Wozzeck, Royal Opera, 31 October 2013

Gerhard Siegel (Captain), Wozzeck (Simon Keenlyside), Doctor (John Tomlinson)

 

Royal Opera House

Captain – Gerhard Siegel

Wozzeck – Simon Keenlyside
Andres – John Easterlin
Marie – Karita Mattila
Child – Sebastian Wright
Margret – Allison Cook
Doctor – Sir John Tomlinson
Drum Major – Endrik Wottrich
First Apprentice – Jeremy White
Second Apprentice – Grant Doyle
Idiot – Robin Tritschler

Keith Warner (director)

Stefanos Lazaridis (set designs)
Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes)
Rick Fisher (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Sir Mark Elder (conductor)

Rankings may well be stupid, pointless, pernicious, yet any performance of Wozzeck which has not reminded one that it is the greatest of all post-Wagnerian operas has failed. This most certainly did not fail; indeed, it triumphantly succeeded. Moreover, this revival of Keith Warner’s Royal Opera production offered a fascinatingly complementary experience to that of ENO’s Carrie Cracknell staging, seen earlier this year. Whereas the latter restored with a vengeance the social protest and condemnation often mystifyingly absent from stagings of Berg’s opera, Warner concentrates upon more expressionistic, existentialist, experimental matters. Part of me was tempted to wish that both had heeded the other a little more, but another voice inside me cautioned that, as Schoenberg observed, only the middle road does not lead to Rome. It is far better to have a focused, committed, if necessarily partial interpretation than one that drops the excess number of balls it would juggle.  (Not that multivalent operatic staging is impossible. We have only to look at the work of Stefan Herheim – imagine a Wozzeck from him! – to appreciate that.)

 

Perhaps the most strongly abiding memory of Warner’s production and the late Stefanos Lazaridis’s designs is that of the Doctor’s experimental laboratory. We are reminded less of social degradation – though that of course is present in the action, by no means slighted – than of Das Cabinet des Dr Cagliari. The Doctor’s weird fascination in experimentation and curiosity takes upon itself the role of that productive, sadistic, deadly perversion inherent in instrumental reason known to us since Adorno and Horkheimer as the dialectic of enlightenment. (It reaches back to Homer in their book, and now inescapably does so in any non-naïve appreciation of the Western tradition.) Wozzeck ends up in the Doctor’s tank rather than in a lake as such, yet he most likely imagines the latter, and it certainly fulfils the exclamation and/or (scientific) observation, ‘Das Wasser ist blut.’ Modern liberals shy away from, perhaps even stand in ignorance of, Nietzsche, but we do well to heed his warnings against the claims of the natural sciences, if only so as more fully to appreciate the real, as opposed to imagined, benefits they have brought us.

Child (Sebastian Wright)

 

 

The unequal division of the stage, most of it devoted to that cabinet of malevolent grotesquerie, a corner sliced off at the front for Marie’s dwelling serves a dramatic as well as practical end. Marie and her child are hemmed in, on the verge of being expelled beyond the stage: there be dragons? They are invaded too, not least by the raucous, post- and sub-Mahlerian music of the local band. What at first seems as though it makes little sense visually comes to do so, but one needs patience and one’s critical faculties to ensure that it does. There is loss: the brutality and brutalisation of war and barracks life, indeed that of late capitalism in a broader, more depraved sense, does not register as it might, as it did in Cracknell’s production. But we do not have to choose. The final scene is, or should be, controversial, Wozzeck’s child freeing himself from the bed where he has witnessed all manner of sordid misery to move towards the tank, haunted by amplified children’s voices, presumably in his head. It is perhaps a step too far away from the societal underpinning of the work, and the amplification is clumsy, whether deliberately so or otherwise. Yet even that has one think.

 

As so often, the conductor, in this case Sir Mark Elder, took a little while fully to get into his stride. The first act, though pristine, precise, pellucid, did not quite cohere as it might have done – and maybe will in subsequent performances. Yet the rest of the performance incorporated those virtues into a reading that drove the action forward as proper music-drama and yet also highlighted to an extent I cannot previously recall the true miracle of Berg’s closed forms. Whatever the composer might have claimed regarding our not needing to hear them in the theatre, to do so in conjunction with the tragic dramatic thrust, the tension between them heightening rather than detracting from, the drama only opens up possibilities, both reflecting and yet also, in Adornian fashion, criticising the dialectic of enlightenment. Occasional orchestral slips notwithstanding, this was a committed performance from the orchestra, at times as ravishingly beautiful as a fine account of Schoenberg’s op.16 Orchestral Pieces, with great, though never exaggerated, dramatic punch where it was required.

Wozzeck and his tormentors, with Karita Mattila (Marie) and Endrik
Wottrick (Drum Major) cavorting in the background

 

 

Simon Keenlyside follows in the footsteps of Matthias Goerne as a great Wozzeck. (It is interesting to note that both baritones are or have been such fine Papagenos too.) Everything is there: intelligence, albeit cruelly circumscribed and tormented, an agony that is almost Christ-like, and, perhaps most painful of all, an empty, dulled numbness at the close. Keenlyside has done many, many wonderful things, but I am not sure that any of them can have been better than this. Karita Mattila brings an undeniable Finnish accent to her German, but it helps one hear the words: no bad thing. Her performance was as committed as one might expect; it drew one in, had one sympathise almost beyond endurance in the Bible-reading scene. Endrik Wottrich’s Drum Major offered a stronger performance than any I can recall from him, his swagger, in both stage and vocal terms, finely judged indeed. The unmistakeable John Tomlinson made for a splendid Doctor; there was no doubting his understanding and communication of the text. Likewise the wonderful Gerhard Siegel as the Captain, putting his experience as Mime to good use in a performance of duly perverted power. For this was a proper team effort, all of the cast deserving of praise, all of their efforts at the service of Berg’s drama. I emerged duly moved, duly bludgeoned.

 

(BBC Radio 3 will broadcast Wozzeck on 2 December at 7.30 p.m.)

Der fliegende Holländer, Royal Opera, 18 October 2011

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Images © The Royal Opera / Mike Hoban

The Dutchman (Egils Silins)

The Dutchman – Egils Silins
Senta - Anja Kampe
Daland – Stephen Milling
Steersman – John Tessier
Mary – Clare Shearer
Erik – Endrik Wottrich

Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Jeffrey Tate (conductor)

Tim Albery (director)
Michael Levine (set designs)
Constance Hoffman (costumes)
David Finn (lighting)
Philippe Giraudeau (movement)


Tim Albery’s production of The Flying Dutchman, first seen in 2009, now returns to the Royal Opera for a run of six performances, of which this was the first. It remains a wasted opportunity on stage, but irritated me less than last time. (Since the production team did not appear on stage, I assume that it was entrusted to a house revival director: ironically, then, it comes across better than it did before.) In musical terms, the performance proved preferable too, if nevertheless mixed in quality.

Senta (Anja Kampe) and Erik (Endrik Wottrich)

As so often, much depends on where one is seated. Last time, from the Balcony, I found the ‘sole virtue’ of the production to have been during the Overture, ‘with a surprisingly effective suggestion of wind and rain upon a makeshift stage curtain’. From the Stalls, however, David Finn’s lighting proved a little too strong, almost blinding at times, whilst the continued suggestion of the sea and its ebb and flow elicited mild nausea. Perhaps the impression of sea-sickness were intended; if so, it should not have been. Albery’s stance that a vaguely modern, working-class community is somehow equivalent to, or an appropriate replacement for, an earlier ‘straightforward’ life by the sea remains to my mind both wrongheaded and patronising. Yet the attempt at social ‘realism’, most clearly incarnated in the factory girls who change their clothes for a tarts’ night out, seems toned down in the revival, a welcome development, permitting a little more emphasis upon the ‘ghost story’ element to the drama. It remains a problem that the Dutchman seems to hold so little interest for the director. His plight not only loses its metaphysics; it barely seems to exist. The same, needless to say, holds for redemption – or lack thereof. Senta is again mostly left to her own devices, seeming less hysterical than just a little peculiar. Her toy ship remains an inadequate substitute for the picture, making nonsense of the Ballad, yet without real suggestion of reinterpretation.

It is a good thing, then, that the Dutchman and Senta were both strongly cast. Last time, Bryn Terfel, who will always be lauded by his legion of uncritical fans, was disappointing in the extreme, unsupported by the staging and veering between bark and crooned whisper. The Latvian bass-baritone Egils Silins proved superior in every respect. One heard every word – as, to be fair, one did with Terfel – but now the words meant something, both in themselves and in proper Wagnerian musico-dramatic alchemy with the notes. Vocal tone was just right, properly suggestive of Wotan: indeed, there were a couple of occasions when I was put in mind of the desperate, tortured Walküre monologue. (It is heartening to see that Paris has signed Silins for its complete Ring in 2013.) Anja Kampe assumed the role in 2009 too; on both occasions she impressed both in terms of textual response and stamina, though the production does her no favours whatsoever. Endrik Wottrich showed some strain, most glaringly at one point during the third act, but this was a much stronger performance than his recent Royal Opera Florestan. There is clearly a Siegmund-type voice locked within; the pity is that the voice production is often constricted. Still, he looked and often sounded handsome, no mere cipher, as is so often the case. Stephen Milling proved impressively attentive to words and text as Daland, as did John Tessier as the Steersman: his song emerged as a true Lied, moving in itself and not simply a plot device. Clare Shearer’s Mary, reprised from 2009, is hampered by the production’s frumpy portrayal, but again made little impression vocally either.

The Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus certainly did make a powerful vocal impression, testimony to fine training from Renato Balsadonna. Weight and line are equally present, and the chorus members do what they can with the staging. The orchestra was just as impressive. Germanic in heft and hue, it once again showed that , on a good night, this is a group of musicians to compare with any. Jeffrey Tate’s conducting, however, proved more of a mixed bag. On at least nine-and-a-half times out of ten, one can discern the progress of a musical performance from its opening bars; this proved an exception. Whilst they were very much on the driven side, the second subject was drawn out and lifeless, setting the pattern for much of the first and second acts. The Spinning Chorus and Senta’s Ballad pretty much ground to a halt. There was also major discrepancy at the beginning of the chorus not only between pit and stage but within the pit (cellos and woodwind). Yet the end of the second act and the third act sounded reinvigorated: more incisive, without being rushed. I suspect that the rest might come more sharply into focus throughout the run of performances: the orchestral sound is certainly there already.

Fidelio, Royal Opera, 29 March 2011

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Leonore – Nina Stemme
Florestan – Endrik Wottrich
Rocco – Kurt Rydl
Marzelline – Elizabeth Watts
Jaquino – Steven Ebel
Don Pizarro – John Wegner
Don Fernando – Sir Willard White
First Prisoner – Ji Hyun Kim
Second Prisoner – Dawid Kimberg

Jürgen Flimm (director)
Daniel Dooner (associate director)
Robert Israel (set designs)
Florence von Gerkan (costumes)
Duane Schuler (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Mark Elder (conductor)

A major attraction to this Fidelio had been the opportunity to hear Kirill Petrenko in the pit. Unfortunately, back problems rendered him unable to continue rehearsals. Petrenko has been named the next General Music Director in Munich and will also lead the 2013 Bayreuth Ring. Though Covent Garden audiences have had chance to admire him before, in my case in the 2009 Rosenkavalier and, some time previously, in a splendid double-bill of Bluebeard’s Castle and Erwartung, his absence was a disappointment. Sir Mark Elder, in situ for rehearsals of the forthcoming production of The Tsar’s Bride, was his replacement, though David Syrus will take over the end of the run. Elder, known principally for later music, took some time to find his feet here. The overture married unsteadiness with charmless adherence to the metronome. Strings sometimes struggled to make themselves heard, though from a purely orchestral perspectives, horns and woodwind sounded quite magical. As can often be the case, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House outplayed its conductor. The first number continued along an unsteady path, mixing a somewhat Italianate lightness – doubtless some would claim to find this refreshing, though I found it straightforwardly inappropriate – with arbitrary tempo changes, suggestive less of Furtwängler than of a caricature of Mengelberg by someone who has never heard him. Elements of such arbitrary juxtaposition remained later on, but for the most part it was a surer Fidelio that emerged. There were, however, a few too many discrepancies between pit and stage, none more noticeable than during Don Fernando’s music in the final scene. The orchestra continued to play very well indeed, certainly far better than it had under the dispiriting leadership of Antonio Pappano last time around in 2007. My suspicion would be that Elder’s reading will settle down in subsequent performances, though there are only three left that he will conduct.

A vocal report must also be mixed. Nina Stemme, though she did not quite nail the climax of ‘O, namenlose Freude,’ was in every other respect very impressive indeed, quite justifying her reputation, fine intonation combined with Classical purity of line, no matter what hurdles Beethoven placed in her way. She made a relatively plausible ‘boy’ too, for those who care. Endrik Wottrich, however, was simply not up to the task. I shall doubtless be forever spoiled by the staggering achievement of Jonas Kaufmann as Florestan, but odious comparisons aside, Wottrich proved both feeble of tone and unable to hit a startling proportion of his notes. Kurt Rydl stood out by virtue of credible delivery of his dialogue; the rest of the cast tended to speak as if in a foreign-language school play. Unfortunately, Rydl’s wobble became too distracting even for those of us inclined to charity on account of past glories. Elizabeth Watts, however, made a sparkling Marzelline and Steven Ebel a similarly winning Jaquino. John Wegner’s Pizarro was darker and more convincingly malevolent than many of the cartoon villains we often endure: a significant achievement that. Willard White’s Fernando did little to convince, however, again showing a singer past his prime. Second Prisoner Dawid Kimberg shone in his brief moment of glory – not for the first time. The Royal Opera Chorus was truly excellent, full of sound, which could yet be withdrawn when necessary, and startlingly impressive in diction, putting many German choruses to shame.

As for Jürgen Flimm’s production, this time revived by Daniel Dooner, it remains a depressing affair. Perhaps less full of arbitrary goings on than last time, it seemed still more lacking in coherence. Updated to what appears to be a mid-twentieth century Latin American country, albeit to no particular purpose, there is little or no focus upon Beethoven’s burning flame of freedom; Marzelline’s ironing makes more of a (tiresome) impression. Far from feeling enclosed and oppressive, Florestan’s cell is vast, so much so that one can almost understand why Leonore fails to see him to start with. The final scene simply falls apart, direction of the characters faltering whilst garishly clad prisoners’ spouses and children parade around. It feels as aimless as that…