Bayreuth Festival (5) - Parsifal, 24 August 2016

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Amfortas – Ryan McKinny

Titurel – Karl-Heinz Lehner
Gurnemanz – Georg Zeppenfeld
Parsifal – Klaus Florian Vogt
Klingsor – Gerd Grochowski
Kundry – Elena Pankratova
First Knight of the Grail – Tansel Akzeybek
Second Knight of the Grail – Timo Riihonen
Squires – Alexandra Steiner, Mareike Morr, Charles Kim, Stefan Heibach
Flowermaidens – Anna Siminska, Katharina Persicke, Mareike Morr, Alexandra Steiner, Bele Kumberger, Ingeborg Gillebo
Contralto solo – Wiebke Lehmkuhl

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Gisbert Jäkel (set designs)
Jessica Karge (costumes)
Reinhard Traub (lighting)
Gérard Naziri (video)
Richard Lorber (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

 

Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth Parsifal – perhaps the greatest staging of any opera I have ever seen (reviewed here, here, and here) – was always going to be a difficult act to follow. Katharina Wagner showed considerable boldness, to put it mildly, in planning to have Herheim’s production succeeded by one from the performance artist and painter, Jonathan Meese, entirely untested as an opera director, although he had designed the sets for Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysus in Salzburg, in 2010. The plug was pulled on that plan for financial reasons; or so it was said. Goodness knows what Meese’s Parsifal might have been; I tend to agree with Tom Service that it was ‘a shame … whatever else, it sure wouldn’t have been stultifying or conventional’. All is not entirely lost on that front, though, for a ‘new Parsifal opera’, seemingly deconstructionist yet nevertheless mythological, by Bernhard Lang will be directed by Meese next year in Vienna (at the Festwochen, I hasten to add, not at the State Opera!)

 

By contrast, I am afraid to say that all has been lost on the Bayreuth front with this new production by Uwe Erich Laufenberg. (And lest excuses be made about shortness of preparation time, it is actually a production originally intended for Cologne, which never materialised there.) Whilst I cannot say that earlier productions of Laufenberg’s I have seen, a Dresden Rosenkavalier and a Vienna Elektra, had proved earth-shattering, they were both intelligently put together, coherent, and with plenty of theatrical interest. None of that could be claimed of a production which is, to return to what Service said Meese would not have been, above all stultifying. Indeed, this may well be the most boring staging of the work I have seen in the theatre; take away its attempt at contemporary ‘relevance’, it might as well have been by Wolfgang Wagner or Otto Schenk. Its premise – seemingly contrived by a nightmare team of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry, ‘introducing’ George W. Bush as dramaturge – would have been more offensive still, had it been presented with some degree of coherence; one should, I suppose, be grateful for small mercies.

 

As it is, I can do no better than quote the opening Terry Eagleton’s magisterial LRB review of a book by the preposterous Dawkins (the review is more than well worth reading in its entirety):

Imagine someone holding forth on biology whose only knowledge of the subject is the Book of British Birds, and you have a rough idea of what it feels like to read Richard Dawkins on theology. Card-carrying rationalists like Dawkins, who is the nearest thing to a professional atheist we have had since Bertrand Russell, are in one sense the least well-equipped to understand what they castigate, since they don’t believe there is anything there to be understood, or at least anything worth understanding. This is why they invariably come up with vulgar caricatures of religious faith that would make a first-year theology student wince. The more they detest religion, the more ill-informed their criticisms of it tend to be. If they were asked to pass judgment on phenomenology or the geopolitics of South Asia, they would no doubt bone up on the question as assiduously as they could. When it comes to theology, however, any shoddy old travesty will pass muster. These days, theology is the queen of the sciences in a rather less august sense of the word than in its medieval heyday.

 

It would be tempting to leave matters there, but alas, I should say something about the production myself, not least to attempt to justify the strong words above. Laufenberg takes us, with as much insensitivity as it would generally be possible, to Iraq. When the curtain opens, part way through the first Prelude, we see what appear to be refugees taking shelter in Monsalvat, which turns out to be a Christian community in war-torn territory. Running across the stage from time to time are some oldiers, presumably American, although I suppose they could be Blairite. Lest we feel unduly sympathetic, however, to people whose country has been invaded and their temple trashed, we learn that they are ‘fanatics’. If only they did not have such silly beliefs – no musician would ever consider the transcendent, would (s)he? – no one would ever have thought of destroying their lives; after all, Iraq was not about oil, was it? And so, in the sole powerful theatrical moment – however dubious – of the whole production, Amfortas is put on to the Cross himself, actually crucified for a while, and made to contribute blood himself to feed the community. Because that is what Iraqi Christians do, is it not? How good of a rational European to point that out to them and to us. The pornographic treatment of Ryan McKinny’s wounded, muscled body, naked, save, bizarrely, for what seems to be a nappy (!), suggests an object of devotion in itself. That might, in other circumstances, have led somewhere; Monsalvat is, after all, a dying community (cf. Dmitri Tcherniakov). Here, one can only presume, we are merely meant to appreciate that these simple folk are not only hopelessly deluded; they are sick perverts too. The rest is vapid nothingness – never more so than in what seems to be a bizarre misunderstanding of ‘Zum Raum wird hier Zeit’, the Transformation Music set to an expensive-looking video that takes us out into space, for an aerial view of the world, prior to homing in on our ‘conflict zone’. Religion, eh: what a terrible thing it is; how stupid it must seem to Martians and to enlightened earth-dwellers.

 

What to do for the second act? Let us be really brave, speak truth to power, spurn Western imperialism and racism, and have a go at Islam. Klingsor’s Magic Garden seems to be in ISIS-lite-land. Muslims, you see: they are both savages and hypocrites. Klingsor keeps a stash of crucifixes, perhaps stolen from the foolish Christian knights: perhaps he is ‘really’ a Christian himself, or perhaps it is just loot. Who cares? Later on, he flagellates himself (with his clothes on), excited by Kundry’s attempts at seducing Parsifal. There is worse, though, much worse. Soldiers again run across the stage from time to time; Parsifal, it turns out, is one of them. Being an American soldier of course means that he must be in the right. The Flowermaidens come onstage, hijab- or niqab-clad. (I do not think there was anyone with a full burka, but could not bring myself to look too closely.) Parsifal is not interested. They come back, having shed their modesty; interested he most certainly now is, and the Arab world is what it should be, an ‘exotic’ fantasy playground for white heterosexual men. So, having essentialised women’s bodies, reminded us  what they are really for, and having shown us what Islam is really about (probably even worse than Christianity, and equally lacking in subtlety, depth, or difference), we can sit back and endure a theatrically inert seduction. Amfortas – has the poor soul not suffered enough? – joins as a spectator, because otherwise we should not understand that he has some connection with what is unfolding. For anyone who might care, Parsifal makes no sign of the Cross at the end; I genuinely have no opinion whether that were a good or bad thing in context.

 

If there were at least some ‘offence interest’, however trivial, in the first two acts, the third commits, pretty much without exception, the ultimate sin of inducing boredom. Members of three faiths, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, get together, realise that they are all the same really, sing Kum ba yah (well not actually, but they may as well have done), and all is well; perhaps they will no longer even be refugees. En route to that revelation and revolution, we see some liberated (that is, naked) erstwhile Islamic Flowermaidens; relieved of their Islam, they are now able to show kindness to an elderly Kundry. Charity, of course, begins outside ‘religion’. Kundry and Gurnemanz take turns in a wheelchair, although the former seems quite sprightly the rest of the time: what a fraud! The final scene continues the eradication of theology: would it not be a grand thing indeed if we were to follow suit?

 

Musically, things were much better, although not good enough to offer ample compensation; that may, in any case, have been too much to ask. Hartmut Haenchen’s conducting was efficient; he clearly knew the score, but offered little beyond that. His briskness was, perhaps, in these particular circumstances, no bad thing; would we really have wished to linger? In the lead up to the Good Friday Music, however, the tempo was so absurdly fast that even that potential virtue was lost. Speeds in themselves are of little interest here; both Pierre Boulez and Daniele Gatti have had much to tell us about the work. But being fast is not a good in itself, any more than being slow might be. Far too often, the score seemed merely to be skated over. The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra played, as one might have expected, very well indeed, but was too often subdued and harried by its conductor. Although much better in the third act, and impressive in heft throughout, the chorus, to my surprise, proved somewhat erratic of intonation during the first act.

 

At least the singing was good, in two cases outstanding, those two cases being McKinny’s Amfortas and Georg Zeppenfeld’s Gurnemanz. Both showed something very close to the ideal musico-dramatic alchemy between words and music, heightening the meaning and impact of both. Zeppenfeld’s heroic stint at Bayreuth – I have seen him in the Ring, Tristan, and Parsifal! – must be regarded as one of this year’s great successes at the Festival. Reactions to Klaus Florian Vogt tend to focus on whether people like or dislike his highly controversial voice. It seems to me considerably better suited to Lohengrin than to Parsifal, but, on its own terms, Vogt’s performance was highly commendable. If the results were sometimes bland, at least to my ears, it is always a relief simple to hear a tenor capable of singing a Wagner role. Like McKinny and Zeppenfeld, Vogt can act too; so can Elena Pankratova, as one really noticed in the third act, when she has next to nothing to sing. If only the acting skills of all could have been put to better use. Whilst Pankratova’s vocal performance was sometimes a little wayward, it was nevertheless capable of thrilling beyond the more obviously histrionic passages, and often drew one with considerable subtlety to listen. Karl-Heinz Lehner and Gerd Grochowski offered laudable performances as Titurel and Klingsor respectively; so did a fine bunch, as it were, of Flowermaidens, likewise our Knights and Squires.

 

Who on earth (or beyond it?) the man seated above the stage, his back turned to us, may have been we never did find out. God? Wagner? Jonathan Meese? One had long since ceased to care. Perhaps we should let Meese have the next-to-last words: ‘Richard Wagner ist, wie Meese, ein Kunstfanatiker mit dem Tunnelblick K.U.N.S.T. Richard Wagner ist keine Ersatzreligion, Richard Wagner ersetzt alle Religionen. Richard Wagner ist die Machterzergreifung KUNST, Meese's Parsifal ist Kunstherrschaft. Meese dient dem Richard Wagner ohne Falsch.’ One does not have to agree, or even to understand, to sense that Meese might have offered something more engaging, perhaps even something more sympathetic towards Wagner’s complex relationships with theology and religion. Nach Wien, then…

Prom 20: Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim - Götterdämmerung, 28 July 2013

Royal Albert Hall

Brünnhilde – Nina Stemme

Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Gunther – Gerd Grochowski
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Hagen – Mikhail Petrenko
Gutrune, Third Norn – Anna Samuil
Waltraute, Second Norn – Waltraud Meier
First Norn – Margarita Nekrasova
Woglinde – Aga Mikolaj
Wellgunde – Maria Gortsevskaja
Flosshilde – Anna Lapovskaja

Justin Way (director)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Staatskapelle Berlin                 
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

Images: BBC/Chris Christodoulou

 

 

By the end of the first act, I was convinced that, barring a catastrophe of, well, Götterdämmerung-like proportions, this would now turn out to be the greatest Ring since Bernard Haitink’s 1998 Royal Opera performances– also semi-staged, also at the Royal Albert Hall. And so it came to pass. Not only did we continue to hear superlative conducting from Daniel Barenboim and equally superlative playing from the Staatskapelle Berlin. (To guard my back, unlike Siegfried, I shall mention in passing very occasional signs of tiredness towards the end, if only so as not to have to return to such Beckmesserish thoughts.) We also at last heard a Siegfried and Brünnhilde worthy of the roles. Götterdämmerung, by virtue of its placing as the third ‘day’ of the Ring, should always be a special occasion, though sadly that is anything but a foregone conclusion; this performance, however went beyond ‘special’, to ‘great’.

 

The weight of history was apparent in those portentous opening chords to the Norns’ Scene, but so was sonorous magic. Wagner’s goal-orientation is not Beethoven’s, though it is not diametrically opposed either; Barenboim’s guiding of this crucial scene opened up possibilities rather than closing them, whilst at the same time ensuring that the drama’s tragic import won out. The bassoon line following the Second Norn’s ‘...woran spannst du das Seil?’ sounded as if it were itself the guiding thread of the Norns’ rope of Fate. More often than one might expect, conductors misjudge Wagner’s climaxes; often, indeed, they try to introduce irrelevant climaxes of their own. There was no such danger here, the outbreak of Dawn judged to perfection, the Staatskapelle Berlin in truly glorious sound, followed by a scene with an ebb and flow – Wagner’s melos – in which words and music truly melded together to form a musico-dramatic whole. And the tenderness of the strings, for instance when Brünnhilde here embraced Siegfried, far surpassed anything the BBC SO had been able to conjure up the previous evening, for Tristan. The final climax to the scene sounded as fully achieved as if Furtwängler himself had been at the podium; not that we should forget here the extraordinary contributions of Andreas Schager as Siegfried and Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde, on whom more below. As ever, Barenboim proved worthy of Wagner’s ‘most subtle art’ of transition, that wonderful Dawn followed by a masterly Rhine Journey, placed aptly midway between Beethovenian playfulness and Mahlerian contrapuntal involvement. (Special mention here should be afforded to the glockenspiel, veritable icing on the orchestral cake.) Once we reached the Rhineland proper, moving towards the Hall of the Gibichungs, we were afforded a veritable pageant, noteworthy not just in itself, but, in its ‘secondary’ diatonicism (to borrow from Carl Dahlhaus on Die Meistersinger, the mediated diatonic harmony being predicated upon the chromaticism it both negated and incorporated) already conveying the mediated unease of ‘civilisation’. Beneath the surface lay not only the nixies of the Rhine, but more worryingly, the snares of Hagen’s plotting. The aural stench of decay – how truly, truthfully ugly some of Götterdämmerung’s music is! – led us to the Hall itself. There was already something of the unhealthy air of Venice, of the Palazzo Vendramin.

 

And so to the first act proper. The sturdiness Barenboim imparted to Gunther’s rhythms – Lohengrin, as it were, aufgehoben – immediately made clear the hopelessness of that character’s plight. (If only Gerd Grochowski had managed a little better the difficult balancing act of a strong portrayal of a weak character, but anyway...) Throughout the act, orchestral exultancy would bid Siegfried to new deeds, all the more movingly for our knowledge of Hagen’s snares, his Watch again sick with chromatic decay, whilst the transition to Brünnhilde’s rock drew us into a more intimate, tragically fragile world. The phantasmagoria with which Brünnhilde’s anger was transformed into evening twilight again had to be heard to be believed, likewise the cruellest of interruptions – more so even the coitus interruptus of Tristan’s second act – upon Siegfried’s appearance (as Gunther). The violence of rape horrified, as it must, at the close.

 

How one relished the richness of the bass line – reinforced by those eight double basses – at the opening of the second act! The architecture of every act was perfectly in place: long familiarity, for conductor and orchestra alike, clearly pays off; the vengeance trio proved no mere set piece, but a true culmination. But moments told equally truthfully, whether the trombone interjections of ‘Hagen’ as Brünnhilde screamed of her deceit. Then the new sound-world of the third act came as a breath of fresh air, though just as soon as one had thought that, necessary doubts set in. The orchestra sounded languorous, almost Debussyan; one often hears Liszt here, in this first scene, but Barenboim’s balances imparted intriguing and apposite presentiments not so much of Pelléas as of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and even the Images. Integration was, as ever key, the Funeral March all the more impressive for acting as interlude rather than interposed set piece. Barenboim’s greatness in Beethoven now fully informs his Wagner, and did so until the closing bar, bathed in the after-glow of orchestral flames that might well have burned us. And yet, at the end there was a message of equivocal hope. Barenboim has no fear of comparisons with anyone, not even Haitink (from whom, in any case, we are extremely unlikely to hear another Ring).

 

From Siegfried’s very first line, we heard what had been missing earlier on. Lance Ryan had proved serviceable in the previous instalment, yet Andreas Schager proved preferable in every respect. The beauty of his voice alone here showed what earlier had been lacking, let alone the dramatic commitment he would show when acting his third-act narration or, indeed, stiffly as ‘Gunther’ with the Tarnhelm. It was clear even in the Prologue that this was a fully mature Siegfried, a man, no longer a boy, despite his fatal flaws; Schager’s interaction with the orchestra as part of a musico-dramatic whole that extended far beyond any single contributor was not the least of his virtues. Drinking the potion brought a touching hymn to lost innocence, soon enough followed by an eroticism entirely lacking in many portrayals (let alone Robert Dean Smith’s Tristan, the night before). There was, moreover, real anger to his contesting Brünnhilde’s claims in the second act, betokening a psychological understanding rarely present in this role. One might have taken dictation, of words and music, from either him or Stemme, for pretty much the whole of the performance. Anyone who did not respond both to the irrepressible vitality of this Siegfried’s swagger with the Rhinemaidens and to the detailed, loving narrative of his deeds recalled would be satisfied with no one, not even Lauritz Melchior. This might actually have been the first time I was moved as I should have been by the moment when he recalls Brünnhilde: a true monument to a truer love than I have heard.

 

Stemme’s Prologue ‘O heilige Götter!’ was a paean to a glorious age, an age which yet had passed; the realm of the gods was not belittled, but there was no doubt that the future held something different. The dramatic urgency she imparted to the Waltraute scene was every bit the equal of Waltraud Meier’s. ‘Denn selig aus ihm leuchtet mir Siegfrieds Liebe!’ revelled in tragic irony: Stemme sang in the present but the orchestra – and we – knew that she sang of the past, the ecstasy of her love notwithstanding. Her fear before Siegfried (as Gunther) was palpable, yet without loss to the commanding nature of her performance. And her Immolation Scene, delivered from the organ, somehow bringing together the strongest virtues of Flagstad’s womanhood and Nilsson’s authority, should become the stuff of legend. Meier’s turning to her sister as the latter asked ‘Weisst du, wie das wird?’ was a dramatic moment worth all (or most of) the stagings in the world. How she later made the words come alive as she told, for instance, of Wotan taming Loge! Though Meier’s Waltraute may be dangerously close to definitive, that is no excuse for overlooking the excellence of her contribution, here with a true sense of epic narrative in telling her tale of Wotan’s depression. Increasing desperation urged on the orchestra, as it in turn urged her on. Her departure had one think of Cassandra herself.

 

Mikhail Petrenko’s protean Hagen is now a known quantity. Sometimes, from force of habit perhaps more than from dramatic necessity, one finds oneself expecting a darker voice, but Petrenko’s vision is in many ways more dangerous than the traditional Ridderbusch-like performance. Rather than pitch-black ‘mere’ evil,  we hear someone devilishly intelligent, and troublingly alluring. Not that Petrenko’s voice is without heft, but, for instance, his ‘Heil! Siegfried, teurer Held!’ as the hero brought his boat ashore was curdled with a menace that went beyond brute force. (After all, it is through cunning that he will slay Siegfried, not though overpowering him.) ‘Dir ha ich guten Rat,’ seemed almost throwaway: ‘I gave you good advice,’ but the words were made to tell, to inform us that such advice to Siegfried was anything but ‘good’, however that might be understood. Aggression and restlessness suggested a power-lust that might have been enhanced by substances the modern would tends to deem illicit. This Hagen was one dealer no one would wish to encounter upon a dark night.

 

Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Alberich once again showed a fine way with words. His injunction to Hagen, ‘Hasse die Frohen!’ seethed with Nietzschean ressentiment, whilst the ghostliness of the regfrain, ‘Schläfst du, Hagen, mein Sohn,’ chilled as it should.  Our trio of Rhinemaidens if anything surpassed its excellence in Das Rheingold.  Anna Samuil, alas, proved somewhat on the shrill side as the Third Norn and blowsy as Gutrune, her vibrato, especially during the first act, uncomfortably unsteady. She was more honeytrap than dupe, and less interesting for it. There was, though, real vocal presence to be heard from Margarita Nekrasova’s First Norn. The Royal Opera Chorus excelled, its weight as impressive as its clarity.

 

All were rightly commended by Barenboim in a few closing words. Charming as ever, he praised the audience for its silence as well as for its most fulsome applause, and forewent to mention the selfish **** (fill in as appropriate) who had interrupted Hagen’s opening advice to Gunther with a mobile telephone call. There were many stars to this Ring, but once again, this proved above all others the achievement of Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin, no secret to those of us enamoured with the German capital, but now firmly ensconced in Londoners’ hearts too. Wolf-Dieter Batzdorf took a well-deserved bow, retiring as concert-master – surely only Barenboim could get away with an implicit Führer gag here, explaining that Germans do not favour the English term, ‘leader’ – but applause resounded for the whole of Wagner’s Attic chorus. And, one hopes, for Wagner himself, a fitting tribute, which is really saying something, to the composer’s bicentenary. Now, please, someone, a CD release...!

 

Götterdämmerung, Berlin Staatsoper, 21 April 2013

Schiller Theater, Berlin

Siegfried – Andreas Schager

Gunther – Gerd Grochowski
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Hagen – Mikhail Petrenko
Brünnhilde – Iréne Theorin
Gutrune – Anna Samuil
Waltraute – Waltraud Meier
First Norn – Margarita Nekrasova
Second Norn – Waltraud Meier
Third Norn – Anna Samuil
Woglinde – Aga Mikolaj
Wellgunde – Maria Gortsevskaya
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja

Guy Cassiers (director, set design)

Enrico Bagnoli (set design, lighting)
Tim van Steenbergen (costumes)
Arjen Klerkx, Kurt D’Haeseleer (video)
Michael P Steinberg, Detlef Giese, Erwin Jans (dramaturgy)
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (choreography)
Luc de Wit (choral choreography)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Staatkapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

(Image: Monika Rittershaus)
Iréne Theorin (Brünnhilde)

This, I know, has become wearily repetitive, but the rewards of the Berlin Ring were once again shown to be entirely musical. Götterdämmerung had for some reason acquired a third dramaturge, prior instalments having relied upon a mere brace. What they might have done, or rather what director Guy Cassiers might have listened to, is utterly beyond me. For all its faults, and it seems to me undeniable that Götterdämmerung was a bit of a mess dramaturgically, Keith Warner’s Covent Garden Ring had ambition, had ideas, and some of the time managed to communicate them. This sorry co-production with La Scala, brought to us courtesy of the Toneelhuis Antwerpen, appears, quite literally, to have nothing whatsoever to say to us. That would be odd in the case of any musical drama worthy of the name – many are not, but that is another story – but, in the case of Der Ring des Nibelungen, it is simply beyond comprehension. Yet again, we are simply faced with a few ‘tasteful’ costumes and effects, and in this case, far too much video. The Tarnhelm dancers return, rather to my surprise offering the saving grace of the staging. Their menacing writhing around Brünnhilde during her shameful and shaming possession by Siegfried struck a note of rare, indeed unique, dramatic power. The appearance of sub-Damien Hirst creatures in formaldehyde offers slight variety, but no discernible point, and more than anything irritates in its acquiescence to the wearisome stylisation of the designs. As I said with respect to Siegfried, we might as well have been at the Met. Of Wagner’s desired ‘emotionalisation of the intellect’, Cassiers offers neither emotion nor intellect, let alone a dialectic between the two. Baffling!

 

If not on quite such superlative form as in Siegfried, Daniel Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin nevertheless did Wagner’s score proud, a more than promising augury for the forthcoming Proms performances of the Ring as a whole. (I shall be speaking at an introduction to Siegfried.) Line and dramatic momentum were impressive, though tension sagged slightly – and surprisingly – at a somewhat anti-climactic conclusion to the second act. Maybe that was a matter of tiredness more than anything else. Barenboim’s almost ‘French’ ear for colour – he knows that Wagner leads to Debussy as well as to Schoenberg, and indeed employs that ear in the music of the latter composer too – offered more than its fair share of textural revelation, the Staatskapelle’s woodwind as euphonious here as in Mozart. Eberhard Friedrich’s chorus acquitted itself very well throughout.

 

There was a great deal to praise in terms of singing too. Waltraud Meier as Second Norn must be the very definition of luxury casting. Stage animal that she is, she made something out of the non-production even here, let alone in her well-nigh definitive Waltraute (also one of the very few redeeming features of the recent, dismal New York Götterdämmerung). Meier can have few peers, if any, and certainly no superiors, in her melding of text and music, in her instinctive yet searching theatrical communication. She offered a standing rebuke to the vacuity of the contribution from Cassiers. Iréne Theorin continued to present a creditably variegated account of Brünnhilde’s part. There was more of the lyrical, less of the heroic, than one often hears, though there remained plenty of the latter nonetheless. I wondered occasionally whether her choices with respect to scaling down, to containment, always made the best sense, but there was a great deal to admire here. Mikhail Petrenko’s Hagen remains controversial. I first heard it in Aix-en-Provence, under Simon Rattle. During the first act, I was less convinced, the relative lightness – this is definitely not the black-toned Hagen we have come to expect – veered on occasion towards the non-committal, though of course Cassiers did not help. However, menace asserted itself, psychotically so, ensuring that the darkness of Hagen’s character duly struck a terror quite lacking in the staging. Gerd Grochowski offered more in the way of clear verbal projection than psychological depth, but again the fault for that may really have lain elsewhere. Anna Samuil’s Gutrune, alas, seemed a victim of miscasting; there was little sense of character and her blowsy delivery, though reined in during the third act, was by any standards stylistically quite inappropriate. The trio of Rhinemaidens (Aga Mikolaj, Maria Gortsevskaya, and Anna Lapkovskaja) was truly excellent, both in solo and ensemble terms.

 

Andreas Schager’s Siegfried I have left until last. Schager was a replacement for the advertised Ian Storey, Lance Ryan having taken the part in Siegfried, but not Götterdammerung. (Schlager had also had to step in for Ryan in the previous cycle, when the Canadian tenor arrived late to the theatre, missing the first act.) I am not sure that I have heard so excellent an account of the role in the theatre; I have certainly heard none better. We can hark back to Melchior all we like, even to Windgassen, but we all know that such expectations are, for whatever reasons, entirely unrealistic. Schager’s Siegfried was of the here and now, dramatically committed – certainly not something of which one could always accuse Melchior – and finely sung, without a hint of the dreadful barking, let alone shouting, that disfigures so many performances. There was no discernible tiring; indeed, a portrayal of youthful, naïve enthusiasm did much of the work the staging ought to have been doing by itself, contrasting tellingly with the corruption of the Gibichung court. This is a production, then, that should be discarded as quickly as humanly possible; it remains just possible, however, that a star may have been born amongst this all-too-tastefully-designed ‘heap of broken images’.

Two CD reviews: Schreker, Der Schmied von Gent, and Lohengrin

These reviews originally appeared (in slightly edited form) in the October and November 2012 issues of OPERA:

Franz Schreker, Der Schmied von Gent

Judith Kuhn: Arstate, Angel; Anna Erxleben: Mary; Christiane Knappe: Squire; Undine Dreißig: Smee’s Wife; André Riemer: Flipke; Edward Randall: Slimbroek; Viktor Sawaley: Second Noble, Henker Jakob Hessels; David Sitka: Angel; Matthias Winter: St Joseph; Oliver Zwarg: Smee; Martin Gäbler: First Noble, Duke of Alba; Thomas Mäthger: Third Noble; Kouta Räsänen: St Peter. Chorus and Children’s Chorus of the Chemnitz Opera/Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie/Frank Beermann (conductor). CPO 777 647-2, 2 CDs, 127:55. Recorded at the Chemnitz Opera House, 28-30 January and 1-2 February 2010.  

  

CPO heralds the first complete recording of Schreker’s 1929-32 three-act opera, Der Schmied von Gent. Smee, a Ghentish smith, falls upon hard times on account of his resistance to Spanish occupation, makes a pact with the Devil and is restored to prosperity. When his seven years are up, he manages the fruits of good works to evade his fate and is thereby, despite St Peter’s initial adamant refusal, admitted to Heaven.

The imposing opening bars, an audible curtain raiser poised somewhere between Neue Sachlichkeit and Hollywood, mark a call to attention. Closed, sometimes neo-Baroque, forms tend to be the rule: more Hindemith than Strauss. Many of the thirty-four scenes have their own generating formal principle, for example a haunting downward scale at the opening of the third act. Alto saxophone weaves its obbligato way on a number of occasions, suggestive of its time, if less strikingly so than, say, in Berg. One may, if one will, play guess the influence. There are, unsurprisingly, Meistersinger-ish echoes in counterpoint and folksiness. Hindemith’s Cardillac seems an obvious precursor. Busoni comes to mind – the sale of Smee’s soul inevitably suggesting Doktor Faust – but he often does in music of this period; much may be correspondence rather than influence.

The subtitle ‘grosse Zauberoper’ courts comparison with The Magic Flute and Die Frau ohne Schatten, kinship most obvious in scenes such as that when Smee meets the Holy Family. There is no gainsaying the compositional craft, whether in terms of orchestration, counterpart, or convincing harmonic progression.  That said, Schreker’s score expresses general situation better than character, for whatever the gentle melancholy of his second-act soliloquy, ‘Schöne Bäum’ draußen am Kai,’ Smee is no Hans Sachs. Yet if not necessarily operatic gold, nor is this corn.

Vocal performances tend to competence rather than inspiration, Oliver Zwarg’s Smee an intelligent, finely-sung cut above the generality. Frank Beermann conducts with formal clarity, though one could imagine a more propulsive account.

Janine Ortiz contributes a thorough, informative booklet note, though the translation is often Google-like. ‘If one considers the note reserves, then it is striking that they involve an eleven-note theme,’ means nothing unless one is in a position to read the original. The libretto would have benefited from better proof-reading: some words appear to be missing completely, for example during the second and twelfth scenes, whereas what I assume to be performance cuts go unacknowledged in the written text.

My appetite was certainly whetted to see the opera in the theatre. Herewith a glimmer of an artist-opera Konzept: portray Smee’s intial destitution in the light of the Great Depression, the Spanish occupying forces in SA uniforms, the diabolical pact as collaboration, and Heaven as a form of inner emigration.

 

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Wagner, Lohengrin

Elsa: Annette Dasch; Four Pages: Christine Bischoff, Isabelle Voßkühler, Judith Löser, Bettina Pieck; Ortrud: Susanne Resmark; Lohengrin: Klaus Florian Vogt; Four Brabantian Nobles: Robert Franke, Holger Marks, Sascha Glintenkamp, Thomas Pfützner; Friedrich von Telramund: Gerd Grochowski; Herald: Markus Brück; King Henry the Fowler: Günther Groissböck. Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marek Janowski (conductor). Pentatone, 3 SACD, PTC 5186 403, 200:34. Live recording of a concert performance from the Berlin Philharmonie, 12 November 2011.

 

Lohengrin, the fourth instalment in Marek Janowski’s Wagner series, arrives in a finely detailed recording. A principal glory of this performance is the precision of its chorus: one really hears Wagner’s contrapuntal ingenuity here and in the orchestra, which sounds less monolithic than is often the case. Janowski highlights shifting instrumental timbres as well as harmony to signal presentiments, for instance during the second act’s first scene, of Alberich’s world and plight. Rhythmic exactitude, such as during the build up to first-act combat, also proves a victor. Details of high-lying violin figuration emerge more clearly than I can recall, fascinating from an analytical standpoint, though such hyper-clarity arguably militates against Wagner’s intention, as in those performances of Strauss’s Don Juan in which technical virtuosity tarnishes the wash of sound. The general sonority of the Berlin RSO veers oddly, without obvious reason, between old-German depth, if not quite to the extent one hears from Barenboim’s Staatskapelle, and a lighter, Mendelssohnian approach.

This set’s other principal attraction is the unearthly Lohengrin of Klaus Florian Vogt; the role might have been written for him, possessed of a Heldentenor’s tonal weight but the lyrical beauty of a Tamino. Vogt’s admirers – there are a few nay-sayers – will require this recording for that reason alone. Alas, much other singing pales by comparison, both with Vogt and with artists of the past. Annette Dasch’s Elsa and Gerd Grochowski’s Telramund are at best distinguished by Lieder-like attention to detail, but both can tend to dryness and fail to soar. Susanne Resmark’s Ortrud is often squally and imprecise of intonation and diction.

Oddly, however, the ‘live recording’ evinces little sense of the concert hall, let alone the theatre, drawing attention to the ideological intent of the series, born of Janowski’s dissatisfaction with contemporary Regietheater. A reactionary imperative to rescue Wagner from his and our troublesome politics is betrayed by remarks from the orchestra’s dramaturge, Steffen Georgi: ‘from today’s perspective, Wagner the theatre-reformist pales into near-insignificance ... a very minor revolutionary.’ I can only suggest that he, Janowski, and the speaker of the Bundestag, who offers a printed endorsement, take another look not only at Wagner’s writings, but at the dramas themselves. Whereas the printed libretto has Lohengrin herald Gottfried as ‘Führer’, Janowski opts for the evasive ‘Schützer’. There remains a dialectical irony, however, in that the case of a Wagner recording as CD rather than DVD helps one focus not only upon Wagner’s music but upon his words. Whatever the intention, my experience was thereby to hear as strong a warning as I had seen in Hans Neuenfels’s Bayreuth staging against the perils of popular attraction to charismatic leadership. Vogt, not coincidentally, starred in Bayreuth too. Politics will out.