Iphigénie en Tauride, Blackheath Halls Opera, 28 September 2025

Blackheath Halls

Images: Julian Guidera
Iphigenia (Francesca Chiejina) 

Iphigénie – Francesca Chiejina
Thoas – Dan D’Souza
Oreste – Dan Shelvey
Pylade – Michael Lafferty
Priestesses – Emily Williams, Ava Reineke, Eva Hutchins
Scythians – Byron Davis-Hughes, Zac Conibear

Director – Laura Attridge
Designs – Peiyao Wang
Lighting – Charly Dunford
Movement – Corina Würsch
Fight director – Mark Ruddick

Students from Greenvale School and Charlton Park Academy

Blackheath Halls Chorus and Youth Company

Blackheath Halls Orchestra

Chris Stark (conductor)

Priestesses as Diana (Emily Williams, Ava Reineke, Eva Hutchins)

Unquestionably Gluck’s greatest opera and, to my mind, the greatest eighteenth-century opera whose composer is neither Rameau nor Mozart, possibly even that is simply not by Mozart, Iphigénie en Tauride needs to come across as such. In a sense, all is secondary to that. Hats off, then, to Blackheath Halls Opera, employing a mixture of professional soloists, conservatoire students, and local residents of all ages, that the results should be quite so compelling, a vindication of community opera in itself and as dramatic experience. No attentive viewer and listener would have been in any doubt as to the work’s stature in a vividly direct performance and production that displayed not only commitment, but resourcefulness and imagination too. 

Laura Attridge’s production stood at the heart of this, neither imposing something extraneous on the work nor shying away from interpretation, rooted in the work but not confined by it: a metaphor and, I suspect, a foundation for the enterprise as a whole. (The idea that there can be a performance or indeed a reading without interpretation is self-evident nonsense, although it proves curiously persistent.) The drama grabbed and did not relinquish us: Euripides re-created, partly reimagined, but above all given new life; Gluck and librettist Nicolas-François Guillard recreated in turn. Stories, dramas, and their meanings change over time, but a core remains, endures, and in some ways is even strengthened. I am sure this would have been the case whether new to it, as many would have been, or a fervent Gluckian (as a few eccentrics might think ourselves). Such is the magic of human creation—and its riddle, as Marx for instance puzzled over, asking how, in his abidingly historical world-view, the art of the Greeks could continue so directly to speak to us Peiyao Wang’s set made excellent use of the space: on two levels, though not in the fashionable way of large theatres, in which too often those in the less expensive seats struggle even to see the higher level of action. Here, action extended downwards from the raised stage, affording a perfect view to everyone. An upside down house, hanging from the ceiling, served as a constant reminder that, in the aftermath of war and other ‘conflict’, all many involved want is to go home, yet are unable to do so. It may no longer exist or have been so transformed (destroyed) as to render the dream impossible. Iphigenia, worlds away from Mycenae, was foremost among those people onstage, though after the interval, the advent of children playing with smaller houses below reminded us she was far from alone. Beyond the stage, refugees remain on all our minds. And it was clear, quite without fuss, that Orestes and Pylades have not only the most intense, meaningful of male friendships, but are truly in love, sealed with a reuniting kiss at the close. The libretto may say ‘amitié’ rather than ‘amour’, but how could it otherwise? This opera has always been a special case; here, the English ‘love’ conquered all. 

Pylade (Michael Lafferty),Thoas (Dan D'Souza),Oreste (Dan Shelvey)

So too did much of the singing. Francesca Chiejina was a wonderful Iphigenia: compassionate, vulnerable, inwardly (and outwardly) strong, her clarity of diction as noteworthy as that of dramatic purpose. Dan Shelvey and Michael Lafferty offered noble and yet similarly, deeply human portrayals of Orestes and Pylades, oppressed and resurrected by Fate—or Diana, strikingly portrayed by three High Priestesses together: Emily Williams, Ava Reineke, Eva Hutchins. Dan D’Souza brought Thoas, the Taurian king, vividly to life with cruelty and not a little charm. Byron Davis-Hughes and Zac Conibear stepped forward to make the most of their time in the vocal spotlight as two Scythians. Various crowds assumed their parts, vocal and dramatic, presenting individuals who together were considerably more than the sum of their parts. Chris Stark led the musical side, the Blackheath Halls Orchestra included, with a keen ear both for dramatic purpose and for what was desirable in this particular situation. Orchestral drama, of which there is much, unfolded as keenly as that onstage, ballet music considered from all quarters integral to the drama in a venerable line of descent from Rameau and ultimately Lully. 

Thoas

Given in English as Iphigenie in Tauris, in a new translation commissioned from Martin Pickard, this knocked spots off my previous evening’s Cenerentola at ENO, which had fallen victim not only to half-baked staging and conducting but to an often excruciatingly unmusical translation. Opera in translation, even from French, can work—and was clearly the right decision in this context. It is, moreover, not only what Gluck would have expected, but what he did when presenting the opera in Vienna for the visit of Russia’s Grand Duke Paul in 1781, only two years after the Paris premiere. (An Italian version would be given in the same theatre only two years later, in light of the failure of the National Singspiel, in a translation by one Lorenzo da Ponte.) One sensed, moreover, a strong partnership between Pickard and Attridge, herself a poet (as well as someone who speaks great sense about what the role of an opera director is—and is not). A memorable occasion, then, all in all: dare we hope for more Gluck in London, and even in Blackheath?

Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (4) - Iphigénie en Aulide and Iphigénie en Tauride, 11 July 2024

Grand Théâtre de Provence

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Iphigénie – Corinne Winters
Agamemnon – Russell Braun
Clytemnestre – Véronique Gens
Achille – Alasdair Kent
Calchas – Nicolas Cavallier
Diane – Soula Parassidis
Patrocle – Lukáš Zeman
Arcas, Minister, Scythian – Tomasz Kumięga
Oreste – Florian Sempey
Pylade – Stanislas de Barbeyrac
Thoas – Alexandre Duhamel
Priestess – Laura Jarrell

Director, set designs – Dmitri Tcherniakov
Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filtschinsky

Dramaturgy – Tatiana Werestchagina   

Le Choeur d’Astrée (chorus director: Richard Wilberforce)
Le Concert d’Astrée

Emmanuelle Haïm (conductor)

 

It is not every day one has opportunity to see Iphigénie en Aulide, let alone in tandem with Iphigénie en Tauride. Even I, fervent Gluckian that I be, had never seen the former staged. This is, of course, just what a major festival should be doing: something that cannot readily be replicated in a house season. Enlisting Dmitri Tcherniakov, one of today’s most sought-after opera directors, underlined the Festival d’Aix-en-Provence’s intent. It was, by any standards, a memorable occasion, even if Tcherniakov’s production proved a little more straightforward, even conventional – I cannot imagine why some booed the first opera – than one might have hoped for, and the period instruments of Emmanuelle Haïm’s Concert d’Astrée often lacked the dramatic commitment either of the more colourful period ensembles (such as Raphaël Pichon’s Pygmalion the following evening) or of modern orchestras. 

Tcherniakov’s Paris Troyens was a landmark staging, its twin presentation of war and therapeutic aftermath in the two parts of Berlioz’s opera cast a powerful, provocative spell that has yet to recede. Here, in a dramatic œuvre of great importance to Berlioz and Wagner, the uncharitable might say there was a little too much retreading of ground, if in near-reverse, war naturally coming second and announced as such at the close of Iphigénie en Aulide, the curtain starkly announcing ‘GUERRE’. To be fair, though, the Tcherniakov therapeutic turn, which after his fitful Ring seemed to many of us to have run its course, is only hinted at in the group of refugees among whom Iphigénie (en Tauride) stays behind. Trauma itself stands rightly, strongly in the foreground, from the second drama’s announcement of casualties over a generation of war (‘une vingtaine d’années plus tard’, we are informed as we re-enter the theatre after the sole, dinner interval). Oreste’s shellshock is horrifying throughout, rendering his emergent friendship – perhaps in this condition, it can be no more than that – with Pylade a necessary, if highly limited, solace. 

Tcherniakov, as usual, provides his own set design, a building outline that can serve, both intact and not, for a range of dramatic purposes—and to my mind did so very well. (It doubtless depended where one was in the theatre, but I heard complaints contrary to my experience, but undoubtedly genuine, from both visual and acoustic standpoints.) At any rate, the contrast on one level between the two dramas registers strongly, the ambiguities of sacrifice readily apparent at the close of Aulide. Iphigénie has been rescued for now, but at what cost, both personal (marriage) and societal (impending war)? A good few of those who had been initially happy, or at least compliant, to cooperate in her sacrifice must surely wish they had gone through with it. The struggle of Achille and his men to overcome Agamemnon and his path is well handled: one of the most convincing fight scenes I have seen on the operatic stage. Few are the opera productions today, or so it feels, that escape silly dancing, neither related to the music nor intelligent set in (non-musical) counterpoint to it. This, alas, proved no exception, but most of us are wearily accustomed to the practice by now; at least it is at a wedding, which one might say is a natural home to silly dancing. It remains a pity, though, that the expressive, dramatic role played by dance in so much eighteenth-century opera, especially that we may broadly consider to be French, once again goes ignored.   

The question of the deus ex machina, familiar to Wagner, who wrote a revised ending of his own (surprisingly adopted by Riccardo Muti at La Scala), is muddied, but that is probably the point. Having Diane speak through the sacrificed Iphigénie – seen at the beginning, in Agamemnon’s imagination – allows Iphigénie herself, in double, to witness that horror, as well as compound fear instilled amidst the similarly consecrated nuptials concerning Agamenon’s voyage. The scene is recalled at the end of Tauride, a nicely ambiguous close into which we can probably read what we will, though it would be difficult to feel wildly optimistic, given what we have seen. There are times when subverting or, more often, simply disregarding the lieto fine irritates, at best, but this is better thought through and without narrowing insistence. 

Haïm’s direction had its moments. The vigour of the Scythian choruses in particular evoked a properly barbaric, brutally war-torn atmosphere from percussion and the excellent chorus alike. In general, though, even for those who find it easier to take such ‘whiteness’ of strings than I do, the emotional range was limited, belying Gluck’s status as a master musical dramatist. Purely orchestral movements often seemed merely pretty or, worse, fey, rather than acting as bearers and drivers of the drama. Dance music thereby doubly suffered, given Tcherniakov’s parallel lack of interest. Intonation, moreover, was variable, even given regular retuning. The audience, however, greeted Haïm with rapturous applause. 

Corinne Winters’s performance would have greatly impressed, had it only been in one of the operas. Hers was a musicodramatic achievement of high order, no mere ‘feat’. As well acted as it was sung, one could read almost as much into her varied facial expressions as her vocal palette. Here was a survivor in every sense. From a strong cast, Véronique Gens as a glamorous yet intensely human (and humane) Clytemnestre, Alasdair Kent’s Achille, cocky vanity matching yet not exceeding his valour, Florian Sempey’s resolute yet highly traumatised Oreste, and Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s heart-rendingly beautiful performance of Pylade stood out for me. This, though, was an Iphigénie cast in depth; I recall no weak links. Whatever my reservations, its memory will also doubtless endure.

Paride ed Elena, Bampton Classical Opera, 24 September 2021

St John’s, Smith Square

Paride – Ella Taylor
Elena – Lucy Anderson
Amore/Erasto – Lauren Lodge-Campbell
Pallas Athena – Milly Forrest
Trojans – Lucy Cronin, Adam Tunnicliffe, Lucy Cronin, Alex Jones
Dancers (Spartans, athletes) – Oliver Adam-Reynolds, Oscar Fonseca

Jeremy Gray (director, designs)
Alicia Frost (choreography)
Jess Iliff (costumes)
Ian Chandler (lighting)

CHROMA

Thomas Blunt (conductor)

Least popular of Gluck’s reform operas, Paride ed Elena shows what little store we should set on popularity. (Do not Gluck’s operas more generally?) Bampton Classical Opera once again deserves our thanks in bringing a ‘neglected’—frankly, ignored—eighteenth-century opera to performance, first in Oxfordshire and now in its annual visit to St John’s, Smith Square. That it should do so at all is praiseworthy enough, that it should do so in ‘current circumstances’ all the more so. If I found some elements of staging, costumes in particular, a little makeshift, it is not worth labouring the point; circumstances were far from ideal. 

The role of Paride, written for a soprano castrato, poses a problem in that one will end up with a cast of five sopranos—or one will transpose it down for a high tenor. Allegedly, for the nature of the alleged ‘problem’ is unclear when one listens, especially to so accomplished a performance as we heard from Ella Taylor. Taylor’s Paris—we may as well use English, since the opera was sung in an English translation by Gilly French—evinced youthful strength and vulnerability through Orphic song, rising to more militaristic clamour where required. Their portrayal both contrasted with and complemented Lucy Anderson’s equally multi-faceted Helen, knowingly beguiling and resistant, ultimately moved—perhaps musically as much as verbally—to confront and acknowledge the transformation of her own feelings. As cunning agent of that transformation, Cupid posing as royal counsellor Erasto, Lauren Lodge-Campbell shone and sparkled. Milly Forrest, a late replacement as Pallas Athena, commanded attention as the deus ex machina, as did members of the small chorus, Lucy Cronin first among equals given her accomplished first-act solo. So too did dancers Oliver Adam-Reynolds Oscar Fonseca, who brought to proceedings a highly physical eroticism otherwise lacking from the staging.

Thomas Blunt led CHROMA in a well considered, flowing account of considerable cumulative drama. Here there was none of the stiffness I observed in a Bampton performance earlier this year of La corona under a different conductor. Blunt judged ebb and flow with due regard for instrumental and vocal sensibilities, but above all with an ear to the greater whole. Cuts were judicious and did little damage, which is not to say that one might not wish to hear them restored in other situations. Here, no one could have tired, in the way some people unaccountably seem to do so, of Classical drama lyricised and rendered visible. Rarely if ever did a small instrumental ensemble have one wishing for larger forces, the St John’s acoustic weaving its magic. Gluck and Calazbigi will surely have won more converts, and willingness to explore dance as musical drama augurs well for further Bampton explorations. Dare we hope, perhaps, for a little Rameau or even Traetta? To be fair, more Gluck would also be highly welcome. We shall see—and hear; at least I hope we shall.

La corona, Bampton Classical Opera, 18 May 2021

St John’s, Smith Square

Atalanta – Samantha Louis-Jean
Meleagro – Harriet Eyley
Climene – Lisa Howarth
Asteria – Lucy Anderson
Narrator – Rosa French

CHROMA

Robert Howarth (conductor)


La corona: Bampton Classical Opera certainly selected a title for our times. However, the English translation under which it was promoted, The Crown, not only has televisual contemporary resonance, but reminds us that every crown, though arguably a misfortune, is not quite a sign of a deadly virus. Not that the eighteenth century, at least until its close, saw things that way. In Europe, at least, monarchies seemed the height of modernity, the path to the future. The old prize of universal monarchy retained currency, albeit in conflict with more novel notions of the balance of power. Those few republics remaining were ailing, unlikely models for human flourishing. And at the centre of Europe remained the Holy Roman Empire and Habsburg monarchy, recently separated yet now once again reunited under Francis (Stephen) I and Maria Theresa.


This was the last of the dozen Metastasio libretti the Vienna court poet named ‘azione teatrale’: that is, a serenata, with definite action and to be staged. We should not get too hung up on the term, more a vague description than a genre; it is difficult to say why, say, L’isola disabitata (as set by Haydn, among many others) and Il sogno di Scipione (as set by many before Mozart, and at least one after him) should be considered such and other, similar works should not, let alone why the Orfeo of Calzabigi and Gluck, quite un-Metastasian, should originally have received that designation.


Gluck’s music, now lost, for an Iphigenia in Aulis ballet, first written for the Imperial Castle at Laxenburg, had been given once more a few months later at Innsbruck for the 1765 wedding of the Archduke Leopold (later Leopold II) to Infanta Maria Luisa (who later notoriously dismissed Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito as ‘una porcheria tedesca’). Having left the theatre at its conclusion, Francis suffered a fatal stroke in his carriage. The theatres closed and the azione teatrale in preparation for Francis’s name-day, in performance by a quartet of his daughters (the Archduchesses Maria Elisabeth, Maria Amalia, Maria Josepha, and Maria Carolina), went unperformed until a 1966 Austrian radio broadcast. Staging had to wait until 1987, in Schönbrunn’s Salon de Bataille, where Gluck’s premiere would have taken place.


The present performance, however, was given in concert, like the British premiere, also from 1987, slightly earlier, at the City of London Festival. In place of secco recitatives, we had a linking English narration. Having drawn inevitable reference to the other ‘corona’, it clearly told us where we were, what was going on, and sketched a broader mythological and literary context, lightly yet learnedly allusive. Context, that is, to the slight tale of who should take credit for the Calydonian boar hunt: ultimately neither Atalanta nor her sister, Climene, neither Princess Asteria nor or Prince Meleagro, but the goddess Diana. It culminates in bestowal of the crown of laurels on the keen royal huntsman Francis. Rosa French delivered her narration with elegance and wit.


The music is fresh, in many respects glorious, certainly well deserving of greater acquaintance, though this is no drama in the sense of the ‘reformist’ Gluck. (Nor was it intended to be.) Robert Howarth’s direction from the harpsichord of CHROMA was forthright and unfussy, well judged in balance and tempo, if occasionally a little four-square for my ears in negotiating Gluck’s structures. (We clearly hear Gluck differently, which is no crime. Far better this, in any case, than egoistic conducting that aims above all to draw attention to itself.)


All four singers acquitted themselves with honour, complementing and lightly contrasting as befitting. The extremity of Atalanta’s coloratura—could the Habsburg-Lorraine princesses really have come anywhere near singing this music?—was effortlessly tamed by Samantha Louis-Jean. Lucy Anderson’s spirited Asteria and Lisa Howarth’s sincere Climene were equally stylish. So too did Harriet Eyley’s Meleagro, whose heroism en travesti, both bright-toned and variegated, proved just the ‘early Classical’ ticket. If the splendid penultimate number, a duet between Atalanta and Meleagro, left both in peril of being outshone by Emma Feilding’s oboe, then that is Gluck’s doing. A joy from beginning to end, whatever our views on crowns, viruses, and their intersection.

Zurück vom Ring! 2016 tally for opera etc.

No further operatic plans for 2016, so here is my tally for the year. The 'etc.' indicates that I have included not only concert performances but other borderline cases, including music theatre. Beat Furrer's 'sound theatre' piece, FAMA, arguably does not belong here at all, but never mind; I thought it would be good to include it. It seems we have a pretty clear winner for the year (always helped by a visit to Bayreuth). The Deutsche Oper's Strauss-Wochen helped Richard the Second share joint second place with Mozart. An especial delight for me is to see Gluck placed so high; more to the point, it has been a privilege to have heard four Gluck performances this year.

As in previous years, I have only allowed one score per composer per event, so Il trittico counts for one, but so does Il tabarro. In the case of Stephen Oliver's 'completion' of L'oca del Cairo, he shares the honours with Mozart.

Wagner 16

Mozart, Strauss 8

Puccini 5

Gluck, Janáček 4

Humperdinck, Tchaikovsky 2

Kim Ashton, Thomas Adès, Thomas Arne, Gerald Barry, Beethoven, Berg, Bizet, Britten, Chabrier, Peter Maxwell Davies, Debussy, Dvořák, Enescu, Beat Furrer, Handel, Hindemith, Mascagni, Stephen McNeff, Stuart McRae, Martinů, Mussorgsky, Offenbach, Stephen Oliver, Purcell, Rameau, Reimann, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rossini, Mark Simpson, Weill 1

Click here, for the sake of comparison, with results from 2013-2015.

Concerts and an overall tally will have to wait until the very end of the year.

Iphigénie en Tauride, Opéra national de Paris, 2 December 2016

Palais Garnier

Iphigénie (Renate Jett)
Images: © Guergana Damianova / OnP

Iphigénie – Véronique Gens

Oreste – Étienne Dupuis

Pylade – Stanislas de Barbeyrac

Thoas – Thomas Johannes Mayer

Diane, First Priestess – Adriana González

Second Priestess, Greek Woman – Emanuela Pascu

Scythian, Minister – Tomasz Kumiega

Iphigénie (non-singing role) – Renate Jett

Krzysztof Warlikowski (director)

Małgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)

Felice Ross (lighting)

Denis Guéguin (video)

Claude Bardouil (choreography)

Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Alessandro di Stefano) 

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Bertrand de Billy (conductor)

Thoas (Thomas Johannes Mayer) and Iphigénie (Véronique Gens)

The greatest of Gluck’s operas? Certainly. The greatest opera between Monteverdi and Mozart? Quite probably (give or take a Dido and Aeneas). Iphigénie en Tauride remains an incredible experience. I say ‘incredible’, since one never quite believes it – or at least I never quite do – from the previous encounter, until acquaintance shows that one’s memory was not playing tricks. For, as Raymond Leppard put it, whilst at work on Orfeo ed Euridice, not a bad opera itself: ‘The odd thing about Gluck is that you look at the music, and for a moment you feel that Handel was right and that he is rather a poor composer, in technique rather inadequate, but then with his flair for the theatre, you see what is behind the notes. I have never heard an instrumental piece of Gluck that I wanted to hear again, but when the big emotional moments come in his operas, they must be played for all they are worth. It all works in the theatre.’ One need not necessarily subscribe to every word of Leppard’s claim to know its essential theatrical truth. Gluck shows us, and this must surely be what so attracted Wagner to his works, that intellect and emotion, words (is this, perhaps the best of his libretti too?) and music, dramatic truth and theatrical imagination are not antithetical. Their relations are (differently) dialectical; they thrive on each other.

Barrie Kosky’s Berlin production (in German) was the first I saw. It packed quite a punch, and memories still do. Krzysztof Warlikowski’s Paris staging, first seen in 2006, is more complicated, more multivalent, yet just as powerful. It concerns itself not just with war – Abu Ghraib was very much Kosky’s name of the game – and its equally horrific aftermath, but specifically with women and war. Warlikowski does it with mirrors, a hall of mirrors if you like. Versailles of course did and does – and we are reminded of the dedication to Marie Antoinette as the Overture gets under way. (Yes, the opera was premiered in Paris, but the Queen was naturally in attendance.) Before that, though, as we have taken our place in the theatre, we have been confronted with glass, reflection (in more than one sense) of and on our place in the gilded Palais Garnier, and mysterious glimpses of what might be going on behind the glass. Theatre is a place of reflection and refraction, of truth and illusion, of seeing and indeed of failing to see (ditto listening). Women – old women – stride back and forth, from back to front of stage. They are confident, afraid, lost, found: they are, we discover, at a retirement home. Greek women need to remember, to be remembered, just as much as Trojan Women.

The elderly Iphigénie implores the gods for assistance. ‘Grands Dieux! soyez-nous secourables!’ She relives, with all the psychoanalytical brilliance of Gluck’s – and Nicolas-François Guillard’s – fusion of outward and inward storm what took place, and we realise that what she now seeks is an end to it all. That trauma has never left her; although she still dresses, not unlike a Dallas matriarch, to the nines, she is broken inside, condemned to relive those horrors of war, of sacrifice, of family. The woes of the House of Atreus were not concluded finished with Elektra. And so, amongst the annoyance, the viciousness, the touching moments of care, within her home, she prepares for the end, and achieves it. Mirrored action looks back, looks forward. Where are we? Back on Tauris? Or at the proud old woman’s obsequies, a royal funeral? Or are we still at the home, day in, day out, wishing, like her, to escape, almost anywhere, any time?

Iphigénie, Oreste (Étienne Dupuis), et al.

The world of dreams, of hidden familial desire is strongly present. A younger Oreste, starved yet beautiful, dreams of, creates his mother, possesses her, feeds from her breast, kills her. He loves Pylade, as strongly as anyone has loved anyone on stage: here, we feel, are the origins of Tristan and Kurwenal. And he loves, possesses Iphigénie too. Forbidden love was imagined, experienced, remembered in three guises: yet the hero then lived, almost Siegfried-like, in the moment. When he and his equally beautiful, all-too-perfect royal family, chiselled cheekbones, exquisite dress, and all, come to mourn the death of his sister, they seem almost as if they are the ones who have died, or perhaps never even lived. Embalmed, they keep it together for almost as long as they need, before the King’s children succumb to their forbidden desire – for each other.   

Two stages of future, then, neither of them good, frame the ‘actual’ action. It is not, in any banal way, ‘explained’ by the rest, but we make our own connections, we question, we recoil in horror, not least when those nagging orchestral figures – that celebrated Gluckian syncopation, for instance – prey upon our, their, raw emotions. Mystery, however, remains. The Scythians are certainly ‘other’, their rites not ‘ours’, but perhaps they are truer, less preoccupied, less weighed down by pasts and futures experienced or imagined. The first-act ballet exhilarates: not only do we come close to witnessing a rite we cannot understand, but we see one of Iphigénie’s elderly companions at its centre, a proud woman, undaunted, at least momentarily, by age, confident in her sexuality, in her dance. Or is it a throwback to Tauris, even a response to an old woman’s medication?

Pylade (Stanislas de Barbeyrac)

The cast was excellent, its silent members too. None of that would have been remotely possible without them. So often, French opera is plagued by an inability to sing in French: not just the language, but the style too. Such was never a question here. Véronique Gens drew one in, made us her confidants, never needing to raise her voice, although occasionally she could – and did – expand her dynamic range. Hers was a subtle, unfailingly alert performance in which all dramatic elements, just as Gluck requires, seemed to be at one. Her alter ego, Renate Jett, complemented, contrasted to powerful effect indeed. Étienne Dupuis, as (the sung) Oreste, for so long (seemingly literally) blinded by his past, rose to dramatic heights as his character progressed (and regressed). Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s Pylade was one of the most moving portrayals I have heard on stage for some time: unflinchingly honest, heart-rendingly beautiful of tone, the two qualities intertwined as if the souls of Oreste and Pylade themselves. ‘Smaller’ roles were all well taken.

Choral singing was impressive throughout, although, just sometimes, I longed for something a little more forthright. There is no room for crudity in Gluck, of course, but this should be visceral drama. (Perhaps, though, that was more a reflection, as it were, of the chorus rarely being seen on stage. Psychoanalytical approaches have their snares, practical as well as theoretical.) My only disappointment was with the somewhat lacklustre conducting of Bertrand de Billy. It was not bad, and indeed, once past a rushed Overture, was generally well paced. One rarely, however, had the sense of this musical drama – even music drama? – being lived, let alone lived as if there were no tomorrow, which, for Iphigénie, was here a thought very much of the essence. As ever, though, the Opéra’s orchestra was on fine form, euphonious to a degree. All we needed was a Riccardo Muti to stir them up…

One thing we did know, however (at least those who did not partake in philistine booing at the close): Iphigénie had seen – and heard – it all. We shall have our own particularly strong associations, whether operatically – Nono’s Algran sole carico d’amore, Stefan Herheim’s Götz Friedrich post-Second World War hommage in that legendary Bayreuth Parsifal, etc. – or from history and the world around us (where to start?) Warlikowski and a tremendous cast, allow her, allowed the scorned victims of war – women, men who love men, ‘foreigners’ – to speak, to sing, to remember, and to be remembered.

Wagner, 'Regietheater', and the Importance of the ‘Singing Actress’: From Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient to Waltraud Meier

Waltraud Meier as Isolde at Bayreuth (dir. Heiner Müller; cond. Daniel Barenboim)

(This is the text of a paper given at this year's OBERTO conference at Oxford Brookes. Click here for a report on the conference as a whole.)

I should like to start with the twenty-first century, before returning (as I seem to have been doing all my academic life) to Wagner, before tracing my way back to our own time. We all, I suspect, have strong operatic memories: our first time, no doubt (I have always been inordinately proud, and inordinately ready to bore people with this fact, that my first opera in the theatre was Wozzeck), but also particular moments in performance, whether of staging, of singing, of conducting, of some or all three of those, and more. I certainly remember the first time I heard – and interestingly, saw – Waltraud Meier on stage. It was as Ortrud at Covent Garden, in 2003. For whatever this might be worth, I remembered nothing of Elijah Moshinsky’s production of Lohengrin, despite it being my first; I was – in retrospect, at least – surprisingly impressed by Valery Gergiev’s conducting; but it was Meier, perhaps above all in the first act, who provided my abiding memory. There is an irony there, in that Ortrud has precious little to sing in that act. What struck me – in my memory, continues to strike me – was the extraordinary presence she had on stage, despite the paucity of vocal, let alone solo vocal, work. I had not even heard of her at the time, but as soon as she stepped on stage, I could not take my eyes off her. She did not seem to play a role; she simply was Ortrud, a feeling I have had many times since in performances she has given – and indeed in performances other similar ‘singing actresses’ have given. This was already a fully formed character, one with dangerous, indeed seductive charisma. I felt rather as I did as a child watching wearily predictable cartoons: it was the supposedly evil character who, for once, I wanted to win. In a way, of course, she does, this being a tragedy; or rather, Lohengrin does not win. She certainly won in the memorability stakes.

Meier as Waltraute, again at Bayreuth (dir. Kupfer; again cond. Barenboim)

Now back to Wagner, but first to one of his greatest inspirations, Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient. Schröder-Devrient was, for a period of about twenty years, from the mid-1820s, perhaps the most celebrated German operatic soprano. She was the daughter of a celebrated actress, Sophie Schröder, and interestingly, made her first stage appearances in spoken theatre, before making her operatic debut, at the tender age of sixteen, as Pamina in 1821. Wagner knew her principally from her work in Dresden, but she had an international career, across German speaking countries, and indeed beyond, in Paris and London too. It seems that the claims of vocal flaws – the English critic Henry F. Chorley wrote of the ‘barbarism’ of the ‘false school’ of ‘nature-singing’, ‘a more absurd phrase was never coined by ignorance conceiving itself sagacity’ – were not groundless. Stephen Meyer, who has looked at the Dresden parts for Halévy’s La Juive – conducted by Wagner himself, who always greatly admired it – has found coloratura simplified and even eliminated in order to accommodate her voice. Chorley complained, ‘What [Guiditta] Pasta would be, in spite of her uneven, rebellious, uncertain voice – a most magnificent singer – Madame Schroeder-Devrient did not care to be.’ That, apparently, was a consequence of German antipathy towards ‘grace, taste, and vocal self-command … the characteristics of the Italian method.’ (Just in case you thought it was only we Teutonophiles who could sometimes be slighting about other traditions…)

However, other critics – often, but not always German – lauded her as what we have come to know as a ‘singing actress’. Reviewing her 1828 performance in Weber’s Euryanthe, Ludwig Rellstab was kinder to her voice, but was nevertheless clear that the voice in itself was not the thing:

Madame Devrient possesses the purely musical gifts of a singer, namely, voice and the school of solfège, only to a moderate degree, although her talents are always worthy of praise. Yet she has brought the art of declamatory song and its connections with exceptionally effective drama to a level seldom otherwise attained. At many times, she shows herself a worthy daughter and student of her mother, whose tragic art was recognised and honoured throughout Germany.

One may note there the phrase ‘purely musical’: Wagner would persistently lament the degeneration of opera into something purely musical, or the realm of ‘absolute’ music. Such was the vapid realm – for him, that is – of Rossini’s vocal display, or worse. Rellstab, in an article on Schröder-Devrient for the 1834 Neue Zeitschrift für Musik, compared her to those ‘singers [who] almost never achieve a truly artistic performance, because they have prioritized a completely superficial, mechanical training of the singing organ.’ Wagner, in his 1872 essay, On Actors and Singers, which he dedicated to her memory recalled:

I have time and time again been asked whether her voice were really so remarkable, since we glorified her as a singer—the voice being all people seem to think about in such a case. It constantly annoyed me to answer that question, for I fought against the thought of the great tragedian being cast into the same group as the female castrati of our opera. If I were asked again today, I should answer in the following manner: ’No! She had no “voice” at all; but she knew how to use her breath so beautifully, and to let a true womanly soul stream forth in such wondrous sounds, that we thought neither of voice nor of singing!’

 

Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, 1804-1860 

Wagner’s Schröder-Devrient conversion experience, or at least his retelling of it – he portrays it with quasi-religious fervour – upon hearing, and of course seeing, her for himself took such ideas further. In Mein Leben, he wrote of a ‘miracle … coming to us [in Leipzig] from Dresden,’ in 1829, a miracle which ‘suddenly have a new direction to my artistic sensibility and one which was to prove decisive for a lifetime’. He went on to explain:

This was a brief appearance as guest star by Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, who stood then at the pinnacle of her career, young, beautiful, and ardent as no woman I have since seen on the stage. She appeared in Fidelio.

It is, perhaps, worthy of note that Wagner should praise her female beauty in a trouser-role. Indeed, a feature common to many descriptions of the singer was her androgynity (which was arguably, at this time at least, more often considered with respect to men than to women, however illogically!) Wagner continued:

 

When I look back across my entire life I find no event to place beside this in the impression it produced on me. Whoever can remember this wonderful woman at that period of her life will certainly confirm in some fashion the almost demonic fire irresistibly kindled in them by the profoundly human and ecstatic performance of this incomparable artist. After the opera was over I dashed to the home of one of my friends to write a short letter in which I told her succinctly that my life had henceforth found its meaning, and that if ever she should hear my name favourably mentioned in the world of art, she should remember that she had on this evening made of me that which I now vowed to become. I dropped this letter at Schröder-Devrient’s hotel and ran wildly off into the night. When I came to Dresden in 1842 to make my debut with Rienzi and could often visit the home of this artist, who was amiably disposed towards me, she once surprised me by reciting this letter word for word, for it appears to have made an impression on her, and she had actually preserved it carefully.

… I wanted to write a work that would be worthy of Schröder-Devrient.

That is quite a testimony from the 1860s, looking back. The only problem with it is that Wagner, whether misremembering or falsifying the past, seems to have substituted this alleged visit in Fidelio for a visit five years later, in 1834, in which Schröder-Devrient actually sang in an Italian opera, Bellini’s Romeo und Julia (as it was known in German translation). Whatever the actual truth of the matter, she mattered enough for him to rave so long after the event and for him to grant her a place in his operatic development that could hardly be more honoured. Her Leonore was famed, in any case, Schröder-Devrient as early as 1822 having achieved great renown for having shouted rather than sung her defiant ‘Töt erst sein Weib!’ (‘First kill his wife!’) Wagner wanted to trace his lineage, not just in Beethoven but in Beethoven’s interpreter – and a female, singing and acting interpreter at that. Interestingly in that respect, Anno Mungen has pointed out, Schröder-Devrient was praised for her ‘feminine’ eroticism, but also in ‘masculine’ terms, for her ‘genius’.

Schröder-Devrient went on to create three Wagner roles: Adriano (Rienzi), Senta (The Flying Dutchman) and Venus (Tannhäuser). That was quite a range, from trouser role, to Romantic dreamer, to goddess of love and proprietor of the Venusberg. She was well remunerated: better than Wagner himself was in Dresden, her salary of 4000 thalers compared to his 1500 as Kapellmeister. This, moreover, was a time when Wagner was making his name not only as a composer – and a German composer, at that – but was in some sense creating the role of the opera director as we understand it today.

First performance of Tannhäuser, 19 October 1845. Joseph Tichatschek as Tannhäuser and Schröder-Devrient as Venus.

For instance, Wagner’s 1847 Dresden production of Gluck’s Iphigénie en Aulide revealed Wagner not only as conductor but as imaginative editor and composer, a musicologist of sorts. He even composed a new ending, returning beyond Racine to Euripides, ridding Gluck’s work of what many have viewed as its disappointingly conventional concluding marriage between Iphigénie and Achille. From such direct experience sprang theoretical writings such as Opera and Drama, in which the importance of an actor’s Gebärde (gesture) features strongly, far more strongly than many Wagnerians acknowledge – or perhaps wish to acknowledge. Wagner would certainly be today excoriated as a purveyor of so-called ‘Eurotrash’ in some quarters, those very quarters – of course – that would ‘protect’ his works against – well, against people such as Wagner. On which note, I should like to quote a little of his own retelling of that production and its circumstances, again from Mein Leben:

The first external claim on my attention in this new year (1847) was the production of Iphigenia, wherein I had to prove myself as a stage director as well; indeed, I was even obliged to lend the most urgent aid to the scene-painters and the machinists. Since the scenes in this work were strung together clumsily and without apparent connection, I had to find new ways to enliven the staging, for the problem seemed to me to lie largely in the conventional treatment of such scenes prevailing at the Paris Opera during Gluck’s time. … The outcome of the whole thing was favourable beyond expectation, and even the management was sufficiently amazed at this exceptional popular success of a Gluck opera to take the initiative and add my name to the posters from the second performance onward as the author of the adaptation. This put the press on my heels at once; but this time, I must say, they did me justice almost entirely: only my treatment of the overture, the sole piece form this work with which the critics were previously familiar from the traditional feeble renditions, aroused any great objection.

Schröder-Devrient was, I think, at the very least a contributor towards Wagner’s conception of opera as drama, in which, less ironically than dialectically, the greater seriousness afforded to what, analytically if not necessarily dramatically, we might call ‘non-musical’ elements, actually enhanced the importance of what we might call, with a similar reservation, the more purely ‘musical’ elements of the work. For instance, in trying to penetrate to the heart of what opera as drama might actually be, he wrote in that book of ‘the unspeakable thing which the orchestra can express with the greatest definition, and indeed, in union with another unspeakable thing – with gesture.’ It was something at which speech could only ‘hint’, but which was to the eye what the orchestra was to the ear.

And so, let us return to someone who might in some senses be considered the Schröder-Devrient of her time. There are differences, of course. No one would speak in such terms of Waltraud Meier’s vocal abilities. On the other hand, many would say that ‘the voice’ is definitely not the thing in itself. I indeed already have. One often hears, moreover, that her presence on purely audio recordings does not come across; one notices, in ‘purely’ vocal terms, imperfections. We need, we are told, to see her on film, or better still, in the theatre. She is – this is a phrase often employed, and I have done so myself – a ‘stage animal’. Meier, moreover, is known above all as a Wagnerian singer; other important roles include those in an emphatically Wagnerian tradition, for instance Klytämnestra in Strauss’s Elektra – and yes, Leonore in Fidelio. She is also a singer, or a singing actress, who has happily – and sometimes unhappily, I should admit – worked with directors who stand very much in Wagner’s own tradition of what we have, rightly or wrongly, come to know as Regietheater. This is certainly not an artist who wishes just to ‘stand and sing’, or, in the older, still less flattering formulation, to ‘park and bark’.

I mentioned her 2003 performance in Lohengrin. Interestingly, when that Moshinsky production was revived at Covent Garden six years later, without her, albeit with strong musical performances – more musical, though, than musico-dramatic’ – I noticed the production far more strongly, and not to its advantage. Having recently seen Stefan Herheim’s brilliant new production at the Staatsoper in Berlin probably did not help, but even bearing that in mind, it was not an impressive experience. I wrote at the time, reviewing it myself:

‘Traditionalists’ might, I suppose, like this lifeless pageant, in which absurd Christian and pagan totems are wheeled on and off, a risible combat scene makes one wonder about – but finally decide against – comedy having being intended, and the direction of the chorus is more or less limited to walking on and off and having each member cross himself. ... Most productions, I admit, would look tired, were they revived after more than thirty years, but I cannot imagine that this had anything to offer even in 1977.

Then, the following year, 2010, I saw Meier again in the role, this time at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin. The production was actually older still, being that Götz Friedrich had created in 1990. If it were hardly avant garde, after numerous revivals, it held its interest well, and I found that, unlike Moshinsky’s production, it did not detract from the performances on stage; quite the contrary, it assisted them, Meier’s included. Despite a problematic Lohengrin, I found much to admire, and crucially, to make me think about, in tandem with the staging, and, I think, in tandem with that first encounter. Like Wagner, I remained under the spell of the singing actress, although I am pretty sure that, in my case, that first encounter actually took place.

… Waltraud Meier, who was, astonishingly, making her house debut. Ortrud has always been one of her finest roles, the tessitura fitting her voice extremely well, and the dramatic demands bringing the best out of her on stage. She can hold an audience in the palm of her hand even when silent. So it proved here. The malevolence in Ortrud’s character – Wagner spoke with disgust of her as a ‘female politician’ – is offset by a clear sense of conviction in the justice of her cause. Moreover, there is, in Friedrich’s production, an interesting possible twist at the end; it is perhaps suggested that the new Führer, Gottfried, may have fallen under her spell. With Meier in the role, one should certainly not write off Ortrud.

So far, so good; but what has that said, other than that Meier is a fine singing actress, who might have certain things in common with another fine singing actress of the past? Perhaps not very much, but I should like, in conclusion, briefly to consider one further staging, which made me think about just the matters I have been discussing here. Ironically, it was one which Meier herself (according to an interview) seems not to have liked herself, but there was no sense whatsoever of that on stage, her performance as committed as ever. I speak of Peter Konwitschny’s Munich Tristan, which I saw last year. Her two performances, of which I saw, marked her farewell to the role of Isolde, one of her most celebrated of all. I gushed somewhat, as I think did everyone in the theatre. I also returned to some of those preoccupations I have mentioned above, some of which I think, like Wagner with Schröder-Devrient, I can trace back to that youthful encounter:

We came, of course, at least most of us did, above all for Meier. It is a tribute to the performance and production alike that she did not overshadow but indeed flourished. It would be unduly perverse, though, to overlook her contribution. Over the years in which she has sung Isolde, she has offered many, developing virtues, whether related to production, musical performance, or even the stage of her career. Here, everything seemed in more or less perfect balance – or, better, fruitful dialectic. Attention to words was second to none, likewise stage presence. Sustaining of a vocal line, however, was equally impressive. Suffice it to say, she did not play Isolde; she was Isolde.

I was also set to think, however, not just about Konwitschny’s fascinating production, but about the work ‘itself’, or rather not the work itself, rather the work as it existed in its complicated relationship with performance and production. What do we call Tristan und Isolde? That might seem a silly question. Tristan und Isolde, surely, and Tristan for short, although already we come to the exquisite difficulty, as Tristan and Isolde themselves partly seem – though do they only seem? – to recognise, of that celebrated ‘und’. Yes, Tristan is just a shortened title, so we should not necessarily read anything into the disappearance of Isolde, but, whilst we clearly value both lovers and both singers portraying those lovers more or less equally – great Tristans perhaps more so, given their ridiculous rarity – it struck me as perhaps particularly perverse to have been referring to my seeing Tristan at the Munich Opera Festival, when, like so many in the theatre, I had been going especially to see and hear Waltraud Meier. I began to wonder whether I should actually have said I was off to see and to hear a work called Isolde. I did not, of course, but asking myself the question raised all sorts of other questions in my mind, concerning tradition, performance, production, both specific and general. The singing actress with whom I had had not just a formative operatic experience but a lengthy association as audience member since had again engaged my mind as well as my emotions, had brought me closer to a Wagner both authentic and authentically inauthentic; she had contributed to what Wagner, in Opera and Drama, still in thrall to the example of his own singing actress, had called the ‘emotionalisation of the intellect’. 

Receiving applause as Isolde in Munich, 2015