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.

Antikrist, Deutsche Oper, 13 January 2024

Lucifer, A Voice – Thomas Lehman
God’s Voice – Jonas Grundner-Culemann
The Echo of the Air of Mystery – Valeriia Savinskaia
The Air of Mystery – Irene Roberts
The Mouth speaking Great Words – Clemens Bieber
Despondency – Maire Therese Carmack
The Great Whore – Flurina Stucki
The Scarlet Beast – AJ Glueckert
The Lie – Kieran Carrel
Hatred – Philipp Jekal

Dancers – Ashley Wright, Giorgia Bovo, Ana Dordevic, Sakura Inoue, Vasna Felicia Aguilar, Yuri Shimaoka, Joel Donald Small, Shih-Ping Lin, György Jellinek, Miguel Angel Collado

Director, set designs – Ersan Mondtag
Revival director – Silke Sense
Costumes – Ersan Mondtag, Annika Lu Hermann
Lighting – Rainer Casper
Choreography – Rob Fordeyn
Dramaturgy – Lara Gebhardt, Carolin Müller-Dohle

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

Opera-Ballet and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Hermann Bäumer (conductor)

ANTIKRIST, Regie: Ersan Mondtag, Premiere 30. Januar 2022 Deutsche Oper Berlin,
copyright: Thomas Aurin

Rued Langgaard’s ‘church opera’ Antikrist is a strange beast. The opera’s first staging was in 1999 at Innsbruck. This, its fourth ever, was due to premiere in 2020, but was delayed for two years on account of the pandemic. I was rather surprised to see a revival at all, let alone a revival with almost no empty seats and an audience so warmly enthusiastic. Limiting this season’s appearances to two, of which this was the first, seems to have been a canny move. I wish I could have shared the audience’s enthusiasm; instead, the work left me bewildered, although the performances seemed excellent.

There are arguments for and against doing one’s homework before experiencing a musical work for the first time. On this occasion, I did not, wanting to be surprised and to approach what I heard with as few preconceptions as I could. Surprised I certainly was, above all by an opera seemingly without plot, by a treatment of the apocalypse somehow devoid of dramatic interest. What we hear at the Deutsche Oper – and what, it seems, is always heard – is a revised version, from 1926-30. I am tempted to say goodness knows what the original (1921-3) was like, given (from what I read) the libretto was completely rewritten and yet still emerged almost comically unsuited to music, let alone drama, let alone both; yet it seems that the first version may have had a little more in terms of plot. At any rate, Langgaard’s own libretto was the determining factor both times in the Royal Danish Theatre’s rejection of the work, and it would be difficult, unless one were a Langgaard cultist (perhaps there are such people), to argue against that verdict. Not, I hasten to add, that the score proved especially convincing.

What we have, here given in a German translation by Inger and Walther Methlagl amounts to little more than a number of largely unidentified figures – I established that one was the Whore of Babylon and one the Antichrist, and suspected one might be Lucifer, but beyond that was lost – denouncing the lost state of the modern world until an almost literal deus ex machina puts things right. It was not at all clear to me, though this seems to have been the fault of my slowness, from what standpoint this was being presented. Part of me hoped a Nietzschean turn might be taken, but it seems ultimately that Langgaard – I assume his ‘voice’ was presented here as God’s – found all around him filth and depravity and wished to tell us so at great length (just over ninety minutes, but it felt longer). It was as if the ranting of a deranged street preacher were less transformed than converted, editing kept to the bare minimum, into a libretto that somehow must then be set to music. It takes all sorts, I suppose, and there is no intrinsic reason why a reactionary message, perhaps especially one so bizarre as this, should not prove fodder for drama; the problem is more that it does not. Perhaps some find a ‘rejection’ not only of plot, not only of characterisation, but also of drama itself. Again, there is no reason opera should not be postdramatic; much of it is and has been, even avant la lettre. What Langgaard presents, though, seems more incompetent than a positive choice or an aesthetic. 

Might the ‘opera’ have been better off as an oratorio? Perhaps, although it would surely still have required major surgery, even a transplant or two. For there is little redemption to be found in the music either. If you like the sound of Wagner and Strauss, but find their musical arguments difficult to follow, perhaps the music ‘itself’ will appeal. Here, phrases uncomfortably close to counterparts in Wagner dramas – all from at least Das Rheingold onwards – are served up randomly with little to connect them, and much the same is done with or to Strauss. Some might call it a collage effect; I could not help but think Langgaard would have been unlikely to survive a Turnitin inspection. There are, to be fair, more promising, even modernistic passages, especially when he writes purely orchestrally. (It is, by the way, difficult to discern much sympathy for the human voice.) Hints – again, arguably more than that – of Hindemith seem more amenable to something approaching sustained musical development, but ultimately they do not lead anywhere. Maybe that is the point, although I fear I may be clutching at straws. 

What I can say is that the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, conducted by Hermann Bäumer, played with evident conviction and even pleasure, making as strong a case for the score as is likely to be heard. The chorus, as ever well trained by Jeremy Bines, did likewise, as did the cast. Since neither work nor production gave much in the way of clues as to who anyone was, I shall limit myself to singling out some wonderful singing from Flurina Stucki as ‘The Great Whore’. The other soloists were excellent too, though, as were the dancers, even if some of the choreography – especially that without music, at the beginning – proved more puzzling than revealing. In that respect, one might say it suited the work. 

Ersan Mondtag’s production certainly looked good. (The set designs were his too, and he had at least a hand in the costume design.) To me it looked as if Achim Freyer were directing a sequel to La bohème. I am not sure a modern-ish street inhabited by clowns was actually intended as a wry commentary on Langgaard’s claptrap, but to an extent it could be taken as such. What was intended by a car suddenly falling from the sky or the similar aerial suspension of a large figure of a male God with vulva I have no idea, but they gave us something to look at, as did  detailed direction of members of cast and chorus. I can only applaud the Deutsche Oper’s courage in granting us a rare opportunity to assess this work for ourselves with such excellent performers. That said, I cannot imagine wishing to do so again.

Hänsel und Gretel, Deutsche Oper, 4 January 2020

Images from the 1997 premiere: © Bettina Stöß

Peter – Noel Bouley

Gertrud – Heidi Melton

Hänsel – Jana Kurucová

Gretel – Alexandra Hutton

Witch – Andrew Dickinson

Sandman, Dew Fairy – Flurina Stucki

Andreas Homoki (director)

Wolfgang Gussmann (designs)

Silke Sense (revival director)

Children’s Chorus (chorus director: Christian Lindhorst) of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

A lovely way to open my operatic year: a new—to me—production of an opera of which I never tire, Humperdinck’s Hänsel und Gretel. Andreas Homoki’s Deutsche Oper production was first seen in 1997 and has clearly done sterling service for a mixed audience of children and adults. (There are matinee performances intended more specifically for families, but there were plenty of well-behaved—often far more so than the adults—children on the evening I attended.) There are clearly limits to what will be thought of as appropriate for such a production. In no sense does Homoki’s team, including revival director, Silke Sense, come close to what remains for me the finest exploration of the work’s dark side: Liam Steel’s 2016 Royal College of Music production. But then, that is not what they are trying to do. The story is told directly, without kitschy evasion or indeed kitsch of any variety. It offers an apt sense of wonder, colour—perhaps heat too, at least metaphorically?—increasing from the relatively drab, humdrum house from which the children have started. Clowns offer a hint or two of menace as the creatures of the forest: clowns always do. The witch is clearly a tormented soul as well as tormentor, a point concerning which, like others, one can make what one wishes. Children doubtless will have done: in no sense being condescended to in the recreation of ‘childhood’ many adults, declining to face up to their own anxieties and fears, wish upon their presumed charges.

I should have to go back, I think, to Sir Colin Davis at Covent Garden to recall so finely conducted a performance. Donald Runnicles and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper did Humperdinck proud not only in presentation but in exploration. Here in the orchestra, one might say, we heard the most fruitful and challenging musical drama. It would be difficult, no impossible, and certainly perverse to play down Humperdinck’s Wagnerisms. Even when they verge on outright plagiarism they do not fail to charm—unlike those of many successors. To hear a performance, however, in which the conductor makes so much of the weblike connection of motifs that one fancies one might be hearing the work of The Master himself is a rare treat indeed. So too is to hear quite how much Humperdinck’s score owes—or can be made to owe—to the yearning of Tristan as to the more obvious candidates, above all to Die Meistersinger. What to make of that? There are psychoanalytical possibilities aplenty, for those willing to take them. Does that not after all penetrate to the heart of what fairy tales have to offer? Speaking of seduction, who could resist the polished tone, dark or golden by turn, of this orchestra at something approaching its best?

Jana Kurucová and Alexandra Hutton made for an engaging central pair: well contrasted and yet also complementary, as adept with stage business as vocal line in construction and development of character. Heidi Melton surely falls into the category of ‘luxury casting’ for their mother, Gertrud, and what a welcome luxury this proved to be, Wagnerian antecedents present for those who wished to consider them, yet perfectly scaled—not necessarily scaled down—and imbued with abundant warmth and humanity. Noel Bouley’s Peter sounded a little out of sorts toward the close, but it was nothing too serious. Andrew Dickinson’s Witch intrigued: no mere caricature, though ultimately an enigma. Flurina Stucki as the Sandman and Dew Fairy, together with the children’s choir and movement choir, all contributed to the evening’s enchantment. Next operatic stop: across town for something rather different, Beat Furrer’s Violetter Schnee.