Die Zauberflöte, Royal Opera, 15 September 2021

Royal Opera House

Tamino – Bernard Richter
Pamina – Salome Jicia
Papageno – Huw Montague Rendall
Queen of the Night – Brenda Rae
Sarastro – Krzysztof Baczyk
Monostatos – Michael Colvin
Papagena – Haegee Lee
Speaker – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Three Ladies – Alexandra Lowe, Hanna Hipp, Stephanie Wake-Edwards
Two Priests – Harry Nicoll, Donald Maxwell
Two Armoured Men – Alan Pingarrón, James Platt
Three Boys – Rafael Flutter, Benjamin Jardim, Victor Wiggin

David McVicar (director)
Dan Dooner (revival director)
John Macfarlane (designs)
Paule Constable (lighting)
Leah Hausman, Angelo Smimmo (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

Images: Bill Cooper. (C) ROH 2021

David McVicar’s 2003 Magic Flute production is really starting to look—more to the point, feel—its age. When fresh and new, especially when conducted by Colin Davis, it had a winning sense of theatrical wonder. If it never tried to plumb the work’s Enlightenment, Rosicrucian, or other depths, it left open possibilities in performance for others to do so. There was striking imagery in John Macfarlane’s designs and the story was told with clarity and intelligence—even if the final scene always seemed a little trite. Now, however, on its n^th revival, much has degenerated into mere silliness. There is enough there to remind us of what it once was, with stronger direction, but enough missing to have one regret its lack. Seeing the first night of this revival on the same day that Nadine Dorries was named Culture Secretary suggested a rare moment of Dorries enlightenment, given her strange claim that ‘left-wing snowflakes’ had somehow managed to ‘dumb down’ pantomime. Once we reached the stage of fart jokes, I began to wonder whether, politics and flakiness aside, Dorries might, perish the thought, have unwittingly hit on a point. I suspect coronavirus restrictions played a part, getting in the way not only of interaction but some of the more ambitious mechanical elements, but it was difficult not to think more interesting solutions might have been explored. Perhaps there was simply not enough rehearsal time.

Tamino (Bernard Richter)

Singing, at least, was in another league. Bernard Richter’s Tamino was everything one could reasonably expect: alluring of tone, careful of words, warmly sympathetic. Huw Montague Rendall’s Papageno proved both lively and thoughtful, likewise respectful of the text, whist appreciating that it is the starting- and not the end-point for a performance. His was a properly physical performance, which nonetheless appreciated that there is much more to the character than that. Salome Jicia’s beautifully sung and acted Pamina and Brenda Rae’s astonishingly accurate, far from entirely unsympathetic Queen of the Night impressed similarly. The Three Boys can sometimes prove a weak link, but not here, Rafael Flutter, Benjamin Jardim, Victor Wiggin comprising an uncommonly fine trio. Krzysztof Baczyk initially sounded a little underpowered as Sarastro, but came into his own in the second act. Choral singing had its moments, in positive and less positive ways.

Brenda Rae (Queen of the Night)

Hartmut Haenchen’s conducting could have been worse. Indeed, I have heard much worse, though a rushed, scrappy Overture, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House on decidedly sub-par form, was cause for concern. Thereafter, breackneck tempi were not, let us be thankful, the order of the day. Indeed, speeds in themselves were rarely a problem. There was rarely much sense of grace, light, or indeed, where necessary, wisdom and weight in the orchestra and its direction, though; for that, the singers seemed more or less left to themselves. Instead, we trudged from number to number, sometimes even from bar to bar, without much sense of a greater whole. It was dutiful Kapellmeisterei, neither more nor less, a world away from Constantin Trinks’s revelatory Don Giovanni in here July.

An unruly audience did not help, applauding, even cheering etween and sometimes even in the middle of numbers: the second-act finale, for instance. That may occasionally, regrettably, happen, but Haenchen seemed to go out of his way to facilitate it. (He even turned for a bow at one point.) So, still more, did the revival direction, which went so far as to leave pauses without anyone or anything on stage. There is quietly accepting the near-inevitable; there can even be metatheatrical framing; there is also pandering to the lowest common denominator. If The Magic Flute is not about about gently, joyously assisting Bildung or self-cultivation, then I do not know what is. Ultimately, though, this speaks of how tired McVicar’s production has become. Time for a change, I think.

Papageno (Huw Montague Rendall)

When a work such as this is given in the original language—German at least, though little sounded especially Viennese—the dialogue needs greater attention. Fidelio often suffers similarly. Some performers were excellent in this respect, Richter and Montague Rendall first and foremost, and there were other perfectly reasonable performances. A few, however, spoke in bizarrely laboured fashion, at barely half speed. The effect was more weirdly expressionist than humorous. Given the dialogue fulfils a similar role here to recitativo secco, it deserves the same care in terms of pacing and rhythm, as well as pronunciation. Appearing to mean something would be a distinct advantage too, as would more accurate titles for those who insist on laughing uproariously at them.

For what it is worth, most of the audience seemed to love it. I was delighted to hear some excellent singing. The production may be seen on ROH Stream from Friday 1 October and is rep until 7 October.

Wozzeck, Bavarian State Opera, 23 November 2019

Nationaltheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Wozzeck – Christian Gerhaher

Drum Major – John Daszak

Andres – Kevin Conners

Captain – Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke

Doctor – Jens Larsen

First Apprentice – Peter Lobert

Second Apprentice – Boris Prýgl

Fool – Ulrich Reß

Marie – Gun-Brit Barkmin

Margret – Heike Grötzinger

Marie’s Child – Alban Mondon

Lad – Jochen Schäfer

Soldier – Markus Zeitler

Andreas Kriegenburg (director)

Harald B Thor (set designs)

Andrea Schraad (costumes)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Zenta Haerter (choreography)

Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

It would be an extraordinary, even an unimaginable Wozzeck that failed to move, to chill one to the bone. This was certainly no such Wozzeck; Marie’s reading from the Bible, Wozzeck’s demise, the final scene with their son and the other children: all brought that particular Wozzeck combination of tears and horror. At its heart, in every sense, lay Christian Gerhaher’s Wozzeck, Gun-Brit Barkmin’s Marie, and their child, touchingly sung by Alban Mondon.

I have heard some fine Wozzecks over the years; Gerhaher must surely rank alongside the finest. He has been selective in his opera roles; it would, however, be an over-simplification verging on distortion to say that he is more at home in the concert hall. Wozzeck is, of course, a very different role from his fabled Tannhäuser Wolfram and is surely the sterner dramatic test, perhaps especially for someone with so heartbreakingly beautiful a voice. Or so it might seem on first glance, but Gerhaher is an artist at least as celebrated for intelligence and humanity. His way with words, music, and gesture too simply had one believe that this was the character he was playing. Verbal nuance without pedantry, attention to musical line without a hint of self-regard, harrowing facial expression that demanded our sympathy: yes, this was a compleat Wozzeck. Barkmin’s Marie, equally well sung (and spoken), equally sympathetic, made for a fine complement indeed. Through her artistry one felt her hopes as well as her devastation, her pride as well as her capacity for love. Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke’s Captain, John Daszak’s Drum Major and Jens Larsen’s Doctor skilfully trod the line between character and caricature, no mean feat in a production that often called upon them to accentuate the grotesque. Kevin Conners as Andres and Heike Grötzinger as Margret impressed too, carving out their own dramatic potentialities, even as we knew them no more likely to succeed than the opera’s central couple. Cast from depth, this was a fine Wozzeck for singing-actors.

Hartmut Haenchen’s conducting proved efficient most of the time, albeit with a few too many discrepancies between sections of the orchestra as well as between orchestra and pit. To be fair, there were also passages—often the interludes—in which all came together to offer something considerably more than that. Haenchen’s reading was not for the most part, however, one to offer any particular revelation. He clearly knew ‘how it went’, yet the post-Wagnerian orchestra as dramatic cauldron had its juices emerge only fitfully.

Andreas Kriegenburg’s production seemed conceptually a little unsure of what it was trying to achieve. Straddling the divide between Expressionist grotesquerie—some arresting images there—and social realism—with a curious twist of Brechtian image, not dramaturgy—is a perfectly reasonable strategy. Communication of how the two might intertwined proved more elusive. Updated to what seemed to be more or less the time of composition, the production left no doubt of the gross injustice and poverty pervading the world in which these events took place. I could have done without all the splashing round in the lake below. Kriegenburg often scored, however, in particular dramatic touches: above all, the acts of Wozzeck’s son, keen to learn from his ill-fated father: watching, listening. and in some cases, acting, as when this evidently wounded child broke his mother’s heart by painting the accusation ‘Huren’ (‘whore’) on her wall. All was lost, then: a moment of devastation. Already we knew what fate, or rather society, had in store not only for Wozzeck and Marie, but for their child too. ‘Wir arme leut’…

Bayreuth Festival (3) - Parsifal, 25 August 2017

Festspielhaus

Amfortas – Ryan McKinny

Titurel – Karl-Heinz Lehner
Gurnemanz – Georg Zeppenfeld
Parsifal – Andreas Schager
Klingsor – Derek Welton
Kundry – Elena Pankratova
First Knight of the Grail – Tansel Akzeybek
Second Knight of the Grail – Timo Riihonen
Squires – Alexandra Steiner, Mareike Morr, Paul Kaufmann Stefan Heibach
Flowermaidens – Netta Or, Katharina Persicke, Mareike Morr, Alexandra Steiner, Bele Kumberger, Sophie Rennert
Contralto solo – Wiebke Lehmkuhl

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

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

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

 

One of the great advantages of the Bayreuth Festival is its Werkstatt principle. Not only do production planning and rehearsal take place in something at least approaching what a festival should be; there is also, crucially, opportunity to revisit, to rethink a staging the following year. Alas, I could see no sign whatsoever of Uwe Eric Laufenberg having done so. That his production of Parsifal is here at all is in itself rather contrary to the principles of the festival. It was brought in, almost off the peg, a production originally intended for Cologne yet never staged there (lucky Cologne!), following the summary dismissal of Jonathan Meese, supposedly over budgetary issues. Who knows what Meese might have come up with? I find it difficult to imagine that it would have been boring, at least, certainly not when compared with this.

 

For if the shock value of Laufenberg’s Islamophobia has somewhat dissipated, it has left in its wake still more grinding tedium and banality. The production, should one stay awake, remains offensive, but it is so ill thought through – what on earth was Laufenberg’s dramaturge doing, or why on earth was he not listened to? – that it is difficult to imagine anyone offering more of a gesture to jihad than a shrug of the shoulders and a series of mighty yawns. Were it not a dereliction of duty that might, at a pinch, court comparison with the production itself, I should be tempted merely to cut and paste what I said last year and then add something about the performances. As it is, I hope I shall be forgiving by quoting myself here, before moving on to attempt to say something slightly different: ‘Indeed, this may well be the most boring staging of the work I have seen in the theatre; take away its attempt at contemporary “relevance”, it might as well have been by Wolfgang Wagner or Otto Schenk. Its premise – seemingly contrived by a nightmare team of Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry, “introducing” George W. Bush as dramaturge – would have been more offensive still, had it been presented with some degree of coherence; one should, I suppose, be grateful for small mercies.’

 

Monsalvat seems to be some sort of Christian community in Iraq, in which some refugees – patronisingly presented as quite without agency themselves – have taken refuge, pursued, or worse, ‘protected’ by Western soldiers. Good for the community, one might say, even if one did not hold with its beliefs. Indeed one might, but Laufenberg is made of sterner stuff. These people are cretins, who deserve only to be mocked, even pilloried. (Perhaps they like Wagner too, or would, given half a chance! Who knows? They might even have taken the trouble to read his writings on religion. Losers!) Why? Because – drum roll – they are ‘religious’. I use the word deliberately, since it is not a word anyone with any real interest in religion, let alone theology, would be likely to use in such a context. It is the bastard offspring of ‘superstitious’ to a third-rate philosophe. And so, in a reframing of the ritual at the end of the act, which might be interesting if it laid claim to anything other than the merely arbitrary, Amfortas is himself crucified and these ghastly, non-liberal people drink his blood. Christians, eh? Presumably Amfortas’s weird nappy is intended to convey quite how infantile this savagery is. Not the sort of thing our dinner-party crowd would do. You mean these people are not centrists? Golly: how outré! Well, we were quite right to invade, then, as Tony said… As for the misunderstanding – a schoolboy would have made a far better stab at it – of Kant and Schopenhauer, as in ‘Zum Raum wird hier die Zeit’: the first Transformation Music glories in a filmic zooming out from Mesopotamia to outer space. It would almost be funny, except again, it is merely tedious – and mind-numbingly stupid.

 

We then shift to the real enemy in the second act. Let us follow in the footsteps of Danish cartoonists and rail at a ridiculous caricature of Islam. It is a ‘religion’, after all, and probably even worse than Christianity. Indeed, definitely worse: there may be no women at Monsalvat, save, perhaps, for the odd refugee, but have you seen these poor Muslim women? Burkini types, no doubt. And indeed, the Flowermaidens, initially dressed ‘modestly’, can reveal their true selves, when, liberated by Parsifal as Western soldier, they reinvent themselves as ‘exotic’ belly dancers. Now our Western hero is interested: what sort of self-respecting woman would not want to display herself to the first passing colonial soldier? Strange, but at least those silly souls – oops: forgive the quaint theology! – have learned their lesson. When things get a little more heated with Kundry, Klingsor the ‘religious’ hypocrite self-flagellates in front of his collection of crucifixes. Amfortas has joined proceedings to give Kundry what she needs – very briefly: very, very briefly. (Or is it just a crass – sorry: ‘provocative’ – visualisation of her recollections? Who cares?) I had almost forgotten: above Klingsor, above the rest of the ‘action’ for both of the first two acts, sits a weird blue mannequin in blue PVC. He does nothing; maybe he cannot. No explanation is given as to who he is, or why he is there. I fear he might be God, or rather those whom the credulous worship as such. Have they not heard? He is dead! Christopher Hitchens told us so. He wanted to invade Iraq too.

 

The mannequin disappears at the beginning of the third act. Has something changed? Yes, the West has won. Parsifal returns to Gurnemanz and Kundry, who share a wheelchair, yet seem perfectly capable of walking when it is the other one’s turn. (What, after all, is an opera production without a wheelchair? No suitcase? Now that is brave!) The Flowermaidens can now do what they were itching to do all along: take all their clothes off and take a soft-porn ‘lesbian for straight men’ shower together. Islam is over, thank God (if you will pardon the expression!) So is Christianity – Judaism too. The final scene – the mannequin ‘mysteriously’ returns: perhaps there is a remnant now of ‘belief’ still to be eradicated – shows members of the three ‘faiths’ shed their differences, eradicate the barbaric ritual, and just get on together after all. Imagine: there are still some diehards who think the invasion of Iraq was not a good thing. There are some, even, who still read Aquinas…! And yet, I fear I have made all of that sound far too interesting. In between, for most of the time, are long stretches of nothingness, designs shamelessly ripped off from other stagings, other images. If only I could believe that were a knowing commentary on nihilism. Confronted with a choice between Laufenberg and Parsifal, Nietzsche, I am confident, would have had no hesitation whatsoever in choosing the work he so despised.

 

What a waste, then, of such excellent singers. Andreas Schager’s Parsifal is by now, for many of us, a known quantity, but that does not make his true, thoughtful Heldentenor any the less worthy of praise. He did what he could dramatically, but it was impossible not to wish one were seeing him again in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliant Berlin staging. Tirelessly committed, ‘what he could’ remained impressive indeed: in a different league from last year’s Klaus Florian Vogt. ‘What Elena Pankratova could’ was likewise deeply impressive, as alert as she could be to the changing requirements and possibilities of her role. It would be a wonderful thing to hear her Kundry elsewhere, I am sure. Georg Zeppenfeld’s Gurnemanz is deeply considered in its blend of words and music; if only Gurnemanz could have offered some words of wisdom on an anti-theology so out of its depth that it could not even reach Wagner’s shallows. That Zeppenfeld continued to command attention tells us much of what we need to know concerning the quality of his performance. Ryan McKinny gave another fine performance as Amfortas, keenly aware of the transformation of the character – staging aside – between first and third acts. Derek Welton’s Klingsor was one of the best sung I have heard: no mere caricature, deeply musical in its malevolence. The smaller roles were all very well taken, knights and squires in particular far more than near-anonymous ‘extras’. And the choral contribution was truly outstanding. Every word could be heard – an achievement in itself – yet never at the expense of musical values. Translucent and weighty as required, even simultaneously, the Bayreuth Festival Chorus, clearly well prepared by Eberhard Friedrich, did everything that could have been expected of it – indeed more.

Hartmut Haenchen kept the score going, but had little insight to offer. He prides himself, apparently, on being fast, indeed as fast as possible. He probably achieved that, although a quick featureless performance will seem to last far longer than a considered, dramatically fruitful reading. There were times when his speeds reached levels of absurdity, not least since they were not in proportion to other sections. (That is a good part of the secret to good, let alone Wagner, conducting, as the Master’s essay, Über das Dirigieren, ‘On Conducting’, would have made clear. Boulez often lauded it, rightly so.) The orchestra ‘itself’ sounded wonderful; this is, after all, its acoustic par excellence. One could even imagine it, in Debussy’s celebrated phrase, ‘lit from behind’, even if Haenchen seemed more concerned to switch the lights off as quickly as possible, and rarely, if ever, to let the orchestra have its luminous head. To think, such a Kapellmeister-ish despatch stands as an heir (if not quite the immediate successor) to the revelatory performances of Daniele Gatti – or indeed, in a very different mould, to Boulez. And alas, to think: Laufenberg is likewise Bayreuth’s ‘successor’ to Stefan Herheim.

 

Tannhäuser, Royal Opera, 26 April 2016



Tannhäuser (Peter Seiffert) and dancers in the Venusberg ballet
Images: Clive Barda/ROH

 

 

Royal Opera House

Tannhäuser – Peter Seiffert

Elisabeth – Emma Bell
Venus – Sophie Koch
Wolfram von Eschenbach – Christian Gerhaher
Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia – Stephen Milling
Biterolf – Michael Kraus
Walther von der Vogelweide – Ed Lyon
Heinrich der Schreiber – Samuel Sakker
Reimar von Zweter – Jeremy White
Shepherd Boy – Raphael Janssens
Elisabeth’s Attendants – Kiera Lyness, Deborah Peake-Jones, Louise Armit, Kate McCarney

Tim Albery (director)

Michael Levine (set designs)
Jon Morrell (costumes)
David Finn (lighting)
Jasmin Vardimon (choreography, Venusberg Scene)
Maxine Braham (movement)

Dancers

Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

 

Wolfram (Christian Gerhaher)
 

London remains starved of Wagner. This season, its major companies offer but two works, Tannhäuser from the Royal Opera and Tristan from ENO. True, Opera North will bring its concert Ring to the South Bank, but that is a somewhat different matter. Comparisons with serious houses, let alone serious cities, are not encouraging, especially if one widens the comparison to nineteenth-century Italian composers. Quite why is anyone’s guess; the composer is anything but unpopular. More to the point, Wagner and Mozart should stand at the heart of any opera house’s repertory. They can hardly do so if they are so rarely performed.

 

I mention that not only because it is very important in itself, but because it has serious implications for orchestras. What used to be Bernard Haitink’s orchestra has had a rougher time of things since his departure. Whilst a great conductor – Semyon Bychkov, for instance, in the first run of this production, or more recently, in Die Frau ohne Schatten – can still summon truly great things from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, its day-to-day experience of core German repertory is fading. Here, under Hartmut Haenchen, there were no particular upsets, but there were only hints at what the orchestra has been capable of, and still might be. Haenchen’s conducting had its moments, but it was the heavenly lengths, and how they might fit together, that were lacking. A penny-plain opening to the Overture suggested ‘authenticist’ tendencies, as if Haenchen would rather be conducting the Dresden Tannhäuser, albeit conducting it a little like ‘period’ Mendelssohn. When it came to the music written for Paris, he seemed to linger and to rush, somewhat arbitrarily. There is stylistic ‘incongruity’, yes, if we want to call it that, but should we not be making something of that, even making it into a virtue?

I suspect that Haenchen’s tempi were, on balance, considerably quicker than Bychkov’s; that was certainly not how it felt, especially in the Venusberg, whose pleasures seemed at times interminable (in the wrong sense). Indeed, the exchanges between Tannhäuser and Venus often sounded alarmingly perfunctory, robbed not only of orchestral ‘cushioning’, but of the direction that Wagner’s orchestra-as-Greek Chorus, even at this stage in his career, offers. Of Beethoven, at least as Wagner would have understood him, there was little: perhaps there was, however, of fashionable, ‘period’ Beethoven-cut-down-to-size. Compared to the most recent other Tannhäuser I had heard, superlatively conducted by Daniel Barenboim in Berlin, this was disappointing.

 

Venus (Sophie Koch)

 

Disappointing in that very important respect, anyway. There was much more to savour vocally. Peter Seiffert gave a strange performance in the title role: it came and went, seemingly without reason, sometimes, especially in the first act, alarmingly out of tune, at other times spot on, always tireless, even when, understandably, his voice acquired something of an edge in parts of the Rome Narration (movingly despatched). Emma Bell was a wonderful Elisabeth; I do not think I have heard anything finer from her. Sincere but certainly not bland, this Elisabeth’s vocal qualities were subtle yet, where necessary (and it often is!), powerful. Sophie Koch’s Venus was ravishingly sung, words and music in excellent, dramatically productive, balance. Christian Gerhaher’s Wolfram is a known quantity to many of us, of course, but no less welcome was it for that. The startling, almost indecent, yet utterly sincere, beauty of Gerhaher’s delivery was once again something for all to remember. There was no need to force the performance; he could draw us in so as to hear a pin drop. Phrasing was just as exemplary. Ed Lyon’s sweetly-sung, dramatically-committed Walther was another pleasure; if only he had had more to sing. Thank goodness, at least, Walther’s solo, only cut from Paris because the tenor could not sing it, was restored. Stephen Milling's sonorous Landgrave was, quite rightly, especially acclaimed by the audience. Young Raphael Janssens acquitted himself well as the Shepherd Boy. So did the chorus (and extra chorus) of Renato Balsadonna, although I think there was greater precision, and perhaps greater weight, under Bychkov in 2010.

 

The ballet

 

Tim Albery’s production does not seem to have changed very much. The Venusberg scene is strongest, the ballet well (if more efficiently than probingly) choreographed by Jasmin Vardimon. It might have been raunchier – Wagner’s music here is, after all, the supreme musical manifestation of desperately trying and failing to achieve sexual climax – but it works well enough. Is a point being made about the unsatisfying nature of pornographic voyeurism? That was an assumption, given that our 'hero' only ever watches, but I am not entirely sure. In any case, the sense of the Royal Opera House being on stage is interesting in this opera. In a work whose central event is a song contest, who is performing, and why? Alas, nothing is really followed through, so that one cannot even really tell whether such metatheatrical possibilities are intended. We end up with little more than a mild compendium of clichés. One bizarre exception is the appearance of cowbells – there is, frankly, little to see – when Tannhäuser first returns to ‘normality’. Their lack of coordination would have been irritating in Mahler, but here, in Tannhäuser? If I had been Haenchen, or the house, I should have put a stop to it. This was not some interesting musical recomposition; it was just a bit of a mess.

The war-torn (Balkan?) setting of the second act I presume to have taken its cue from the Landgrave’s ‘Wenn unser Schwert in blutig ernstern Kämpfen stritt für des deutschen Reiches Majestät’. It would be a stretch, however, to say that post-war deprivation was what Tannhäuser might really be ‘about’, at least without some further work on the director’s part. Albery seems content to let Michael Levine’s set designs do the work for him, which of course they cannot. The third act carries on in much the same way. Very much worth hearing for most of the singing, then, but a restricted view would not penalise you unduly.

 

Götterdämmerung, De Nederlandse Opera, 30 November 2013

Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam

Siegfried – Stephen Gould

Gunther – Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester
Alberich – Werner van Mechelen
Hagen – Kurt Rydl
Brünnhilde – Catherine Foster
Gutrune, Third Norn – Astrid Weber
Waltraute – Michaela Schuster
First Norn – Nicole Piccolimini
Second Norn, Wellgunde – Barbara Senator
Woglinde – Machteld Baumans
Flosshilde – Bettina Ranch

Pierre Audi (director)

George Tsypin (set designs)
Eiko Ishioka, Robby Duiveman (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Cor van den Brink (choreography)
Maarten van der Put (video)
Klaus Bertisch (dramaturgy)

Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra

Netherlands Opera Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

 

I shall try to make this relatively short, partly on account of time pressures, but also because I still have to watch the DVD set of this Amsterdam Ring from Hartmut Haenchen and Pierre Audi, and shall therefore be able to say more once I have seen the whole ‘cycle’. (I know the word is misleading in many ways, but it is now so ingrained that its use is sometimes well-nigh inevitable.) That said, a live experience can be very different from a filmed one; indeed, for me at least, the former is nearly always preferable. There is in any case a different cast for this run. Moreover, fellow speakers at the Internationaal Wagner Congres, which took me to Amsterdam in the first place, advised that Audi’s production, in particular George Tsypin’s brilliant set designs, did not really transfer very well to video. I shall see…

 

In many respects, it is Tsypin’s ring-like space – presumably developed in concert with Audi – that dominates proceedings: not in any sense limiting, but as a good production will do, enabling. (Stephen Langridge’s Parsifal, to which I shall come shortly, did quite the opposite: a rude, yet alas not-at-all surprising awakening, upon my return to London.) The ring is, cleverly, not circular but never meets, permitting a lengthy walkway up to the theatrical heights. Not only does that facilitate comings and goings, observations and retreats; it reminds us that Wagner’s Hegelian view of history – Schopenhauer notwithstanding – does not deal in the purely ‘cyclical’. In Götterdämmerung perhaps of all works, that is crucial. The audience is drawn in; indeed people watch – like the Immolation Scene ‘watchers’ themselves – from the extremities of the set. Equally innovative and provocative is the placing of the orchestra within the ‘ring’. It is, of course, quite a different conception from that of Wagner’s invisible orchestra at Bayreuth, which, bizarrely, no one seeks to follow.  Yet, in a sense, it has equally distinguished roots in Wagnerian æsthetics. Wagner’s conception of the orchestra as his Greek chorus does not rely upon an invisibility that was never the case in Athens; indeed, the complexity of the chorus’s engagement with drama is part of the point. We are reminded, moreover, of Patrice Chéreau’s stated Bayreuth wish, explicitly echoing Wagner, that ‘that the orchestra pit be, like Delphi’s smoking pit, a crevice uttering oracles — the Funeral March and the concluding redemption motif. The redemption motif is a message delivered to the entire world, but like all pythonesses, the orchestra is unclear, and there are several ways in which one might interpret its message. … Should one not hear it with mistrust and anxiety?’

 

Audi does not propose an overarching Konzept, at least not insofar as I could discern from this viewing of a single drama. Yet in no sense does his production seem vacuous. This is not Lepage (surely the very nadir: no criticism could be too harsh), Schenk, Braunschweig, or Cassiers. There is, may Wotan be thanked, no aping of a bad nineteenth-century naturalism, as Thomas Mann would have put it and whose utterly failure Wagner himself appreciated. Yet there is a sense both of myth – at some times vaguely eastern, the veils for Gutrune and Brünnhilde reminding one of Wagner’s (proto-)Schopenhauerian flirtations – and of its interaction with history: the very stuff of the Ring. Boundaries are fluid yet the presentation is far from formless. Thus the Gibichungs can sport stylised nineteenth-century fashion at one point, for instance Gutrune’s wedding dress, and Gunther’s hunting green with top hat, both admirably fitted to the attractive figures of Astrid Weber and Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester. At the same time there is a sense of the mists of myth and pre-history descending, the imaginative presentation of Brünnhilde’s final sinking into red oblivion a case in point: superficially similar, in its use of choreography and sheets, to that in the Berlin production of Guy Cassiers, yet so much more theatrical – and meaningful. Elegance is never exchanged for Loge’s anarchistic fire. And there is real fire too – somewhat mystifyingly at the end of the second act, but more meaningfully at the end of the third.  The Tarnhelm is used intelligently at the close of the first act, so that we see both mysterious visitors and their role in Brünnhilde’s fate. Too often - for instance, in Keith Warner's London staging - directors mess this up completely; not here.

 

Hartmut Haenchen’s direction had its moments. It was certainly preferable to the truly abysmal efforts of Antonio Pappano last year at Covent Garden. (I am beginning to think that legislation might be necessary to wrest Wagner from Pappano’s near-monopoly. A good musical director would recognise his strengths and more importantly his weaknesses, and distribute repertoire accordingly.) There was little of that stopping and starting, that driving hard and that grinding to a halt; yet, by the same token, there was some scrappy orchestral playing – the brass nearly inaudible at the end of the first act, when their steel should viscerally reflect the brutality of Brünnhilde’s rape – and Wagner’s melos was sometimes obscured.

 

Stephen Gould’s Siegfried was serviceable: more than one can often say, but it was neither an especially meaningful nor mellifluous performance. Catherine Foster displayed considerable dramatic commitment and, when her tone was properly focused, a fine command of Wagnerian line; intonation, however, was sometimes a problem.  Kurt Rydl, a wonderful Hagen in his time, showed that, whilst he can still act the part with the best of them, he should alas probably have retired a while ago, his voice often threadbare and lacking focus.  Weber, though her voice could sometimes prove attractive, had a tendency towards blowsiness. Marco-Buhrmester, though, was deeply impressive, his vocal delivery of text and music alike as elegant as his stage presence. Michaela Schuster’s Waltraute was the other star performance; as with Marco-Buhrmester, every word was made to tell, yet without exaggeration. Hers was a performance that drew one in as the production suggested. I only noticed afterwards that Eberhard Friedrich had trained the chorus; that made perfect sense, since its excellence put me in mind of Bayreuth at its best. More anon when I have watched the DVDs…

DVD Review: Der fliegende Holländer, Netherlands Opera

Daland - Robert Lloyd
Senta - Catherine Nagelstad
Erik - Marco Jentzsch
Mary - Marina Prudenskaja
Steersman - Oliver Ringelhahn
The Dutchman - Juha Uusitalo

Martin Kušej (director)
Martin Zehetgruber (set designs)
Heide Kastler (costumes)
Reinhard Traub (lighting)
Sebastian Huber (dramaturgy)
Joost Honselaar (television director)

Chorus of the Netherlands Opera (chorus master: Martin Wright)
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

Opus Arte OA 1049 D (166 minutes, recorded live at the Amsterdam Music Theatre, 16 and 25 February 2010).


The performance opens with a monochrome televisual storm, through which we see as well as hear strings, horns, kettledrums, other instruments, and eventually the conductor. Wagner’s opening bars prove furiously driven. Calmer seas greet the very slow, very soft English horn-led response, spots on the camera making clear the ‘framing’ of the filmic experience. The Overture, then, finds its roots in a backward-looking pot pourri conception, as opposed to forward-looking integrated symphonism, though it is perhaps not entirely without attempts to forge such a unity. Brass tend to Solti-like stridency, though the Netherlands Philharmonic woodwind evince winning perkiness and welcome lack of homogeneity. Urgency and stark contrast, then, are the watchwords, suggesting neither performance nor production will prove beholden to ‘tradition’, whatever that might be. When, towards the close of the Overture, we first view the stage, it is unclear whether the curtain has been up all along. A stark – again monochrome – set of steel and glass is immediately revealed, onto which runs a motley multi-coloured crew, one member sporting an unbecoming tropical shirt, equipped with lifejackets and lifebelts, as one registers the (relative) surprise of hearing in such a context Wagner’s 1860 ‘redemptive’ version of the coda. Were one wishing to distinguish oneself from Cosima’s Bayreuth ‘music-drama’ approach, the ‘original’ or at least an earlier version of the score might have provided greater consistency. However, one soon begins to realise that, by default or design, and I cannot believe that there is no design here, the conflict between ‘backward-’ and ‘forward-looking’ Wagner is being dramatised.

Wind ‘noise’ heightens, for better or worse, the orchestral storm throughout this opening scene. Fine choral singing throughout offers both weight and clarity, a credit to the Netherlands Opera Chorus. The Steersman, spotlit, dons a gold-lamé coat to deliver his song, taken very slowly, distended even, vocal strain telling not least through intonational insecurity; contrast is attained by speeding up considerably for the ‘Hoyohe!’ quasi-refrain. Tempo fluctuations mark the Dutchman’s ensuing monologue too, well delivered by the dark Finnish voice of Juha Uusitalo. This Dutchman is clearly tormented, but powerful too, looking forward, as does the orchestra, to the Wotan of the Walküre monologue. For all the modern dress and setting, though, the shadowy arrival of him and his crew has been accomplished in ghostly fashion, his other-worldliness intensified during the exchange with Daland. And it is clear that ‘exchange’ is on the latter’s mind, suave if shallow venality the guiding principle of Daland’s conduct, in an intelligent reading from Robert Lloyd.

Hartmut Haenchen has become increasingly prominent as a Wagner conductor. I first encountered him on disc at the helm of some rather hard-driven CPE Bach performances, then in the theatre leading Salome in Paris, which he also conducted relatively recently at Covent Garden, both solid if hardly unforgettable performances. As conductor for the Netherlands Opera Ring, directed by Pierre Audi (here credited as ‘artistic director’), and for Parsifal both in Paris and at La Monnaie, he has made claims for himself as a quasi-‘authentic’ Wagnerian, dubiously boasting of having led a swifter Parsifal even than Boulez, as if speed equated to tempo – though I believe Clemens Krauss, if not Hermann Levi, came in a few minutes faster still. Whatever the ideological stance, however, Haenchen’s performance is for the most part impressive, poised, like Martin Kušej’s production, between Wagner’s reimagined past and future. ‘Numbers’ have their own character, yet never distractingly so, as tends to happen when conductors become insistent upon Wagner’s debts to predecessors; the seeds of Bayreuth are to be identified too in a greater continuity. Likewise, the ghostly figure of the Dutchman, whose realm appears to be of an almost Schopenhauerian metaphysical realm, contrasts with the fistfuls of fifty euro notes gathered keenly by Daland and the Steersman.

The second act proved at first somewhat puzzling to me. There is just the one girl spinning: Senta. The rest are pampering themselves at a spa, towelling robes and all, with a swimming pool outside the window. A contrast is certainly drawn between Senta’s seriousness and the magazine-reading habits of the others, Mary included, but it seems an odd way to go about presenting it. However, one comes to realise that Kušej is also drawing a contrast between Senta’s present self – Catherine Nagelstad is hardly a girl, but nor does she now need to be – and a past simplicity, imagined or otherwise, hence the determined nature of her spinning amidst a backdrop of tawdry modern entertainment. The Dutchman’s hooded, marauding crew may be seen outside, leaving a dead body by the swimming pool, which turns red with bloody pollution. After a brief visit outside – into the real world? – Senta re-emerges to Erik with blood on her hands. Would-be purity cannot be maintained in such a world, though Nagelstad’s excellent marriage of Lieder-like detail with fine command of vocal line underlines the effort. There is, moreover, more than a hint of Nilsson-like sarcasm – again, this is no mere girl – to her delivery of the words ‘Ich bin ein Kind, und weiß nicht, was ich singe!’ When the Dutchman arrives, the meeting between the two of them is invented by Haenchen with a musical weight, if not always style, such as one might expect of the later Wagner. The stage is relatively empty, thinned out, too, Kušej emphasising the existentialist challenge the lovers offer to Daland’s empty materialism.

Once one has out of the way the embarrassing disco-dancing, neither attentive nor revealingly contradictory to the score, the third act continues to heighten the contrast between the late bourgeois-phenomenal world and a noumenal alternative; we also continue to follow a stronger portrayal of Erik than is generally encountered. He emerges as more dignified, more of a credible character, despite his backward-looking music. Though Erik may be no revolutionary, here and in the preceding act – especially upon the words ‘Satan hat dich umgarnt!’ – he presents us not only with a plausible alternative morality to either of the production’s two principal worlds, but also with true, deeply-felt anger, through Marco Jentzsch’s finely judged, not-quite-heroic portrayal. He may be romantic rather than Romantic, but he is no cipher. However, it is the darkly Romantic image of Senta’s portrait that is revealed as the final backdrop for Martin Zehetgruber’s set designs. Victory for erotic metaphysics over Erik’s more plausible humanity? Perhaps, but not quite, for, in a move that genuinely shocked me, Erik shoots dead first the Dutchman, upon his self-revelation, and, following her final words, Senta too. Then comes the ‘redemptive’ ending, where one might have expected Dresden. Viewing the two lovers upon a now-empty stage, one continues to question, though not necessarily to discount, the claims Wagner makes for redemption. His music may point us to Tristan, but that only begs further questions.

Salome, Royal Opera, 3 July 2010

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Narraboth - Andrew Staples
Herodias’s Page- Sarah Castle
First Soldier - Nicolas Courjal
Second Soldier - Alan Ewing
Jokanaan - Johan Reuter
A Cappadocian - John Cunningham
Salome - Angela Denoke
A Slave - Andrea Hazell
Herod - Gerhard Siegel
Irina Mishura - Herodias
First Jew - Adrian Thompson
Second Jew - Robert Anthony Gardiner
Third Jew - Hubert Francis
Fourth Jew - Steven Ebel
Fifth Jew - Jeremy White
First Nazarene - Vuyani Mlinde
Second Nazarene - Dawid Kimberg
Naaman - Duncan Meadows
Guests of Herod

David McVicar (director)
Justin Way (revival director)
Es Devlin (designs)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Andrew George (choreography and movement)
Emily Piercy (revival choreography)
Leo Warner and Mark Grimmer for Fifty-Nine Productions (video)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

David McVicar’s production of Salome received its first revival at Covent Garden, though McVicar left its revival in the capable hands of Justin Way. The House of Horrors element that irritated considerably last time seemed softened, replaced by a lighter, more humorous form of camp. Perhaps this were so, or maybe it was just a case of knowing what was coming; at any rate, in this of all operas, a somewhat lower level of sensationalism was gratefully received.

There is something to be said, I suppose, for the transformation of Herod and Herodias into comic characters, though there was perhaps a little too much of the world of the sitcom to their behaviour. More fundamentally, I remain unsure why the work was updated to the inter-war years 1920s: not that I have any specific objection to it, but little was made of it, beyond perhaps the sense of a violent society – but what society is not? – and the still-problematical caricaturing of the Jews. Wilde, Hedwig Lachmann, and Strauss really do not need any help in that regard. McVicar’s Dance of the Seven Veils witnessed second time around was no surprise, but it remains perverse. Salome gains clothes rather than lose them, as she appears to relive her childhood with the suggestion of Herod as her abuser. Es Devlin’s set retains its striking appeal, the split-level ‘upstairs-downstairs’ arrangement providing glimpses of the Tetrarch’s dinner party proceeding above, until the guests repair below – somewhat oddly, given the distinctly unglamorous nature of the basement. The costumes are generally equally striking, not least in the case of the typical McVicar array of extras: the guests and various household functionaries, including an array of pretty footmen sporting tight-fitting livery. And then there is Naaman, the executioner, whom McVicar has transformed into a principal – though necessarily dumb – character, played once again by the muscular street entertainer from Covent Garden market, Duncan Meadows. I have yet to be enlightened as to why he would have stripped off whilst down in the cistern, but his bloodstained reappearance doubtless titillated some. There was quite a bit of casual nudity elsewhere but the only truly erotic moment was that of Salome’s fatal kiss, which certainly retained its horror, and rightly so.

Hartmut Haenchen’s account of the score took a while to get going; I seem to recall a similar trajectory when I heard him conduct Salome a few years ago in Paris. However, after the first half an hour or so, he captured a fine balance between demands of the dance and colouristic fantasy. The orchestra was on fine form after a slight initial thinness of tone, strings gleaming as if instantiating the jewels with which the Tetrarch vainly tries to pay off Herodias’s daughter.

Angela Denoke put up a valiant attempt in that role. She paid commendable attention to the words, give or take a few peculiar consonants, but lacked the sheer physicality of Nadja Michael in 2008. Denoke appears a little too much the elegant woman of a certain age. Moreover, the more extreme demands placed upon her by Strauss found this Salome almost as severely parted as her predecessor, albeit closer to the prescribed pitches. McVicar’s conception of Jokanaan – a ‘Beckettian tramp soaked in sewage’ – does not assist a singer’s assumption of the role, but Johan Reuter proved a worthy successor to Michael Volle, providing an aptly lumbering physical presence, expressed through his voice as much as his acts. Gerhard Siegel and Irina Mishura impressed in their way as the Herods, amusing if not necessarily regal. Andrew Staples presented a credibly sympathetic portrayal of Narraboth, who is after all the only sympathetic character in the drama, though memories of Joseph Kaiser last time around were undimmed. Smaller parts were generally well taken, the chattering Jews especially – whatever resultant discomfort one might feel.

If there was something of an end-of-term feeling to this revival, which comprises but five performances, everything was commendably professional. Ultimately, however, I do not feel that the production gets to the heart – if heart Salome has – of the work. I remain hopeful that Harry Kupfer’s stunning production for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden will see the light of day on DVD. In the meantime, there is amusement to be had here.