (Mandy Friedrich) and Frau Reich (Michaela Schuster)

Sir John Falstaff – René Pape

Herr Fluth – Michael Volle

Herr Reich – Wilhelm Schwinghammer

Fenton – Pavol Breslik

Junker Spärlich – Linard Vrielink

Dr Cajus – David Oštrek

Frau Fluth – Mandy Friedrich

Frau Reich – Michaela Schuster

Jungfer Anna Reich – Anna Prohaska

First Citizen – Javier Bernando

David Bösch (director)

Patrick Bannwart (set designs)

Falko Herold (costumes)

Michael Bauer (lighting)

Detlef Giese (dramaturgy)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

René Pape (Sir John Falstaff) and Chorus

No one would seriously claim Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor to be a masterpiece; the only question, it seems, is whether one might occasionally bear it. In that sense – and probably a few others – it is riper for conversion into opera than a play that stands in no ‘need’ of it. Verdi’s Falstaff has its devotees; if you like that sort of thing, then that is doubtless the sort of thing you will like. Otto Nicolai’s opera, for better or worse, stands closer to the play, for better, and is rarely seen on stage. All credit, then, to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden for resurrecting it for the first new production of the season, with a cast that can rarely have been matched, let alone bettered, and with Daniel Barenboim, no less, in the pit.

Barenboim’s direction prove sure and loving, the warmth of the Staatskapelle Berlin’s response, both to him and Nicolai’s score, exemplary. I cannot imagine that he or (m)any members of the orchestra had performed it before. (Its last outing on Unter den Linden had been three decades previously, in 1989: an apt anniversary, given that the new premiere took place, as seems now to have become customary, on the Day of German Unity.) There was certainly a sense of fresh discovery, but also, equally important, one of grounding in the fertile musical soil from which it had sprung. From the (relatively) celebrated overture onwards, the strings offered a lighter, more golden tone than one often one hears from this band: more Vienna than Berlin, one might say, and not inappropriately so for a composer formerly based in the Austrian capital and who somewhat reluctantly departed for its Prussian counterpart, at Frederick William IV’s invitation, only in order to have his new Singspiel, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor performed. As one of Nicolai’s many illustrious successors at the Linden house, Barenboim seemed to relish equally the composer’s debts to Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Weber, and Rossini, among others. Indeed, the correspondences with early Wagner – we might, perhaps, think this more convincing than Das Liebesverbot, if unquestionably less so than Die Feen – had me wish Barenboim would at last conduct one of the pre-Dutchman operas. Orchestral detail from the early German Romantics, form from the acknowledged masters of opera buffa – if tending more towards Rossini’s formalism than Mozart’s dynamism – and occasional hints of Fidelio and perhaps even Beethoven’s orchestral writing: there are worse mixes, far worse.

If you were expecting a ‘but’, you were not wrong. Nicolai, following ETA Hoffmann, described his work as a ‘comical, fantastical opera’. I suppose it is, if not of uniform success. Ultimately, it is difficult to say that the score, or indeed the opera as a whole, progresses beyond that. Its dramaturgy is somewhat weak, without much or anything in the way of characterisation. Mozart casts a heavy shadow, of course, but the action and humour, such as it is, remain situational and formalistic. Salomon Hermann’s libretto might profitably have distanced itself further from Shakespeare. Still, there are plenty of operas with unsatisfactory libretti and/or dramaturgy. We are not speaking of catastrophes such as Euryanthe or Oberon; nor, however, are we speaking of such scores. This, perhaps, is where a radical production might save the day – except, alas, it did not.

Junker Spärlich (Lienard Vrielink), Jungfer Anna Reich (Anna Prohaska), Fenton (Pavol Breslik), Dr Cajus (David Oštrek)

Save for updating, David Bösch’s production probably does too little. Some might say it does too much, not least with respect to the dialogue. Whatever the truth of that, this does not seem a happy medium. It is difficult to see what is gained, other than avoidance of folksiness – thank goodness for that – from the transposition of the action to what seems to be social housing with a swimming pool (!) Transformations are effected where required. The final scene, in Windsor Park, offers genuine fairy magic, alongside knowing awareness of that transformation. More of that, read back into the frankly laboured earlier comedy, would have been welcome. Bösch picks up on the verbal motif of Sekt and drunkenness, but surely most directors would. Otherwise, we are left with the ‘jokes’ of René Pape in a fat suit, two of the men, Junker Spärlich and Dr Cajus, donning tutus and falling for each other, and women getting the better of their menfolk. The latter victory is of course, a mainstay of comedy, but something more of a critical stance is surely needed at this stage. Or perhaps not: much of the audience seemed to love it. There are worse outcomes than that, far worse.

Dr Cajus, Frau Fluth, Sir John Falstaff

Given the quality of vocal and stage performances, they could be forgiven for that. Pape’s Sir John Falstaff is not nearly so central a role as some might expect, Nicolai and his librettist remaining true to the opera’s title. That said, he and Michael Volle, as Herr Fluth (Ford), offered a winning combination of vocal excellence and lightness of touch, Volle the more natural comedic actor. (If you want to see Pape draped in a shapeless white dress and bonnet, impersonating the old woman of Brentford, now is nevertheless your opportunity.) The greater interest, though, is surely allotted the womenfolk and Fenton. None of them disappointed; indeed, all excelled. Mandy Friedrich and Michaela Schuster’s fine match of stage presence, coloratura, and vocal security proved just the thing, in every respect. Insofar as one could be moved by the drama of characters, it would surely have been by the delightful duo of Anna Prohaska and Pavol Breslik, the former – speaking, uniquely, in German and English – presenting a performance of typical acuity and musicality, the latter ardent even beyond expectations. In their high-spirited, yet ultimately touching, parody of Romeo and Juliet, work, performances, and production surely reached their high point. All singers, however, deserved thanks for fine performances, so too the chorus.

As for Nicolai, it would be of interest to hear more of his music, not least to gain a broader impression. Reputations resting on a single work can often mislead. Ulrich Konrad’s New Grove article on the composer mentions, for instance, an 1832 ‘Baroque style’ Te Deum, which sounds, on the face of that description, rather different from this opera, a work of no mean historical importance. Its overture is charming, and deserves to be heard more often than is the case nowadays. A production willing to press further, to interrogate the work and its possibilities, indeed to create possibilities beyond those immanent, may yet provide us with a more compelling piece of theatre. It certainly offered opportunities, well taken, for fine singing: well appreciated, it seemed, by the audience and the singers themselves. I cannot help but think, however, that Nicolai’s ultimate legacy will remain his founding of the Vienna Philharmonic concerts a few years earlier. There are worse legacies than that, far worse.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 27 July 2019

Nationaltheater

Images: Wilfried Hösl
Hans Sachs (Wolfgang Koch)

Hans Sachs – Wolfgang Koch

Veit Pogner – Christof Fischesser
Kunz Vogelgsang – Kevin Conners
Konrad Nachtigall – Christian Rieger
Sixtus Beckmesser – Martin Gantner
Fritz Kothner – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Balthasar Zorn – Ulrich Reß
Ulrich Eißlinger – Dean Power
Augustin Moser – Thorsten Scharnke
Hermann Ortel – Levente Páll
Hans Schwarz – Peter Lobert
Hans Foltz – Roman Astakhov
Walther von Stolzing –  Daniel Kirch
David – Allan Clayton
Eva – Sara Jakubiak
Magdalena – Okka von der Damerau
Night Watchman – Milan Siljanov
 

David Bösch (director)

Patrick Bannwart (set designs)
Meentje Nielsen (costumes)
Falko Herold (video)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)
Theresa Schlichtherle (revival director)
 

Bavarian State Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Beckmesser (Martin Gantner) and Sachs

‘Es klang so neu und war doch ein bißchen alt’? A little more than three years after first seeing David Bösch’s (then new) production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, I looked forward to making its reacquaintance. It struck me then as being, alongside Stefan Herheim’s staging (seen in both Salzburg and Paris), one of the most significant additions to the repertory. There has not, frankly, been much in the way of competition, offerings from Barrie Kosky and Andrea Moses in particular having proved well-nigh disastrous. How did Bösch’s staging measure up now? In some ways, well. It is certainly more coherent than either of the last too named. However, a good deal of what had made it distinctive, and had decided me to include it in this essay, had disappeared, presumably a casualty of the lack of rehearsal for a brief festival revival. Two at least of its most distinguishing characteristics, the violence at the heart of a reconstructed, provincial ‘community’, and a welcome feminist conception of Eva, had respectively been toned down (more likely, perhaps, unknowingly omitted) and jettisoned. A great pity, that, though perhaps not unlikely in the circumstances: a reminder, at least, that what we see in June and July is not always so very close to what was originally envisaged (and seen).

 

Walther (Daniel Kirch) and Eva (Sara Jakubiak)

I shall try, though, not to dwell unduly on what might have been, on what had been: anyone interested in the 2016 first performances, including Jonas Kaufmann, may consult the initial review. The importance of (multi-)media in transmission of music, art more generally, and indeed life, such as it is, more generally, continues to register, for instance in video footage of plans, instructions, flowcharts, and sketches: there is a thin line, perhaps, between the nerd and the pedant. Press coverage of the mastersong competition flicks through, also on video, when the masters first enter, an important point the centenary 1868-1968 (the first year, of course, the work’s premiere, the second year not an unimportant year in the history of the Left), in which Veit Pogner had claimed the prize. That generation has a great deal to answer for, many of us would argue; at least we were spared the sight of Antony Charles Lynton Blair et al. strutting their wares ‘just more one time’. At any rate, this contest for a bartered bride, as much sport as art, and heavily sponsored by ‘Meister Bräu’’, sums things up nicely. Sport, of course, always gets off lightly, entwining nationalism (and/or localism) and toxic masculinity, as it does. No one dare accuse it, though, given the media interests at stake. (Consider British liberals’ obsession with the appalling 2012 Olympics.) Contrast that with the laudable attempts at self-criticism of most important artistic production since the Second World War. That contrast certainly seems implicit here, although the shock violence initially administered by Beckmesser as Marker to Walther now seems ‘mere’ entertainment: a flashing of lights rather than electric shock. Perhaps, though, as everything becomes more mediated, as Trump, Johnson, and other fascists star in their own game show, impervious to political criticism and activity, there is something to be said for such a degeneration too.

 

The moment of revolt – or is it further repression – comes through more fitfully in the second act than previously. Can one make a Marcusian case for the apprentices’ thuggery? Probably. Should one? Difficult to say. (One might say the same for Andreas Baader, after all, or the original, far more lethal, RAF.) But the chemistry between Sachs and Eva, the plausibility of their romance, has struck earlier on a very different note. What often seems dramaturgically unconvincing, even odd, here seems quite natural, for want of a better word. Whether that were the case in 2016, I cannot remember, although the artists, Wolfgang Koch and Sara Jakubiak, were the same. Their performances all round were outstanding. If the extremely powerful moment of Eva’s rejection – of the contest – in the third act now seemed to be missing, Jakubiak offered intelligent, vocally alluring singing, as well as accomplished acting. So too did Koch, of course, with a wisdom born of experience not only as Sachs but in many other roles.

 

Sachs and Beckmesser

Let us return, however, to the production, to the third act. Sachs’s neon-lit van having lost two of its letters, now sighs, in Schopenhauerian style, ‘ACH’. More might have been made of that implication, especially in light of loss of the provincial violence that initially made this act so threatening, so disconcerting. There remain hints, perhaps most notably in the apprentices’ behaviour towards David, homophobic bullying still, I think, implicit. But they are only hints, and would perhaps mostly be noticed by those who had seen the production before. Beckmesser’s return at the very close, to shoot himself, makes far less sense in the absence of such build-up. A pity, as I said, although perhaps there is something to be salvaged in reflection upon continuing degeneration into entertainment.

 

Walther and Beckmesser

Musically, standards remained high: very high indeed in the case of Kirill Petrenko, the orchestra, and chorus. Of Wagner’s works, this seems very much Petrenko’s best, at least in my experience. Formidable technical challenges – simply marshalling those forces, in a far from simple staging – never seemed to register, however great the art in concealing that art (a Meistersinger virtue in itself). Wagner’s score flowed with all the inevitability of a mighty river. That is never, though, at the expense of detail, overt contrapuntal (and other) virtuosity in which the composer sometimes revels portrayed lovingly, comprehendingly, without degenerating into mere virtuosity itself. It was, moreover, not only in the counterpoint and chorales that Wagner’s Bachian debt was repaid. Wagner’s writing for oboes in particular, played as superlatively as it was here, gave pause to all manner of thoughts concerning connection with Bach’s sacred music too. (Now might we hear a St Matthew Passion or B minor Mass from Petrenko? Even some of the cantatas? Too much to hope? If so, it is surely a victimless crime.)

 

Eva, Walther, and Magdalena (Okka von der Damerau)

Kaufmann had withdrawn earlier in the week, replaced at very short notice as Walther by Daniel Kirch. There was considerable promise in his performance, although he tired towards the end. At his best in the second act, Kirch showed himself capable of a detailed, variegated performance, both verbally and musically. Earlier on, perhaps still finding his way around the Nationaltheater, he had a tendency to force his voice somewhat, almost as if a Siegfried. There remained, though, much to admire. Martin Gantner’s Beckmesser was first-rate: a sung Malvolio of the highest quality. Allan Clayton’s David proved equally detailed and finely sung, well matched to Okka von der Damerau’s spirited Magdalena. Christof Fischesser made for an uncommonly youthful, virile Pogner, and Milan Siljanov’s Night Watchman suggested a singer from whom we shall be hearing much more soon. More than enough, then, to be going on with until the full revival Bösch’s production unquestionably merits.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Bavarian State Opera, 22 May 2016

Walther (Jonas Kaufmann) centre stage, with the Chorus, the Mastersingers, and Eva (Sara Jakubiak) looking down adoringly from her platform
Images: © Bayerische Staatsoper/Wilfried Hösl

Nationaltheater, Munich

Hans Sachs – Wolfgang Koch

Veit Pogner – Christof Fischesser
Kunz Vogelgsang – Kevin Conners
Konrad Nachtigall – Christian Rieger
Sixtus Beckmesser – Markus Eiche
Fritz Kothner – Eike Wilm Schulte
Balthasar Zorn – Ulrich Reß
Ulrich Eißlinger – Stefan Heibach
Augustin Moser – Thorsten Scharnke
Hermann Ortel – Friedemann Röhlig
Hans Schwarz – Peter Lobert
Hans Foltz – Christoph Stephinger
Walther von Stolzing – Jonas Kaufmann
David – Benjamin Bruns
Eva – Sara Jakubiak
Magdalene – Okka von der Damerau
Night Watchman – Tareq Nazmi

David Bösch (director)

Patrick Bannwart (set designs)
Meentje Nielsen (costumes)
Falko Herold (video)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)

Chorus and Extra Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Die Meistersinger at the theatre in which it was premiered, on Wagner’s birthday: an inviting prospect by any standards, still more so given the director, conductor, and cast, still more so given the opportunity to see three different productions within little more than a couple of months). Glyndebourne would come only four days later; my principal point of – inevitable – comparison would therefore be with Stefan Herheim’s staging, first seen in Salzburg, but later (this March) in Paris. Herheim’s production is, unsurprisingly, one for the ages. I have no doubt that it will reveal more upon every subsequent encounter. It comes, perhaps, closer to Wagner’s reconciliations. However, any good Adornian – is there such a thing? Are we not, necessarily, all at best bad Adornians? – will warn you of the dangers of such positive Hegelianisms. David Bösch’s staging gradually reveals itself to be quite the necessary negative indictment, with respect above all to two particular (related) aspects of the work: violence and gender. If less all-encompassing than Herheim’s staging – what is not? – then it lays claim to be the first Meistersinger production in my experience to address the work from a feminist standpoint. It also arguably offers the most intriguing treatment – I shall not say ‘solution’, for surely there is none – to the ‘Beckmesser problem’. Katharina Wagner’s notorious Bayreuth staging might have given it a run for its money, had only the competence of her craft matched the provocative thinking of her dramaturge, Robert Sollich. Above all, though, this proved to be great musical drama: everyone committed to something far greater than the sum of its parts, and that includes ‘parts’ such as Jonas Kaufmann and Kirill Petrenko.

Walther arriving in Nuremberg

Let us start, however, with Bösch’s staging, with excellent designs by Patrick Bannwart and Meentje Nielsen. We are in the 1950s. What could be more apt? And no, I am not being sarcastic. This is a work concerned with reconstruction, set in a city which, more than most, has had to be concerned with reconstruction. Wagner, I suppose I should reiterate for the nth time, was in no sense concerned to present a historical Nuremberg; the ever-present – well, nearly – spirit of Bach makes that abundantly clear. And did not the 1950s see ‘New Bayreuth’, in particularly Wieland Wagner’s Meistersinger ohne Nürnberg? As John Deathridge once acidly commented,  when Wieland spoke of “the clearing away of old lumber” (Entrümpelung), … [he produced] stage pictures bereft of their “reactionary” ethos — and, as sceptics were prone to add, most of their content as well.’ Indeed, and if many in the audience had more to hide even than Wieland, he had his own reasons too. The relationship between provincialism and the dreadful reconstructionalism of the 1950s is complicated yet undeniable. Lest we forget, 1955 was the year in which the West German Army was (re)founded, denying its origins in what had gone before; this was also the period of increasingly prevalent terraced dynamics and sewing-machine geometries of Bach performances by minor German chamber orchestras, performances that would soon metamorphose into ‘authenticke’ claims, deluded and cynically deluding, to ‘restore’ Baroque practice. ‘They say Bach, [but] mean Telemann,’ as Adorno unforgettably put it. Wagner meant – and means Bach, and vice versa. There is nastiness as well as homeliness in provincialism; Bösch draws out the former, in a useful corrective to the norm.

 

David (Benjamin Bruns) and Walther

 

What might seem a nostalgia for the period and its ‘popular culture’ – similarly in Bösch’s Munich L’Orfeo – is revealed to be far more complicated than that. For one thing, what does ‘popular culture’ mean? Such is a problem at the heart of the opera, at the heart of relationships between the Masters and the populace, and Sachs’s suggestion of testing the rules. And such has arguably become still more so given the rise of what some of us are old-fashioned enough still to regard with, the Frankfurt School, as the Culture Industry. If resistance is to come, it will be more likely to come from Helmut Lachenmann than from the world of commercial music, successfully masquerading as ‘of the people’. And so, when microphones and various other paraphernalia of the recording industry – ‘Classical’ in the deadly marketing-speak of that world, then as well as now – are put in place, we sense, amongst many other things, an act of domination such has been inflicted upon works by Bach, now more or less unperformable, and upon every other aspect of our ‘administered’ world and lives. Although the Personenregie of Bösch’s staging is always detailed, interesting, telling, it is only – as in the work itself – towards the end of the third act, in the Singschule, that things come closer into conceptual focus. It is, as always in the bourgeois state, with violence that that is accomplished. David has already, most intriguingly, seemed a nastier, vainer, and yes, more interesting character than usual, with the strong implication that his penchant for small-scale violent behaviour is owed in part not only to his provincialism but also to his inability truly to create. Walther has tried to defend David when the apprentices, at the beginning of the scene, attacked him, but he will have none of it; outsiders are not to be welcomed, perhaps not even for Magdalene’s sake. Will David prove a second Beckmesser? We shall see; it is, at least at this stage, the first Beckmesser who provides the shock – literally.

The electric shocks administered to Walther, forcibly restrained in his chair, by the Marker are the work of what Gudrun Esslin would soon call the Auschwitz generation; and as Ennslin went on, there is of course no arguing with them. That, despite, or perhaps because, of Beckmesser’s – and Pogner’s – relative attractiveness (relative to how we usually see them, and indeed to the definitely older-school Kothner). Who, after all, has not occasionally found something of attraction in the discipline of fascism, especially when (s)he has been emboldened by readily available bottles of Meisterbräu? Guilds had never been as stable as nostalgia suggested; that is surely part of Wagner’s meaning here. But Bösch brings already-existing divisions to the foreground. Some Masters look – costumes crucial here – and act with greater modernity, or at least in greater fashion than others. If the Guild is keeping things together – and such, of course, was the crux of nineteenth-century Romantic and Hegelian defences in the face of liberal attacks upon them – then it is not clear whether it will succeed for much longer. ‘Reconstruction’ tends to incite – as any Stolzing, Ensslin, or Lachenmann would tell you.

Beckmesser (Markus Eiche) and Hans Sachs
(Wolfgang Koch)

 

Sachs’s van – ‘Sachs’ says the neon, definitely not of Fifth Avenue – captures our attention at the beginning of the second act. There is no doubt that the mise-en-scene is of a grimmer 1950s: doubtless necessary in some ways given the cost of war, but this is not a suburb of joy. It is not the Munich we see in the second Heimat; nor is it the Nuremberg the tourist will see. But it is there. Beckmesser’s virtuosity comes to the fore. He is not a fraud, although he may be unimaginative; he has craft, even if he does not have art; he is, moreover, certainly not a mere figure of fun. His piccolo guitar to Walther’s full-size version invites a number of reflections. Yet his song works, in its way: perhaps of another age, another age that most likely never was, but such is reconstruction. Eva seems even more girlish than usual, almost Barbie-like; I asked myself whether we should ever see a feminist production that would address the monstrous nature of her treatment. The violence of the Prügel-Fuge’s staging eclipses any I have seen. Too often, we forget that there is real violence involved. (Perhaps Wagner did so too; if so, he stands as much in need of correction as anyone else.) Here, David’s deeds with baseball bat mark him out as every inch the neo-fascist; Pegida would welcome him with open arms. We then begin to wonder: what will the guild become in the hands of his generation. Is Sachs the last hope, rather than the harbinger? Likewise, how will Walther turn out? For ever Tariq Ali, think how many Blairs, or would-be-Blairs there have been. At the close, the Night Watchman (in modern policeman’s garb) is dealt with by the remaining small gang of young townsfolk. They take him back to his car and send him on his way, but it is made clear that he has no choice; this is their manor. Crossing themselves beforehand, they have mimicked the (deliberately?) incongruous procession at the opening; they know how to use traditional forms when it serves their purpose. The final punishment beating takes place as the curtain – and one of the thugs’ baseball bats – falls.

 

Beckmesser dragged to his beating

‘Sachs’ has lost its first and almost its second ‘s’ when we catch up, the morning after the night before. Make of that what you will. Walther has spent his night in the van. Beckmesser, when he hobbles back, is suicidal – quite understandably. It is discovery of the poem that turns his mood (just enough) around. Sachs is not the only one so to suffer, although Beckmesser would never have the imagination, nor the understanding, to come up with the Wahn monologue. Still, the ubiquity of Wahn is more than usually, atmospherically present. Yes, as Michael Tanner has pointed out, the work is about ‘coping’; and coping is difficult in a world such as this, which is one reason why we indulge in deluded and deluding reconstruction in the first place. Walther is too young, too callow really to understand; he and Eva are unable to keep their hands off each other, on top of the van, as Sachs confronts a further bout of depression. The violence of Wolfgang Koch’s – and the Bavarian State Orchestra’s – outburst here, the former occasionally edging towards Sprechgesang, even towards Schoenberg’s Gurrelieder, was especially telling, and complemented, extended the production memorably, indeed frighteningly. But Walther eventually appreciates his selfishness, and comes down to help: a touching moment, especially in light of such darkness all around.

Let us leave the staging as some would doubtless like the work to be left, before the Festwiese. Unlike them, those who misunderstand the Quintet and do not appreciate that its moment of ‘beauty’ is quite deliberately foreshortened, we shall return, but I should rather deal with Bösch’s final scene at the end. (Think of this, perhaps, as a rupture to the account of the staging, just as Peter Konwitschny once ruptured the aura of this allegedly problematical scene, in order, controversially, to put it mildly, to deal with the allegations, most of them unfounded.)

I have never heard the work conducted better ‘live’ than by Kirill Petrenko. I was less convinced by his Bayreuth Ring performances than many were; perhaps I did not hear him at his best. This, however, was Wagner conducting – in a work in which I have heard even Daniel Barenboim and Daniele Gatti struggle to reach their highest standards – to speak of in the same breath as that of Bernard Haitink (my first). Petrenko’s command of the Wagnerian melos, assisted by, indeed expressed in, the outstanding playing of the Bavarian State Orchestra, was outstanding at every level. There was no doubting the overall structure, but that structure was formed by the needs of the moment, by the Schoenbergian working-out of the material, rather than imposed, Alfred Lorenz-like, upon it. This was not a David; this was a young Sachs. He could, indeed, hold back or press on when the singer seemed to be suggesting it, playing the orchestra like his own piano, albeit without the slightest hint of shallow virtuosity, for this was no Beckmesser either. But it would not jar; indeed, performance and work seemed to form one another, which, in this of all works, is surely the point. The orchestra had nothing to fear from the most exalted of comparisons; rather, those with whom it might have been compared, should fear them. Likewise the chorus, whether in terms of vocal heft and colour, of clarity of line, or of stage movement. The dialectic between individual and society (and changing conceptions thereof) was brought vividly to life here and elsewhere.

I took a little while to settle down to Koch’s Hans Sachs. That is partly personal, I think; to my ears – and indeed to my eyes – he somehow seems more to be an Alberich. That I found disconcerting, but it was my problem, really. There was no doubting the intelligence of his portrayal, and in the third act, my reservations evaporated. Here, there seemed to be a perfect marriage of Wort and Ton, of Oper and Drama. (And yes, I know that is not quite what Wagner meant in the latter case, but it is considerably closer than it might initially seem.) He took us through Sachs’s struggles, and took us through some more. There was no false reconciliation of ‘mere’ geniality, although manipulation of Wahn might prescribe it, successfully or otherwise, if as a palliative rather than as a cure.

Kaufmann’s Walther avoided the drawback of his first performance in the role (I think), in concert at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival. There, it was an astonishing performance, in which Kaufmann tired a little towards the end. Here, he was perhaps less golden of vocal tone, more baritonal, but that is an observation rather than an æsthetic judgement. There was no problem whatsoever with his pacing. And my goodness, he could act! The puppyish enthusiasm of the first acts, the inspiration Walther drew from Eva, whilst showing off to her, not unlike a tennis player at Wimbledon with his girlfriend in the crowd, the mixture of enforced, societal chivalry and the arousal of deeper, or at least more primal, urges: those and many more acutely observed moments denied the manufactured boundary between ‘musical performance’ and ‘acting’. If we are to talk of ‘Wagner’s intentions’, let it be in that manner.

Benjamin Bruns had a difficult time of it. This, after all, was anything but the typical David, but Bruns had us believe in the ‘new’ – or should that be ‘restored’ – character, his impotent (often, at least) rage as chilling as the ‘purely’ vocal delivery was thoughtful and indeed often beautiful. Sara Jakubiak really took to the demands of her role (on which more below). Visually and vocally striking, this was an Eva both at home in and estranged from her Nuremberg. Okka von der Damerau’s Magdalene brought a deeper, luxuriant vocal colour to the stage, again with clear ‘dramatic’ as well as vocal commitment. Tareq Nazmi’s Night Watchman was deep and dark of tone: just what the doctor has always ordered.

Pogner (Christof Fischesser) and
Kothner (Eike Wilm Schulte)

 

Of the other Masters, Christof Fischesser was definitely first among equals: handsomely, even suavely sung, a Pogner of ambition in which he was likely to succeed, rather than someone entering his twilight years. Kothner was played movingly by Eike Wilm Schulte, with the relative stiffness of his delivery, particularly striking in the first act, a move to distinguish this ‘old-school’ Master from the next generation(s). Markus Eiche’s Beckmesser was of the first class: more plausible a suitor than most, intelligently, often beautifully, sung, with a fine marriage of dignity and, increasingly, desperation.

 

Back, then, to the Festwiese. Who owns the guild, or at least its products? A corporation, albeit in the modern rather than the archaic sense: Pognervision. Privilege, be it of class, of gender, of other varieties, is always likely to emerge victorious. The early televisual variety show we see might seem ‘popular’ but it is deeply – and indeed shallowly – manipulative. (Admittedly, Bösch has nothing on ‘real life’, in this country at least, Tory Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt appointing his friend, the creator of Big Brother, Peter Bazalgette, to chair the Arts Council, etc.) Falko Herold’s video work provides ‘titles’ for each Master (‘individual’ or styled to be corporate?) as he enters the scene, just ‘like on the television’. There is, of course, something for all the family – within strict limits. David and his camp dancers suggest what the real view of ‘deviance’ is: perhaps it will be tolerated as a harmless joke, but as for any serious attack on patriarchy… David is not in on the joke, anyway, and his humiliated by them: again, a proto-Beckmesser. When forced (‘peer pressure’ is like that) to drink too many shots, to prove his ‘real’ masculinity, he falls paralytic, unable to perform his functions (doubtless in any sense).

Magdalene (Okka von der Damerau), Beckmesser, and Eva, as the town clerk would claim his unwilling 'prize'

 

The cruelty meted out to Beckmesser will be even worse - although we should remember, and we are minded, that he too would essentially buy Eva, our bartered bride, and he makes clear his desire to possess her, even against her will, so is no 'victim' at all in that very important sense. Bedecked in gaudy ‘variety’ gold, in which he is clearly anything but comfortable, Beckmesser has been set up to fail. ‘Entertainment’ is the name of the game, and we are reminded of the cruelty of a work in which the comedy, in the common sense at least, is within, is of characters laughing at another; it is comedy, then, at which we should feel uncomfortable, and we do. Eva, who has learned a great deal during the course of the work, is increasingly disgusted by what she sees. Kothner is ‘marketed’ as celebrating his fiftieth year in office; even a ‘tribute’, indeed perhaps especially a tribute, must bear the ‘ratings’ in mind. (The relative stiffness of his delivery in the first act, via-à-vis that of Pogner and Beckmesser, thus falls into greater relief.) When Eva thinks that Sachs has fallen in with her father’s sell-off – for surely this ‘show’, with related ‘philanthropy’, is as much for business as anything else – she cannot bear to look at him any more. Whilst the crowd, manipulated by the ‘event’, sings his praises, she not only turns away; from her balcony, she haplessly throws the contents of her glass in his direction. No one notices; on stage, that is, for we do.

Sachs on stage, receiving the crowd's acclamation, before Eva (above with Pogner) turns her back in disgust

Yet Sachs is wiser than most, as we have always known. He realises that all has gone awry at the moment when most – whether on stage or in the typical audience – think it has been resolved. Has Walther joined the guild? It is not clear (deliberately so, I presume). In a more fundamental sense, however, Sachs is deeply troubled rather than triumphant. Beckmesser returns. Out of desperation, he tries to shoot dead the presumed author of his misfortunes, but falls before being able to carry out his punishment. The idea, we presume, was to let the poison, or whatever it was, do its work following the shooting. That may or may not be metaphorical. Of course, it does not work out as intended. It never did for Beckmesser; it never does for reconstruction. Well, not unless you are Wagner – or Herheim, and then you acknowledge that it is not what most people think it is. And even then…