Ariadne auf Naxos, Staatsoper Berlin, 11 March 2017

Schillertheater

Ensemble (from 2015 premiere)
Image: Monika Rittershaus

 

Music Master – Arttu Kataja

Major-Domo – Elisabeth Trissenaar
Lackey – David Oštrek
Officer – Sergiu Saplacan
Composer – Katharina Kammerloher
Tenor, Bacchus – Roberto Saccà
Wig-Maker – Adam Kutny
Zerbinetta – Elena Sancho-Pereg
Prima Donna, Ariadne – Anna Samuil
Dancing Master – Manuel Günther
Naiad – Evelin Novak
Dryad – Natalia Skrycka
Echo – Sónia Grané
Harlequin – Gyula Orendt
Truffaldino – Grigory Shkarupa
Scaramuccio – Linard Vrielink
Brighella – Miloš Bulajić
Puppeteer – JARNOTH
 

Hans Neuenfels (director)

Katrin Lea Tag (set designs)
Andrea Schmidt-Futterer (costumes)
Stefan Bolliger (lighting)
Yvonne Gebauer (dramaturgy)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Eun Sun Kim (conductor)

The prospect of a staging from Ariadne auf Naxos from Hans Neuenfels was exciting indeed. His Bayreuth Lohengrin is well-nigh universally acknowledged, usual irreconcilable suspects aside, as a modern classic. Both Mozart stagings I have seen from him – Salzburg’s Così fan tutte, my first, and La finta giardiniera, here in Berlin – have been intelligent and probing. There is, of course, a much lengthier history to his work in spoken theatre and film, as well as his own writing, indeed in opera too, dating back even beyond his celebrated 1980 Aida for Frankfurt, whose landmark treatment of the work’s Orientalism outraged not only those aforementioned usual suspects but, it seems, a good few others aside. What would he do, then, with Strauss, whose twin musical gods were Mozart and Wagner, here in Ariadne, as so often, set in fruitful competition, contradiction, and perhaps reconciliation with each other?

Perhaps I should have known to expect the unexpected, but what I did not really expect was restraint, even conventionality, albeit shorn of a good deal of the theatricality and metatheatricality that lies at the heart of most productions – and indeed of the work itself. Such is largely what we see, or do not see, at least in the Prologue (save for the sudden, brief reappearance at the end, at the back of the stage, of Troupe Zerbinetta’s male members, as it were, replete with enormous strap-on dildos, enthusiastically waved around. I have no idea why in context, but it certainly attracted attention.) There is otherwise little sense of visual provocation; Andrea Schmidt-Futterer’s costumes convey a sense of modernity in its chic, allegedly ‘timeless’ form. Katrin Lea Tag’s set is relatively spare, as in the Opera proper; there is no sense, as has recently been fashionable (for instance, Christof Loy at Covent Garden or Claus Guth in Zurich), of attempting anything with self-reference to its particular location. I am not sure why it was necessary for the Major-Domo to extract money from a cash machine, suddenly revealed in the wall. Maybe it was just underlining a point concerning patronage; maybe it was a passing hint at vulgarity. (Do the super-rich have such things in their houses as amusements, or perhaps as safety deposit boxes?)  I did not especially care for the performance of Frau Neuenfels, Elisabeth Trissenaar, in that role; she is an excellent actress, and was so again here, but her delivery was strangely caricatured, not least in this otherwise straightforward context. The parody here is surely pretty much written in; adding more seems a little like caricaturing the musical caricatures of Mahler’s Fourth Symphony. Otherwise, all is rather as it ‘should’ be, well directed, well presented, but not especially interesting.
 

In the Opera, that changes somewhat, yet only somewhat. Another brief baffling moment – to me, at any rate, although perhaps I was being slow – is the arrival and speedy departure of an ecclesiastical procession. Again, the designs are not lavish; it is, after all a desert island. Again, the action is not complicated. There are, however, certain enigmatic, I should say suggestive, touches – and one important intervention. Threads are handed out (by the Composer, if I remember correctly) at the beginning, to Naiad, Dryad, and Echo; they snap, or were never woven together in the first place, suggesting and yet deconstructing the Fate of Wagner’s Norns. A mysterious puppeteer (JARNOCH) wanders on and off, on one occasion bearing Grecian masks (Theseus and Ariadne?), and parading ‘Schicksal’ (destiny) on the back of his T-shirt. His acts open up rather than close down possibilities for reflection: just what a production needs. Zerbinetta tries to instruct Ariadne, but the latter pays heed neither to her song nor to her written slogans.

 

For it seems that Ariadne has a death-wish, one which, revealingly, perhaps as an Adornian Rettung (‘rescue’) of the work, is fulfilled. She does not join Bacchus, but takes her life, highlighting the contradictions of the final scene, Hofmannsthal’s wish for ‘transformation’ dealt with at least as severely (and perhaps rightly so) as Strauss’s stubbornly materialist peroration. Tragedy is reinstated, as many a composer of opera seria – would like. And the Composer joins Ariadne in her death. Such, after all, is the lot of modernity, after Hegel: art would die and yet we will not, cannot, let it. We need our modernistic fragments, however much they refuse to add up. We certainly do not need what Adorno excoriated as the Happy End, although it is what mere ‘entertainment’ – paid for, because it gains ‘results’ – will give us. If only this might have been read back into the relatively disappointing Prologue.

 

There was much, then, to engage the mind. What about the ear (insofar as they may be distinguished from one another)? Anna Samuil, alas, offered a crude performance as Ariadne, her constant wide vibrato wearing and her acting ability rudimentary. Roberto Saccà’s Bacchus was better, although workmanlike rather than thrilling. (One cannot always, or even often, have Jonas Kaufmann, I suppose.) Katharina Kammerloher’s palpably sincere Composer was more impressive, although her vowels were sometimes distractingly strange – and she shaded dangerously close towards sentimentality at the end of the Prologue. Elena Sancho-Pereg, however, made for an excellent Zerbinetta. The coloratura held no obvious fears for her; just as important, she presented a more rounded character than one often encounters. Perhaps Ariadne should have listened to her after all. The other roles were all well taken, with a fine sense of company, Arttu Kataja’s Music Master, Gyula Orendt’s Harlequin, and Sergiu Saplacan’s Officer especially pleasing.

 

Eun Sun Kim’s direction of the orchestra was mostly competent, yet rarely more than that. She made a somewhat vulgar meal, surprisingly so, out of the Composer-Zerbinetta duet, otherwise tended to more of a Kapellmeister’s approach. The Staatskapelle Berlin sounded glorious, though: darker than, say, Vienna or Dresden and all the more intriguing for it, not only as Neuenfels’s staging shifted towards overt tragedy, but all along suggesting an alternative path to that which we ‘knew’. The players’ soloistic prowess was second to none throughout, yet they clearly listened to each other too, lengthy experience of chamber music telling. The musical art of performance, then, lived in the pit even as we witnessed the representation of its death onstage. Sometimes Zerbinetta’s ‘neue Gott’ turns out to be the god we have known all along, transformed.

 

Die Fledermaus, English National Opera, 30 September 2013

Coliseum

(sung in English)

Gabriel von Eisenstein – Tom Randle

Rosalinde – Julia Sporsén
Frank – Andrew Shore
Prince Orlofsky – Jennifer Holloway
Alfred – Edgaras Montvidas
Dr Falke – Richard Burkhard
Dr Blind – Simon Butteriss
Adele – Rhian Lois
Ida – Lydia Marchione
Frosch – Jan Pohl

Christopher Alden (director)

Allen Moyer (set designs)
Constance Hoffman (costumes)
Paul Palazzo (lighting)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Fitzpatrick)

Orchestra of the English National Opera

Eun Sun Kim (conductor)

 

 

Champagne is constantly evoked in the libretto of Die Fledermaus, an all-too-ready explanation for the events that have taken place or are to follow. As Prince Orlofsky sings, ‘Champagner, König aller Weine! Hoch die sprudelnde Majestät und ihre Untertanen!’ or, as Frank ruefully comments, ‘Der verdammte Champagner!’ We could have done with a few more bubbles here, especially following the interval.

 

The ultimate question, then, is: what is it that falls a little flat? It is not always easy to put one’s finger on it; by the same token, there are a good few things to admire, so it is perhaps better to put off that question a little longer. As implied above, the first act is on the whole rather fun and indeed much of the rest of the production makes one think. (That is a red rag to the bull of a certain self-satisfied variety of opera-goer, let alone operetta-goer, but who cares?) Christopher Alden’s staging quite rightly does not take the easy road; if one is going to plead the cause for the defence, especially in a case such as this, then one needs to dig beneath the surface. The Overture presents both the gigantic version of Eisenstein’s pocket watch, which will haunt the staging throughout, and figures of bats themselves, before we see the bat. (Incidentally, should ENO not call the operetta, The Bat, rather than employing a German title?) As the performance progresses, we realise that the surrealistic occurrences may not be just that; Rosalinde’s marital bed, one of many handsome designs by Allen Moyer, conjures up fantasies that prefigure Freud, but they are the stuff of the drama itself, not something superimposed. Indeed, the blurring of boundaries between what is ‘dreamed’ and what is ‘real’ is one of the strongest features of Alden’s production. It takes us forward so that, in his words, ‘the ponderous nineteenth-century Victorian bedroom of Act I cracks open to let the fresh air of Act II’s 1920s-ish celebration of loosening up, freedom, and creativity.’  Except, and I suspect this may be where I part company from many others, the problem is not that the production goes too far; I am not sure that it goes far enough. One does not really feel what Alden describes. If there were an ‘orgy’, as I had heard it described prior to the performance, then somehow my friend and I managed to miss it. A little more abandon would not have gone amiss. ‘The reactionary crackdown on subversive degeneracy in Act III’s prison’ likewise does not really come off. Indeed, it seems tacked on, the Nazi thuggishness of Frosch an all-too-easy card to play, a card which, moreover, seems uncertain as to whether it be intended parodically. The alarming overacting of Jan Pohl in the role would seem out of place on just about any stage, or indeed in a 1970s situation comedy; but here, when more subtle expectations have originally been set up, it seems all the more striking a misjudgement, presumably on Alden’s part.

 

I confess to initial scepticism about the idea of Johann Strauss in English, but if translation must be done, then Daniel Dooner and Stephen Lawless did a fine job indeed, a striking contrast with the previous ENO effort for Fidelio (David Pountney). Whilst all was going well, there was genuine wit to be savoured – and the later problems certainly did not lie with this accomplished translation. Eun Sun Kim’s conducting of the score proved varied. It began in mercilessly hard-driven fashion, but calmed down, and if sometimes it felt more observed than felt from within, there were passages in which the rhythmic lilt was winningly conveyed. For that, of course, the orchestra itself deserves credit too. Yet one could never quite kid oneself that this was the ‘real thing’, a slippery concept, and in repertoire such as this, dangerously amenable to all manner of unpleasant, völkisch interpretations. Perhaps, however, and this goes for the contribution of the cast as well, performances will sound more at ease with themselves as the run continues.

 

There was much to enjoy from the cast, Tom Randle predictably subtle, no mere caricature, as Eisenstein, and Julia Sporsén an attractively-voiced Rosalinde. Andrew Shore displayed considerable comic as well as musical gifts as Frank. Jennifer Holloway offered vocal depth as Orlofsky, though many of her words were quite incomprehensible, partly no doubt a result of the thick, allegedly ‘Russian’ accent she was obliged to adopt. I continue to find the idea that ‘regional’ or ‘foreign’ accents are intrinsically hilarious at best questionable, but it seems to have become a staple of such events, doubtless as a substitute for genuine comedy. Likewise, if Edgaras Montvidas’s Alfred and Rhian Lois’s Adele tilted too much towards such caricature – probably not their fault at all, certainly jarring with the more interesting aspects of this conflicted production – they offered considerable vocal rewards, as did Lydia Marchione as Ida. Richard Burkhard’s Falke had some problematic moments vocally; Simon Butteriss offered a Dr Blind as camp as (presumably) requested by the director. Choral singing was generally of a high standard. It was, though, that elusive sense of ‘company’ that was perhaps most lacking. Again, that may rectify itself in subsequent performances.

 

I wonder, though, whether the principal problem lies with the work itself. Of course, one does not expect it to be Parsifal or Saint François d’Assise; even so, it remains rather thin stuff: better than Lehár, no doubt, though otherwise, Offenbach’s wit, style, and satire seem preferable in just about every respect, and perhaps transfer better to a modern, international house. Granted, this is a very difficult genre to get ‘right’; Elisabeth Schwarzkopf claimed to find it trickier than opera. Is it really worth the trouble, though? Perhaps it is better off left to the ‘traditional’ likes of the Volksoper, though Alden et al. certainly merit thanks for trying something more provocative. Given ENO’s puzzling neglect of Richard Strauss – surely a work such as Intermezzo ought to be right up its street – it would probably be better advised to transfer its allegiance to him for the next few Strauss outings. Once a decade or two seems about right for Johann.