Munich Opera Festival (2) - Idomeneo, 5 July 2024

Nationaltheater

Images © Wilfried Hösl

  

Idomeneo – Pavol Breslik
Idamante – Emily D’Angelo
Ilia – Olga Kulchynska
Elettra – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Arbace – Jonas Hacker
High Priest of Neptune – Liam Bonthrone
The Voice (Oracle) – Alexander Köpeczi

Antú Romero Nunes (director)
Dustin Klein (choreography)
Phyllida Barlow, Nina Schöttl (set designs)
Victoria Behr (costumes)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)
Catharina von Bülow (revival director)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (director: Christoph Heil)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Ivor Bolton (conductor)

Take a stroll around central Munich and you may come upon a plaque on Altenhofstrasse indicating the spot where Mozart lived in the winter of 1780-81 whilst at work on Idomeneo. The opera was written for the Residenztheater, now generally known as the Cuvilliés-Theater, although now we saw it at the Nationaltheater, home since its 1818 opening to most of the Bavarian Court – latterly the State – Opera’s activities. Both theatres were eventually rebuilt after Allied bombing, although Mozart’s apartment building was destroyed for good in 1944.  A different staging of Idomeneo would have been required to go ‘home’, for Antú Romero Nunes’s 2021 production certainly makes use of the larger stage and space, but that did not entirely negate a sense of homecoming, not least given memories of a fine concert encircling and presaging the work at last year’s Munich Opera Festival, in the ‘original’ venue. 

Why inverted commas? Perhaps they represent a fussiness too far, given how much any old building will have been rebuilt over the years, although the old theatre did have to be rebuilt from scratch, finally reopening in 1958, not with Idomeneo but with Le nozze di Figaro. Idomeneo was still then a great rarity and remains, to many of us bafflingly so, less popular than any other of Mozart’s seven ‘mature’, full-scale operas. (Many of us may be inclined to soften the distinction drawn there, but it continues to hold for opera companies and their general public.) Given the total break in its performance history – unlike that of, say, Figaro – we might say that any performance becomes more of a reconstruction too, irrespective of intention. The work is often cut and if, at least in a good performance, one feels the loss, it can also work in truncated form within reason. This version – and I think one can go so far as to use that word – had, however, some highly unusual, even unprecedented textual features, some to my mind more justifiable than others. Old and new, fidelity and reimagination, text and performance, music and drama: these do not necessarily stand opposed, but their relationships have also never been without friction. If part of the interest lies in that friction, difficulties may also lie therein. On this occasion, it would be fair to say that we experienced both. 

Action prior to the overture is now a commonly accepted, albeit perhaps now all too common, theatrical strategy. It is more unusual to open with stage music interpolated from elsewhere, a feature throughout the production. What we saw and heard, though, intrigued, largely due, I think, to Phyllida Barlow’s arresting set designs, verging on an installation in themselves. Here, at the beginning, in a dark and dangerous port, musicians and dancers set the scene in several ways, solo- and ensemble-human fragility contrasting with the elemental sea implied scenically and musically, as the Overture proper came upon us. Quite why Nunes felt the need to project ‘titles’ as it unfolded, I am not sure. I suppose it let people know who the characters were and who was singing their parts, but beyond that it achieved little. In retrospect, the lack of dramatic motivation, in spite of a lot ‘going on’, proved too prophetic. Beyond the striking, meaningful ‘look’ – one could read much into Barlow’s structures, above all the sheer mysteriousness of the realm of the gods – Nunes seemed to have little to say. The performance progressed, but that was about it, save for a strange marriage of interpolations and cuts, recitative predictably suffering most. Of politics there was little sign, but nor did the lack of drama and sense of installation seem to be an overt aesthetic, as in the case of Romeo Castellucci. 

Idomeneo (Pavol Breslik) and Arbace (Jonas Hacker)

Perhaps most indefensible – not the first time it has reared its head in a Mozart opera – was a fortepiano rendition of the D minor Fantasia, KV 397/385g, shorn of its turn to the major mode (by whomever), which provided the opportunity for further ballet music, probably suggestive of the relationship between Idamante and Ilia, though I was not always clear whether dance were intended as pantomime or in the older, ‘Italian’ tradition. ‘Perhaps’, because it was run close by the surprise arrival of the aria, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te … Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505, for Idamante and, you guessed it, obbligato fortepiano. Emily D’Angelo sang it very well, but neither its tenuous connection with the opera nor dramatic momentum was well served. 

The worst decision, though, was to fade out ‘Torna la pace’, musicians onstage imitating Haydn’s Farewell Symphony. What could the director have been thinking of? And what could any conductor – presumably not Ivor Bolton, who did not conduct the premiere – have been thinking of, permitting such a radical step without any discernible motivation? Pity poor Pavol Breslik as Idomeneo, who then had to set though the concluding ballet music eating a sandwich, as dancers, more furries than Furies, did their thing. Martin Kušej’s 2014 production for Covent Garden, much misunderstood at the time and sadly unrevived, showed quite how this extraordinary music can grip as drama (and despite an indifferent musical performance). This, alas, simply became tedious. 

Bolton’s musical direction did not help in that respect. It certainly had its moments over the evening as a whole, but the problem was that they were mostly moments. It cannot have been helped by the ‘version’ with which he was presumably presented, but a greater sense of dramatic pulse could readily have been achieved, as could more generous vibrato for the strings and less ‘period’ rasping from the brass. Trombones, though, sounded splendidly otherworldly for the Oracle. Occasional discrepancies between stage and pit, especially during choruses, were swiftly and tidily resolved. The array of continuo instruments was odd, as well as choices made as when to use them; however well played, the presence of a theorbo made little sense. A wind machine, though, offered a nod both to older stagecraft and to onstage atmosphere. 

The greatest satisfaction for me was to be had from the singing. For me, a highlight was the beginning of the third act, Olga Kulchynska’s ‘Zeffiretti lusinghieri’ and the quartet the other side of KV 505 vocally breathtaking and dramatically very much on point. The four singers’ coming together could not have spelled  fear and fate more clearly. Breslik’s assumption of the title role was beyond reproach, ringing in musical security yet permitting of doubt and nuance in character. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller’s Elettra was very good too, though there was a strange moment in her final aria in which she seemed to pause; it was unclear to me whether this were a demand of the production, an interpretative strategy, or something else. Indeed, throughout, her character seemed strangely minimised by the production. Jonas Hacker’s Arbace made the most of both his arias, as did Liam Bonthrone and Alexander Köpeczi in their smaller roles. The chorus likewise made a fine impression, hinting at a greater meaning that seemingly eluded the director.

Don Giovanni, Vienna State Opera, 3 February 2023

Don Giovanni – Kyle Ketelsen
Commendatore – Ain Anger
Donna Anna – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Don Ottavio – Dmitry Korchak
Donna Elvira – Kate Lindsey
Leporello – Philippe Sly
Zerlina – Isabel Signoret
Masetto – Martin Häßler

Barrie Kosky (director)
Katrin Lea Tag (designs)
Franck Evin (lighting)
Theresa Gregor (costumes)
Sergio Morabito, Nikolaus Stenitzer (dramaturgy)

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Lang)

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Antonello Manacorda (conductor)

Images: © Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Donna Anna (Hanna-Elisabeth Müller) and the Commendatore (Ain Anger)

One of Barrie Kosky’s great virtues as a director is that he does not impose a one-size-fits-all approach, or aesthetic, to his work with opera. There will sometimes, of course, be visual similarities – doubtless in part his, in part his design team’s – but they are intermittent and rarely, if ever, determining factors for the conceptual framework. (An especially vexing misconception of the AMOP crowd is that designs ‘are’ the production. No wonder they fail to understand anything they see.) And that framework, like it or otherwise—I have regularly fallen into either camp—is usually pretty clear. 

What puzzled me most about this Don Giovanni was a relative lack of clarity—whether in my perception or intrinsic. I think I managed to piece a bit more together afterwards, but much of it seemed, at least to me, a little undercooked: not a characteristic I readily associate with the director. Is that perhaps a by-product of its first outing having been at the height of the pandemic, when restrictions may have inhibited certain types of action? Characters certainly seem to spend a good deal of time, though far from all of it, some distance apart on a large stage. It is a rocky, rather grim landscape, many miles (literally, I suspect, as well as conceptually) from early-modern Seville (or the Venice Da Ponte’s libretto often seems fundamentally to suggest). Nothing is hidden, or concealed, in a wasteland that is anything but labyrinthine. It sprouts flora in the final scene of the first act, as do the chorus (who, whatever I said earlier on, resemble strikingly the chorus in Kosky’s Komische Oper Monteverdi Orpheus). But then it is back to the grey, rocky landscape—and latterly, a pool of water. 

That literal flowering seems to suggest some sort of Bacchic ritual, it would seem, albeit curiously shortlived. Perhaps that is the point: what does Giovanni do when things are not flowering, when the wine is not flowing—which does not even seem to happen at his feast, nor indeed ‘Finch’ han del vino’? He waits, it seems: a curious undermining of the kinetic energy that makes up his dramatic – in music and words alike – persona. Again, I imagine that is the point. Indeed, after, though only after, the performance, I sensed that, especially later on, this had been for Don Giovanni and Leporello, perhaps for the others too, a performance of Waiting for the Commendatore. Or had it? The idea of a Beckettian Don Giovanni is intriguing, but not very much more seems to be done with it. 

Don Giovanni (Kyle Ketelsen) and Masetto (Martin Hässler)

The other principal theme, perhaps related, is a centring of Leporello, who seems (not unreasonably, I suppose, given a standpoint of psychological realism) quite traumatised by his experiences with Don Giovanni. Is there a sense of abuse there? One might argue that that is intrinsic to the master-slave dialectic, though I am not sure that is quite how Mozart and Da Ponte see it. I think so, but more strong, again especially towards the end, is a sense of an ersatz father-and-son relationship. Perhaps, according to standpoint, that is intrinsically abusive. One might, truthfully yet not necessarily revealingly, observe that all of Don Giovanni’s relationships, if one may call them that at all, qualify as such. I sensed, though, that Kosky is saying more than that, without being quite clear (in my mind) what that ‘more’ is. Donna Elvira seems to be behaving rather unusually too. 

Don Giovanni and Leporello
(Philippe Sly)

Another Kosky virtue is that he knows his music. As with any director, indeed any musician, one might disagree with his response, but it would be unfair to claim that he has not considered it. A case in point here would be the concatenation of dances Mozart presents as a society of orders stands on the libertine – perhaps even revolutionary – precipice. For once, not only do we have the different bands of musicians on stage; the characters dance the appropriate dance, lending visual realisation of an extraordinary moment whose import may not always be recognised by a twenty-first-century audience. Too often, directors impose trademark silly dancing for all-comers. (There is a bit of that too, but not here.) I could not help, though, but wish that Kosky had interpreted the music, or at least how I hear it, a little more. It is not that music need always be doubled on stage, any more than the libretto need, but in the absence of a stronger conceptual lead, it might have helped. Herbert Graf’s Salzburg Felsenreitschule ipproduction for Furtwängler continues to score here. 

I am wary, as anyone should be, of saying it would have been better to have done x than y. It seems more fruitful in general to concentrate on y, though consideration of x may have some heuristic use in sharpening critique of y. For me—surely also for Mozart and Da Ponte—Don Giovanni is unquestionably a religious, indeed a Catholic, work, profoundly concerned with sin and damnation. That does not mean it must be presented as such, but it suggests performance would do well at least to find a satisfactory alternative to doing so, rather than simply ignoring the issue. That may be why, assuming God rather than Nietzsche to be dead, Kosky steps, surprisingly tentatively, toward the Theatre of the Absurd and, perhaps, beyond it to Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty, though neither comes across so starkly as it might. But then, perhaps neither is supposed to; if something is a context, it is not necessarily for me to say that it should become something more than that. Is it, though, for an audience member to voice bemusement concerning what, if anything, the message might be? Surely it is; for if not, not only criticism but theatre itself must be dead. And, whatever Kosky’s message may be, whatever the strange intermittent lack of theatricality to a production that yet strains hard to be theatrical, I strongly doubt he would wish to propose that particular death. 

As it was, a strong cast of singers worked hard to bring theatrical as well as musical values to the stage. Kyle Ketelsen was an energetic, charismatic Don Giovanni, owning the stage when he needed to, yet not without a sense of the chameleon when musically as well as dramatically called for. Philippe Sly’s wounded yet spirited Leporello offered a tour de force in the service of Kosky’s strangely compelling conception. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, an initial announcement notwithstanding, and Dmitry Korchak both shone as the unambiguously seria pair, Donna Anna and Don Ottavio. They understood how coloratura works dramatically—and made us feel that. Kosky’s Donna Anna is certainly no unwilling participant: a more controversial idea now than it might have been twenty or even ten years ago, but certainly not without warrant in the score, let alone Romantic tradition. Kate Lindsey’s ‘Mì tradi’ was worth the price of admission alone; not that the rest of this captivating artist’s performance was not similarly excellent. If I were unsure quite what Kosky was trying to suggest here, there was no doubting Lindsey’s dramatic and musical capabilities of doing so. Ain Anger’s Commendatore was intelligently sung, paying commendable attention to the words as well as to overall aura. Isabel Signoret and Martin Häβler’s spirited Zerlina and Masetto likewise made much, though never too much, of their words, marrying them with sweet satisfaction to melody and overall characterisation. 

Antonello Manacorda and the Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera (to all intents and purposes the Vienna Philharmonic) seemed neither at odds, nor completely of one mind. There was no discernible attempt made to stymie the Vienna sound, commendably full on occasion, and anything but puritanical. (Imagine: puritanism in this of all works!) Yet whilst generally choosing sensible tempi – I still cannot come on board with the fashionable alla breve for Overture and Stone Guest, however ‘correct’ it is held to be – Manacorda often seemed to remain somewhat on the surface: more, perhaps, of orchestra than score. He was supportive of the cast, though, and I cannot imagine anyone being seriously disappointed. I doubt use of the all-too-familiar conflation of Prague and Vienna versions was his doing. Whoever made that decision really should have known better, but no one ever does (well, hardly ever). The outcome, save in the most blistering, powerful of performances, is always dramatically unsatisfactory; this was no exception. Prague is, of course, the answer; it would be a good start were someone occasionally to ask the question.

BPO/Nézet-Séguin - CPE Bach and Brahms, 19 October 2017

Philharmonie

CPE Bach: Heilig, Wq 217

Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem, op.45

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (soprano)

Wiebke Lehmkuhl (contralto)

Markus Werba (baritone)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

A slightly – well, perhaps more than slightly – baffling programme this. One might have presumed that the short CPE Bach cantata (eight minutes according to the programme, but I did not check my watch), Heilig, were present as a curtain-raiser for Brahms’s German Requiem. Brahms, after all, thought highly of Emanuel Bach, editing some of his music. And perhaps it would also have offered another opportunity for one of the vocal soloists. But no, the vocal types are different, so we had Wiebke Lehmkuhl sing a short solo and disappear for the rest of the evening. Perhaps even odder, the two works required different platform arrangements, so we had an interval in between them. Might it not have made more sense to have heard a selection of earlier music – Schütz, perhaps, even JS Bach or Handel? – with a more overt connection to the specific Brahms we were about to hear?

 

Anyway, we did not. It was a welcome opportunity to hear this 1776 cantata, for solo contralto, double chorus, and double orchestra, its text drawn from Herder, Isaiah, and the Te Deum. I cannot say that I found anything, save for its forces, especially individual in the writing: far more conventional than, say, many of CPE Bach’s orchestral or piano works. It would be difficult to begrudge it its Berlin Philharmonic premiere, though, and I have no wish to do so. Orchestra and choir (Berlin Radio Choir) alike offered a glorious sound throughout, antiphonal (Handelian) contrasts registering – although perhaps not quite so strongly as they might have done. Lehmkuhl’s performance sounded beautifully sincere, verbally and musically. It is always enjoyable to hear a little trumpet-led rejoicing too, and so we did. Yannick Nézet-Séguin ensured, greatly to his credit, that there was nothing unduly hurried to the performance, encouraging and retaining a note of necessary grandeur. It was nevertheless soon over, though, and I at least was left wondering ‘why?’

 

There was certainly nothing ‘off-the-shelf’ to Nézet-Séguin’s German Requiem either, conducted from memory. If I cannot say that his conception of the work was particularly close to mine, that is no reason to disqualify it; indeed, it was every reason to try to engage with it on its own terms. As sound, it was difficult to fault the performances of choir and orchestral alike, and again I have no wish to do so. What a joy – although is joy really what we should feel here? – it was, for instance, to hear those lower strings at the opening of ‘Selig sind, die da Leid tragen’. The blend of orchestral sound, moreover, was irreproachable, whilst offering plenty of opportunity to hear individual instruments and sections: the three harps, in particular, stood out beautifully, even celestially. And there was real warmth, even consolation, to that opening chorus, although I have heard Brahms sound darker, much darker. I was not at all sure, however, why we heard quite so robust an emphasis on ‘Freuden’; it came out of nowhere and merely sounded mannered. The great second number, ‘Denn alles Fleisch’ was a little darker, as surely it must be, but with a strange touch of ‘glamour’ to it. It was certainly worlds away from Klemperer or Furtwängler. What the performance did have, in spades, was clarity. Nézet-Séguin shaped the movement well, preparing transitions, rendering them convincing, the winding down at the close was handled especially well. What I missed, I think, was a greater sense of ‘meaning’: not just theological or even verbal.

 

Markus Werba proved a relatively light-toned soloist, which seemed to fit with the general approach. In ‘Herr, lehre doch mich,’ however, I could not help but think that the orchestral sound was a bit too close to Strauss; there is no single way that Brahms sound, of course, but I am not sure, by the same token, that just anything goes either. It would be churlish, nevertheless, to deny the sonic pleasure of the build-up above the movement’s pedal-point. Following a duly lieblich ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,’ Hanna-Elisabeth Müller got off to a shaky start in ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’. Brahms’s solo writing here is exposed, even treacherous, and so it sounded. She settled down before too long, though.

 

Nézet-Séguin took the opening of the following number, ‘Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt,’ very deliberately: not just pace, but choral enunciation too. It certainly focused attention on the words, whatever else I thought of it. However, the blazing, almost ‘operatic’ approach – more Strauss again, even Wagner, than Brahms, I thought – to the Last Trump seemed somewhat out of place. A cappella writing in the final ‘Selig sind die Toten’ reminded us that the choir was in itself just as impressive as the orchestra. It flowed nicely, and sounded consoling. Concerning what, however, did we need to be consoled?

Musikfest Berlin (2) – Barto/DSO Berlin/Eschenbach - Mozart, Rihm, and Mendelssohn, 8 September 2017

Philharmonie

Mozart-Busoni – Don Giovanni: Overture

Mozart – Concert aria: ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te? – Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505

Rihm – Piano Concerto no.2

Mendelssohn – Symphony no.4 in A major, ‘Italian’, op.90

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (soprano)

Tzimon Barto (piano)

Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin

Christoph Eschenbach (conductor)

What a joy it was to hear the Overture to Don Giovanni with Busoni’s 1908 concert ending. Once one has done so, it is difficult to know why anyone would prefer any of the more ‘traditional’ solutions. What a joy, moreover, it was to hear Christoph Eschenbach conduct the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin in a performance that was ‘traditional’ in the best, rather than a lazy, way: no modish – or rather, puritanically orthodox – alla breve introduction, and a full orchestral sound, albeit from really rather a small band. The important thing, of course, was that the spirit was there, both in D minor and in D major – and it was. Busoni then plunged us back into the Stone Guest scene, the music subsiding with dark ambivalence: then the scena ultima, whose banishment was ever a stain upon so many ‘Romantic’ interpretations. The first time I ever conducted an orchestra was in this overture; how I wish I had known Busoni’s version then!

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller and Tzimon Barto joined the orchestra then for the wonderful concert aria, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te? – Non temer, amato bene’. In the recitative, Müller, Eschenbach, and the orchestra worked closely to convey a myriad of subtleties in Mozart’s writing, every note and every word mattering, yet without pedantry. I first thought of Christine Schäfer (with the Berlin Philharmonic and Claudio Abbado), only for Müller then – ‘Venga la morte…’ – to prove far more hochdramatisch. No phrase, verbal or musical, was taken for granted. Barto’s entry, heralding the aria proper, promised much in tone and touch. Alas, his contribution turned out oddly: at times, sensitive, a true partner, at other times curiously heavy-handed. Everything else, however, came close to perfection, the entwining of opera and concerto – not that they are not entwined already! – as apparent in Mozart’s passages of hushed anticipation as in his bravura coloratura.

Barto seemed on much surer ground in the Second Piano Concerto of another Wolfgang: Rihm, which he and Eschenbach premiered in Salzburg with the Gustav Mahler Youth Orchestra in 2014. Its single movement proves, as is often the case, suggestive also of a multi-movement conception, although never quite predictably. The opening material, piano and orchestral chords initially responding to each other, then fusing, has a harmonic language redolent of, yet never to be reduced to, Schoenberg and Berg. Process, however, is certainly quite different, the line seemingly concentrated in the middle register of both solo instrument and orchestra – Rihm views a concerto as ‘only’ meaning that ‘there is a soloist and a collective’ – with bass clarinet in particular offering commentary, and other lines surrounding. Barto and the DSO Berlin provided welcome clarity, without evident sacrifice to ‘atmosphere’. Climaxes and indeed the piece as a whole all seemed very well shaped, Eschenbach clearly having the piece’s measure. A couple of sweet-toned violin solos suggest an alternative path: neither taken, nor eschewed. Later, more Bartókian material evolves from what we had heard, suggestive perhaps of another, related movement, and apparently more malleable in its nature. Rihm is nothing if not eclectic, and yet never seems arbitrary here (apart, perhaps, from a strange guest appearance from temple blocks, but that may well have been my problem). A cadenza passage, underpinned by double basses, pays homage to ‘tradition’, but then so does much of the rest of the piece, without being hidebound: rather like Busoni, one might say. The quiet ending both ‘spoke’ and ‘sang’.

An exhilarating yet never merely breathless performance of Mendelssohn’s Italian Symphony was to be heard in the second half. The DSO’s sound (or Klang) sounded just right for this music – as, indeed, it had earlier too, lightness and richness two sides of the same coin, woodwind a sheer delight. There was a great deal of pleasure to be taken in the sound itself, albeit never in a Straussian, materialist sense (and rightly so). Eschenbach ensured that the music breathed without sagging. The first movement’s formal dynamism was, so it seemed, effortlessly manifest, art concealing art. Its development proved, much to its advantage, more overtly Beethovenian than often one hears, the recapitulation no mere ‘repeat’, almost a second development, so much having changed in the meantime. Antiphonal violins certainly paid off in the elucidation and drama of Mendelssohn’s counterpoint. The second movement was on the brisk side, yet retained a strong sense of the processional, Mendelssohn’s mastery of orchestration wondrously revealed therein, not least through a variety of articulation. In some ways, the minuet and trio emerged as more of a ‘slow movement’, although that is only a matter of degree. A necessary – or at least desirable – hint of slight nostalgia for a Mozartian world that has passed was beautifully conveyed, not least in the daringly relaxed trio. And what horn playing there was to savour! There was no doubting the orchestral virtuosity we heard in the finale, but it was quite without self-regard, at the service of the musical argument. It seemed over in a trice, leaving us wanting more.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Arabella, Bavarian State Opera, 6 July 2015

Nationaltheater, Munich

Count Waldner – Kurt Rydl

Adelaide – Doris Soffel
Arabella – Anja Harteros
Zdenka – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Mandryka – Thomas Johannes Mayer
Matteo – Joseph Kaiser
Count Elemer – Dean Power
Count Dominik – Andrea Borghini
Count Lamoral – Steven Humes
Fiakermilli – Eir Inderhaug
Fortune Teller – Heike Gröyzinger
Waiter – Niklas Mallmann
Welko – Bastian Beyer
Djura – Vedran Lovric
Jankel – Tjark Bernau

Andreas Dresen (director)

Frauke Meyer (assistant director)
Mathias Fischer-Dieskau (set designs)
Sabine Greunig (costumes)
Michael Bauer (costumes)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Soren Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Philippe Jordan (conductor)

I had last seen Arabella as part of the Munich Opera Festival’s Richard Strauss Week in 2008. It is not, I am afraid, my favourite Strauss opera; in fact, it is probably my least favourite. However, I am always willing to be convinced. There was a great deal to admire in this performance, but I fear that asking for more than to admire it on the work’s own terms would have been to ask the impossible. A tale of operetta-ish Jane Austen – or is that of Jane-Austen-ish operetta? – the libretto unfinished (and set as it was written by Strauss, out of respect for Hofmannsthal), it is not a work that makes it easy for one to care about its characters, nor indeed for their plights, such as they are. Its outings other than in Strauss’s Germanic heartland, and sometimes even there, veer dangerously close to that dubious operatic phenomenon: the ‘vehicle’ for a star soprano. Yet Arabella herself remains a curiously blank canvas on to whom men, and to a certain extent women, project their fantasies. That is not in itself an unpromising idea, if one can steer clear of misogyny: after all, one can say the same, up to a point, about Lulu. But is Strauss’s – or indeed Hofmannsthal’s – heart really in it? Is this ultimately more than an unsuccessful rehash of certain themes in Der Rosenkavalier? Again, I remain to be convinced.

Enough of doubts, anyway, at least for the moment. This was a splendid performance. The Bavarian State Orchestra was on excellent form throughout, Strauss’s orchestral sound perfectly captured, with enough clarity and, at times, irony to guard against the sentimentality that is perhaps more of a snare in this opera than any of his. (And yes, I include Rosenkavalier in that.) Philippe Jordan clearly knew the score and communicated its twists and turns admirably. Waltz and other rhythms were well pointed, phrases taking their place within a greater whole to highly convincing effect. My only real misgiving was that very difficult end to the final act. One should certainly feel the accelerando and its frankly sexual implications, but here, as so often, the gear change seemed unprepared. It is perhaps only fair to point out that it is something very few conductors manage to pull off. (Sawallisch, Keilberth, and Böhm spring instantly to mind, but then, without an encyclopædic knowledge of the discography, I am floundering. I seem to remember Christoph von Dohnányi, always a fine Strauss conductor, convincing here too at Covent Garden; he certainly did in the score as a whole.) Jordan’s achievements here were real – and greatly appreciated, as were those of this magnificent orchestra.

Anja Harteros had been due to sing Arabella in that 2008 performance, but cancelled; this time, she was present, and that made all the difference. (Her substitute had, sadly, left a great deal to be desired.) Harteros, like Karita Mattila at Covent Garden in 2004 made the most of the role, turning Arabella into as convincing a flesh-and-blood woman as one could imagine, without distorting unduly the frustrating ‘purity’ of the role. This was a graceful and – in the final scene – sexy portrayal, sung with consummate ease, beauty, and indeed commitment. One could not have asked for more. Thomas Johannes Mayer contributed equally to the sexual frisson at the end. His performance as Mandryka was dark, even on occasion demonic, fully living up to the high hopes Hofmannsthal seems to have entertained for the character and – who knows? – might actually have accomplished more fully, had he lived. Mayer’s Wagner singing is by now well known; he is clearly an equally fine Straussian. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller’s Zdenka was lively, spirited, unfailingly well sung: everything one wishes for in such a trouser(-ish) role. Doris Soffel’s Adelaide provided an object lesson in ‘secondary’ character portrayal, making far more of the compromised mother – not least in her second-act amorous encounter with Elemer – than one would expect. Kurt Rydl complemented her perfectly as Waldner: again compromised, but with life and honour in him when called upon. The couple’s way with Hofmannsthal’s text was surely second to none. Joseph Kaiser made for an attractive Matteo indeed, as much vocally as on stage, a plausible possibility for Arabella, had she been interested. As for the Fiakermilli, surely the most irritating character, if one can call her that, in all Strauss, Eir Inderhaug did a good job, without elevating the coloratura quite into something one could simply enjoy for its own sake, there being little else to detain one’s interest.

I say that, but director, Andreas Dresen, did what he could. In what is otherwise a relatively conventional, though that is certainly not to say dull or unthinking, production, the Fiakermilli’s presentation as an S&M Mistress of Ceremonies can hardly be missed. Dresen sees her, as a programme note made clear, as the initiator of the night’s amorous events, ‘the anarchistic element’, testing the guests’ boundaries. It is an interesting idea, even if there seems to be a limit to how emphatically the work, at least as it stands, can support it. Still, it is part of the task of a good production to present such possibilities and to see where they will lead. In general, Dresen seems content to draw out the characters – as, indeed, he would claim to be doing with the Fiakermilli – and that he does with skill, without turning them into something they cannot really be. Psychological realism and exploration not unreasonably trump the search for a Konzept, although I should be curious to know whether a more challenging staging would deepen appreciation of the work, or simply disrupt it. Mathias Fischer-Dieskau’s set designs, Sabine Greunig’s costumes, and Michael Bauer work together to stylish effect indeed: black, white, and red were the order of the day: the Austrian triband with eagle, I suppose, although not of course the colours of the Austrian Empire of the day. I am not sure that the colours necessarily signify anything, though, or even if they do, that there is further meaning to be discerned. Not unlike the opera, one might say.




 

Munich Opera Festival (2) - La clemenza di Tito, 19 July 2014

Images: © Wilfried Hösl
Sesto (Tara Erraught) and
Vitellia (Kristine Opolais)

Nationaltheater, Munich

Tito – Toby Spence

Vitellia – Kristïne Opolais
Sesto – Tara Erraught
Servilia – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Annio – Anna Stéphany
Publio – Tareq Nazmi

Jan Bosse (director)

Victoria Behr (costumes)
Ingo Bracke (lighting)
Bibi Abel (video)
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Ádám Fischer (conductor)

 

 

 

It had been a while since I had seen La clemenza di Tito in the theatre, though I spend a good deal of time on it when teaching. Alas, there was little to cheer about here, save for some of the singing. Ádám Fischer’s listless conducting only had me long for Sir Colin Davis, in the pit for the sole convincing musical performance I have heard ‘live’; Jan Bosse’s stage direction had me longing for just about anything else.

Fischer, first: his role was puzzling. If anything, I’d have expected someone from at least the quasi-authenticist wing to harry the score. And that is what the Overture sounded like: grand neo-Classicism reduced to something impatiently knocking on the door of small-scale Rossini (without the gloss or the bubbles). Thereafter, however, Fischer tended to maul the score, rarely letting it settle at one tempo or another. Not that there is anything wrong with tempo variations; far from it. But Fischer seemed unable to find a general pulse for an aria, let alone for any greater structural unit. The great public scenes were scaled down: surely this calls for a reasonable-size chorus.  Perhaps worst of all was the lugubrious pacing of many of the secco recitatives: in this of all Mozart’s works, we really do not need to dwell on them, since they are many, they are not his work, and they are sometimes frankly unsatisfactory in terms of where they tonally lead us. For some reason I could never establish, they were mostly given with harpsichord, but a few with fortepiano. The Bavarian State Orchestra played well enough, considering, but as with Dan Ettinger’s dreadful Figaro two nights earlier, it was difficult to shy away from the conclusion that the orchestra would have been better off without a conductor. Certainly in this case, it would have been better off without the more interventionist aspects of Fischer’s decidedly peculiar interpretation.

Tito (Toby Spence) and chorus members

Bosse’s staging? Ultimately, as a friend wearily remarked to me during the interval, it reflects the seeming inability of a large number of opera directors to take opera seria seriously, as it were, let alone to take this extraordinary late example of the form for what it is. Caterina Mazzolà’s often drastic revision of Metastasio was acknowledged neither for what it had become, nor for what it had been, and certainly not for what Mozart transformed it into. It is difficult to discern any understanding of the classical conception of opera seria as spoken theatre with additional music having come into conflict, whether in work and reception, with later-eighteenth-century æsthetics, which had ascribed greater importance to music – unless, that is, it be nodded to by having the excellent solo clarinettist sit on the edge of the pit to be looked at by Sesto and then later by Vitellia. It is equally difficult to discern any sense of the political, of this coronation opera as, in words I have used for an article elsewhere, ‘a compulsory class in a school for ruler and ruled’.  It is just all a bit silly, with various people wandering around in ludicrously exaggerated visions of eighteenth-century dress, the size of Vitellia’s dress especially ridiculous. Wigs look as though I have been taken from an LSD-user’s vision of Amadeus. The trouser roles offer a bit of gender confusion, in that the characters’ dress seems as much female as male. And that is it: none of those ‘ideas’ is really developed, let alone related to the work. The only other feature I can recall worthy of comment is the general change from black to white between acts and the banal apparent conclusion that the characters find themselves through the burning of the Capitol. Of revolution, of counter-revolution, of Enlightened absolutism, of aristocratic revanchism: there is nothing. What on earth the dramaturge was offering for his fee I cannot imagine. And of Mozart: well, there is, if anything, still less.

Toby Spence had his good moments, more in the second act than the first, but had some strikingly unsteady moments too. He certainly was not helped by the direction, which seemed limited to having him wander around uncertainly in a sheet. I felt rather conflicted about Kristïne Opolais. There was no doubting the committed nature of her performance as Vitellia, but the nature of the application was not always necessarily appropriate. In the first act, she sometimes sounded as though she would have been happier singing Puccini, forsaking Mozart’s line for generalised ‘operatic’ sounds and gestures that have little or no place in his world. The second act was much better, though, ‘Non più di fiori’ an undoubted highlight, in which even Fischer got his act together to lead a strikingly successful transition into the finale. (It was a rare, much appreciated example of an ill-behaved audience not being permitted indiscriminately to applaud.) Tara Erraught and Anna Stéphany were more or less beyond reproach as Sesto and Annio, clean of line and clear of dramatic purpose – at least insofar as the production permitted. Both would grace the Mozart ensembles of any house. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, the Susanna in that earlier Figaro, impressed once again as Servilia; if anything, the role – and form – seemed to suit her better still. Tareq Nazmi’s Publio, again not helped by a production which seemed to have the character down as simply a bit of a weirdo, could have been more cleanly sung. And there we have it: an opera seria performance as if from the bad old days, when the drama was seen as secondary to the singers, when the music was barely understood for what it is. Not for the first time, I longed for Gérard Mortier and the Herrmanns.

Munich Opera Festival (1) - Le nozze di Figaro, Bavarian State Opera, 17 July 2014

Nationaltheater, Munich

Count Almaviva – Gerald Finley

The Countess – Véronique Gens

Cherubino – Kate Lindsey

Figaro – Erwin Schrott

Susanna – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller

Bartolo – Umberto Chiummo

Marcellina – Heike Grötzinger

Basilio – Ulrich Reß

Don Curzio – Kevin Conners

Antonio – Peter Lobert

Barbarina – Elsa Benoit

Two Girls – Josephine Renelt, Rachael Wilson

Dieter Dorn (director)

Jürgen Rose (designs)

Max Keller (lighting)

Hans-Joachim Rückhäberle (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Dan Ettinger (conductor)

 

 

Image: Wilfried Hösl

 

One is unlikely to come across a cast of Figaro principals much better than this today, and the virtues of this performance indeed proved to be primarily vocal. Gerald Finley offered a handsomely-sung, dramatically alert portrayal of the Count, beautifully complemented by Véronique Gens, whose apparent indisposition was only occasionally evident. Erwin Schrott’s Figaro suffered from surprising occlusion of tone during the first act, but thereafter was very much on form, Schrott’s theatricality and musicality working very much in tandem. His Susanna, Hanna-Elisabeth Müller was perky and vivacious in both respects too. Kate Lindsey had a slightly uneasy start as Cherubino, but more than made up for it with a perfectly-sung ‘Voi che sapete’. One could believe in her/him throughout too, not least when she adopted the guise of awkward cross-dressing. Amongst the rest of the cast, Ulrich Reß’s Basilio stood out, although he alas – following directorial orders? – adopted the current tendency towards caricature in the role, if less so than sometimes one endures. Elsa Benoit’s Barbarina showed great promise, indeed great achievement; I suspect that we shall soon be hearing more from her.

 

If only the cast had been better supported, let alone led, by Dan Ettinger. The orchestra sounded as though it would have been happier playing without a conductor; indeed, though sometimes a little on the heavy side, the orchestral playing as such was distinguished throughout. Alas, Ettinger seemed never able to settle on the ‘right’ tempo: not that there is only one, but at the time, it should feel as though that were the case. After an Overture and good part of the first act that were driven as if they were Rossini, with little or no space to breathe, other numbers relaxed too much and felt unduly drawn out. Worse still were the occasions when tempi changed arbitrarily – this was no Furtwängler! – during a number, ‘Dove sono’ an especially unfortunate example, Gens seemingly very much at odds, and rightly so, with the conductor. It was far from the only occasion upon which coordination between stage and pit went quite awry. My habitual lament at the loss of Marcellina’s and Basilio’s fourth-act arias was exchanged for relative relief: a sad state of affairs.

 

Dieter Dorn’s production is an odd affair, of which I struggled to make much sense. I had the impression – which may of course be wide of the mark – that we saw a director of a fundamentally conservative disposition who nevertheless felt obliged to try something ‘new’, resulting in a compromise that lacked coherence. I assume that the contrast between period costume and scenic abstraction was deliberate, perhaps attempting to make some point about stylisation, about contemporary reception of an over-familiar eighteenth-century work, etc., but am not entirely sure quite what that point was. The fourth act’s ‘business’ with white sheets in place of ‘proper’ scenery has unfortunate echoes of a school play, or perhaps better, a school ‘movement’ session. The cast seemed to flounder on stage, and I could not really blame them. There was an equally unfortunate, if typical, tendency, if less extreme than can sometimes be the case, to confuse this most sophisticated of comedies with mere farce. (Does not Mozart’s score tell us everything we need to know in that respect – and indeed in every other?) For the most part, the cast rose above such limitations, but limitations they certainly were.