Dialogues des Carmélites, Royal Opera, 2 June 2014

Images: Stephen Cummiskey/Royal Opera House

 

 

Royal Opera House

Chevalier de la Force – Yann Beuron

Marquis de la Force – Sir Thomas Allen

Blanche de la Force – Sally Matthews

Thierry – Neil Gillespie

Mme de Croissy – Deborah Polaski

Sister Constance – Anna Prohaska

Mother Marie – Sophie Koch

M. Javelinot – John Bernays

Mme Lidoine – Emma Bell

Carmelites – Yvonne Barclay, Katy Batho, Tamsin Coombs, Eileen Hamilton, Anne Osborne, Deborah Peake Jones, Louise Armit, Andrea Hazell, Elizabeth Key, Kate McCarney, Deborah Pearce

Sister Mathilde – Catherine Carby

Mother Jeanne – Elizabeth Sikora

Chaplain – Alan Oke

First Commissary – David Butt Philip

Second Commissary – Michel de Souza

Officer – Ashley Riches

Gaoler – Craig Smith

Robert Carsen (director)

Michael Levine (set designs)

Falk Bauer (costumes)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Philippe Giradeau (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Westrop)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

 

This was a performance whose intensity increased almost immeasurably as the evening went on. That seemed to be as much a matter of the production as the conducting, of the singing as the orchestral playing, although there were, of course, exceptions. At any rate, the final scene proved devastating in its combination of abstraction and directness, the amplified (electronic?) guillotine notwithstanding. Robert Carsen’s staging, and in this case especially Philippe Giradeau’s movement, exemplary throughout, frame the action simply and without hysteria, as the equally exemplary ensemble thins out one by one – until the appearance of Blanche, to whom Constance reaches out from afar, and then… Yes, the opera veers dangerously close to sentimentality, and perhaps in some places crosses that boundary, but the frisson experienced near that boundary is part, though only part, of what Poulenc is about. Musically, the scene is not quite reducible to the ghost of Œdipus Rex, haunted by an earlier ghost of Gounod; it is, indeed, its own unforgettable self. And the other influences, Puccini, Mussorgsky, and Debussy amongst them, never overpower the ‘dialogues’ of the title, with their roots in a very French understanding of plainsong and religious life. It was not only in the final scene that music, staging, and performance came together very well indeed, but it was perhaps the finest example and of course the climax.

 

Mme de Croissy (Deborah Polaski) and Blanche (Sally Matthews)

If only Carsen’s understandable interest in the revolutionary crowd did not overpower some of the other scenes, this would be a great staging indeed; as it stands, Carsen’s divided attention seems to run along the lines of much (mis-)understanding of the opera. I do not wish to carp about the role played by the volunteer Community Ensemble, whose direction and performance deeply impressed, and whose achievement, some of its participants having experienced homelessness, prison, and long-term unemployment, can hardly fail to move and to cheer. But Carsen’s presentation tends to suggest that the opera is more ‘about’ the French Revolution than it really is. This is a drama about Divine Grace, a truth at least as often forgotten, or overlooked, as the similar truth about Parsifal, a work with which Poulenc’s opera would otherwise have little or nothing in common. There are moments, nevertheless, when the ensemble works wonders, perhaps above all acting as a human – or inhuman? – dividing line between Blanche and her brother, the Chevalier, when he visits her in the convent. Still, the loss is perhaps a price worth paying for the redemptive involvement and prospects afforded to members of the ensemble, who have also been invited to take part in a careers support programme by the Royal Opera House and its partner organisations (Streetwise Opera, Synergy Theatre Project, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama).

Mother Marie (Sophie Koch) at the centre

Sir Simon Rattle’s role in proceedings was impressive too – as one might expect from this conductor in French music. Rattle’s leadership of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, generally on very good form itself, refused to sentimentalise, taking the opera faster than some may have wished, but hardly offensively so and quite without the mannerisms that so often disfigure his readings of the ‘central’ Austro-German symphonic repertoire. And the big moments had great punch, the unanimity of orchestral and vocal ensemble alike quite remarkable. Poulenc once remarked that he did not want his music to be analysed but to loved; perhaps a better way to love it, though, is to accord it the dignity of some degree of analytical, as well as dramatic, thought.



Constance (Anna Prohaska) and other Carmelites

 

Sally Matthews’s performance of the central role was one which improved almost out of recognition as the evening went on. The first scene was troubled by thick vibrato and less than convincing French. It would be vain to contend that Matthews’s French diction or style ever truly convinced, but it became possible to leave to one side one’s doubts, as her dramatic sincerity won one over. Anna Prohaska made a wonderful foil as Constance: vivacious, pure and clean of tone, yet full of fun. In short, she simply ‘lived’ the character, convincing us that this was how she must be; it would be a pity if we were not one day to hear her Blanche. Deborah Polaski’s Old Prioress impressed through sheer strength of personality, even if, again, her French was far from beyond reproach. Her Erwartung did not seem so very far away at the end of the first act. Emma Bell was sensational as her replacement, ringing as true and clear as I have ever heard; indeed, this was the finest performance I have heard from her. Equally distinguished was Sophie Koch’s Mother Marie: a tricky, yet crucial role. Her inner demons and ultimate humanity were powerfully portrayed in a reading of vocal distinction too. Yann Beuron’s Chevalier de la Force made a headstrong and imploring mark, whilst Alan Oke captured better than I had previously encountered the ambivalent role of the Chaplain. Indeed, pretty much every one of the smaller roles was well taken, and the choral singing could hardly be faulted either. This was, then, whatever quibbles one might have had concerning aspects of Carsen’s production and the French diction, an excellent company effort, and should be lauded as such.

Lulu, Staatsoper Berlin, 9 April 2012

Schiller Theater, Berlin



Images (c) Bernd Uhlig

Lulu – Mojca Erdmann

Countess Geschwitz – Deborah Polaski

Dresser, Gymnast – Anna Lapkovskaja Painter, Negro – Stephan Rügamer
Dr Schön, Jack the Ripper – Michael Volle
Alwa – Thomas Piffka
Athlete – Georg Nigl
Schigolch – Jürgen Linn
Prince, Manservant – Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke
Theatre Manager – Johann Werner Prein
Doctor of Medicine, Professor – Wolfgang Hübsch
Lulu's Doppelgängerin – Blanka Modrá, Liane Oßwald

Andrea Breth (director)
Erich Wonder (set designs)
Moidele Bickel (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Philipp Haupt (video)
David Robert Coleman (‘adaptation’ of the London Scene)
Jens Schroth (dramatic advisor)

Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Johann Werner Prein (Theatre Manager), Georg Nigl (Athlete), Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Prince, or whoever he was supposed to be here...)

I am genuinely at a loss to know where to start with this performance of Lulu, but perhaps a little chronological background would be as good a place as any. Having admired Andrea Breth’s Salzburg production of Eugene Onegin, which he conducted, Daniel Barenboim invited her to direct Wozzeck and Lulu in Berlin. Wozzeck was much admired at last year’s Festtage; I thought highly of it, albeit with a few more reservations than many seem to have felt. It was certainly, however, a good enough production to have me look forward to Berg’s second opera. Except that it was not really Berg’s second opera at all: instead, Breth and Barenboim served up a bowdlerised version, a ‘Berliner Fassung’ for which I cannot imagine anyone had called, and which certainly did not seem to satisfy anyone in the theatre. The Prologue disappears completely, replaced by a horizontal actor’s drawn out reading from Kierkegaard and Lulu’s third-act scream, as does the Paris Scene from the Third Act. This is not a reversion to the old two-act version, though, even if one discounts the bizarre excision of the Prologue, in which the terms of the drama are set up, the whole world a stage or a circus. For the final scene, set in London, has been rewritten, adapted, call it what you will, by one David Robert Coleman, of whom I freely admit that I had never heard before. On the basis of this encounter, I sincerely hope that reunion should be indefinitely postponed. One might be able to take the use of a radio – presumably a recording, though it may just have been a strange acoustic trick – during the first act, but Coleman’s sketchy orchestration sounded more akin to an undergraduate’s first attempt to look through Berg’s manuscripts than a finished ‘version’, let alone a competitor to Friedrich Cerha’s standard completion.

A metaphor for the production?

Why was the latter not used? Presumably permission was refused, not unreasonably, on account of the decision to make cuts. Whose decision? Breth’s? Barenboim’s? The former’s, with the latter’s acquiescence? Why, why, why? It sounded as much a mess as what we saw onstage, of which more anon, despite fine musical performances, of which more anon. Berg’s harmonisation of the hurdy-gurdy Lautenlied is tossed aside in favour of a manifestly inferior version by Wedekind. This is not, of course, simply a matter of an inferior harmonisation, nor indeed of having missed the tune’s first appearance in the excised Paris Scene; dodecaphonic writing and method are completely undermined. This is musical violence from which I am frankly astonished that Barenboim did not recoil. Likewise when it comes to the violence done to Berg’s symmetries, dramatic and musical, is unconscionable; this is not some Italianate number-opera. It is mystifying that one of the truly great musicians of our time, someone who has collaborated closely with Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau, the team that brought us the first ever staging of the ‘complete’ Lulu, and one who has so excelled in the music of the Second Viennese School, should have acquiesced – if indeed, that is what happened. It was, apparently, at Barenboim’s invitation that Coleman put together his ‘version’, steel drums and all – yes, really! an intimation of an early jukebox, we are told – but was the original decision to travesty Berg’s opera made by Breth? Let us assume so, for it is difficult to imagine why someone conducting Lulu for the first time would wish not really to conduct Lulu at all.

Lulu (Mojca Erdmann), Geschwitz (Deborah Polaski)

Insofar as one can establish responsibility from Breth’s production, it seems likely that the idea was hers. She certainly seems to have no interest in Berg’s structures, substituting for them a tedious play of actors and mimed actions. The setting appears to be a cross between a production of a Beckett parody and a 1980s pop video, a grim warehouse with a crashed car and a great deal of scaffolding. (The latter actually provides a degree of relief; I found myself able to imagine in its structures some Bauhaus-like counterpoint to the constructivism, if not the Romanticism, of Berg’s score.) A great deal goes on, but relatively little seems to have anything to do with the opera itself, nor indeed with the ‘characters’ who sing in this production. Instead of a film of Lulu’s trial – why are directors, often so besotted with film, so reluctant to respect this necessary or at least advisable visual counterpoint to Berg’s palindrome? – we simply gaze upon a couple of filmed eyes, maybe Lulu’s, maybe not, whilst someone tips a woman out of a wheelbarrow, puts her back in again, and wheels her off. The sub-Beckett atmosphere is of questionable relevance to Berg, but I could discern no attempt even to make it fit. There is, of course, no change of scenery, despite the clear dramatic necessity to shift from one milieu to another. At the end, there is a minor conflagration, permitting more colour than has otherwise been permitted all evening. Just as with Christof Loy’s dreadful, indeed well-nigh unbearable, ‘minimalist’ production for Covent Garden, I cannot imagine that anyone not already well versed in the opera would have the faintest idea what was going on, or who anybody might be, let alone why one might care. If the idea were to excise supposed misogyny and perhaps other uncomfortably drawn characters – why, incidentally or perhaps not incidentally, is it so difficult to distinguish between attitudes voiced by characters and those voiced by creators? – then all that was achieved was to neuter, indeed almost to obliterate, the drama.

Lulu and Jack the Ripper (Michael Volle)

The truly odd thing about this whole fiasco is that Barenboim conducted what remained of Berg’s score superbly, so much so that one could almost, especially if one knew the score, fill in the gaps. Despite the ruptures, there was a true understanding of both dramatic and musical flow and the generative nature of Berg’s serial writing. Allied to a Staatskapelle Berlin on fine form, its dark, ‘old German’ sound a true joy to hear in this repertoire, one had a frustrating sense of what might have been. Much of the singing impressed too. Mojca Erdmann occasionally struggled, her voice running out of steam at one point until she elected to resume her cruelly high line an octave lower, but for the most part she sang as well as she acted: a credible doll-like approach that permitted all manner of coloratura parallels to be drawn. Michael Volle sang as well as one might have expected, in a role he seems well on the way to be making his own. If occasionally a little wobblier than one often hears in this part, Deborah Polaski’s Geschwitz was a forthright performance. If she did not tug on the heartstrings as one might hope, that was surely more a matter of the production and its cuts than anything else. Thomas Piffka sometimes sounded forced as Alwa, his lines consequently lacking shape, but elsewhere sang well enough. Stephan Rügamer was compelled to perform a very odd caricatured Negro dance, surely more offensive than anything alleged to be found in the opera itself, but nevertheless emerged with credit, as did Georg Nigl’s Athlete, who also had to perform a great deal of shadow-boxing in the background. Jürgen Linn’s Schigolch made surprisingly little impression, but again that may have been at least as much a matter of the production as anything else. The whole lasted about three hours, including one interval.

Again, why, why, why?

Schoenberg, 'Moderne Menschen' triple-bill, Leipzig Opera, 20 April 2008

Oper Leipzig

Moderne Menschen: Eine Schönberg-Trilogie

Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Axel Kober (conductor)

The musical world’s debt to Leipzig Opera cannot be gainsaid. Even Erwartung is hardly over-exposed, whilst stagings of Die glückliche Hand and Von heute auf morgen are rarer than gold-dust. Moreover, to perform all three of Schoenberg’s one-act operas was not merely a magnificent declaration of intent; it also paid off in artistic terms. Though I might entertain reservations concerning certain aspects of the staging, these should not detract from the enterprise itself, which also included a Schoenberg exhibition at the opera house. Each of the operas was presented separately, with a different cast and production team. Conductor Axel Kober and the fearless Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra were common to all three. One can debate about whether the works might have benefited from a common approach; there are valid arguments on either side. Given that they were performed under the single heading, Modern Menschen (‘Modern People’), deriving from the final line of Von heute auf morgen, there would have been something to be said for a more single-minded treatment, but let us not worry too much on that score. I am delighted to see that Leipzig Opera’s dedication to the cause will continue; next season, the trilogy will be revived as part of the house’s permanent repertoire. Many more celebrated companies should be put to shame.

Von heute auf morgen

Der Mann – Wolfgang Newerla
Die Frau – Hendrikje Wangemann
Sänger – Timothy Fallon
Die Freundin – Susanna Anderson

Das Kind – Johannes Gosch, Jonathan Lauch, Maximilian Friedrich, Ruben Bestfleisch, Johannes Ruß, Ilkja Kafanke, Andre Kafanke, Johannes Gramsee, Thomas Beck, Patrick Koglin
Der Gasmann – Björn Bachmann, Roman Schulze, Christoph Schubert

Immo Karaman (director)
Fabian Posca (co-director)
Kaspar Zwimpfer (designs)
Marie-Louise Walek (costumes)

Von heute auf morgen is, by any standards, an historically important work: the first twelve-note opera. Yet how often does one have the opportunity to hear it, let alone to see it staged? It is more than historically important, too, a far better work than many that refuse to leave our stages. One may smile at Schoenberg’s desire, influenced by the success of the Brecht-Weill Threepenny Opera, to write a popular ‘hit’, but as Hanns Eisler remarked, the subject matter and the words evoke ‘a mundane operetta’. The music, however, as Eisler went on to say, is, of the future, in spite of Schoenberg’s intentions, but this tension rendered the apparent banality of the text ambiguous and ultimately presented ‘a kind of apocalypse on a family scale’. One of the work’s most persuasive interpreters, Michael Gielen, has rightly referred, again suggesting that this was far from Schoenberg’s intention, to the ‘horror music’ of the ‘subconscious of the bourgeoisie’.

This came to the fore, though not didactically so, in Oper Leipzig’s production. The banality of bourgeois existence was nicely portrayed on stage, in what was a vaguely updated setting. A nice touch was the initial conveyor-belt of household goods: important to this mode of existence in one sense, yet utterly unimportant and indeed ‘fashionable’ in another. For Schoenberg’s intentional ire is directed against the vapidity of fashion, a just object of anyone’s ire. And so there was no attempt to dignify the Friend and the Singer. Their fashionable contempt for ‘old-fashioned’ existence was worse than the object of their contempt.

All four of the singers impressed in their roles, whose vocal difficulties are of course considerable. Such difficulties are perhaps intensified by the need to continue in ‘light’ vein. The principal couple, played by Wolfgang Newerla and Hendrikje Wangemann, bear the brunt of this pressure. That they never seemed to tire and remained impeccably in character, albeit changing character, throughout is a tribute to their artistry. Susanna Anderson and Timothy Fallon were convincing siren voices for the fashion, which changes ‘between today and tomorrow’, although I wondered whether the latter might have been a little more alluring and/or heroic. The Child underwent various incarnations, from small to strapping. (I am not quite sure why.) Each of his incarnations handled his notated rhythms well. The three – again, I do not know why – images of the gasman had little to do other than display their chiselled physiques as bait for the unhappy Woman, but they could hardly be faulted in that respect.

The orchestra was excellent throughout and was securely led by Axel Kober. The gleaming Bauhaus-like constructivism of Schoenberg’s score is not generous to second-rate performance, let alone worse, but there was no chance of that here. There was a fine sense of continuity, and one felt duly overwhelmed – and in definite need of a drink – by the canonical ‘horror’ quartet in which the opera culminates.

Die glückliche Hand

Der Mann – Matteo de Monti

Members of the Leipzig Opera Chorus
Stefan Biz (chorus master)

Eine Frau – Meylem González
Ein Herr – Roman Schulze

Carlos Wagner (director)
Daphne Kitschen (designs, costumes)
Tom Baert (choreographer)

Die glückliche Hand is anything but ‘light’, even in the somewhat ironic sense one must adopt when speaking of Schoenberg. It is, however, I think, ultimately a more ingratiating work, an Expressionist masterpiece of the highest order. Schoenberg’s fanatically detailed instructions for staging, many concerned with an almost Scriabin-like music of colours, present a difficulty for any director. Carlos Wagner elected to ignore the colours, or rather to present many of them as words above the stage, although on stage he actually followed quite a few of Schoenberg’s directions. In the programme, he defended this course by speaking of creating a ‘world of symbols’ from his own subconscious, to respond to that of Schoenberg. I have no especial problem with this, but I wondered whether, in a work so rarely staged, it might have been worthwhile to present at least some of Schoenberg’s colours. As it was, we found ourselves on the moon, and with a football theme replacing the Schoenbergian jewellers’ workshop.

Matteo de Monti was a good, if not outstanding, ‘man’, as the only vocal soloist. There was nothing wrong with his portrayal, but it lacked the flawed artistic heroism that Schoenberg at least saw as so crucial. The six men and six women from the Leipzig Opera Chorus were superb, for which credit should also go to Stefan Biz. Positioned unseen behind the audience, there was a wonderful spatial effect, which offered an intriguing substitute for our colour deprivation. The orchestra sounded magnificent, revelling in the heights and depths of Schoenberg’s expressionism, once again securely guided – and rather more than merely guided – by Kober.

If I had doubts – though doubts rather than opposition – concerning the production, it should be added that Carlos Wagner’s Personenregie was faultless. One witnessed this as much in the non-singing ‘extras’ as the Man himself. Meylem González and Roman Schulze (previously a Gasman) proved themselves fine actors and commendably athletic too. Members of the Faculty of Sports Science at the University of Leipzig were able to display their footballing skills, joined by Schulze, who seemed just as much at home in this respect.

Erwartung

Die Frau – Deborah Polaski

Sandra Leopold (director)
Tom Musch (designs, costumes)

Erwartung also received a fine performance. Anything remotely acceptable in the role of the Woman will be a tour de force, and this was no exception. I did not feel that Deborah Polaski brought quite the knife-edge dramatic charisma to the role that I heard a few years ago from Inga Nielsen at Covent Garden, but this was also doubtless partly attributable to the differing concerns of the production. It would be unreasonable, to put it mildly, to expect pitch-perfection here, but I noted a number of slips. Balanced against that, Polaski was admirably secure of tone and certainly could act.

We appeared to be in some sort of studio confessional, the Woman of course having lost her lover. She appeared to be recording herself, for at least part of the time, although it was not clear why she was in the studio. Was she being held, on trial, mad, etc.? There is much that is unclear in Schoenberg’s original, and indeed that is much of the point, so we should not concern ourselves too much with precision. There was a creditable sense – shared between production and performance – of increasing madness and hopelessness. Once again, the orchestral contribution was first-class, as was Kober’s direction. That marvellous sense of athematic splintering and refraction was powerfully caught, but so was the underlying sense of direction through which one of Schoenberg’s most miraculous score continues to cohere, whilst breathing the air of all manner of other planets.

More controversial was the ending. Disrupting what Walter Benjamin would have called the ‘aura’ of the work, Sandra Leopold decided to have Polaski play back part of the recording she had made, which we heard – in recorded form. I thought that this worked rather well, and offered an interesting response – intentionally or otherwise – to the lack of finality in the score. (This is a lack of finality arising from the very nature of the very writing, so my words should not in any sense be considered as an adverse criticism.) Certainly, no one seemed to mind in Leipzig, although I can imagine that more conservatively-minded audiences might well do so. On the other hand, they would probably have stayed away in the first place from Schoenberg, even a century on.

I am not sure that I emerged from this trilogy any the wiser concerning the Child’s question at the end of Von heute auf Morgen – ‘Mama, what are modern people? – but perhaps that is the point. Maybe there is no single thread binding us together at all. Schoenberg would probably have dissented, but no more than Wagner was he always the surest guide to his own work. The crucial thing here is that Oper Leipzig gave us the rarest of opportunities to consider such questions.