Lash, Deutsche Oper, 20 June 2025

Images: © Marcus Lieberenz

A – Anna Prohaska
S - Sarah Maria Sun
N – Noa Frenkel
K – Katja Kolm
Live Camera – Nadja Krüger
Synthesiser, Piano – Christoph Grund, Ernst Surberg
Electric Guitar – Adrian Pereyra
Stage percussion – Thomas Döringer, Florian Glotz, Konstantin Tiersch, Laslo Vierk
Box operators – Nana Ajei Boateng, Zé de Pavia, Lennie Fanslau, Victor Naumov, Paula Schumm

Director – Dead Centre (Bush Moukarzel)
Designs – Nina Wetzel
Lighting – Jörg Schuchardt
Sound design – Arne Vierck
Video – Sébastien Dupouey
Dramaturgy – Sebastian Hanusa

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Enno Poppe (conductor)

Having been an avid follower of Rebecca Saunders’s music since my first encounter at the Wigmore Hall in 2012, mostly in Germany (Berlin and Munich in particular) but also in London, I was excited to learn her first opera would be given at the Deutsche Oper—and still more excited to be able to visit for the premiere. Equally interesting and exploratory in vocal and non-vocal music and with an excellent track record in choice of verbal texts, Saunders seemed in many ways an ideal candidate for operatic composition. It would at the very least be interesting to see what that development entailed—and so it was. 

Lash—Acts of Love, to give it its full title, is not a conventional opera. No surprises there, one might say. Yet if it has elements of something more installation-like, more in Ed Atkins’s libretto (if one can call it that, Saunders also credited for conversion of the initial text) and general dramaturgy than in Saunders’s score, it certainly qualifies as an opera. The Deutsche Oper did it proud, with Bush Moukarzel of Dead Centre; video work by Sébastien Dupouey; a cast of three truly outstanding singers, Anna Prohaska, Sarah Maria Sun, and Noa Frankel, plus the equally excellent actor Katja Kolm, all clearly working together and filmed live by Nadja Krüger; and the house orchestra on fine form indeed, conducted by Enno Poppe. Each of the female voices, indeed their bodies more generally, is intended as the foundation of what we hear and largely succeeds in conveying that sense: four parts of the same woman, not only mirroring, often explicitly, but forming—themselves or rather herself, and the images around them. 

What a welcome change, moreover, it was to have so little of the male standpoint (and gaze). Indeed, if that could have been excluded more tightly still – one of many reasons, I fear, to have wished for a different libretto – the work might well have been enhanced. Not that there was any reason to be ungrateful for Enno Poppe’s unfailingly alert, comprehending, dramatically alive conducting, nor for the excellence of the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, male musicians included—and first among equals, those musicians onstage during the third act. Perhaps, though, less might have been more. The excellence of performance, the excellence of the composition also served, perhaps ironically, to point to a lack in Atkins’s text (or whatever we want to call it). 

Sex and death are and always have been inextricably interlinked. This presentation of ‘a woman … suspended in the immediate aftermath of a death,’ recounting ‘fantasies and memories of love and loss and fucking and sickness, kissing, eyeballs, genitals, fingertips, lips, and lashes—each scoured for consoling significance to hold back death’s meaninglessness,’ has a stated idea: ‘through the imminence of her own body, her own mortality, she rediscovers loss as the precondition of experience—of love.’ It is not experienced as a narrative; nor would one expect it to be. But Saunders’s writing, through three acts spanning almost two hours, draws it together, like a great symphonic poem with voices. It grows in intensity – judged, I think, by whatever parameter(s) – and gives the strong impression of binding the work together. It also becomes more instrumental/orchestral, both onstage and around the auditorium, but also in the proportion of writing—or so it seemed to me. ‘Organic’ is doubtless an epithet outdated by at least two centuries for such writing, but perhaps I might be indulged here, if only in the Hegelian sense of a musical owl of Minerva spreading its wings at the performance’s dusk.

That said – and with all the caveats concerning a single hearing/viewing – my expectations were only partly fulfilled. This is owed in no part to the difficulty and particularity of writing opera, even for otherwise excellent composers. With the best will in the world, Schubert, generally recognised to be one of the supreme vocal and instrumental composers in the Western tradition, was not a significant composer of opera, though his operas are far from without interest. I could not help but wonder whether Saunders’s musical and dramatic gifts were not so readily operatic, whether a large-scale concert-work such as YES were more her thing. My problems, though, did not really lie there. At the post-show reception, Intendant Dietmar Schwarz described Atkins’s text as ‘postdramatic’. I suppose so, if, as Hans-Thies Lehmann more or less intended the term, we look at what is held to fall under that umbrella rather than using it to define. Whether it works well, in this context or any other, is another matter. 

Ambiguity is often a good thing. That as to whose the ‘lash’ is – the woman’s, the creator’s (i.e. Atkins’s own private-public monologue), or anything else – has much to be said for it, though it does not really seem to lead anywhere, without that failure to lead anywhere making an evident point. Ultimately, the music and the performances seem to shoulder all the work, hamstrung by a stream of consciousness that is hardly Joyce or Beckett. Constant repetition of ‘fucking’ and so on may not be intended to shock, yet comes across as thinking itself edgier than it really is; hand on heart, I found it more than a little tedious, more akin to a little boy shouting ‘look at me’ than anything that might have been claimed for it (and doubtless will be). 

I felt ambivalent, then, and not a little saddened to do so. The Blue Woman, seen at London’s Linbury Theatre in 2022, struck me as an ultimately more successful example of what postdramatic, feminist opera (as opposed to postdramatic and/or feminist productions of operatic repertoire) might be—at least restricted to words, their dramaturgy, and to a certain extent their further implications, as opposed to musical quality (or performance). By the same token, I certainly felt a desire to revisit the work, to continue, like the woman at its centre, to piece together my experience, although perhaps not immediately. I shall only too happily find myself ashamed concerning initial lack of understanding. In the meantime, a handful of boos (grow up!) and a houseful of rapturous applause told a more straightforward story.

Tristan und Isolde, Deutsche Oper, 3 July 2024

Tristan – Michael Weinius
King Marke – Günther Groissböck
Isolde – Ricarda Merbeth
Kurwenal – Leonardo Lee
Melot – Jörg Schörner
Brangäne – Irene Roberts
Shepherd – Clemens Bieber
Young Sailor – Kieran Carrel
Steersman – Byung Gil Kim

Director – Graham Vick
Designs – Paul Brown
Lighting – Wolfgang Göbbel  

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (director: Thomas Richter) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Juraj Valčuha (conductor)

Images from the 2011 premiere: © Matthias Horn

And so, the Deutsche Oper’s season, in which it has shown all ten of Wagner’s ‘Bayreuth’ works, begins to draw to a close. I have not managed to see them all; by accident rather than design, I have seen the current productions of trhe seven ‘music dramas’, but missed those of The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin (all of which I have a seen before). Of those I saw, all but Philipp Stölzl’s Parsifal were new to me. Stefan Herheim’s Ring I greeted enthusiastically, though not without reservations, in May; the Wieler-Viebrock-Morabito Meistersinger less so, though it had its moments. How would the late Graham Vick’s 2011 Tristan, which somehow I had missed until now, fare? 

Disappointingly, I am afraid. Maybe I was not in the right mood, though it was certainly not only that, but I do not think I have ever felt less engaged, or even interested, in a performance of what should always be a work like no other, on the edge of the possible but also of what one can bear. I doubtless quote this letter from Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck too often, yet however drama-queenish the expression, the principle remains sound, or at least readily comprehensible: ‘I fear the opera will be banned – unless the whole thing is parodied in a bad performance –: only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad, – I cannot imagine it otherwise.’ Once again, sanity regrettably endured.

Let us begin with Vick’s production, at which I feel able only to throw my hands into the hair and say (polite version): goodness knows. One can admire his extraordinary work in Birmingham and indeed some or many of his stagings, without having much idea what is going on here and, more sadly, without being able to care very much. Is it perhaps all a drug-induced dream, Dallas meeting Trainspotting? One of the very few (on its own terms) theatrically convincing moments, presaged by a disturbing appearance (one of many, from a cast of irritating extras) by a shaking, wall-hugging addict, is when Tristan and Isolde inject themselves for what seems, even sounds, to be that elusive perfect hit. Who they are, though, and what they are doing in something that may be a house or may be a funeral parlour (Morold’s funeral, I thought to start with, though the coffin surely remains too long) is anyone’s guess. All manner of strange people come and go. A gang of menacing men in the first act suggests an approach founded, oddly, upon gender, when surely the whole point is the irrelevance of the phenomenal world, but it is soon gone anyway. 

So too are the woman who walks around naked and, in the second act, outside in the garden (albeit with an indoor fireplace), a male naked gravedigger. Perhaps it is hot out there, and Tristan’s overcoat is a product of his addiction. He and Isolde sit on the sofa for most of it, as if watching the television; they seem to have little interest in each other. A torch-cum-gigantic-peppermill sometimes comes into view above, though it does not seem aligned to the night/day axis. From time to time, a woman in adjoining room does the ironing. The Steersman makes his appearance bursting out of the bathroom in mid-shave. It all ends, banally enough, with Isolde, spying some more people walking around the garden, opening the door to join them. Quite. That the action in this ‘action’ (Handlung) is entirely metaphysical seems to have eluded Vick, as it does many, but this lacks so much as a hint of coherence on its own terms. I think the point, or at least a point, may be that they have grown old in the meantime; with that, at least, one can sympathise. 

The real drama lies in the orchestra, of course, or should. There were passages of relative fluency among the rest from Juraj Valčuha, but that is about the best one can say. More often than not, we had audible gear changes, surprisingly thin strings, odd balances, faulty ensemble, and a deadly tendency throughout each act to slow down. The second act felt interminable, whilst Tristan’s third-act agonies amounted to little more than a lengthy list of non sequiturs. The Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, normally outstanding in Wagner, sounded as if it had had enough; I cannot blame it. 

Ricarda Merbeth’s Isolde had much to commend it, especially in the first act. She made a great deal of the words, offering a masterclass in scorn, though sustaining a line seemed less of a priority. Hans von Bülow’s claim that this is Wagner’s bel canto opera is as silly as it sounds, but that does not mean there is no melodic interest in the vocal line. Still, she outshone her Tristan, Michael Weinius, who had seemingly endless vocal reserves to call on. Given how shouted and unvariegated they were, it was tempting sometimes to wish that he had not; this was neither bel nor canto, and his acting was at best gestural. Leonardo Lee’s Kurwenal bloomed into what, alongside Günther Groissböck’s beautifully sung, finely detailed Marke, was surely the finest performance of the night. Irene Roberts sang well too, though a little more mezzo-ish depth would not have gone amiss, especially so as to contrast with Isolde. Given what the singers were presented with, though, it would be churlish to complain further. 

Wagner, then, was saved again. Next  stop: Bayreuth, including a new Tristan. Fingers crossed for a little madness.

Don Giovanni, Deutsche Oper, 26 June 2024

Don Giovanni – Andrzej Filończyk
Donna Anna – Flurina Stucki

Don Ottavio – Kieran Carrel

Commendatore – Patrick Guetti
Donna Elvira – Maria Motolygina
Leporello – Joel Allison
Masetto – Artur Garbas
Zerlina – Arianna Manganello
Artist – Ellen Urban

Director – Roland Schwab
Set designs – Piero Vinciguerra
Costumes – Renée Listerdal
Assistant choreographer and revival director – Silke Sense

Movement Choir 

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (chorus director: Thomas Richter)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Daniel Cohen (conductor)

Image: Bettina Stöss (from 2023 revival)

We now find ourselves in the twilight zone in which house and hall seasons are drawing to a close, but festivals have already begun. I shall flit back and forth for the next few weeks, albeit with greater emphasis on the latter, but here returned to the former, to Roland Schwab’s production of Don Giovanni for the Deutsche Oper Berlin. I saw it when it new in 2010 and have deliberately not looked back, though I have a sense that my reaction was somewhat similar: some good ideas, but lacking in coherence. That, at any rate, offers a snapshot of my reaction last night. (I shall look back after posting.) 

The opening impression is of some sort of crime boss in the title role. His tightly drilled (well choreographed, though to what end?) entourage features throughout, though I cannot say I found that added much, especially in the strange (drug-induced?) shaking to which many of them often fall prey. A sense of menace is imparted, though perhaps at the cost not only of distraction from the real action, but also and more seriously underlining a sense that, for the most part, especially earlier on, both production and performances seem a little lost on a stage and in a house of this size. Other goings on, whether the dark-suited mob, or an admittedly arresting carnival of death that accompanies rather than drives the first act’s final scene, have a tendency to come across as being put there to fill the space. The well-worn Dantean ‘Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate’ is inscribed on a portable door through which the guests arrive (which haphazardly returns briefly, and not when one might expect, in the second act) in a welcome recognition, not the only one, of the work’s religious nature, but ultimately goes for little. 

Throughout, much is done with golf clubs, again I suppose intended to underline the masculinity of one side (and yes, I know women play golf too, though it is not clear the production does). Other business, such as constant wielding of whips and a good deal of other noise-making activities, show a tin ear for the reality that this is an opera, in which not only music but some of Mozart’s very greatest music plays a hallowed role. Clearing up mess, literally with bin bags, seems to be Leporello’s business: fair enough, I suppose. At one point, though, the men are in dustbins, which may sound intriguingly Beckettian, yet ends up being another short phase in a production that never seems to know where it is heading. What Don Giovanni’s score card system denotes, I was never quite sure: is a high score good or bad? I presumed the former, but then his final ‘1’ for the Stone Guest scene would make little sense at all. 

The audience certainly did not help, laughing, chattering, and so on, seemingly in utter disconnection from what was seen, let alone heard. What should have been a truly powerful moment and marked one of Schwab’s most imaginative ideas, Don Giovanni seating his ‘disciples’ for his last supper, the moment frozen in the painterly manner one might expect, for him to break bread, elicited widespread vigorous laughter. The Eucharist and/or dark inversion thereof are now apparently merely amusing. To be fair, I suppose it would explain a good deal, and if that is the reaction an attempt to address the profoundly religious nature of the work elicits, then, God or Nietzsche help us, perhaps it is more understandable why directors generally and, in most cases, disastrously avoid it. 

Why such strange decisions continue to be made concerning the ‘version’ I do not know. It is all very well to blame singers’ desires to give ‘their’ arias, but it is not their decision and they often find themselves oddly deprived too; one cannot imagine them having reached this settlement in any case. However difficult it may be to stand the loss, the Prague version is almost always preferable. If you must, and if you have a performance of such calibre that it and the production can override the problems, the most familiar of the Prague-Vienna conflations, justly maligned, can work. (He said through gritted teeth, thinking what would otherwise always be lost.) ‘Vienna’, insofar as we know what it was, has latterly, unaccountably had a weird renaissance; it is time for that fad to be put to bed. Goodness knows what the reasoning for the combination heard on this occasion was. We heard Mi tradì and Dalla sua pace, though neither Il mio tesoro (odd, given such a fine performance of Don Ottavio’s first aria) nor the Zerlina-Leporello duet. Recitatives were cut and sometimes paused, whilst other things, rarely if ever worth the wait, happened. It made little intrinsic sense, though then given the dramatic looseness of both staging and conducting, it was not particularly a problem either. Ironically, I think production and performance would both have needed to be better or worse for it to matter more. 

For Daniel Cohen’s conducting of a Deutsche Oper orchestra that often sounded out of sorts – what a change from its recent magnificent Wagner and Strauss – seemed oddly to mirror the non-committal confusion of Schwab’s staging. It began poorly, balances in a mercilessly hard-driven, tales-of-rasping-brass Overture so awry that one could barely hear the strings. Not so much the conductor’s fault, though still dispiriting, the duet between Donna Anna and Don Ottavio in the first scene pretty much fell apart. Cohen was excellent here in picking this up and moving things on, and whilst there were quite a few subsequent discrepancies between pit and stage, they would be on a smaller scale. When he and the orchestra really clicked, there was some fine playing. The problem was more that rarely, if ever, in the first act and only sporadically in the second was a fundamental pulse established. At best, we heard a string of disconnected arias, recitative often too ‘edited’ to be of much use, the impression being given of ‘accompanying’ a varied recital rather than musically leading the action. 

Vocally, there was a good deal to admire. The occasional mishap such as that mentioned above, there was nothing truly to disappoint, although the standard of singing was not always so consistent as it might have been. The moment Maria Motolygina stepped on stage as Donna Elvira, performing voltage shot up; hers was an outstanding performance by any standards, boasting cleanness of line, finely modulated tone, and dramatic commitment: one I was delighted to hear. In the title role, Andrzej Filończyk was excellent, growing in stature and defiance, to boast an enthralling performance in his final scene, helped by new-found proximity to the audience but ultimately founded on charisma and artistry. Joel Allison’s livewire Leporello followed eagerly in his footsteps, at least until then. Patrick Guetti’s Commendatore made a strong impression too. Flurina Stucki’s Donna Anna sometimes seemed underpowered, but she recovered and made a good job of her second-act aria. Kieran Carrel’s ‘Dalla sua pace’ was as sweet-toned and mellifluous as one could wish, though I never sensed that he was quite inside the role (a difficult task, admittedly). I am not sure either of these was really her or his role. Likewise in the case of Zerlina and Masetto. Arianna Manganello and Artur Garbas sang well enough, though  might have made more of what they had to do; in that, they were not necessarily helped by the production. 

The worst, I am afraid, came at the end, in the total excision of the final scene. Everything in the work and tonal expectations, specific and general, pull it forward; so too, still more bafflingly, did the production seem to do so. There was, however, nowhere for it to go; it simply stopped and those who, much to my chagrin, were wildly applauding were in a sense right. Yes, Mahler did it; yes, perhaps, given that he was Gustav Mahler, he managed to make it work; no, by any reasonable standards, he was still misguided, partial in his view of the work, surprisingly uncomprehending of its dramaturgy, to have done so. That such an ultra-Romantic route should be taken made no sense whatsoever in context. If the aim were to provoke dissatisfaction, that was certainly achieved; I almost hope it was, since the alternative, sheer cluelessness, is more depressing. Perhaps it was a metaphor, after all, for our age’s strange inability even to attempt to understand this towering opera.

Siegfried, Deutsche Oper, 18 May 2024

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere)
The Wanderer (Iain Paterson) and Alberich (Jordan Shanahan)

Siegfried – Clay Hilley
Mime – Ya-Chung Huang
The Wanderer – Iain Paterson
Alberich – Jordan Shanahan
Fafner – Tobias Kehrer
Woodbird – Nicolas Schröer
Erda – Lindsay Ammann
Brünnhilde – Ricarda Merbeth

Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival director – Philine Tiezel
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Video – Torge Møller
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Nicholas Carter (conductor)

Mime (Ya-Chung Huang)

Emblems of the refugees’ arrival but also perhaps of impending departure, suitcases once again form and delimit the set, the rehearsal piano at their centre once again omnipresent. Wagner’s life and work becomes their own, our own. It certainly has mine since I first fell under its spell, and despite occasional attempts to escape – or at least to take a break – it never works. This Deutsche Oper Ring is not helping in that vain attempt, a somewhat disappointing third act notwithstanding. 

A Ring mystery is what its ring actually does, what its powers actually are. They certainly do not tally with what the characters tell us about it. Must one in some sense believe? Is it a form of theology, as Wagner, keen student of Feuerbach, might understand it? Probably. At any rate, it notably does Alberich’s bidding at the start, its yellow light focused at the piano, opening its lid, and thus initiating the Bühnenfestspiel’s ‘second day’. He and Wotan, Schwarz-Alberich and Licht-Alberich, as Wotan-as-Wanderer will call them, watch and wander from the start. They are not always present, yet often they are. Tellingly, the Wanderer watches the whole first scene from above, and Alberich appears, to Mime’s anger, during the second. (Perhaps, again, his brother might actually have been able to help him, like Siegfried, like the Wanderer, but the clever craftsman does not want to know.)  Their final confrontation, at least onstage, in the first scene of the second act attains a tragic magnificence and import such as rarely, if ever, have I encountered. That again, is surely in part Nicholas Carter’s doing, proportions of the act as a whole seemingly reconsidered, so that, like the final act of Die Walküre, thoughts of lopsidedness – the so-called ‘Forest Murmurs’ often overstay their welcome, but not here – never materialise. It is also surely that of Stefan Herheim’s staging; the two, along with vocal-dramatic performances proceed together, more or less indivisible (although for the purposes of writing, one must start somewhere). The two figures are, of course, themselves refugees here: they have stepped forward, assumed roles; yet, like the boys in Lord of the Flies, however changed, they must also remain who they were, albeit within a different, often Brechtian framework of storytelling. 

SIegfried (Clay Hilley), Brünnhilde (here Nina Stemme)

Music continues to play its stage role. Where Alberich, in a sense, founded his enterprise on an instrument he had found, or perhaps brought with him, Mime has expanded his endeavours into a brass workshop, where instruments hang from the ceiling. It is a slightly odd assortment and that, presumably, is the point. Mime is not an ‘artist’, but a ‘craftsman’; Wagner always upheld that Romantic distinction, which directly colours his creation of Mime and Siegfried. An artist would doubtless have brought in some other instruments. Incapable of moving beyond his narrow, technical purview, Mime continues to do the same thing—as, of course, he does in attempts to reforge the sword. Not for nothing in Herheim’s cunning elision of Wagner and Mime (here, for better or worse, in striped top) is the ‘Wagner tuba’ a key exhibit. Dubious tendencies from Wagner reception –much as we might wish, we cannot always simply ignore them – resurface. Mime’s dwarf-like quality and large head surely offer a nod to strange claims made concerning Wagner’s height and (worse still) physiognomy. Nietzsche would have laughed; the Wanderer does. 

The craftsman’s resourcefulness is important, though, at least if it may be harnessed to something more. It is possible, at least for Siegfried, to have bellows created from what is available, in a splendid nod to the original steam technologies of Bayreuth. Fafner also emerges from the suitcases and instruments too, brass teeth fairly gleaming, basic sheet props and colourful lighting again working their wonders for the rest of his maw. For lighting (Ulrich Niepel) can accomplish so much, simply yet starkly, as in Mime’s silhouette of brief power, or its prospect, when he holds the Wanderer’s spear. A vision of the world, which Mime, like Alberich still would ‘win’, is unfurled, again using what has emerged from the refugees’ possessions. 

Siegfried and Mime

It is a pity, perhaps, that Siegfried’s appearance – notably, like that of his father – is so ‘historically’ bound as (to us) to seem ridiculous, but that is surely deliberate, the flaws of ‘heroism’ present from the beginning. A striking innovation, though, is the return of Siegmund and Sieglinde in a Hänsel und Gretel-like ‘Dream Pantomime’. Siegmund may have rejected the immortality of Valhalla, but there are other ways to return, to guide (such as Mime never could). That the Woodbird, an excellent boy treble (Nicolas Schröer) emanates from this world – a very junge Siegfried, if you will – makes a significant contribution to the psychoanalytical framework. So too does the dragon’s blood in which he becomes mired and the pitching of appearance somewhere between clown (picking up from Das Rheingold) and (from Die Walküre) zombie, a disconcerting contrast with fresh youthfulness of voice. 

Carter seemed to offer a presentiment in the first act, which (rather than vice versa) on one occasion seemed very much to approach Humperdinck’s score. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it struck me at the time and before I knew what was to come on stage. His direction of the once-again outstanding Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper remained deeply and consistently impressive, both tied to and leading the action onstage. So too did the cast’s performances. Iain Paterson proved a typically thoughtful Wotan, Jordan Shanahan making a welcome return as an ambiguous clown-Alberich, readable and ‘relatable’ on multiple levels, without forsaking the destructive impulse at his core. 

Siegfried and Mime

Ya-Chung Huang’s Mime was, quite simply, one of the best I have seen and heard, turning the Siegfried-Mime axis into a true battle of very different tenors, for which Clay Hilley’s tireless Siegfried should also receive due credit. Both learn to conduct, as to play the piano, to lead musically and seemingly according to the score, but do they bring it to life? That requires the return of the refugees—and discarding of the old (Walküre) score. Huang’s ability, doubtless enhanced yet only enhanced by make-up and costume, to play his role as if Mime were a puppet-clown, grotesque yet also human, captured so much of the role, its uncomfortable aspects included. Above all, it reminded us of Wagner’s great achievement in showing us, as the late, greatly lamented Michael Tanner pointed out, the sheer misery that it is to be Mime. Tobias Kehrer continued and extended his excellent work as Fafner, that extraordinary last gasp of recognition – ‘Siegfried!’ – given its proper, prophetic, yet chilling worth. I assume his return to ‘life’, or whatever it was, was as much a recognition of the underlying Brechtian ideas as it was of his acquiring zombie-status, though perhaps it was both. The Woodbird’s frustrated waving him away, getting in the way of the story, was a nice touch, but I did wonder whether it might have been better all round not to present the problem in the first place. 

The Woodbird, Siegfried

What, then, of the third act? Musically, again, there was much to admire, though even in that respect – and perhaps more on account of inextricable connection with stage action than any actual flaws – it held my attention less. There was certainly nothing to complain about in Lindsay Ammann’s return as Erda, beautifully sung and enunciated, the character, now more dishevelled, awakened from her sleep and emerging once again from the prompter’s box. Ricarda Merbeth’s surprise return, in place of the previously advertised Elisabeth Teige, as Brünnhilde will have disappointed no one either. Her radiant performance, quite an achievement given its notorious demands so late in the evening, was quite the tonic, insofar as one could avoid distraction, from the events around her. For whilst I can rationalise Herheim’s decisions here, for the first time I felt rather less than convinced. 

The first two scenes go mostly as they ‘should’. No harm in that, quite the contrary, and the third seems nicely set up by the now apparently proficient Siegfried summoning Brünnhilde’s mountain and fire from the piano. Unless, though, I was missing something – it would not be the first time – there is not much more to it then return of the refugees, their ‘identification’, first among straightforward traditional gender lines, with Siegfried and Brünnhilde, then, taught by the score (whose ubiquity becomes more than a little tedious) and, presumably, also by what the two principal characters sing, turning more fluid in orientation and staging an orgy around them. It is all very well done, to the extent of unfortunate distraction from the two singers, ‘parked and barking’. Again, I assume that to be the point, yet it ultimately seemed to me misguided. I doubt this was an attempt to hold up Wagner’s drama as insufficient, or intolerably Romantic. Frank Castorf did so in his Walküre and it proved the weakest part of his Ring. Yet Castorf arguably proved most compelling here in Siegfried, when his conception found itself guided by the weight of Wagner’s drama, even perhaps by a mediated version of its Romanticism. Is a basic Brechtian point about storytelling, ‘enhanced’ by young people in white underwear doing their thing, enough? There are plenty of places one might go in Berlin to see the real thing, if that is what one is after. 

It might be tempting to see this ‘problem’, if problem it be, as mirroring Wagner’s own in completing the Ring. After all, it was at precisely the same place, the end of the second act, that he ceased his compositional work on it for twelve years. Turning instead to Tristan and Die Meistersinger, he wrote to Liszt that he had ‘led my young Siegfried into the beautiful forest solitude; there I have left him beneath a linden tree … he is better there than anywhere else. – If I am ever to take up this work again, it must either be made easier for me, or else I myself must in the meantime make it possible to bestow this work on the world in the fullest sense of the word.’ Yet when Wagner did return to his Siegfried, to the linden tree, or rather to the scene that followed in which all is both changed and resolved, it was still more under the spell of Schopenhauer and his musical aesthetics (as well as his broader philosophy). That, really, should have been right up Herheim’s street. I shall happily eat my words if all becomes clear in Götterdämmerung; for now, however, I register my first note of dissent. 

Die Walküre, Deutsche Oper, 12 May 2024

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2020 premiere, with a different cast)

Siegmund – Daniel Frank
Sieglinde – Elisabeth Teige
Hunding – Tobias Kehrer
Wotan –Derek Welton
Fricka – Annika Schlicht
Brünnhilde – Ricarda Merbeth
Siegrune – Arianna Manganello
Roßweiße – Karis Tucker
Gerhilde – Felicia Moore
Ortlinde – Maria Motolygina
Waltraute – Elissa Pfaender
Helmwige – Flurina Stuckl
Schwertleite – Alexandra Ionis
Grimgerde – Nicole Piccolomini
Schwertleite – Lauren Decker
Hundingling – Eric Naumann

Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival director – Silke Sense
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Video – William Duke, Dan Trenchard
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper 

Nicholas Carter (conductor)

What if the Volsung twins did not engage our sympathies so fully as they usually do? What if their actions were less positive than we tend to think? Sometimes, recently, those questions have been posed implicitly by what still seems to me a strange desire positively to reassess the Fricka of Die Walküre. Not that Wagner is the only point of reference here, but the Ring’s creator was very clear on this, both in the work ‘itself’ and in other writing. A letter to Theodor Uhlig (12 November 1851, so before he had started work on the music) speaks of Wotan’s ‘struggle with his own inclination and with custom (Fricka)’ and indeed Fricka herself refers to ‘the guiding rope of custom, rent asunder,’ which she would ‘bind anew’. Latterly, some seem to have decided to take the part of Fricka’s family-values morality. Like every character – this is part of Wagner’s greatness – Fricka is given her due, and should be in performance. A caricature, whilst tempting, will get us nowhere. What I took from the first act of Stefan Herheim’s Walküre – thus before her reappearance – was something slightly different: a willingness, refreshing if unsettling, to challenge the dominant narrative concerning Siegmund and Sieglinde, a challenge to which Fricka would assent, albeit for different reasons. Sieglinde has still been deeply wronged, of course: the evening begins with her, traumatised, unable to make the central stage piano sound. Only after several fruitless attempts does the orchestra launch its storm. It is a questionable pursuit in ‘real life’, of course, to cast doubt on how trauma may manifest itself; perhaps the same should be the case here. That said, many of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s acts seem designed to dissipate sympathy, from her insistence on kissing him far too ‘early’ and in front of the mute Hundingling (her child with Hunding, I presume), to her murder of him who, starved of affection from his father seems only to wish to find a new family with his mother and her new lover. That Siegmund too rejoices in that act underlines the predicament. His holding Hunding earlier at knife point also reverses roles somewhat. Ultimately, the strength both of acting and Personenregie (seen also, for instance, in the individual treatment of the Valkyries) made a case for reassessment. So too, arguably, did the doubt –preconceptions properly challenged – I continued to feel. The framing is powerful and provocative; that is what matters most.

 

Likewise or at least related, in the third act, the true horror of what Wotan proposes for Brünnhilde, too readily sentimentalised, comes across more clearly than I can previously recall. Portrayal of male violence, especially sexual violence, against women onstage is a controversial issue now, and rightly so. Nevertheless, Herheim’s portrayal of Valkyries raped by a host of the undead – immortality and mortality a crucial theme for Wagner’s deeply Feuerbachian drama – underlines what the god intends for his ‘favourite daughter’, too often lost in final reconciliation. Hundingling, notably, has taken his place along them; what else, after all, could he have learned from his earthly sojourn? This scene seemed to alter the dramatic, perhaps even the temporal, proportions of the third act. The latter probably were objectively different too, conductor Nicholas Carter working in tandem with the production. Throwing the dramatic weight forward had the first two scenes seem considerably more substantial, the third a logical, still deeply moving outcome to its predecessors. The emotional torrent of Wagner’s – and the once more outstanding Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper’s – strings still registered keenly, yet a shadow rightly hung over what we heard and felt.

All around, refugee suitcases formed the set, reminding us of the external world encountered in Das Rheingold. A war zone is suggested, aptly for all that unfolds, the second as much as the external acts. These people’s reappearance and different reactions to what they saw reminded us we should not take ‘their’ reactions for granted, ‘othering’ them as an undifferentiated mass. These, like the characters of the Ring many are playing, are individual human beings, not some other species known as ‘migrants’. Wagner was a refugee too and expressed pride in having been so; so is Siegmund, always ‘geächtet’, as he puts it. And so too, we should remember, is Sieglinde, returning to her Medea-like act. We always feel sympathy for Medea, so should we not for this Sieglinde too? If not, why not? From where, we might ask, are they refugees? The world around us has all too many possibilities, as does history. So too does reception history: might we not understand them also as heirs to the ‘men and women moved to the very depths of their being’ at the end of previous Ring productions. Celebrated predecessors such as Chéreau and Kupfer spring particularly to mind. For reception, always a Herheim speciality, continues to be so. The brilliant coup de théâtre of turning on the house lights when Wotan wills ‘das Ende’ may be old hat: Brecht, 1924, as a friend commented. But is that not the point here, that theatre and reception history more broadly contribute to what we see and hear, both when it conforms and when it does not? One could not want for alluring yet dangerous contrast in fire from lighting and video here either.

Carter’s direction continued to impress. If I found the opening Prelude hard-driven, then I often do; it could reasonably be replied that this is, after all, a storm. This conductor’s chemistry with the orchestra was not the least of this performance’s virtues; nor was careful shaping, without sounding unduly moulded, of paragraphs and scenes to form not only a satisfying musical whole, but one that interacts tellingly, excitingly with the action onstage. There are so many potential approaches to this music that it is perhaps impossible, even for a Furtwängler, to keep them all in the air. If, though, I sometimes missed the dramatic and dialectical despair conjured from the second act – that extraordinarily difficult yet crucial sequence – by the likes of Bernard Haitink or Daniel Barenboim, the sheer malevolence of the darker music associated not only with Hunding, but also with Wotan, was rendered strikingly immanent. It is a wonder, given the repeated telephone calls taken by someone in the far left of the stalls, that the Annunciation of Death managed to move at all, but it did. (It certainly had me devising my own such annunciation for whomever the culprit may have been.)

 

Herheim’s different conceptual approach to Siegmund and Sieglinde doubtless had consequences for perception of their performances. So too did relatively unappealing – especially so in Siegmund’s case – scenic presentation. That said, whilst Daniel Frank sang the role well enough, it did not seem to me the most keenly dramatic of performances, however considered. Elisabeth Teige engaged attention and sympathy more powerfully as time went on as his sister-bride. Tobias Kehrer’s Hunding seemed to me revisionist in an ultimately more convincing fashion, imparting deeper understanding of how and why even this most unsympathetic of characters might have turned out the way he did, without neglecting that he had. Derek Welton’s Wotan came across as perhaps more tightly, certainly more darkly, focused than that of Iain Paterson in Das Rheingold; that is perhaps in part a matter of material, but surely also pays tribute to the intelligence and musicality of this fine artist. At times, profoundly, disconcertingly other-worldly, the god could also readily turn human, all too human. Annika Schlicht’s Fricka was again not only beautifully sung, but verbally scrupulous, as here she must be all the more. From a fine complement of Valkyries, Ricarda Merbeth captured an excellent balance of waywardness – how could anyone delude himself she could for long be kept in check? – and growing compassion.

If, initially, I felt if not underwhelmed, then less overwhelmed than by the fizzing theatricality of Herheim’s Rheingold, this Walküre grew on me and has continued to do so. Music drama is, after all, not only theatre, as an increasingly Schopenhauerian Wagner would have been first to argue. At the close, Mime-as-Wagner returns, to deliver at the ‘right’ musical moment Siegfried from Sieglinde, collecting the shattered pieces of Notung too. Both Mime and Wagner soon had their doubts as to what sort of monster they had created. That here they have done so from, as it were, the very spirit of music, the ever-present piano, will surely prove significant. Soon we shall discover for ourselves.

Das Rheingold, Deutsche Oper, 11 May 2024

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere)

Wotan – Iain Paterson
Donner – Thomas Lehman
Froh – Attilio Glaser
Loge – Thomas Blondelle
Fricka – Annika Schlicht
Freia – Flurina Stucki
Erda – Lindsay Ammann
Alberich – Jordan Shanahan
Mime – Ya-Chung Huang
Fasolt – Albert Pesendorfer
Fafner – Tobias Kehrer
Woglinde – Lee-ann Dunbar
Wellgunde – Arianna Manganello
Floßhilde – Karis Tucker

Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival director – Constanze Wediknecht
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Video – Torge Møller
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper
Nicholas Carter (conductor)

We begin in the rehearsal room, piano onstage, vast grey slab wall and fire exit behind, lights above. Below, the orchestra tunes, actually tunes. The magic of theatre, of music theatre, of opera, and of all concerned to bring it to our eyes and ears brings the two together: not necessarily so we cannot tell the difference between ‘drama’ and ‘reality’, but so that we are made aware of the ever-shifting boundaries between them, how one brings the other into being, as is also the case for Wagner’s related yet different trinity of drama, music, and gesture in Opera and Drama. That ‘book of all books on music’ (Richard Strauss) is, in a sense, the fount of all we see and hear; onstage, it is represented by the piano: the instrument around which so many rehearsals have taken place and at which Wagner sat to compose; from which for many, though not all composers, the miracles of the modern orchestra first come into being. A suitcase-laden procession of refugees, the perennial image of our times – from the vicious, racist ‘swarm’ of Cameron and Farage’s ‘breaking point’, to Merkel’s inspirational ‘Wir schaffen das’ and the welcoming crowds I saw at Munich Hauptbahnhof – crosses the stage and initiates the action, one of them, Wotan or better the human being who will play that role, plays the celebrated E-flat with which the Ring begins. This is no ‘crisis’; it is a reality and, in that reality, an opportunity. These people are the very stuff of the drama, of our drama, and of theirs. Decisions made and roles played will be matters of life and death. How differently this plays now that Merkel’s Willkommenskultur has itself been assigned to history, how all the more necessary then it is to find a new path. 

Herheim and his revival successors do this, moreover, not through dwelling on origins, but through the brazenly theatrical (and musical) magic of opera. Reality never quite disappears, but the insight of Schiller, Marx, and many others, Wagner included, that, left to his own devices, given the freedom and the education to do so, man will create is not only the starting point, but a point, if you will, of (Nietzschean, even Schopenhauerian) eternal recurrence that yet, through (Hegelian) history, is never merely that. The animating philosophical conflict of the Ring has begun. Likewise, animating joy in and through theatre, of the rehearsal piano rather than the piano composer, of Wagner’s creative life has been reignited, through Rhinemaidens’ magic tricks, Loge’s devilish flashes of fire, ever-resourceful use and reuse of stage staples such as billowing sheets, and the whole Wagnerian phantasmagoria of sight, sound, and sensation. Froh’s final rainbow is surely, at some level, a successor to Götz Friedrich’s rainbow tunnel in the previous Deutsche Oper production. History and, more specifically, reception both form and liberate us in our response. 

The first scene emerges, in typical, theatrical twin bind and opportunity, both seamlessly and with seams openly to show from what has gone before. The Deutsche Oper’s actors – ‘extras’ if you prefer, but the term seems more than unduly limiting – form the Rhine from themselves: what else do refugees have? They have their packed belongings, of course; still more will come from them in due course, the gods’ costumes included. Inciting, reflecting, and been incited by the Rhinemaidens’ play, their beautifully, sexily choreographed movement suggests a Venusberg-am-Rhein, with all the occasional awkwardness of an orgy’s need for perpetual reignition. Alberich, or the person who becomes him, models himself on that saddest of theatrical figures, the clown. That is how the others see him, of course; most poignantly of all, it is how he sees himself when they hand him back his mirror. He has, as Wagner shows us, been so sorely provoked, with so little prospect of reward in a cruel non-golden age of aesthetic hedonism, that renunciation of ‘love’ – as someone once said, ‘whatever that means’ – is an obvious next step. The ring he creates seems immediately to do his bidding—until, and ay, there’s the Ring’s rub, it does not. And we see it, as well as its consequences, throughout. 

From those sheets come the Rhine, the mountains of the gods’ realm, even the tree at the end from which, I assume, the next instalment will spring. A premonition of Volsung twins strongly suggests so: a sparing use of video and thereby all the more powerful. The whole Bayreuth project was built on technology, as was the world from which it sprang. So too were they built on choices of what to use and when, not on idiotic euphoria and fear about film supplanting theatre or ‘artificial intelligence’ supplanting actual, human intelligence. The hoard, perhaps the best I have seen, comes from those suitcases: a true bric-a-brac show, including musical instruments (echoing, almost literally, Alberich’s possession and instrumental use of a trumpet in the first scene) and religious artefacts, cross and menorah included. 

They cover Freia clumsily, brutally, yet also completely inside the piano from which she and Fricka, in posed nineteenth-century tableau vivant-style have risen, and through which portal she and the giants (her love for Fasolt is movingly real, as it should be) have passed to and from Riesenheim. Donner and Froh are splendidly caught too, stars of rock (Freddie Mercury) and disco (wig carefully prepared with hairspray, soon lost) respectively. Loge is a true Mephisto to two Fausts, Wotan and Alberich, with a little – in this he is not alone – though never too much of previous Herheim creations, the Parsifal Klingsor and the Lohengrin Herald reincarnated in something dazzlingly new. Alberich’s Nibelungs are, for once, a true host of night, terrifying to behold, images of death and the undead, marching to his lead. (Again, I recalled, a brief yet telling image from the second act of that Bayreuth Parsifal.) Indeed, throughout, the ways in which movement proceeds both in time to the music and not, yet never heedless to it, are not the least indication that we are in the hands of a musical stage director. Attempts at musical direction, both from the piano and conducting from the score, of the would-be leaders of our stage world, tell – and play – their own stories too. 

Art and its tricks, then and now, are not reality; they spring from it, yet we see, far more clearly how they are put together, whilst wondering all the more at them. They are more than reality; again, they form and react to it, at least potentially liberating us from it. And they cross history, through an artwork’s reception, always a joy for and from Herheim. Wotan’s winged helmet for once says much, not least in the boredom with which he discards it. So does Mime as Wagner in trademark velvet beret, a cunning tribute-cum-insult, in which the inventor of the Tarnhelm who cannot ever quite become an artist embodies the brilliance and insecurity of his creator. Yet ultimately, that craftsman also brings the drama, brings us, the score from which first he, then others reads, sings, learns, and is bound by. In a duly ambiguous representation of Werktreue, it becomes Valhalla, the sacerdotal fortress and resting place of heroes. Meanwhile, the sword, emblem of Wotan’s ‘great idea’, is placed through the piano lid, ready for a truer, more courageous hero to extract it. 

If Herheim surpassed my expectations, so too did the performances. Nicholas Carter’s musical direction proved, quite simply, a revelation. Carter has recently led performances of the Ring in Bern; returning to the Deutsche Oper, he offered an ideal balance between thorough musical grounding and theatrical spontaneity. This was a performance in which everything both fell near-miraculously into place and yet also involved itself in the dramatic here and now, as much, as it must, contributing to the drama as reflecting it. Balances were, without exception, well judged, as were tempi. What particularly struck me was the keenness of ear – and ability to project it – in recognition of Wagner’s different kinds of writing. Rarely, if ever, have I heard so clearly the roots in Gluckian accompagnato of Fricka’s contributions to her first exchange with Wotan, also of course tribute to the astute, rich-toned artistry of Annika Schlicht. My sole, extremely minor musical disappointment lay with the anvils. All else fairly sprung off the page as if in a musical Kammerspiel, mediated in the mind’s eye by the magical mechanics of the piano. 

A Kammerspiel would be nothing without its actors, and here both individual performances and ensemble as a whole were second to none. There may be (some) starrier assumptions elsewhere, but none more alert to the joy, as well as to the necessity, of musicotheatrical creation. As Schlicht’s consort, Iain Paterson offered a thoughtful performance, typical of the cast as a whole in its alertness to verbal and musical texts alike, as well as to their alchemic reaction as part of a new-yet-rooted performance text. Any Loge worth his salt will steal the show, 'durch Raub', yet Blondelle’s owned it too: tricksy, fiery, manipulative, and corrosive, in words and line as in gesture. Albert Pesendorfer and Tobias Kehrer shone as the giants, their performances as finely differentiated as those of Ya-Chung Huang’s intelligent Mime and Jordan Shanahan’s masterclass in the role of Alberich: sympathetic up to a point, yet as brutal in his forming by events as he had initially been hapless. This clown had grown up to lead troops, not a troupe, his curse echoing in the ears until the close. An excellent trio of Rhinemaidens underlined that too, their cries piercing any attempts there might have been to rejoice. So too did the coup de théâtre of Erda’s appearance and finely sung warning (Lindsay Ammann), emerging from the prompter’s box so as, well, to prompt, ‘sensibly’ clad like a stock librarian of yore. To whom, after all, should one turn for wisdom regarding texts?

St Matthew Passion, Deutsche Oper, 29 March 2024

Evangelist – Kieran Carrel
Jesus – Padraic Rowan
Bass – Joel Allison
Tenor, False Witness – Kangyoon Shine Lee
Petrus, High Priest, Pontifex II – Youngkwang Oh
Pilatus, Judas, Pontifex I – Artur Garbas
Soprano, First Maid – Siobhan Stagg
Alto, False Witness, Second Maid – Annika Schlicht
Girl – Zoé Höchse
Friend – Selina Nüsse

Director – Benedikt von Peter
Revival directors – Eva-Maria Abelein, Matteo Marziano Graziano
Set designs – Natascha von Steiger
Costumes – Lene Schwind
Video – Bert Zander
Lighting – Roland Edrich
Dramaturgy – Dorothea Hartmann

Children’s and Youth Choirs of the Deutsche Oper (director: Christian Lindhorst)

Youth Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Children’s Choir of the Aalto-Theatre, Essen (director: Patrik Jaskolka)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (director: Jeremy Bines)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Alessandro De Marchi (conductor)

Images: Marcus Lieberenz

Had someone told me I should be attending performances of the two Bach Passions on consecutive evenings, Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, in Leipzig and Berlin, my first reaction might have been of scepticism, followed by reflection that this could not fail to be a Holy Week to remember. And indeed, it has not failed, neither in that nor in any other respect. However, had I then been told that I should find a staged performance in an opera house considerably more involving, not only thought-provoking, than a concert in the Thomaskirche, my reaction might have turned to something a little stronger than scepticism. Yet so it came to pass. I had little idea what to expect, though memories of Deborah Warner’s Messiah for the English National Opera (remember them?) continue to cast a baleful shadow. There might have been common ground, in that the Deutsche Oper’s production claimed to share a concern for ‘community’. Yet whereas, in London, that had been an unfortunate buzzword, here community involvement, not only from five choirs, amateur and professional, but also from a Berlin (and beyond) public that seemed to go beyond the typical, nonetheless broad opera audience, as well as both intelligently considering what community the work might construct and questioning what that might mean in an increasingly secular society. 

Benedikt von Peter’s staging, a co-production with Theater Basel, was first seen in Berlin last year. Here, in one of its first revival performances, it attracted a large audience both in the traditional auditorium and in additional seating onstage. Or perhaps that should be congregation, as we were addressed in the titles; we were given the music for two chorales to sing too: ‘Was mein Gott will,’ and ‘O Haupt von Blut und Wunden’. The production is in many ways, especially during the first part, quite straightforward. That works to its advantage once critical possibilities are voiced; they are grounded in something that has arisen, it seems, rather than having arisen from initial antagonism. Its spatial-conceptual framework would seem to have developed collaboratively from discussions between the director and conductor Alessandro De Marchi, doubtless dramaturge Dorothea Hartmann too. The two orchestras are on stage, either side of the space in which the production plays out. The conductor is at the front of the stalls, and the choirs are positioned around the auditorium in the shape of the Cross, an arrangement, we are told, modelled on an expansion of the separation of forces between altar and ‘swallow’s nest’ gallery. It certainly helps break boundaries between performers and audience, rendering us all in some sense congregants—whilst maintaining the possibility of different levels of engagement according to belief or inclination.

 

Members of the Children’s Choir of the Deutsche Oper carry the Cross onstage in the monumental opening chorus. I have heard it both more and less monumental. This was not, thank God, a dogmatic performance, De Marchi showing himself commendably pragmatic: all too much a rarity, alas, in today’s ‘authenticke’ world. If its tempo was fast, at least to my ears, it was not absurdly so; nor was there whining rigidity. Klemperer’s approach would, after all, neither have suited the occasion and forces, nor doubtless the conductor’s inclination, any more than something more objectionable. Once past a little discrepancy between orchestras – eminently forgivable in the circumstances – one felt drawn in to the greatest of all (music) dramas: visually, aurally, aesthetically, and yes observantly. Children act out the Passion, with overtones of Oberammergau, as it is musically enacted by the adults, the Evangelist in particular assuming the role of their instructor. Thus we see ‘disciples’ leave a little boy alone, tied and blindfolded—as indeed we hear that. But I have missed a stage: before that first chorus, a little girl has read to us from the Book of Isaiah. She appears to be simply reading a lesson, but becomes an increasingly critical voice, shouting to the deserting disciples, albeit to no avail. At the close of the first part, she frees Jesus: out of humanity, not necessarily faith. Indeed, elements of faith continue to trouble her, unable to reconcile her ethics with the economy of salvation. Having been freed, Jesus runs off to join the others, those who had captured him, rather than be comforted by his liberator: a difficult, hurtful act, rich in symbolism. After all, he must; he has no choice in any of this. She returns to the Bible, to read, learn, and think though not necessarily in the way her instructors intend.

 

In the second part, the girl (Zoé Höchse) returns, ever more ‘troublesome’ to the forces of organised religion. She cannot accept what is happening and is eventually banished by the Evangelist. (There is, I think, more than a dash of Greta Thunberg to her.) So too is her friend, and so too are some of the other children, convinced by the rebels’ arguments and understandably unwilling simply to do as they are told. Disturbingly, having remained separate following his trial, Christus briefly takes part in these expulsions too, but we can find ample Scriptural warrant for that, should we wish. By contrast, some of the ‘remaining’ children are elevated to sung as well as visual participation: a couple of them highly impressive as well as touching. As not only tragedy becomes clear but also its truer theological, sacrificial meaning – that of the Cross in whose form the entire drama unfolds – the children who cannot accept it invade the stage with their own, unresolved questions as placards. Epic theatre meets Christian ritual, and ultimately it us for us to decide (or not). Questioning a Bach Passion may seem odd, indeed unwelcome, to many, and surely it would be in a church. In an opera house, though, things are different. It might well not have worked, but it did. 

That was due in no small part, of course, to Da Marchi and his musical forces. The Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper played with great style and sensitivity: not trying to be something they were not, but engaging in a recreation of Bach for today, without ever suggesting they might prefer to be playing Wagner. Indeed, in their obbligato roles, one sensed a moment of musical liberation: how wonderful, it seemed, that for once they could not only play this repertoire, but engage in music theatre of their own. Likewise the massed choral forces, used sparingly together, but voicing drama and reflection from around us, evoking a great basilica as much as Stockhausen. All involved in their direction deserve credit, pastorally as well as musically, this mirroring work and production in practice. One can question some of the musical choices, but that will always be the case in such music; one can still learn from the choices made. I might not choose to use lutes for the continuo, but I greatly appreciated their contribution.

 

Kieran Carrel proved an excellent Evangelist. It is at the best of times a considerable task, emotionally as well as vocally; with additional ‘dramatic’ duties, it became all the more so. Carrel’s understanding and communication of that understanding seemed to gain depth from those challenges, fully engaging with circumstances and their conceptual framework. The same might be said of Padraic Rowan’s Christus, darkly beautiful: strangely, properly remote yet also approachable. The other vocal soloists also all impressed. Battling a cold, Joel Allison nonetheless offered moving accounts of the bass arias; there were only a few occasions when one could tell. Tenor Kangyoon Shine Lee proved at least his match in the tenor arias, finely sculpted line and tone at the service of the text. Siobhan Stagg, Annika Schlicht complemented each other well as soprano and mezzo, offering performances both considered and, so it seemed, dramatically spontaneous. Youngkwang Oh and Artur Garbas impressed similarly in their parts. There really was no weak link, but rather in a true sense a musical community that both constructed and was constructed by Bach’s great Passion and its particular enactment.