Chaya Czernowin - Heart Chamber (world premiere), Deutsche Oper, 15 November 2019

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

HEART CHAMBER, Regie: Claus Guth, Uraufführung am 15. November 2019, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Michael Trippel

Her – Patrizia Ciofi

Her Inner Voice – Noa Frenkel

Him – Dietrich Henschel

His Inner Voice – Terry Wey

Soprano – Robyn Allegra Parton, Micaëla Oeste, Jana Miller, Rachel Fenlon

Mezzo-soprano – Verena Usemann, Anna-Louise Costello, Verena Tönjes, Jennifer Hughes

Tenor – Hans-Dieter Gillessen, Lawrence Halksworth, Wagner Moreira, Martin Fehr

Bass – Philipp Schreyer, Christoph Brunner, Simon Robinson, Andrew Munn

The Voice – Frauke Aulbert

Double Bassist – Uli Fussenegger

Claus Guth (director)

Christian Schmidt (designs)

Urs Schönebaum (lighting)

rocafilm (video)

Yvonne Gebauer, Dorothea Hartmann (dramaturgy)

Ensemble Nikel (Brian Archinal (percussion), Yaron Deutsch (electric guitar), Antoine Françoise (piano), Patrick Stadler (saxophone)), 

SWR Experimentalstudio: Joachim Haas, Lukas Nowok, Carlo Laurenzi (live electronics)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Johannes Kalitzke (conductor)

The day prior to seeing this, the world premiere of Chaya Czernowin’s fourth opera, Heart Chamber, I had completed in draft a short introductory article on the music of Schoenberg. That was doubtless part of the reason why various works of Schoenberg came to mind both during and after the performance of this fascinating new work; but I do not think it was—at least I hope it was not—only on that account. An unnamed man and woman: one might think first of Verklärte Nacht, not least since Heart Chamber, subtitled ‘An inquiry about love’, addresses, according to the composer, a ‘transformative path’, namely ‘the elements of falling in love that expose us to our most intense beauty but also to our most intense vulnerabilities and insecurities’. It was really, however, Schoenberg’s first two operas, Erwartung and Die glückliche Hand, which provided some context or framework for my response. Czernowin’s conception, whilst far from breezily romantic, is nowhere near so dark, nor so expressionist, as either. The sound of a surrounding vocal ensemble suggested as much distance from Die gluückliche Hand as affinity; that opera nonetheless afforded a reference point of sorts. Moreover, unlike either of the Schoenberg works—though like, I suppose, his third and final one-act opera, Von heute auf morgen—both man and woman have a voice, here further amplified, in addition to actual electronic amplification, by further solo parts for their inner voices.

It was less in subject matter than in overall conception that Erwartung helped frame my response. In letter to Busoni, written just before beginning work on that score, Schoenberg presented a physiological understanding of what he was about to portray: ‘For a human being, it is impossible to feel but one sensation at a time. One has thousands at once. … And this variegation, this multifariousness, this illogicality which our senses demonstrate, this illogicality presented by their interactions, set forth by a soaring wave of blood, by some sense- or nerve-reaction, this I should like to have in my music.’ In Heart Chamber, Czernowin—and I felt this with considerable, sometimes well-nigh overwhelming force before reading a word about it—attempts ‘to create a true multisensory experience, an experience of music in its sensual fabric, where music becomes smell, touch, cutting pain, extreme vulnerability, pure joy, or euphoria. The transitions and shifts between these states are uncontrolled and unpredictable.’ Reinventing the operatic wheel, then? Perhaps, but is that not what any opera composer worth his or her salt will be engaged in at some level? There is certainly here a strong, even unusually strong, sense of aural and visual, compositional and performative elements coming together dynamically yet also structurally—this is perhaps more knowingly sectional, if undoubtedly interconnected, a work than a post-Romantic piece such as Erwartung—to create something we might yet know, if we must, as a Gesamtkunstwerk.

An double bass solo (Uli Fussenegger), nervous and wide ranging, eventually settling on a narrower bad of pitch oscillation – a minor second, if I remember correctly – is the way in, an overture of sorts. Is this the heart or the physical and metaphysical chambers within which it is confined? There seems no reason to choose. Listening and watching, one registers different speeds, sometimes successive, sometime simultaneous, of experience; a bowing as much as an electronic modification, the spatial relationship between the excellent Ensemble Nikel to the side of the auditorium and the orchestra in the pit as much as that between conductor Johannes Kalitzke and electronics, or voices on and offstage. Nevertheless, at the structuring, animating heart, if one may put it that way, of this opera there stand voice and voices, singular and plural, generic and particular. One may say that such is the case for any opera—and yes, in many ways of course it is. However, I think it is probably fair to say that it is still more so the case for some operas, and some types of opera, than others, at least vis-à-vis the orchestra, or whatever stands in its place. For me, Heart Chamber took one back, with an effect not entirely unlike—whatever the differences in means—a work such as Pascal Dusapin’s Passion, to the earliest, Monteverdian days of opera: not in the sense of pastiche, nor even, as with Dusapin, of reference, but, to quote Czernowin, of ‘being about the voice, about using the voice, about communicating with the voice.’ That is, I know, what some, more responsive to its charms than I, say of bel canto opera too; I shall leave it to them to comment on any such affinity. Vocal colour, both through singing, prior recording (sometimes set against the present), and complex yet meaningful sound design, multiplies, not least in its potentiality for meaning.

Doubling or more, whether of ‘real’ or electronic voices, invites reflection, just as will any number of retellings of, for instance, the Orpheus legend. Vocal externalisation of inner voices, often more the affair of instruments, of harmony—and it is certainly not the case that there is none of that here—adds further layers not just of meaning, sometimes of a daily contradiction we all know, yet do not always acknowledge, but of experience both highly immediate and mediated. Such conflicts take place, related and unrelated, between song and speech, stage and film too. Incomprehension and frustration play roles as important as understanding and satisfaction. This is often, then, the realm of the unconscious, as further suggested by a number of dream sections, not always so readily distinguished, but which both for Schoenberg (again to Busoni)—music as ‘an expression of feeling, as our feeling really is, which connects us with our unconscious, not a changeling born of feelings and “conscious logic”—and for Czernowin, more vocally, less orchestrally—‘an additional singer (an internal voice) who reveals the protagonists’ deep subconscious … The internal and external voices do not always agree’—are perhaps the ultimate source of drama, even of ‘reality’, whatever that may be. In neither is narrative straightforwardly the point, probably still less so for Czernowin than Schoenberg. How one reacts to countertenor (Terry Wey) mirroring and contradicting baritone (Dietrich Henschel) and contralto (Noa Frenkel) doing likewise, yet never in anything so banal as mirror image, for soprano (Patrizia Ciofi) is part of the way one structures and indeed creates one’s own response.

This landscape, however, is no forest, enchanted or disenchanted. It is unrepentantly urban, quotidian, even in contrast with such settings. It could be anywhere; it might even be one of the roads outside, just off Bismarckstrasse. Video work (roca-film) treads with excellence that thin line between specificity and non-specificity, just as it does differently, elsewhere, in nightmarish, invasion of ants, as psychological as it is physiological; for what is ‘reality’ here? So too, more broadly, do Claus Guth’s direction and Christian Schmidt’s designs, indeed the production as a whole. A highly resourceful revolving stage creates and delimits spaces, urban and physiological, perhaps even metaphysical too. That is more a question for us, I think, than for the work and production as such. My first reaction was that I should need to see and hear the opera again to be able to say anything about it; sadly, that was not immediately an option and, in retrospect, time for reflection was undoubtedly a good thing too. The experience, conscious and unconscious, would doubtless be very different—just as it would with Cosi fan tutte or Tristan, and their treatments of a not entirely dissimilar theme. I should nevertheless be keen to see and hear it again, especially given such committed performances, and have no hesitation in recommending it to anyone for whom opera is both what it was for Monteverdi, Mozart, Wagner, or Schoenberg and something necessarily different.

Salzburg Festival (7) – Scharoun Ensemble/Pintscher: ‘Beyond Recall: Kunstprojekt Salzburg’, 24 August 2013

 Grosser Saal, Mozarteum

Vykintas Baltakas – Eselbrücke

Mark Andre – E2
Dai Fujikura – silence seeking solace
Jay Schwartz – M
Olga Neuwirth – Piazza dei numeri
Bruno Mantovani – Spirit of Alberti
Matthias Pintscher – Beyond (A System of Passing)
Nina Šenk – In the Absence
Michael Jarrell – Adtende, ubi albescit veritas
Johannes Maria Staud – Caldera (for Tony Cragg): Szene im antilopischen Stil
David Fulmer – Faces of Awilda
Vito Žuraj – Insideout

Mojca Erdmann (soprano)

Dietrich Henschel (baritone)

Scharoun Ensemble and other members of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Matthias Pintscher (conductor)

Anthony Cragg: Caldera

 

It seemed such a splendid idea: twelve new commissions, all to receive their first performances, each inspired by a different new(-ish) piece of public art in the city of Salzburg, especially since the quality of the latter works is far higher than what we must often endure in the United Kingdom. One expects something of a mixed bag in such situations, and that was certainly the case here; however, even had that not been the case, there was, at least for me, a distinct, indeed insuperable, problem with respect to the presentation. I like to think of myself as capable of enduring the odd musical marathon; as a Wagner scholar, my stamina has perhaps become greater than that of those whose musical experiences focus entirely upon the traditional concert. Moreover, I am very much in favour of experiments with concert form and length, though not necessarily just for the sake of it. Here, however, I simply found the experience too much. A concert of new works, not all of which are likely to become acclaimed as masterpieces, lasting from 7 p.m. until almost 11 p.m., with but one short interval, really did not show off any of the works to good advantage, a difficulty exacerbated by blinding lighting from the stage. (There was more than one instance I spied of a player wincing.) Half-way, or perhaps not even that, through the first half – actually comprised of seven pieces – I struggled to regain the will to live, and cannot imagine that I was entirely alone in that respect.

 

For that reason, I do not intend to go into any great detail concerning the pieces performed; I do not feel in a position to do so, and should rather say little or nothing than be unfairly damning. The first four pieces I could readily have done without. Vykintas Baltakas’s Eselbrücke is inspired by Brigitte Kowanz’s Beyond Recall, a commemoration of the prisoners of war who built Salzburg’s Staatsbrücke between 1941 and 1945. Eselbrücke was brighter than one might have expected, but that was partly the point, I think; however, its post-Stravinskian fanfare quality – presumably intended to portray the hustle and bustle of the modern city, motion without progress? – outstayed its welcome somewhat. Mark Andre’s E2, for double bass and cello, was merely dull: grey and well-nigh interminable. Mojca Erdmann made the first of a number of scintillating appearances in Dai Fujikura’s silence seeking solace, joining a string quartet in a piece that was pretty enough, but which did not evade suspicions of note-spinning. In a way, it was a relief to hear the pop-like repetitions of Mozart phrases in Jay Schwartz’s M, but, despite Dietrich Henschel’s committed performance – he generally seems in his element in new music – it was difficult to think that such post-minimalism (?) amounted to much more than shop-soiled rhythms and silly noises.

 

The other pieces in the first half seemed more substantial, though fatigue did not help their reception. Olga Neuwirth offered a typically finely-wrought ensemble piece (with high soprano, Erdmann), Piazza dei numeri, responding to Mario Merz’s Ziffern im Wald. Despite Neuwirth’s concern that she risked becoming obsessed with numbers – are not most composers, in one way or another? – she bases her score on Fibonacci rows from Merz’s igloo, formed of stainless steel struts, their neon-lit numbers most readily visible in the Mönchsberg evening. (The programme booklet for the concert is invaluable in its provision of such information.) As we heard numbers sung from the igloo, there was a definite sense that music and the image projected on a screen behind the stage – such was the case for all performances – now properly interacted, perhaps even merged. Bruno Mantovani’s Spirit of Alberti played with the Mozartian Alberti bass to iridescent ensemble effect. Matthias Pintscher’s Beyond (A System of Passing) for solo flute benefited enormously from the virtuosity and musicianship of Emmanel Pahud, but it was clearly a major addition to the solo flute repertoire in any case. Reacting to Anselm Kiefer’s Salzburg installation, A.E.I.O.U., the piece, in Pintscher’s own words, ‘enforces a quite different sound [from his preceding work, the orchestral Chute d’étoiles], one of great lightness. It is far more about air, paths, and perspectives – which are also a major topic in Kiefer’s work.’ Paths opened up and closed, likewise the perspectives of which Pintscher spoke; one could well imagine oneself engaging in a Salzburg miniature version (or vision) of Strauss’s Alpine journey.

 

The second half was more consistent in quality, though a certain sameness announced itself in hearing work after work for similar ensemble, even given the variables of vocal contribution. David Fulmer’s Faces of Alwida, the penultimate work to be performed, seemed at first to offer something quite different, and in a sense it did. However, its more ‘Eastern’ soundworld – the usual percussion suspects in particular – soon palled in a piece that sounded stretched to four or five times its optimum length. Nina Šenk and Vito Žuraj proved attentive vocal composers, the former’s In the Absence playful yet touching in its soprano setting of words by Graz artist, Erwin Wurm: ‘bi di bi di bi di bi di/bi di bi di ja zum bi dig e winn.’ Žuraj’s  Insideout was the only piece in which Erdmann and Henschel both participated, its struggle between the sexes evocative of the world of music-theatre. Michael Jarrell and Johannes Maria Staud both justified the regard in which they are held. The former’s Adtende, ubi albescit veritas is inspired by Christian Boltanski’s ghostly sculpture in the crypt of Salzburg Cathedral, death and hope confronting each other in a vocal work (Henschel again) whose piano-led ensemble seemed both to mirror and contest Alfred Hofmann’s translation from Augustine. Staud’s piece for soprano, clarinet, and prepared piano offered more than mere contrast. Taking its leave from perspectives thrown up by Tony Cragg’s Caldera, which stands in Makartplatz – not, ‘Markartplatz’, as the programme had it, both in German and in English –  Staud’s correspondences between soprano and clarinet, at times almost as one, seem heightened by the piano and ‘active page-turner’, whose lines, in the composer’s words, give ‘depth – a three-dimensionality – to what happens,’ and permit ‘a magma-like proliferation’. I wished that I could hear it by the sculpture itself, on another occasion.

Kirchschlager/Henschel/Drake - Wolf, 6 January 2013

Wigmore Hall
 

Königlich Gebet

Der Sänger
Auf einer Wanderung
Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchens
Das verlassene Mägdlein
Lebe wohl
Im Frühling
Prometheus
Grenzen der Menschheit
Philine
Spottlied aus Wilhelm Meister
Harfenspieler I-III
Mignon I-III
Kennst du das Land

Anglelika Kirchschlager (mezzo-soprano)
Dietrich Henschel (baritone)
Julius Drake (piano)

 

Twelfth Night at the Wigmore Hall brought Hugo Wolf from Angelika Kirchschlager, Dietrich Henschel, and Julius Drake. Whilst there was much to enjoy, most of that came courtesy of Kirchschlager, Drake proving variable in his command of Wolf’s admittedly difficult piano writing, Henschel having one wish for variability in order to leaven an often unpleasant tone.

 

Mörike settings opened the programme. In Auf eine Wanderung, Kirchschlager and Drake offered heightened, Schubertian expectancy, presenting the song as a child of Die Post. Ghosts of Tristan were to be heard during the interlude between the two stanzas, harmony quite properly the agent of transformation. Kirchschlager’s communicative artistry told, both through the excellence of her diction and, just as important, her use of those words. (It is no good simply being heard, if one does not know what to do with the words, what their implications might be, as many of us found to our cost with Bryn Terfel’s deeply disappointing recent Wotan at Covent Garden.) In Lebe wohl, harmony and vocal line sounded anticipatory of Strauss, whereas Mahler and the Second Viennese School hovered on the horizon in Das verlassene Mägdlein. If only Drake had been more in command of the piano part here and elsewhere, this could have been very special indeed; as it was, it seemed, rightly or wrongly, as if more practice would have been in order. Nevertheless, Kirchschlager offered a soaring account of Im Frühling, albeit an account without the lack of verbal attention that often accompanies that adjective. Moreover, she showed how she could scale her tone down to the greatest intimacy. Erstes Liebeslied eines Mädchen took us both back and forward to youthful excitement. The delirious nature of Wolf’s post-Wagnerian writing was compromised a little by Drake’s less than complete technical control; nevertheless, the essential mood of the song still registered.

 

Goethe settings made up the rest of the programme. Drake proved a little too orchestral in Königlich Gebet, which sounded oddly akin to an orchestral reduction. However, he proved admirably detailed in his response to Der Sänger. Henschel’s dryness became increasingly difficult to bear, though, especially when, as in Grenzen der Menschheit, it was compounded by seeming inability to maintain a vocal line, let alone to shape it. The song, alas, might have been better off entitled Grenzen der Sänger; indeed, Sprechstimme would have come as a relief. In Prometheus, the piano was furious, Lisztian in spirit, yet often surprisingly inexact. The voice had not improved; if anything, it had deteriorated, hectoring beyond anything even Fischer-Dieskau’s wildest detractors might ever have alleged.

 

Henschel returned after the interval to introduce a second half made up of songs from Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre. The second Harfenspieler suffered from Drake’s inability to make Wolf’s syncopations sound as such, rather than as simply odd metrical uncertainty, though matters improved as the song progressed. Henschel offered more of the same, so it was a great relief when Kirchschlager returned for Philine, coquettish, seemingly anticipatory of Schoenberg’s cabaret songs. Henschel’s Spottlied presented a voice that had seemingly disintegrated; there was little to hear beyond barking. Despite occasional intonational issues, the return of Kirchschlager for the Mignon songs was again most welcome, the first in particular a hochdramatisch reading, the third suffused with sadness, its onward tread maintained as if to prevent any slide into the merely lachrymose. Kennst du das Land, the fourth of the set, was almost, yet rightly, not quite, operatic; once again, Strauss beckoned. The encore, Schubert’s duet version of Nur wer die Sehnsucht kennt seemed, to me at least, to cross the operatic line, but with Henschel in attendance, that hardly mattered.

Tannhäuser, Deutsche Oper, 12 February 2010

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia – Reinhard Hagen
Tannhäuser – Stephen Gould
Wolfram von Eschenbach – Dietrich Henschel
Walther von der Vogelweide – Clemens Bieber
Biterolf – Lenus Carlson
Heinrich der Schreiber – Jörg Schörner
Reimar von Zweter – Jörn Schümann
Venus/Elisabeth – Nadja Michael
Shepherd – Martina Welschenbach
Tannhäuser double in the overture – Stefan Siedler

Kirsten Harms (director)
Bernd Damovsky (designs)
Inga Timm (assistant costume design)
Silvana Schröder (choreography)

Chorus and Supplementary Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin
Ulf Schirmer (conductor)

Of the ‘canonical’ Wagner Romantic operas and music dramas, that is from The Flying Dutchman onwards, Tannhäuser must surely be the least fashionable. It certainly seems to be the least performed. I had only seen it in the theatre once before, the very same theatre as it happens, though in the Deutsche Oper’s previous production, by Götz Friedrich. How then, did the present performance, from the first revival of Intendant Kirsten Harms’s 2008 production, compare? On balance, favourably in musical terms, less so when it comes to the staging.

I am afraid I found Harms’s direction as confusing as I had in December’s Die Frau ohne Schatten. Both that work and Tannhäuser need a degree of directorial assistance. To clarify or to problematise would seem the two obvious paths from which to choose. Here, it was difficult to detect a unifying idea beyond the refusal to opt for the either/or principle, of which Harms speaks in a programme interview. It seems to me that either this was not pushed hard enough, to go beyond portraying Venus and Elisabeth as ultimately one and the same, or it was insufficient as a Konzept; to go beyond that dichotomy of my own, I might add that the two are not mutually exclusive. So if Elisabeth is ‘revealed’ as Venus – this ‘revelation’ seems especially weak, since it is creakingly apparent all along – then where does that leave Tannhäuser? If the choice between Wartburg and Venusberg were a false one, then perhaps his fate might be considered tragic, yet it did not seem so here. Is he thereby redeemed? Perhaps, but again it is difficult to discern that from the staging. Venus/Elisabeth seems to move centre stage, but is that merely to evade the issue? (In fairness, it arguably makes Elisabeth a more interesting character.)

Moreover, there is no cumulative element to the settings and designs; we simply move from one setting to another: sometimes with a certain mediævalism, which does not seem to be ironised, sometimes not. Stage mechanics are displayed at the act openings, but it is difficult to discern any attempt thereby to frame, to ‘deconstruct’, or to alienate. I have no idea at all why the pilgrims of the first act appear in Hell, mediæval monsters and all, a setting which is difficult to relate to the rest of what we see. A mediæval musicologist friend informed me that a good number of the heraldic costumes for the second act are copied from the Codex Manesse – Walther von der Vogelweide appears in that manuscript himself, I might add – yet, whilst the effect is undeniably colourful, I can discern no dramatic point beyond a further blurring of time and location, a blurring whose point is in turn unclear. Likewise, the point of airborne suspension and gradual, albeit interrupted assumption of suits of armour eluded me. Finding the third-act Elisabeth as a Florence Nightingale character, tending the sick in modern hospital beds, refers of course to the deeds for which the historical figure was canonised, but the connection with the rest of the production, or indeed with the work, remained obscure, at least to me. I can see a good case for highlighting a tension between the Middle Ages, Wagner’s time, and our own, but the decisions here seem merely arbitrary – if a critique of Wagner’s dramaturgy at this time, then it needs to be made clear, and I do not think that it was – and sadly lacking in dramatic tension.

Ulf Schirmer, however, delivered an eminently dependable account of the score. There were no especial revelations – and he was hamstrung by the decision, whoever made it, of performing the Dresden version – but it is no mean achievement to hold Wagner’s structures together and to delineate them so clearly. Moreover, the playing elicited from the orchestra of the Deutsche Oper was often of a very high quality indeed. I was especially taken by the golden glow from the strings – more Vienna than Berlin, I thought – and by the purity of the woodwind, especially during the faux-archaisms, conjuring up, quite appropriately, a nineteenth-century world of ‘early music’.

An initial casting disappointment was that Stefan Siedler, the unusually credible ‘Tannhäuser double’ from the overture –incidentally, is it not a bit of an odd Bacchanale that does not include other men? – turned out to be just that, or rather not that at all. Just when one had thought that one might be able to believe in the stage presence of the central character, he was replaced by an artist of rather more ‘traditional’ build and countenance: a bit like Brad Pitt acting as a ‘double’ for me. Anyway, Stephen Gould did a very good job vocally as Tannhäuser. He could sing the role, which far from goes without saying in the Heldentenor world; he could shape his phrases; there was no appreciable tiring. Nadja Michael, perhaps unsurprisingly, proved a variable Venus/Elisabeth. At her best, she provided just the dramatic credibility often lacking elsewhere. Presence and commitment were very much in evidence. There was too much wayward vocalism, however, to be able to ignore the flaws; some passages from the Venusberg were at best approximate in their tuning. Rather to my surprise, her Elisabeth was probably, on the whole, more successful than her Venus. It is not clear to me that, the production notwithstanding, it is really possible for one singer to do justice to both roles, but that is not Michael’s fault. Dietrich Henschel provided a Lieder-singer’s attention to detail as Wolfram, but his tone sometimes turned dry; I could not help but think that Fischer-Dieskau would have purveyed this sort of interpretation more successfully. I thought it a pity not to have a boy’s voice for the Shepherd, but Martina Welschenbach certainly sang the part well. The chorus, under William Spaulding’s direction, was most impressive throughout, providing both weight and clarity.

But why the Dresden version? Was this the director’s decision or the conductor’s, I wonder? Or should I stop posing either/or questions? I know that many, Christian Thielemann included, claim its virtue to be coherence, yet Tannhäuser remains problematical. Wagner famously told Cosima that he still owed the world a Tannhäuser, and if anything, what Carl Dahlhaus identified, in Richard Wagner’s Music Dramas, as the works’ ‘abruptness …, lack of mediation … [and] casualness of motivation,’ is greater in the earlier version, since the later, often Tristan-esque music permits instead the case of Wagner’s music criticising itself, a dramatisation of the Elisabeth-Venus conflict in musical terms. I am certainly not saying that the Dresden version should never be performed, but so much is lost when one forgoes Wagner’s Paris additions: musically and in terms of the history of the work – with, it seems to me, little gained beyond fulfilling an interest in first thoughts. I have heard it responded that we should be quite happy with the Dresden version, had Wagner not made his revisions for Paris, but that is no response at all; one might as well say the same of Leonore and Fidelio, though the situations are different. At any rate, my lament is more a comment concerning current fashions than upon this production in particular. Would someone, somewhere kindly permit us to hear the Paris Tannhäuser?