Bayreuth Festival (1) - Der fliegende Holländer, 1 August 2024

Festspielhaus

Images copyright: Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Daland – Georg Zeppenfeld
Senta – Elisabeth Teige
Erik – Eric Cutler
Mary – Nadine Weissmann
Steersman – Matthew Newlin
The Dutchman – Michael Volle

Director, set designs – Dmitri Tcherniakov
Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filshtinsky
Dramaturgy – Tatiana Werestchagina

  
Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Eberhard Friedrich)
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

The Dutchman sets sail every seven years, though more often at the Bayreuth Fetival. Like all of Wagner’s operas and dramas staged there, The Flying Dutchman will run for several years, then take a few years off prior to a new staging. I first saw Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production here last year and welcomed it with enthusiasm: a return to form for a director who had seemed in danger of falling into a therapeutic rut. Despite a few, largely unvoiced misgivings over Oksana Lyniv’s conducting, I put them to one side, knowing what a challenge it can be to conduct in the covered pit and trying to remain open to approaches that would not necessarily be mine. This year, Tcherniakov’s staging continued to impress, though I could not help but feel a little had been lost in tightness of presentation (or lack of Werkstatt development in the meantime). The major problem, though, was Lyniv’s direction of the score, loudly acclaimed by the audience, yet which for me fell seriously short, resulting in the strange, unwelcome achievement of making Wagner’s score sound incoherent, arbitrary, and for long stretches – which, sadly, seemed even longer – simply dull, mostly excellent vocal performances notwithstanding. 

Back to Tcherniakov first, though. Here ‘H’ – presumably ‘Holländer’, someone to whom even hardline Line of Duty fans seem not to have given due consideration – returns to his home town, as usual with Tcherniakov, brilliantly evoked scenically through his own set designs. The horrific deeds he recalls from his childhood are played out during the Overture, a small town closing ranks against his mother, perhaps a prostitute or at least in receipt of financial aid from Daland, leading to her death by hanging from a window. This is something, understandably, of which he can never let go; traumatised, he is clearly bent on vengeance against Daland and family (which now includes Mary as his wife), and more broadly against the entire community. Whether his feelings for Senta are ‘real’, whatever that might mean, or not, seems beside the point. He clearly has his own trajectory and she has hers, determined (as in so many stagings, as in Wagner) to escape a world of stifling conformity—and, in a sense, does so. 

Yet at what cost? When the inevitable conflagration occurs, perhaps hinted at earlier by Mary’s placing of candles at the impeccably bourgeois dinner table that proves only a source of misery and misunderstanding, the Dutchman, having shot others, is himself shot by Mary (as you will have gathered by now, a considerably extended part) to whom a now clearly traumatised Senta turns for comfort. The surplus wealth our ever-venal Daland has achieved in the meantime has gone up literally in flames, leaving the women once again both to suffer the consequences and to attempt to pick up the pieces. Dreams can readily turn into nightmares—although someone seated near me appeared, unaccountably as well as distractingly, to find the whole thing a comedy, merrily chortling throughout. 

Michael Volle gave another fine performance as the Dutchman. Every word counted, at least as much as, arguably still more so than, every note. Though this was undoubtedly an opera performance, it drew on his deep experience of Lieder and other concert singing. Moreover, he dealt extremely well with what I assume was a serious injury, appearing with a crutch, though wielding it so well in the course of his portrayal that I initially thought it must be a new feature of the production. Only when he retained it for curtain calls, was I reasonably sure this was not the case (though I shall happily be corrected.) Elisabeth Teige’s vocal strength, accuracy, and dramatic commitment were second to none throughout. Hers was a haunted, haunting portrayal that drew on a wide-ranging palette of vocal colour whilst remaining absolutely centred throughout. Nadine Weissmann as Mary once again impressed as a fine singing actor, whilst Georg Zeppenfeld showed for the nth time that he can apparently do no wrong in any role, including one that requires unattractive traits of personal weakness. This was mostly the same cast as in 2023, the exceptions being Eric Cutler’s Erik and Matthew Newlin’s Steersman. Cutler truly made Erik into a character of his own; what a luxury it was to hear a Heldentenor hold his imploring own in this role. Newlin likewise impressed greatly in his smaller role, clearly relishing the Festspielhaus acoustic and what he could accomplish, verbally and musically, within it. 

Lyniv’s conducting had its moments. It retained a sense of urgency to begin with, from last year, though all too often that dissipated into a strangely meandering tour through the music. A tendency, already pronounced in 2023, to overemphasise the number-opera aspects to the score, as if ashamed of the seeds of something more ‘progressive’, had now become an apparent determination to make it sound as if it were little more than Das Liebesverbot. Yes, of course one can hear varied roots in the score; of course, highlighting them on occasion can be revealing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Erik benefited most from such emphasis, though it is worth recalling that the opera does not fall so neatly into ‘backward-looking’ Erik and Daland, and ‘forward-looking’ Dutchman and Senta. Indeed, the way in which Cutler brought that to the fore through gesture as well as voice was not the least of his achievements. 

Yet so heterogeneous an approach required some sense of direction, whereas what we heard, especially in the second act, promised less redemption than interminable day-to-day tedium. I can only wish I believed that to have been evidence of a musicodramaturgical point of view. The third act fared better, not least since problems with the chorus, or rather with coordination between it and the orchestra, which Lyniv failed for too long to address, had now been fully resolved. Even here, though, an apparent determination to rob the orchestra of its depth and, more seriously still, Wagner of harmonic meaning suggested more an abdication of musical dramaturgy than an alternative. I can only assume the production’s use of Wagner’s post-Tristan ‘redemptive’ revisions to the score was intended to evoke irony; to an extent it did, more at the close than in the revised Overture. Yet it made little sense given such an approach to the score, other than to suggest it was a bit of a mess. My sentiments, however, seemed to place me in a minority; I do not think I have heard a more enthusiastic reaction to any performance at Bayreuth.

Bayreuth Festival (1) - Der fliegende Holländer, 14 August 2023

Festspielhaus

Daland – Georg Zeppenfeld

Senta – Elisabeth Teige

Erik – Tomislav Mužek

Mary – Nadine Weissmann 

Steersman – Tansel Akzeybek

Dutchman – Michael Volle

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)

Elena Zaytseva (costumes)

Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)

Tatiana Werestchagina (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

It had been six, not seven, years since I last saw The Flying Dutchman, but it was time. So it was for ‘H’: Holländer, rather than a friend from Line of Duty, though there was certainly something of the allied Nordic Noir genre to Dmitri Tcherniakov’s staging, first seen in 2021. The Dutchman revisits his home town following an horrific crime, resulting in a woman, perhaps a prostitute, left hanging from a window, seen (or dreamed) during the Overture. He plays his cards close to his chest, but is bent ultimately on justice, revenge, or both, insofar as they may be separated. Is that what he achieves? He seems to think so, maniacal in a burning triumph to match Götterdämmerung, windows of Tcherniakov’s own small-town, Norwegian set, its church a focal yet distant point of alternative judgement; or, for Nietzscheans, alternative death, ablaze. Until, that is, Mary, the ‘normal’ yet apparently decent animating future of community singing (rather than spinning), desperate to escape from that world, shockingly shoots him dead at the close, the ironic strains of Wagner’s 1859 ‘redemptive’ ending telling their own tale from the pit. 

Mary, it seems in this retelling, is Senta’s mother or stepmother. She is certainly resented earlier by Senta, who in crazed fashion – is she high, a not uncommon reaction to smalltown life? – supplants her in front of the choir, waving her arms around to little apparent musical effect. The Dutchman’s picture, however, still causes a stir. To have Nadine Weissmann, Frank Castorf’s unforgettable Erda, in this newly important, and sympathetic role, added intriguing, intertextual possibilities to this mind, although that is perhaps for the most part a private matter. Weissmann’s performance was as musically endearing as it was dramatically powerful, its silences and quiet looks as potent as the final shot.

This is, among other things, a tale of storytelling. The Steersman, Daland, the Dutchman, Senta, most likely everyone has a story to tell. The past, especially as understood by the present, is like that. For the woman hanged was the Dutchman’s mother, and it would seem, Daland’s lover. (I think it was a little more than a transactional arrangement, though I am not entirely sure. Perhaps they were not either.) The town bar is a dangerous, masculine place of storytelling; the Dutchman has money, and thus can buy men and time. The choir is most probably the bar’s feminine equivalent. At any rate stories are told and heard, decisions are made, and steps are taken towards the final tragedy.

For Senta, it has been a tale cleverly poised between Nordics Noir and Beige (the latter literally in Elena Zaytseva’s costumes for her and the womenfolk). And it is emblematic of the success of the whole, almost whatever one may think of parts of it, that this is seen and heard at all levels. When Tansel Akzeybek’s Steersman sang his song, eliciting derisory laughter, the number of different tones and expressions used, without sacrifice to the whole, transformed it into a mini-cantata or indeed an encapsulation or anticipation, of the whole drama. The tragedy of having to live in the circumstances given and which cannot be altered is not of course, uncommon. It seems, however, unusually apparent and immediate on this occasion. That thought may be politicised; it may be internalised; it may even be transmuted into geography. What is this Norway, we might ask, for Wagner, for Tcherniakov, for the performers, for us? To say it is, the imagination is too easy, although there is surely an element of that. We all create it before our eyes and ears, although certainly not with free will. Always the grey, the beige, the community, and likewise our dreams, fantasies, and plans to escape beckon, thwart and are thwarted, impart life and death. 

Michael Volle’s complete portrayal, as visceral as it was detailed, as rooted in Schubert ballads and even Bach as it was echt-Wagnerian, was a rare prize, fundamental to our experience, as was Georg Zeppenfeld’s luxury casting as Daland. I say ‘luxury’, but in fact a signal virtue of this performance and this production was to have one realise quite how important and complex the role should be. Elisabeth Teige’s Senta was fully the equal of the portrayals of her illustrious peers. A fittingly Nordic heroine, as steely as Nilsson when required, yet probably more variegated in response to very particular stage requirements, she understandably received thunderous applause. Erik is a difficult role; one cannot (usually) be unduly heroic or assertive. Tomislav Mužek nevertheless impressed in another excellent performance.

Eberhard Friedrich’s Bayreuth Festival Chorus was likewise on first-rate form, as it must be. A rooted community that can yet be swayed, it offered an almost Bach Passion-like combination of participation and observation. That goes for Tcherniakov as well as Wagner. Much the same may be said of what Wagner would soon designate his Greek chorus, the orchestra. If Oksana Lyniv drove hard times, not least during the Overture, and sometimes seemed more inclined to look back toward the number-opera past than forward to the music-drama future, hers was always a musically and dramatically motivated reading, strongly in sympathy with the production. The orchestra itself was incisive, decisive and full of telling colour, such as Wagner had learned in Paris. My ears may still tend, say, towards Wolfgang Sawallisch in 1959, but this was – and is – a Dutchman for here and now. After all, the past, constantly retold and reinvented, is always with us, terrifyingly so as the house from which that terrible deed was done burns. 

Der fliegende Holländer, Deutsche Oper, 22 September 2017

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Erik (from a different cast, 2017 premiere)
Images: Thomas Jauk

Daland – Andreas Bauer

Senta – Martina Welschenbach

Erik – Robert Watson

Mary – Ronnita Miller

Steersman – Gideon Poppe

Dutchman – Josef Wagner

Christian Spuck (director)

Eva-Maria Abelein (assistant director)

Rufus Didwiszus (set designs)

Emma Ryott (costumes)

Ulrich Niepel (lighting)

Dorothea Hartmann (dramaturgy)

Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines) of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

Poor Erik. Most people who have seen and/or heard The Flying Dutchman must have thought that at some point, if only mildly and with a hint of contempt. It is in many ways a thankless role, perhaps not unlike Don Ottavio, albeit with less in the way of vocal beauty. And so, it is an interesting idea to place him at the centre of the action, to turn the drama into his story. The payoff in the third act of Christian Spuck’s production – we do not, thank God, have any intervals – is considerable. I rather wish, though, that what we see there might have been read back more clearly, strongly, or something at least, into the first two acts. Apart from Erik wandering around the stage, often sitting with his head in his hands, or wall hugging (yes, I am afraid so), everything else looks pretty ‘modern-ish-traditional’. Ulrich Niepel’s lighting creates, especially in the first act, plenty of dark atmosphere. Otherwise, Spuck’s production and Rufus Didwiszus’s designs look pretty much as you might have expected them to – at least unless you are of an unfortunately ‘folksy’ persuasion. (In that case, Wagner is probably not for you.) The small model ship we have seen in many other productions is there for Erik to hold. There is rainfall – its noise frankly distracting, and not in a good way, during the Overture; there is plenty of water; there are galoshes; there are nineteenth-century sewing machines; and so on.

Without Erik, then, there really would be no Konzept on which to remark. No problem with that: one strongly delineated idea may well be enough. It is not, though, unless we count his mildly surprising behaviour and his different, slightly more colourful, clothes. Perhaps it has all been his dream; it makes, I suppose, a change from Senta’s dream. His stabbing her at the close is a moment of genuine drama. Then, everything recedes –the image and acts of a repressive crowd familiar from almost every staging, for how could they not be present? – leaving him alone on the stage, as at the beginning. The decision to use Wagner’s later musical thoughts – I tend very much to prefer Dresden – is thrown into interesting relief here; what is the ‘redemption’ we hear but certainly do not see (even on the questionable terms of Senta and the Dutchman)? Is it utter Wahn? Again, I wish we had seen or heard something more of a trail leading up to this, beyond, that is, Erik’s frequent onstage presence. Perhaps the idea had been more strongly, coherently presented when the production received its premiere earlier this year; rehearsal time and repertory direction can sometimes mislead. On the other hand, I can only comment on what I saw.

And, of course, on what I heard – which was a perfectly decent repertory night’s performance, with some things very good indeed. Donald Runnicles was generally on secure rather than inspiring form, emphasising the numbers within the score – yes, a perfectly justifiable approach ‘historically’ – rather than its musicodramatic anticipations (and more than anticipations). Bar a strange transition, including one glaring missed entry – these things happen – to the second act, and some slightly lacklustre treading of aural water early in the third, there were solid virtues to be heard. On the other hand, when performing in one single span, and perhaps especially when incorporating the 1860 Tristan-esque revisions, more in the way of overt Fernhören might make for a more fulfilling dramatic experience. (‘Yes, Cosima,’ I hear you reply. Guilty as charged in this, but only this, respect.) It is a very difficult work to bring off, though, with such competing demands; perhaps that ideal performance in my head is simply unrealisable, even if someone else were to agree to my ‘ideal’. Those occasional fluffs notwithstanding, there was much to be enjoyed in the orchestral playing, secure of line, and often impressively dark in tone. Choral singing also impressed, not least the confrontation between the two bands of sailors in the third act, clarity and heft there quite beyond reproach.

Whatever one thinks of placing Erik at the dramatic centre, he will still only have the same amount to sing. In that respect, at least, much will still hang upon the Dutchman. Josef Wagner gave a deeply musical, considered performance. He perhaps occasionally lacked the last ounce of dramatic power, for instance, during his first-act duet with Daland, sounding slightly out-sung at times. That, however, was probably as much a comment on the estimable performance of Andreas Bauer, no mere caricature: flawed yet honourable. Martina Welschenbach’s Senta took a little time to get going vocally, but grew into something impressive indeed. Her obsession with the painting – a dialectical result of Erik’s obsession with her, real or otherwise? – registered strongly from the outset. And in the ‘non-title’ role, Robert Watson sang Erik’s part very well, clearly alert to its competing stylistic demands: a trickier task than many imagine. Gideon Poppe’s Steersman proved a vocal delight, having one wish, as so often, that he had more to do; the same went for Ronnita Miller’s typically likeable, yet not too likeable, Mary. Did this all quite fit into the Konzept? I am not so sure. However, I do not think that was in any sense the fault of a fine cast of singers: something one should never take for granted.

Terror in Munich: Munich Opera Festival (1) - Der fliegende Holländer, Bavarian State Opera, 22 July 2016

Nationaltheater, Munich

Daland – Matti Salminen

Senta – Catherine Nagelstad
Erik – Wookyung Kim
Mary – Okka von der Damerau
Steersman – Dean Power
Dutchman – Johan Reuter

Peter Konwitschny (director)

Johannes Leiacker (designs)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Werner Hintze (dramaturgy)

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

Bavarian State Orchestra
Asher Fisch (conductor)

Nationaltheater, Munich. Image: Felix Löchner

 

‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.’ It is, perhaps, a line quoted too often; yet, even though it may not have been entirely accurate on this occasion, it came to my mind. Its accuracy might be questioned in several respects. Although the Bavarian State Opera eschewed Wagner’s Tristan-esque revision – rightly, in my view, that working better for Tannhäuser than The Flying Dutchman – this was not Götterdämmerung. Moreover, the end, as we experienced it, came more as silence and alienation than a whimper; close, then, but probably not quite the same. More important still, in retrospect – hindsight was inescapable on this particular occasion – the real catastrophe, or rather news of it, came after the end of the performance, the ‘real world’, as is far too often the case at the moment, offering the keenest of tragedy. So perhaps I should start again; I shall not, however, since I should like to start at the end, indeed feel compelled to do so, lest tales of Mrs Lincoln and her critique of the evening’s dramatic proceedings hover too close for comfort. For this was an evening – thank God – never to be repeated, one that even the most ambitious of stage directors would have struggled to envisage, let alone to create. Without in any sense wishing to minimise Peter Konwitschny’s achievement in this typically arresting, provocative, yet ultimately deeply, if not unrelievedly, sympathetic production, only Karlheinz Stockhausen, and before him Richard Wagner himself, might have come anywhere near this – and even then, not so very near.

 

The music stopped, then, just before the final bars; the lights fell. Silence fell too, the singers looking uneasily at each other: splendidly acted, I remember thinking. Then, following that caesura – inevitable memories of Konwitschny’s celebrated Meistersinger, even for those of us who only heard tell – we heard the final bars, albeit from what sounded like a distant, wind-up gramphone. I even wondered whether it might have been Konwitschny père’s recording, rendered more ancient, not that that matters. Redemption, then, was undercut not only by Wagner’s Tristan-less ending. (I am skating over the more complex issues of earlier versions, but that is not really the point here.) It was ironised – few directors manage to ironise Wagner successfully; Konwitschny does – by hearing it as something we all knew, all expected, were more or less hearing in our heads anyway, and yet then did not hear as we should. It was a little like King Marke’s appearance in Die Meistersinger: meaningful, consequential, a modernist rather than a post-modernist quotation.

 

Then we spilled out onto the Max-Joseph-Platz, quite unaware of Munich’s terrorist lockdown. My telephone had no reception; I could not contact a friend, to see whether he had been there or not. (It later transpired that he had not.) Many of my fellow opera-leavers seemed puzzled. We could not, for instance, enter a restaurant on the other side of the square; although a few people in there were eating, the doors were locked. Whilst trying to find out what was going on, I eventually received a call from my father, to check that I was safe; he began to explain, and armed police came into view. I learned after that those who were less quick on their feet than I had been were unable to leave the Nationaltheater for quite some time. I, however, had little choice but to try to walk back to where I was staying, armed police and other advisors pointing me and others first in one direction, then in another, often seeming to disagree with each other. Meanwhile, so far as I was aware – this was not the case, but it was what everyone seemed to think at the time – the U-Bahn was closed, since one of several gunmen (there was, of course, only one) had gone down there, armed. Walking past Odeonsplatz station was a little frightening, then; but it was the eeriness of the evacuated beer festival in the square – when I had walked to the opera, it had been full of beer, music, Dirndls, Lederhosen – that, if anything, chilled more. Having spoken to my brother too, I made it back to my host’s, who filled me in on events unfolded and unfolding – and immediately poured me a much-needed drink.

 

I learned much later that what I ‘should’ have seen and heard – Barry Millington had sent me his review of the production, but I had not read it at the time – was Senta, clearly furious with the Dutchman for not having trusted enough, setting one of the quayside barrels ablaze and mount her own act of terror. The explosion I ‘should’ have heard – unlike Wagner’s music, I did not know it – never came; darkness and alienation, nevertheless curiously, chillingly effective, did. No wonder so many onstage ‘acted’ confused; they had not, it seems, been acting at all. Presumably many had suspected a technical problem. The Bavarian State Opera had, it seems, decided to pull the explosion. For those in the know, was this perhaps a bit like ‘hearing’ Mahler’s missing third hammer-blow in the Sixth Symphony? (Thank goodness this was not a Mahler evening: that really would have been too much.) And so, the business of interpreting, reinterpreting, a particularised version of Konwitschny’s staging – never, let us hope, to be repeated – truly got under way; or at least it did in the odd couple of seconds between replying to anxious Facebook and Twitter messages from friends. (Why, they wondered, had I not replied? Most of them had no idea, of course, that I had been in the theatre for nearly two-and-a-half hours, without an interval.) I shall never forget the non-bang and the gramophone whimper, nor the further step our wretched world made towards Götterdämmerung.

 

Let me turn, though, to what I had seen and heard before. My memory and my experience are doubtless coloured by the ‘other’ events of that night. Nevertheless, what I saw and heard was impressive indeed, on its own terms. Our friends at Against Modern Opera Productions – how chilling it was to see, that very night, them railing, as if Hitler had never fallen, against ‘degenerate’ artists – might even have liked, had they not seen the word ‘Konwitschny’, the realistic designs from Johannes Leiacker, with which the mise-en-scène opens. For it is a (German) Romantic, even Gothic landscape that provides the backdrop. Apart from anything else, this is a ghost story: every one of us, every society, is overwhelmed by ghosts from our pasts. So too, of course, is opera. Nevertheless, ships are definitely ships; the sea and sky are definitely the sea and sky. The Dutchman’s crew, moreover, are most definitely Golden Age Dutchmen. The painterliness is, in one sense at least, ironic. AMOP would not have ‘got’ that; representations and their deconstruction would have gone unnoticed, uncomprehended. They would surely, though, have noticed the heightened venality not only of Daland, but his crew too (modern Norwegians, but as yet, not with an overwhelming Wagnerian clash between ghostly visitors and the ‘present’). Daland’s pockets of a few golden chains; the Steersman crowns himself with a golden crown; the other lads eagerly join in the bonanza: there is much jewellery to be had from the new ship’s Cardillac-like cargo, unless, as one of Wagner’s less-eagerly acknowledged forebears might have advised him, ‘L’or est une chimère’. A chimera of another variety haunts the Dutchman: the Angel in white who visits the stage. This Dutchman is a man, with sexual fantasies of his own; they distract him, pave the way for tragedy; they lead us to the second act.

 

Our opera-as-Pegida acquaintances would certainly have started screaming degeneracy, at the deliberate scenic contrast when the curtain rose upon that act. This is a swish health club, in which the wheels that spin are those on the exercise bicycles. Mary leads the class, the girls engaged in the uneasy camaraderie and rivalry of the mindless heteronormative pursuit for an ‘ideal’ physical form to please ‘the’ men they have either hooked or would like to hook. (Or is it the other way round?) Spinning, one might say, takes more than one guise: old visiting new, new visiting old; connections abound. Senta does not fit in; she arrives late for the class, and is far more interested in her Romantic painting. Erik is a creepy yet impatient voyeur: no mere innocent he. Yet it is Senta’s disruptive presence, encouraged by the reappearing Angel, that ultimately, prophetically, proves the turning point. It sets in process the Brechtian – house lights on – lecture to the audience she and the Dutchman give at the close of the act. ‘Romantic love? Yeah, right…’ Everything, then, is set up to fail, as it increasingly does during the third act, modernity and caricatured Old Dutchmen engaging in violent combat, the past, as it so often is, victorious – not least because the present refuses to learn from it. And then – well, you have heard the rest. Explosion there comes – on this occasion, came there not.

 

The cast was distinguished. Catherine Naglestad trod to powerful, even searing effect the line between, on the one hand, twin incitement to Verfremdung and terror, and on the other, heartfelt, Romantic or neo-Romantic ‘feminine’ suffering. Her top notes – and not just her top notes – thrilled; we were reminded that the female redemption problematized by Konwitschny, by us more generally, is, not only in Wagner but in so much opera, often effected through vocal presence. Johan Reuter traced this complex Dutchman’s mood swings with great skill; we sympathised with, even followed, his distractions and his demons. Matti Salminen’s final Daland – so, at any rate, I was informed – was a bluff yet knowing performance, a fine tribute to a great artist. Wookyung Kim came close to stealing the show with his sensitively sung, far-from-pushover Erik. Okka von der Damerau imparted dramatic as well as ‘merely’ musical meaning to the role of Mary, and Dean Power proved as appealing and as intriguing a Steersman as I can recall having heard. Choral singing was wonderfully full-blooded too. All, then, engaged with Wagner’s work as living drama.

 

The Bavarian State Orchestra was, unsurprisingly, in its element here. Its playing encompassed all manner of shades from darkest, grimmest of musical tragedy to echoes of Mendelssohn and Weber, apparently – if only apparently – more blithe, even fairy-like. This was orchestral Wagner as outstanding as one might hear from Daniel Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin. Asher Fisch might have benefited from a more Barenboim-like sense of the work’s melos; or at least he would have done for me, my preference being very much for a more ‘musico-dramatic’, less ‘number-opera’ approach to the work. The latter is, of course, perfectly justifiable in theory, but it tends, unless more strongly incorporated into a sense of an unbroken whole, to make parts of the work drag – especially when, as here, numbers such as Senta’s Ballad, are taken so slowly. Fisch undoubtedly knew what he was doing, though; he had me, on more than one occasion, rethink, rehear. The waltzing at the end of the first act – perfectly in keeping with fantasies venal and sexual, visually as well as musically realised – pointed far into the musico-dramatic future, to Strauss as well as to the integrative tendencies of later Wagner. The Flying Dutchman is in some ways the most difficult Wagner drama of all to bring off musically; no one would have been seriously disappointed, if at all, by this performance.

The rest was silence; until, that is, it became the noise of chaos.

Der fliegende Holländer, Royal Opera, 5 February 2015

Images: ROH/Clive Barda

 

 

Royal Opera House

The Dutchman – Bryn Terfel

Senta – Adrianne Pieczonka
Daland – Peter Rose
Erik – Michael König
Mary – Catherine Wyn-Rogers
Steersman – Ed Lyon

Tim Albery (director)

Daniel Dooner (revival director)
Michael Levine (set designs)
Constance Hoffmann (costumes)
David Finn (lighting)

Chorus of the Royal Opera House (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Andris Nelsons (conductor)

 

I wonder whether we need a new way of thinking – and talking – about operatic ‘revivals’. Perhaps the term is more meaningful when it comes to works that have been dead and buried for years, before being rediscovered by subsequent generations. However, when it comes to productions, I cannot help but think that it increasingly obscures rather than aids understanding. Where, after all, has the production been in the mean time? Hades? More to the point, though, I think we tend to underestimate, at least in many cases, the role of the revival director. (The often problematical ‘repertory’ system employed in many German theatres is a different matter; I am thinking here of theatres operating according to what is essentially a stagione principle.) In this particular case, Daniel Dooner seemed to make a better job of ‘reviving’ Tim Albery’s production of The Flying Dutchman than Albery had made of presenting it in the first place. Or was it a matter of a better-adjusted cast? The one does not exclude the other, of course; indeed, the two are not unlikely to have been related.

Steersman (Ed Lyon)

The 2009 ‘premiere’ had greatly disappointed, eschewing Wagner’s interest in myth for a  form of dreary realism, quite out of place and seemingly determined – understandably, I suppose, given its misguided premise – to downplay the figure of the Dutchman as much as possible. It did not make sense and it did not involve. The irritants have not entirely gone away, especially during the third act, in which the drunken antics of the townsfolk – here, it must be admitted, very well portrayed by the chorus and Ed Lyon’s Steersman – still seem to be far too much ‘the point’. But they are counterbalanced and, on occasion, supplanted by a stronger sense of the Dutchman’s plight and its consequences. ‘Revival’ seems something of a misnomer for a hugely beneficial shift of emphasis, unless we mean that the work itself experiences something of a revival – which, I think, it does, at least vis­-à-vis its outing six years ago.

 

The Dutchman (Bryn Terfel)

Bryn Terfel’s performance certainly seems less ‘revived’ than brought to life for the first time. In 2009, he had disappointed perhaps even more than the production. There were still occasional unwelcome tendencies towards crooning, especially towards the end of his first-act monologue. They were occasional, though, and Terfel followed up his excellent Proms Walküre Wotan – almost certainly the best thing I have heard him sing – with a world-weary Dutchman who, moments of tiredness aside, yet had powers of something mysterious in reserve for when the moment called.  This time the words were not only crystal-clear – always a formidable weapon in Terfel’s armoury – but invested with a true sense of dramatic meaning. Adrianne Pieczonka’s Senta was at least his equal in terms of dramatic commitment; arguably, this thrilling, unmistakeably womanly performance went still further. I say ‘womanly’ since this was a reading that seemed thoroughly in keeping with a recent, welcome understanding of Wagner’s earlier heroines to be more than virginal male projections. Peter Rose made the most of Daland’s character: venal, yes, but also looking to the future for his daughter as well as himself. Michael König offered an alert Erik, Catherine Wyn-Rogers a properly maternal Mary. Often threatening to steal the show was Lyon’s Steersman, as fine a portrayal as I can recall: an everyman, perhaps, but one with agency, for which verbal and musical acuity alike should be thanked.

 

Senta (Adrianne Pieczonka) and Erik
(Michael König)

Andris Nelsons’s conducting for the most part brought out the best from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House. However, the interpretation as a whole did not seem quite to have settled; I strongly suspect that subsequent performances will impress more. The Flying Dutchman is a difficult work to bring off; despite fashionable claims for overplaying its (alleged) antecedents, it really works best as a whole when viewed, as Wagner would later do so, in the light of his subsequent musico-dramatic theories. Senta’s Ballad may not originally have been its dramatic kernel, but it has become so. Nelsons sometimes seemed unclear which way to tilt, especially during a drawn-out Overture, whose extremes of tempo threatened to negate any sense of unity. There were sluggish passages elsewhere: not hugely drawn out, but enough to make one wonder where the music was heading. The third act emerged tightest, and may well be a pointer to what audiences will hear later in the run. Choral singing was not entirely free of blurred edges, but there was much to admire, and again, I suspect that slight shortcomings will soon be overcome. This remained an impressive ‘revival’, all the more so, given its manifest superiority to the production’s first outing.  

 

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Der fliegende Holländer, 12 August 2012

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Daland – Franz-Josef Selig
Senta – Adrienne Pieczonka
Erik – Michael König
Mary – Christa Mayer
Steersman – Benjamin Bruns
The Dutchman – Samuel Youn

Jan Philipp Gloger (director)
Christof Hetzer (set designs)
Karin Jud (costumes)
Urs Schönebaum (lighting)
Martin Eidenberger (video)
Sophie Becker (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Assuming that Rienzi and Wagner’s two earlier operas will not enter the regular Festival repertory, and discounting Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, The Flying Dutchman was my final work from the Wagner canon to hear at Bayreuth. Unusually, early controversy was elicited not by the production, but by casting. Evgeny Nikitin, as the whole world must now be aware, was forced to withdraw, or ‘asked to resign’, owing to an absurd over-reaction to a tattoo claimed to be a swastika but which was not. Bayreuth’s nervousness concerning the slightest possible connection to its darkest period is understandable, but the Festival would be far better advised to confront its past head on, as Katharina Wagner seems commendably determined to do, rather than to resort to such quick-fix public relations gimmicks, which will always backfire.

Nikitin is a fine artist and was sorely missed, his replacement Samuel Youn to be lauded for acting as a last-minute replacement but hardly for his performance. Whilst he started off resoundingly dark and clear of tone, he did not reach the end of his monologue before intonational problems set in. Alarmingly, there were entire phrases during his performance when he was as much as a quarter-tone off-pitch; it was not a matter of odd notes. Perhaps the audience was being indulgent on account of the special situation, but this was some way by now from the first night; I could not help but think that the warm reaction Youn received signalled an audience for the most part unable to discern his tuning, even if one were to put aside a rather dour stage presence.

His colleagues, save for a rather nondescript Mary – why does this role seem so difficult to cast? – provided a good deal of vocal compensation. Adrienne Pieczonka had a few moments in which her tuning too left a little to be desired, also on occasion her diction, but for the most part, hers was an impressive, unusually womanly, performance. This Senta was no girl and seemed, which fitted well with the production, to know very much what she was doing. Her Erik, Michael König, showed himself possessed of a fine, mellifluous tenor, even if he were a little stiff on stage. Benjamin Bruns was quite a revelation as the Steersman. His is a still more mellifluous, at times ravishingly beautiful, voice; I wished that more had been written for him. Perhaps best of all was Franz-Josef Selig’s Daland, unerringly centred with respect to pitch and words, and just as unerring when it came to tonal warmth. Perhaps he ultimately sounds a little too kindly for the role, but that is really to nit-pick.

Christian Thielemann drew an echt-Bayreuth sound from the Festival Orchestra. He certainly knows how to work both orchestra and Festspielhaus acoustic. Not that this reading was undifferentiated in its darkness; there were splendidly light, almost fairy-like, Mendelssohnian textures to be enjoyed too. However, there were problems with Thielemann’s performance – at least for me, though the audience again reacted almost ecstatically at the endless curtain calls. A recurring trait in some, though far from all, of his performances is a tendency to pull around the music arbitrarily, almost because he can. Whilst it can occasionally prove refreshing, if only as a counterblast to unimaginative or doctrinaire-metronomic performances, here there were too many occasions, as in his Philharmonia recording of Schumann’s Second Symphony, in which it sounded merely contrived and interrupted the flow. There was a wonderfully pregnant slowing at the end of Senta’s ballad, fully justified by the anticipation it engendered. Balanced against that were frankly bizarre gear-changes such as a sudden slowing during the transition to the third act. (The opera was performed in an unbroken span, and in Wagner’s later version.) I was also a little surprised to hear the old operatic forms so clearly delineated; yes, Wagner marks them in the score, but I have yet to hear a performance of the ‘number-opera’ as opposed to the ‘music-drama’ variety that has proved entirely convincing. More than once I longed for Klemperer’s level-headed yet visceral communication of the score. Choral singing was first-rate throughout.

I was left somewhat nonplussed by Jan Phillip Gloger’s production, new this year. It has some excellent visual touches, not least thanks to Christof Hetzer’s striking set designs and Urs Schönebaum’s evocative and equally striking lighting. I liked the use of red to denote Senta’s realm of adventure, drawing together her dress, the red with which she daubs boxes to bring about her own modest Dutchman installation – the equivalent to the painting – and the sometimes shocking use of blood. And the way silhouetting is imaginatively employed to make the fantasy of not only a boat but a liberating cityscape is impressive indeed. The modernity of Daland’s factory is chillingly conveyed, but it is not entirely clear to me that it is enough for a production of this work to indict contemporary capitalism – contemporary to us, that is. I have no particular problem with the setting being an electric fan factory: spinning of a sort, I suppose. Yet it did not seem to add anything very much, save for the very end, when, courtesy of an opportunistic mobile telephone picture taken by the Steersman, Wagnerian redemption is splendidly undercut by transformation of the fan design into a memento of the suicide of Senta and the Dutchman. That was by far the most savage indictment of the evening of our sick and sickening system of production.

The presentation of the Dutchman as a weird, android-like figure, presumably a product thereof, seemed more odd than anything else. At his entrance, wheeling in – yes, you have guessed it – a suitcase, he appeared to me to be injecting himself with a syringe. He did not seem very practised at it, for a great deal of blood was spilled. Apparently that was the point, cutting himself to show that he was human after all, but I was not the only person to have missed that in the theatre, having instead to resort to a programme interview. There were, indeed, too many instances where the action, especially for a relatively small theatre, was on too small a scale properly to understand, or was simply, at least to me, obscure. I had the sense that there was a better production waiting to break out; let us hope that the Werkstatt principle will enable refinements in years to come.

CD review: Daniel Barenboim - Complete Wagner Operas

Daniel Barenboim: Complete Wagner Operas


Warner Classics 2564 66683-4, 34 compact discs, 36 hours 35 minutes

They are not, of course, ‘complete’ in an absolute sense, for the three earliest operas, Die Feen, Das Liebesverbot, and Rienzi are not present, but here are the complete Teldec recordings of Wagner’s operas and music dramas, as recorded by Daniel Barenboim. Knowing where to start with such an undertaking threatens to seem almost as daunting as undertaking it oneself, so I hope that the reader will forgive what is by necessity a cursory and partial examination of what seem to me to be some of the more notable features of this set.

To my surprise, Der fliegende Holländer somewhat disappoints. Barenboim’s conducting has its moments, and sometimes rather more than that; moreover, he has his own Staatskapelle Berlin on excellent form, its dark, ‘old German’ sound an increasingly rare pleasure in an age of international homogenisation. It is certainly a welcome aspect of Barenboim’s interpretation that he takes the opera in forward-looking fashion, more interested in highlighting musico-dramatic presentiments than trying to belittle it as so many do, as if this were merely a more ambitious type of Italianate number opera. However, that feeling for musical ‘line’, which is so often one of the most remarkable aspects of Barenboim’s conducting, is not always entirely with him. One might argue that that reflects the score’s ambivalence, but turn, say, to Klemperer and one does not feel the same. Yet it is really the singing that lets down the set. Falk Struckmann’s Dutchman might well be coming into greater focus as a dramatic strategy, but it is difficult to feel that Struckmann is at his best here. Far more serious a problem is Jane Eaglen’s Senta. This is a difficult role, but her tuning is, especially for a studio recording, often alarmingly awry, and I defy anyone truthfully to warm to her general tone, let alone to find hers a sympathetic, involving portrayal. Fans of Rolando Villazón may wish to capture his cameo as the Steersman, but I doubt that even the most fanatical would purchase a set such as this for that alone.

The Dutchman is given in its non-redemptive Dresden version; Tannhäuser largely follows Dresden, save for its use of Paris in the second scene of the first act. (Experienced Wagnerites will know that the situation is rather more complicated than ‘Dresden’ v ‘Paris’, but let us leave that on one side for the moment.) Eaglen again proves a millstone – why was she engaged? – but if you can somehow take a Tannhäuser with its Elisabeth filtered out, you might find more to enjoy. That said, it would be difficult to consider this recording as a vocal triumph. René Pape’s Landgrave and Hanno Müller-Brachmann’s Biterolf are probably the best sung roles, but no one is going to buy a Tannhäuser for its Biterolf, nor even for Waltraud Meier’s dramatically committed Venus. I might also add Dorothea Röschmann as the Young Shepherd, but that depends how one feels about a female voice in the role. (It is often preferable, at least in practical terms, in the theatre, given the potential for a treble to go awry, but a recording should be another matter.) Peter Seiffert, Erik in the Dutchman, does a reasonable job in both, but little more than that: he can sing the notes, but is not the most illuminating of interpreters. As in the previously considered recording, however, Barenboim, his orchestra, and his chorus, expertly trained by Eberhard Friedrich, prove intelligent and purposeful guides. Weighting and balance are often superbly judged, and Barenboim’s command of line rarely deserts him on this occasion.

Seiffert fares much the same as Lohengrin. One hears far worse, but nor does one hear anything approaching a revelation. He is certainly no Sándor Kónya. The rest of the cast largely impresses, however: Pape again, as Henry the Fowler, his rich darkness of tone a pleasure that is not remotely guilty, Emily Magee a silvery-toned Elsa, Struckmann on more focused form as Telramund, and Deborah Polaski a fine singing actress of an Ortrud. I prefer Meier (for Abbado) here, perhaps partly on account of having experienced her extraordinary portrayal in the theatre, but Polaski’s is a fine alternative of that ilk. A particular reason to acquire this set is the completeness of the score: the second part of the Grail narration is restored. In performance, and certainly in the theatre, I think that Wagner’s own cut – as suggested to Liszt, for the first, Weimar performance – has great merit, but a committed Wagnerite will surely want at least one ‘full’ Lohengrin. Barenboim again conducts the Staatskapelle Berlin with great insight, never resorting to cheap thrills, preferring to respond to the score’s requirements in terms of harmonic rhythm. Again, weighting and balance are for the most part impeccable. The chorus on this occasion is not that of the Staatsoper, but that of the Deutsche Oper.

It may seem perverse in a review of this kind to say less proportionately about the Ring, surely the centrepiece of any Wagner survey. It is certainly not for a want of interest on my part. However, many readers will know this Ring or at least be likely to acquire it for the sake of Harry Kupfer’s Bayreuth production, to my mind the most recommendable overall since Patrice Chéreau’s ‘Centenary’ Ring with Boulez. A few pointers then will suffice. The ‘Bayreuth’ sound is present and correct; this is, after all, a ‘live’ recording (from 1991). Those who thrill – as I am sure we all do, in the right mood – to Karl Böhm’s live Bayreuth performances will experience something rather different here. There is a sense of grandeur, of spaciousness, to Barenboim’s conducting that avoids the excesses of Böhm’s white heat: swept along one might be during Die Walküre, but Siegfried often just feels rushed. Barenboim, as in his Lohengrin, creates a fine sense of the sound welling up from the subterranean depths, Wagner’s orchestral Greek Chorus apparently – and this, for the most part, is surely illusion – taking the lead. That is not to say that the readings are lacking in direction, far from it, but it seems less imposed than more driven performances can. Solti’s celebrated Decca set is not only driven but for the most part quite devoid of a greater line; some still swear by it, but I find it verges upon the unlistenable, despite some superlative singing and orchestral playing.

Moreover, Barenboim, for all his worship of Furtwängler, shows himself alert to other tendencies and possibilities. A characteristic of much of Barenboim’s Wagner is an awareness of the ‘French’ sonorous possibilities, perhaps on account of a good deal of experience in conducting works from Berlioz to Boulez. Woodwind in particular benefit from an approach that is not so stereotypically ‘Germanic’ as lazy generalisations would have one believe; it is not the only way, and no one would ever wish to be without Furtwängler, Keilberth, et al., but Barenboim offers something illuminating and perhaps surprising. Take, for instance, the echoes of Auber in Gutrune’s music, an aspect to which – again, the reader may be surprised to read – Boulez is also keenly attuned. As Wagner wrote in Oper und Drama, French opera is unmasked as a coquette; so it is here in musico-dramatic terms, too.

I do not have time to dwell upon the singers, but anyone who has experienced Sir John Tomlinson’s Wotan in the theatre will surely want to hear it here; his voice has latterly lost its bloom whilst retaining, even intensifying, its stentorian authority. Here those intent on preferring the ‘vocal’ to the ‘dramatic’ will feel less imperative to make the analytical choice. Siegfried Jerusalem may well have been still more suited to the role of Siegmund than to Siegfried, but he is surely the finest of ‘modern’ Siegfrieds, a rare instance of someone one can enjoy rather than endure. Dame Anne Evans is an honest, intelligent, if perhaps not ultimately thrilling Brünnhilde, but Waltraud Meier’s Waltraute is almost enough in itself for one to acquire the set. That extraordinary cantata-like scene in Götterdämmerung is the real thing; Evans certainly sounds incited to her best.

Tristan und Isolde benefits from a fine pairing in the title roles: Jerusalem and Meier. Again, many of us will have favourites from the past, but these two are unlikely to be bettered in the present or the foreseeable future. One may prefer, say, Nina Stemme, but Meier’s approach is not that of a Lieder-singer; it is that of a wholehearted dramatic participant. Perhaps it really needs to be seen, but one can see a great deal in one’s head, so vivid is this account. If you want perfection, venture elsewhere, but is this not a work that goes far beyond, painfully beyond, ‘mere’ perfection? The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is of early Abbado vintage (1994), sounding more traditionally German than it tends to do so nowadays. (Though I should add that if you listen to the orchestra playing for Christian Thielemann, it still can sound as of old.) Barenboim knows the score intimately, and handles it with evident loving care. However, I miss here a sense either of the Furtwänglerian transcendent or, say, the sheer drama of Böhm or, better still, Carlos Kleiber. It is a fine performance, nevertheless, and is unlikely to disappoint.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, by contrast, and rather like a performance I heard Barenboim conduct at the Berlin Staatsoper Unter den Linden, has a slight tendency towards the marmoreal, Karajan on a not-so-good day. (Unlike many, I greatly admire much of Karajan’s Wagner.) Sometimes the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra, for all its virtues, sounds a little dull. When more variegated in tone, recalling those ‘French’ tendencies mentioned with respect to the Ring, it springs into life, but the golden tone of, say, Kubelík with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, or indeed, Karajan in Dresden or Bayreuth, brings us closer, and more consistently closer, to the heart of this joyous work. (That goes for its many darker moments too: the dialectic is thereby felt all the more keenly, especially with Kubelík.) The Bayreuth chorus is as splendid as one would expect – many thanks to Norbert Balatsch – but this is not a Meistersinger that is distinguished vocally. Seiffert as Walther again sings the part, but does not really go beyond that. (There are, moreover, far more beautiful assumptions.) Robert Holl and Andreas Schmidt are rather matter of fact as Sachs and Beckmesser; on a recording, one wants more than that. And Magee’s Eva is adequate rather than inspiring. (Who will ever forget Gundula Janowitz for Kubelík?)

Finally, Parsifal, perhaps the finest of the bunch. The Berlin Philharmonic sounds resplendent in 1989-90 guise, and even the recording location, the Jesus-Christus-Kirche, seems to play its part in permitting the score to bloom, not least in the choral scenes. Barenboim guides these and indeed the rest not only with a sure hand but with a dramatic sense which must, at the very least, approach second-to-none amongst present-day interpreters. The searing drama of, say, Boulez in the second act is not quite Barenboim’s way, but then nor is the extraordinary Zen-like ritual of Karajan in the first and third. There are always viable alternatives to whatever approach one might happen to favour, and Barenboim’s account renders one aware not only of the drama, but also of the more ‘purely’ musical virtues of Wagner’s scoring. (Not that others do not, but that seems to me a particular virtue of Barenboim’s performance.) Again his ear for orchestral sonority works wonders here, but so does his experience of pacing. Jerusalem and Meier again make as fine a modern pair in the two central roles as one could hope for. Again, anyone who has experienced Meier’s Kundry in the theatre will certainly want to hear this. I have heard greater agony in Amfortases than I do with José van Dam, but his is an intelligent portrayal throughout, unlikely to disappoint. Matthias Hölle might do, as Gurnemanz, but there is nothing especially wrong with what he does; he just does not bring to life the narrations as a Hotter, or indeed a Tomlinson, is wont to accomplish.

There is, then, a great deal to recommend in this set. None of the recordings would quite be my first recommendation, but then the whole concept of a ‘first recommendation’ is perhaps the problem in works that admit of, indeed require, a multiplicity of approaches and auditions even to begin to reveal their true wealth of riches. In any case, amongst ‘modern’ recordings, many of these would rank highly indeed. As a set, however, this proves more than the sum of its parts. Not only does one acquire all of the dramas from the Dutchman onwards at what must be an unbeatable price; not only is Barenboim’s conducting manifestly superior to the stopping and starting of Solti, whose ‘complete’ set is really the only comparable endeavour; one also becomes a companion to one of the greatest musicians of our time, in his continuing engagement with some of the supreme achievements of musical drama.




(This review first appeared here, on wagneropera.net.)