Le nozze di Figaro, Komische Oper, 27 April 2024

Schillertheater

Count Almaviva – Hubert Zapiór
Countess Almaviva – Nadja Mchantaf
Susanna – Penny Sofroniadou
Figaro – Tommaso Barea
Cherubina – Susan Zarrabi
Marcellina – Karolina Gumos
Bartolo – Tijl Faveyts
Basilio – Johannes Dunz
Antonio – Peter Lombert
Cherubino – Georgy Kudrenko
Count’s henchman – Nikita Kukushkin
Young man – Nikita Elenev

Director, designs – Kirill Serebrennikov
Co-set designer – Olga Pavlyuk
Co-costume designer – Tatyana Dolmatovskaya
Choreography – Evgeny Kulagin
Dramaturgy – Julia Jordà Stoppelhaar, Daniil Orlov
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Ilya Shgalov

Orchestra of the Komische Oper

James Gaffigan (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

It is currently fashionable to treat the three operas Mozart wrote with Lorenzo Da Ponte as a ‘trilogy’. There is nothing wrong with that in principle: that is, in commissioning a director (perhaps a conductor too and some of the cast) to stage all three. Nor is there anything wrong with attempting to draw out dramatic themes hold in common. What is sauce for the musicological goose should also be sauce for the performing gander, and vice versa. Results, however, seem more mixed: more, it seems to me, because the gander will not necessarily pay as much attention as he might, if not to the goose, then at least to the intrinsic qualities of the works themselves. Sadly, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s decision to entreat all three works to Vincent Huguet resulted in three productions that ranged from the merely vacuous to the catastrophic. Neither (relatively) recent experiments in this respect from the Salzburg Festival has resulted, to my mind in great success, though at least Claus Guth came up with a memorable, in the best sense provocative Marriage of Figaro. The jury must remain partially out on Kirill Serebrennikov for Berlin’s Komische Oper, with a Don Giovanni to come; yet, whilst this new Figaro has a number of things to commend it, it also proves considerably more problematical than his excellent Così fan tutte (premiered in Zurich). 

The set offers a literal upstairs-downstairs setting: eminently suitable, one might think, for a drama involving relations between masters and servants. In many ways, it is, though the sheer grubbiness of the ‘downstairs’, rows of washing machines to excite disgraced ex-MP Keith Vaz, seems in a not especially productive way to be a little too much. An old woman gets a great deal of ironing done, though, and cast members, especially male ones, freely change their clothes in an uninviting environment, which also plays host to a torture-interrogation scene for Figaro’s trial (again, perhaps a little too much, not least in its disregard for the words and music being sung and played). Above seems to be an art gallery, though it may just be that expensive works of art and, latterly, an exhibition are to be seen in the Almavivas’ private residence. An older painting is damaged and sent for repair, though I do not think we see it again; it is replaced by a shallow, kitschy installation-world with neon slogans, which, as video commentary and a spoken intervention by Dr Bartolo inform us, poses questions about contemporary relationships between hyperreality and simulation. ‘Capitalism kills love’; reads one; I presume the banal truism to be deliberate, although my wager would be small. One of the neon signs reads ‘FESTA FOLLIA’, ‘party madness’, which at least has relevance to what is going on and perhaps even to the folle journée of Beaumarchais’s title. We are, I presume, invited to read this into what else is unfolding dramatically, and that seemed to me at least a fruitful way to proceed, but connections both with what we saw and with the work might have been made clearer. 

I realise talk about ‘not trusting’ the work and its creators runs the risk of sounding, indeed perhaps being, unduly reactionary. It and they will survive to fight another day, and there is plenty of room, or should be, for productions that take their leave from a work to say something different, as well as those more evidently at its ‘service’. That said, I could not help find some of what we saw unduly provisional, as if the director had either run out of time, or simply could not be bothered. Serebrennikov certainly has ideas; this is not a Huguet-style disaster, far from it. Whether they are pursued with sufficient rigour to be comprehensible to an audience, let alone to form a coherent argument, is sometimes less clear. 

For there is much messing about with the text, without much in the way of gain from it. Characters are eliminated, redeployed, invented with scant justification, and the old(ish) trick of using titles to say something else begins to look a little threadbare. Why Bartolo’s first-act aria is cut, only to reappear in the third act I have no idea. The character’s sudden appearance in the second act finale is surprising, since no one will have any idea who he is, save for a text-message exchange (video again) between him and Marcellina earlier on. Text messages also feature heavily in the splitting of the role of Cherubino between a silent, highly physical male actor and a frumpily dressed ‘Cherubina’, who relays his messages to others. We read in the programme the extraordinary claim that Serebrennikov ‘gets round the operatic convention of casting a soprano in the role … (rather overstretching the imagination of the audience) and he makes Cherubino into a credible rival’. If high Victorianism could readily manage such gender fluidity and the ‘convention’ dates back not only to the premiere but to the entire conception of the work, it does not seem too much of an ‘overstretch’ to ‘imagine’ that Berlin in 2024 could cope. Perish the thought that disguise might also be crucial to the role and drama. The more fundamental idea, though, is that ‘a personification of eros’, who ‘cannot hear or speak’ uses as ‘his only weapon … passion, utilising his whole body’. Perhaps, though, presenting a hearing actor imitating deaf speech might have been rethought, so as to offer representation to a deaf actor. It is surely only a coincidence, though, that this gave Serebrennikov another opportunity to depict male undress and nudity. 

Barbarina is nowhere to be seen; I had thought her part might be united with that of ‘Cherubina’; that might have made some sense. It seemed to be in the third act, but then for some reason or none, the Countess sang her cavatina in the fourth act. A further odd claim, moreover, is that made by dramaturge Julia Jordà Stoppelhaar in the programme that Serebrennikov ‘becomes even more of a Kammerspiel [chamber play]’ by eliminating the chorus and allegedly ‘supporting roles’ (Nebenrollen). Since he adds a good few of his own, such as the bizarre, pet-playing ‘Count’s henchman’ – nothing necessarily wrong with bizarre, but even so – and another ‘Young man’, as well as other extras drawn from the Komparserie, the claim seems at best tenuous even on its own terms. The greater problem lies in what has been lost, musically too, nowhere more so than in the near nonsense of hearing much of the chorus music with orchestra alone (or, in the first act, shared between soloists and harpsichord). 

Interpolation of music from Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet to suggest (I presume) the neurotic, white-glove-wearing Count’s fragile state of mind, might have made greater impact had it been better played; it actually took me some time to realise what it had actually been (however obvious the selection). The debt owed to – no, let us be scrupulously fair, coincidence with – the better thought-through Calixto Bieito Fidelio incorporating Beethoven’s Heiliger Dankgesang was too obvious and not at all flattering. A pause would probably have been a better idea, if something must be done at all. I have little idea why the third act began with ‘Soave sia il vento’. The staging seemed to suggest the end of a threesome between the Count, Countess, and Susanna, though nothing that happened afterwards seemed to take that into account. At least, if so, it was a rare acknowledgement that women might have sexuality, or at least sexually attractive qualities, too. Moving Marcellina’s aria to the third act works well, precisely because there is dramatic motivation for the shift, observations on gender becoming part of her curatorial address. It also, to be fair, ensures that we hear a number all too rarely heard. Retention of Basilio’s aria, where it should be, is also greatly appreciated, not least given such an excellent performance, although Serebrennikov’s casual handling of action elsewhere in the fourth act often suggests a little more attention to what is ‘supposed’ to happen might have worked wonders for coherence. Moreover, the aria, sadly for something so rarely encountered in performance, made questionable sense in a portrayal that suggested the character to be far from elderly. 

Otherwise, tonal coherence seemed to be the least thing on anyone’s mind: a pity, given James Gaffigan led a bold, variegated account of Mozart’s music, the level of orchestral playing in general far higher than the unfortunate quartet sounds. Well paced and intelligently supportive both of singers and broader dramatic goals, too often it played second fiddle to Serebrennikov’s ideas, yet remained impressive. So too did much of the singing—and all of the acting. My criticism of the conception of ‘deaf Cherubino’ should not in any sense detract from Georgy Kudrenko’s performance in itself, though it did tend unfortunately to overshadow Susan Zarrabi’s performance. Hubert Zapiór’s made much of his difficult (though, I suspect, rewarding) task as Almaviva, in many ways a fascinating study in the fragility of masculinity. Tommaso Barea was an alert, agile Figaro; it is not his fault that his character seemed somewhat elbowed out by the production. Nadja Mchantaf, a fine singing actress as well as actress, seemed somewhat miscast as the Countess, especially in her first aria; recitatives fared better. Karolina Gumos, Tijl Faveyts,  and Johannes Dunz all shone in their roles. In many ways, it was the remarkably able Penny Sofroniadou who, as Susanna, held things together—which is probably as it ought to be. A little more of ‘what ought to be’, though, might more generally have assisted ‘what might be’.

The Golden Cockerel, Komische Oper, 3 February 2024

Schillertheater

King Dodon – Alexander Roslavets
Prince Guidon – Pavel Valuzhin
Prince Aphron – Hubert Zapiór
General Polkan – Alexander Vassiliev
Amelfa – Margarita Nekrasova
Golden Cockerel – Julia Muzychenko, Daniel Daniela Ojeda Yrureta
Queen of Shemakha – Kseniia Proshina
Astrologer – James Kryshak
First Boyar – Taiki Miyashita
Second Boyar – Jan-Frank Süße
Dancers – Michael Fernandez, Lorenzo Soragni, Silvano Marraffa, Kai Chun Chung

Director – Barrie Kosky
Assistant director – Denni Sayers
Set design – Rufus Didwiszus
Costumes – Victoria Behr
Choreography – Otto Pichler
Dramaturgy – Olaf A. Schmitt, Meike Lieser
Lighting – Franck Evin  

Orchestra and Chorus of the Komische Oper (chorus director: David Cavelius)

James Gaffigan (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Two productions, very different, of Rimsky-Korsakov’s last opera, The Golden Cockerel, within two years: James Conway for English Touring Opera, which I saw in Hackney, and now Barrie Kosky’s new production for Berlin’s Komische Oper in its temporary home in Charlottenburg. Both are experienced, though neither was planned, in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, ETO’s first night less than a fortnight after, the Komische Oper’s second night falling as we approach the two-year anniversary (although intended for 2020 and thwarted by the coronavirus pandemic). Rimsky’s satire on tsarist power and Russian imperialism in the wake of the Russo-Japanese war could hardly be more topical, then, and it would be difficult, indeed perverse, to banish thoughts of today’s King Dodon from our minds completely. In neither production, though, were such ideas first and foremost—and that is arguably a good thing. Spelling out so clearly rarely is, though there will always be exceptions. ‘Rimsky in Hackney’ gave a good introduction to the piece and played fruitfully with ideas of orientalism. Though necessarily given in a reduced orchestration, that proved surprisingly – for a composer and score for whom orchestral colour are so crucial – little of a problem. A dated English translation, replete with ‘amusing’ rhyming couplets, offered more of a barrier. This Cockerel, given in Russian, in full, and in excellent style by James Gaffigan, the Orchestra of the Komische Oper, and a fine cast of singers, took a different turn in Kosky’s production, which initially had me feel a little dissatisfied. However, the more I considered it, the more it grew on me. 

What is missing? Russia, orientalism, and the ‘fantastic’ colour associated with them, though certainly not fantasy itself; and most of the politics too. There is nothing wrong with including the former trio; there is every reason to do so. We can live without them, though, for they will never disappear from what we hear—and all of them benefit from or rather, in today’s climate, demand something in the way of deconstruction. The politics are perhaps more of a problem—or were for me. Surely a satire on war and power stands in a curious position if little attention is granted either? Yes and no, though to start with my answer, doubtless as someone strongly inclined toward political theatre, would definitely have been ‘yes’. Instead, taking his leave from the Astrologer’s claim – a deft way of dealing with the censor, who nonetheless refused to approve the opera – that this was only a fairy tale whose characters he had brought to life, Kosky treats this all as Dodon’s dream. 

A cop out, you might say: one of the most tired devices in children’s, let alone adults’, writing. And yes, most of us will have felt cheated at, say, the end of John Masefield’s The Box of Delights, though things become more complex when we read it in the light of The Midnight Folk, which is not a dream. Here the spur is to consider the work more psychoanalytically. If this is a fairy tale, the dream permits a more erotic but also a more absurdist turn. Rufus Didwiszus’s designs disdains a palatial world of gilt for a landscape that might be a setting for Waiting for Godot; Dodon’s clowning and dishevelment owe something to that world too. Victoria Behr’s costumes are crucial here too: Dodon remains the same, but all around him change, delineating stages of the dream-drama as much as character, arguably more so. It would hardly be a Kosky production without someone in fishnets; here the King’s men are horses on top and cabaret artists below. Some might complain we have seen it all before, and perhaps we have, but within this framework it makes sense.

Kosky also makes excellent sense of the second act – as did Gaffigan – which I see I found ‘over-extended’ in Hackney. It arguably sits less well with a political interpretation and, without something else, might seem oddly unwarranted. Such a thought never occurred to me on this occasion; indeed, my thoughts on occasion turned to Kundry’s revelations to Parsifal in the second act of that opera, an example certainly well known to Rimsky. The Queen of Shemakha becomes Dodon’s wish-fulfilment, and thus – in a twist of the final revelation when the Astrologer owns that only he and the Queen were ‘real’ – an impossible male fantasy, a siren who cannot exist. I wonder whether there might be room for both, and doubtless there can, but perhaps then I might be complaining of a lack of focus. This opens up possibilities rather than closing them, and for that, as well as Kosky’s clear attention to the fact that this is a musical drama, with an orchestral score and vocal parts that demand dramatic attention, we should certainly be grateful. Likewise for the sense of mystery that attends certain shifts, not least in presentation of the ‘people’, be they shadowy or downright oddball. A framework is provided, but there is no attempt to dot every ‘i’ and cross every ‘t’. Dreams may or may not ‘mean’ something; that remains in large part up to us. They will nevertheless certainly signify, if never quite representing, wishes and fears—which may be amenable to stronger political interpretation for tsars then and now. Note the Queen’s skilled troupe of dancing boys, but also the stark image of the King's sons hanging from a tree, all for a ruler whose principal skill seems to be tilting at windmills.

Gaffigan’s command of colour, rhythm, structure, and harmony are superb, revealing this as a truly incisive score with multiple interpretative – dramatic, as well as ‘purely’ musical – challenges of its own. The orchestra was on terrific form throughout: important, I think, to underline, given the tendency to think of this company’s values being more on the ‘theatrical’ side. In truth, any opera company that does not bear witness to the multifaceted nature of the genre will not get very far: no one goes to see an opera without music, and if some reactionaries may claim to prefer to close their eyes, their manufactured outrage gives the lie to that. Motifs imprinted themselves in the memory, as did rhythms, timbres, and their combination. Sometimes – often – this drew us in, but it could distance us too: not exactly Verfremdung, but certainly an advantageous framing to the framing of our fairy tale. 

Equally important to that and so much else was the excellent cast. On stage almost the whole time for a two-hour-plus performance without an interval, Alexander Roslavets gave a towering performance as King Dodon. It is not an easy thing to bring a plodding, in many ways unimpressive character to musical life, but that Roslavets certainly did, granting him sympathy as well as absurdity, through equal concentration on words, music, and gesture. Kseniia Proshina’s Queen of Shemakha offered old-style stardom, partly ‘straight’, partly in inverted commas, and pristine command of all the vocal challenges Rimsky threw at her. James Kryshak’s Astrologer trod a fine line between sympathetic and almost frighteningly unsympathetic, and emerged all the stronger for it. Margarita Nekrasova’s deep, unerringly ‘Russian’ mezzo, as near a contralto as made no odds, was just the thing for the housekeeper-turned-regent Amelfa. Julia Muzychenko brought the Cockerel itself to vivid vocal life, in a fine partnership with Daniel Daniela Ojeda Yrureta’s onstage performance, which offered plentiful malice and ambiguity. As ever, there was a fine sense of company, these singers and their colleagues all contributing to the greater whole. What did it mean? What, indeed?

 

Eugene Onegin, Komische Oper, 15 December 2023

Schillertheater

Eugene Onegin – Günter Papendell
Tatiana – Ruzan Mantashyan
Olga – Deniz Uzun
Lensky – Gerard Schneider
Mme Larina – Stefanie Schaefer
Prince Gremin – Tijl Faveyts
Filipievna – Margarita Nekrasova
M. Triquet – Christoph Späth
Zaretsky – Ferhat Baday
Captain – Jan-Frank Süße
Guillot – Alexander Kohl

Barrie Kosky (director)
Werner Sauer (revival director)
Rebecca Ringst (set designs)
Klaus Bruns (costumes)
Simon Berger (dramaturgy)
Franck Evin (lighting)

Orchestra and Chorus (chorus director: David Cavelius) of the Komische Oper

James Gaffigan (conductor)

Images: Iko Freese / drama-berlin.de

I first saw Barrie Kosky’s Eugene Onegin, premiered in 2016, in 2019, a few months before the theatres closed. Then it was at the Komische Oper’s permanent home on Behrenstraße. Now, the building having closed for several years for renovation, this latest revival may be seen across town in Charlottenburg’s Schillertheater, conducted by the company’s new music director James Gaffigan. The cast is a mix of old and new, Günter Papendell, Stefanie Schaefer, Tijl Faveyts, and Margarita Nekrasova survivors from 2019, the rest new (at least to me). 

Memory, though, is a strange thing; or rather, ‘memories’ are, since even one’s own will come into conflict with one another. Although I remembered liking what I saw, what I saw on this occasion did not always correspond to my recollections, which may indeed have been of other productions, real or imagined. Much the same might be said of what unfolds here (in many dramas, no doubt, yet it seems or seemed more than usually germane here). For there are certainly misunderstandings, missed opportunities, ‘bad timing’, and the rest in the relationships, not only Onegin and Tatiana’s, of Eugene Onegin. That of Tatiana and Prince Gremin may be an exception; yet if so, it is dependent on the failures of another. It is, in any case, hardly the central relationship; it serves as a contrast to what might have been, an antidote of reality to fantasy. Kosky’s setting the entire action in the same place, with one partial exception, brings with it some loss, not least in the inevitably lesser contrast between public and private, whose portrayal therefore becomes still more a matter for the orchestra. Yet its dramaturgical function here also brings with it considerable gain, anchoring character’s differing understandings, memories, and decisions in Rebecca Ringst’s almost pastoral, outdoor setting that yet takes in threatening woods behind. (It is not as if the libretto suddenly vanishes when all stage directions are not adhered to literally.) Although real enough – it is not abstract – it imparts something of a dream-like quality, in which not only memories but, at least as important, objects bind everything together.

 

Jam and jam-jars, for instance: when the opera opens, Mme Larina and the nurse Filipievna are making jam, readily eaten by Tatiana and Olga. When Tatiana sends her letter to Onegin, it is inside a jar sent as a gift. And so on, until the close, when it is there in what seems to be the same place: where it all (tragically?) began. There is something would-be bacchanalian to the ball scene, when it takes place outdoors. This, one feels, is as far away from civilisation as these characters, this society, dare travel. And, of course, it leads to the frozen, pointless misery of the duel scene. Onegin, moreover, does not face the decentring he sometimes can. There is plenty of and for Tatiana too, but we feel – and, I think, have suggested to us – more of his miserable wandering, his downward spiral than usual. Helplessly drunk when he arrives for the duel, he shows that it is already too late for him, let alone for Lensky. His early stiffness is probably a self-defence mechanism; at any rate, we feel its relationship to what is to come. All the while, subtle transformations in Franck Evin’s lighting aid the transformations, both gradual and sudden, in the drama itself. And when a room in Gremin’s palace appears, for the first St Petersburg scene, Onegin by now a sad, destroyed outsider, it is only to be dismantled onstage shortly after, in preparation for the ’return’ to a past which may or may not have ‘actually’ existed for the final scene.

 

Kosky’s conception remains the guiding one. The Komische Oper’s new music director, James Gaffigan, conducting his first production in the role, would appear to have been presented with certain challenges, not least among them caesuras when all stops, hearts included, all falls silent. On this, the first night of Werner Sauer’s revival, Gaffigan integrated these and other ‘givens’ to excellent effect. His reading, like Kosky’s, seemed to gain pace and depth as the evening progressed, the orchestra responding with eagerness to the vision with which it was presented. Almost chamber-like in scale to begin with, its Petersburg grandeur was undeniable, both in itself and in contrast. Choral contributions were likewise as well acted (and blocked) as sung.

 

Papendell’s Onegin follows and, to an extent, leads that trajectory too. It was a compelling portrayal in 2019 and is in 2023, his brokenness in the third act deeply moving. Ruzan Mantashyan travelled on a different, related journey as Tatiana, convincingly the shy, bookish girl at the outset, very much a woman at the close, albeit one struggling to keep herself in one piece. This she accomplished through musical and gestural means alike—as well as fine costuming (Klaus Bruns) and make-up. If I sometimes wished Gerard Schneider would adopt a less Verdian approach as Lensky, his was an undoubtedly committed performance, greatly superior to what I had heard from another singer four years ago. Deniz Uzun’s extravert Olga was a joy—and a telling contrast with her more complicated sister. Faveyts and Nekrasova at least matched memories of their excellent portrayals last time around: not a bad summary of the evening as a whole. The company may be on the move physically, but not aesthetically, whether that be in direction or quality.

Munich Opera Festival (1) - La fanciulla del West, 26 July 2019

Nationaltheater

Images: Wilfried Hösl

Minnie – Anja Kampe

Dick Johnson – Brandon Jovanovich

Jack Rance – John Lundgren

Nick – Kevin Conners

Ashby – Bálint Szabó

Sonora – Tim Kuypers

Tim – Manuel Günther

Sid – Alexander Milev

Bello – Justin Austin

Harry – Galeano Salas

Joe – Freddie De Tomasso

Happy – Christian Rieger

Jim Larkens – Norman Garrett

Billy Jackrabbit – Oleg Davydov

Wowkle – Noa Beinart

Jake Wallace – Sean Michael Plumb

José Castro – Oğucan Yilmaz

Pony Express Rider – Ulrich Reß

Andreas Dresen (director)

Mathias Fischer-Dieskau (set designs)

Sabine Greunig (costumes)

Michael Bauer (lighting)

Rainer Karlitschek, Lukas Leipfinger (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra

James Gaffigan (conductor)

Many Puccini cognoscenti will speak of La fanciulla del West as Puccini’s finest opera – or at least his most musically interesting. In the latter case, I think I can hear what they mean, even if I do not agree. I continue to struggle, with the former claim, although this performance at the Munich Opera Festival made the most convincing case I have yet heard for the work. Its virtues were predominantly musical, in keeping with the work’s general valuation.

Whether in the pit or on stage, we were in hands far better, far more musical, than ‘safe’. One would have to travel far and wide to hear superior orchestral playing in Puccini, or indeed anything else, than from the Bavarian State Orchestra – and even then, one might well fail. Its lengthy experience in Wagner truly paid off, the composer’s renewed – not that it ever really vanishes – fascination with Tristan und Isolde there for all to hear: not just as superficial similarity, but as something more generative. For that and much else, the incisive, comprehending conducting of James Gaffigan deserves high praise indeed. Equally apparent here, especially in darker passages, was the related yet distinct haunting of Pelléas et Mélisande and, more broadly, Debussy’s music. It was Allemonde above all, though, that seemed to inspire the (apparent) workings of fate. Gaffigan captured to a tee the ‘American’, almost Gershwin-like character of the opening bars, proving himself – and the orchestra – distinguished guides to all of the score’s twists, turns, and transformations in between.

The principal trio of singers proved equally distinguished, unquestionably Wagnerian guides to the work’s course. Anja Kampe was, thank goodness, no goodie-two-shoes Minnie. In a more flesh-and-blood portrayal than I recall, this was a conflicted woman with, yes, much good in her, but also a beating heart that could take her to places unsafe, unwise, maybe even unwarranted. More than once, I was put in mind of her Kundry (with Daniel Barenboim, in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s magnificent production). I seem endlessly to repeat myself when it comes to performances from Brandon Jovanovich. I am certainly not prepared, however, to vary just for the sake of variation. His performance as Dick Johnson was everything we have come to expect from this intelligent, committed artist, as dramatically powerful as it was verbally acute, as sweet-toned as it was virile. John Lundgren’s Jack Rance was just as impressive: dark, malign, but also comprehensible, no cardboard-cut-out villain. From a fine supporting cast, I should single out Tim Kuypers’s Sonora. I do not think it is just the human agency of the role that has me do so; Kuypers made one feel there was considerably more to it than that.

Andreas Dresen’s production of La fanciulla del West premiered in March this year. (The opera’s first Munich outing, intriguingly, came in 1934, the city by then well and truly the Hauptstadt der Bewegung.) It does not do anything especially interesting with the work, but nor is it unthinkingly ‘traditional’, for want of a better word. A darker setting – literally, as well as metaphorically – is provided for the action, perhaps most notably for the first act at the Polka Bar. Mathias Fischer-Dieskau’s set designs, Sabine Greuning’s costumes, and Michael Bauer’s lighting are very much part of this. There were times when I wished for something more probing, more critical, but at least Dresen steers well clear of the folkloric. For my reservations remain concerning the work itself, more precisely its dramaturgy, and I cannot help but wonder whether a director might fruitfully contribute something more here. 

Some are doubtless more important than others. One can get worked up about the racism. It is well-nigh impossible for a thinking person in 2019 not at least to cringe. But I am not sure that it especially helps, unless one childishly rejects all art of the past on the grounds that it is not of the present. Perhaps, though, something more might be done to address the issue. It certainly is not here – but then, alas, Puccini tends more than any other opera composer of stature to suffer from a lack of critical stagings. The somewhat sprawling nature of the first act perhaps invites greater intervention than we found here.

It is the close, however, that seems most urgently to invite a more critical stance. If I find the happy ending unconvincing – Puccini is surely better dealing with tragedy, and that includes the hollowest of victories in Turandot – then that must, at least in part, pay tribute to the expectations the composer has set up and indeed to his playing with them. I wish Dresen had donea little more with the possibility of undermining that ending. Jack’s fumbling reach for his gun is at best half-hearted; then the curtain comes down, separating Minnie and Dick from the rest. Nor do I think the score escapes charges of sentimentality here. No matter: it is what it is, and perhaps one day I shall come to appreciate it as many others clearly do. For now, the magnificently vile sadism of Turandot will continue to work its magic. Puccini’s wish for a ‘second Bohème, only stronger, bolder, and more spacious,’ seems to me unrealised. Fanciulla is perhaps bolder, if only in aspiration; it is certainly more spacious, if not to its benefit; it is hardly stronger. There was no doubting, however, the strength of these musical performances; in many respects, that was enough for now.

Storm Large/Hudson Shad/BBC SO/Gaffigan - Korngold, Weill, et al., 23 November 2016

Barbican Hall


Korngold – Symphony in F-sharp
Walter Jurmann – Veronika, der Lenz ist da
Dimitri Tiomkin – High Noon: ‘Do not forsake me, O my darlin’’
Weill – A Touch of Venus: ‘Speak Low’
Weill – Klopslied
Jurmann/Bronisław Kaper – A Day at the Races: ‘All God’s Children Got Rhythm’
Weill – The Seven Deadly Sins

Storm Large (singer)

Hudson Shad

BBC Symphony Orchestra

James Gaffigan (conductor)

In the world’s present parlous state, Brecht (Weill too, perhaps) speaks to us more clearly, more sharply than most. Donald Trump could pretty much have sprung from the pages of Mahagonny, or indeed The Seven Deadly Sins. The fine performance of that masterly ballet chanté which was the necessary performance in this BBC Symphony Orchestra performance. The rest I could pretty much take or leave, although there were clearly admirers in the audience.

 

When first hearing Korngold’s Symphony in F-sharp (in the BBC Philharmonic recording with Edward Downes), I rather liked it. It must have been years since I had last heard the piece; I cannot say that I had missed it greatly, and indeed found it something of a bore on this occasion. It was a well-enough upholstered bore, yet I did not find the material justified the length. In the first movement, it took a while for the orchestra to achieve a good balance, although the Barbican acoustic should probably take some blame for that. (Thanks to the Government, by the way, for scuppering the plan for a decent concert hall in London!) James Gaffigan went to considerable extremes of tempo, but held the movement together pretty well. A certain cinematic quality to its progress was not inappropriate, nor was a certain sonic similarity to the ‘heroic’ Prokofiev of the Fifth Symphony. Transitions were well handled in the scherzo, though ensemble was not always so precise as it might have been. I liked the languorous quality to its trio; Gaffigan’s tempo, however, sometimes brought the music to near-standstill. A Brucknerian quality was apparent in the slow movement, which received a warmly neo-Romantic reading, not lacking in necessary malice. The finale proved colourful, but a well-paced performance could not disguise its excess of repetitions.

 

The second half opened with a number of close-harmony pieces from the American group, Hudson Shad. I am not convinced that concert-hall listening is really quite right for such music: perhaps they would be better off in a bar, with drinks and chatter. (But then, I was never able to understand Cambridge choirs’ enthusiasm for them; I longed to hear more Byrd instead…) My patience for Kurt Jurmann’s hit Veronika, der Lenz its da was limited indeed, but others seemed to enjoy its ever-so-mild camp. Likewise the other Jurmann song, and the two contributions from Dimitri Tiomkin. ‘Speak Low’ from A Touch of Venus served to reinforce my prejudice that Weill’s music lost almost all interest upon emigration across the Atlantic. The short Klopslied, however, was recognisably the work of Busoni’s pupil, albeit with a healthy dose of surrealism thrown in. The gentlemen did not overplay it, thereby letting its anarchic wit speak for itself. It was a real find (for me, that is).

 

For The Seven Deadly Sins, Gaffigan and the orchestra returned, joined by Storm Large, a singer with real presence, indeed real star quality. For a performance in English (the translation by Auden and Kallman), one is better putting out of one’s mind the world of Lotte Lenya. That was surprisingly easy, for Large, ably accompanied, made the work very much her own, in a subtle, sharply observed, finely enunciated performance. She could act, but did not need to draw attention to the fact, just as she could sing and dance, again without any need for underlining. The shedding of her overcoat spoke volumes; so did the chill of those spoken Anna II statements: ‘Right, Anna’. With a wind-heavy band that sounded just right, with Gaffigan unfailingly adopting tempi that sounded equally right, and with just the proper sense, from time to time, of a little rhythmic drag, Weill permitted Brecht to speak. Dance rhythms pointed to Weill as ironic heir to Mahler. Much orchestral material reminded us that this was the composer of that magnificent Second Symphony. (What a pity we had not heard that in the first half instead! Or indeed the Violin Concerto.) Hudson Shad were on excellent form too, their ‘Family’ often sounding very much of a Neue Sachlichkeit world, the bite of Brecht’s text – ‘Shameless hoarders earn themselves a bad name’ – drawing blood. The exploration of sins had a properly cumulative effect as far as ‘Envy’, after which the Epilogue proved a further study in alienation. They were going home to Louisana, to that little home beside the Mississippi. ‘Right, Anna!’

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Don Giovanni, 23 July 2016

Nationaltheater, Munich

Don Giovanni – Erwin Schrott

Commendatore – Ain Anger
Donna Anna – Albina Shagimuratova
Don Ottavio – Pavol Breslik
Donna Elvira – Dorothea Röschmann
Leporello – Alex Esposito
Zerlina – Eri Nakamura
Masetto – Brandon Cedel
Old Man – Ekkehard Bartsch

Stephan Kimmig (director)

Katja Haß (set designs)
Anja Rabes (costumes)
Benjamin Krieg (video)
Reinhard Traub (lighting)
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

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

Bavarian State Orchestra
James Gaffigan (conductor)

All told, this was probably the best Don Giovanni I have seen and heard. Judging opera performances – perhaps we should not be ‘judging’ at all, but let us leave that on one side – is a difficult task: there are so many variables, at least as many as in a play and a concert combined, but then there is the issue of that ‘combination’ too. At any rate, whilst not every aspect might have been the ‘very best ever’ – how could it be? – all was of a very high standard, and much was truly outstanding. I even began to think that the wretched ‘traditional’ Prague-Vienna composite version might for once be welcome; it was not, yet, given the distinction of the performances, the dramatic loss was less grievous than on almost any other occasion I have experienced.

 

If Daniel Barenboim’s Furtwänglerian reading in Berlin in 2007 remains the best conducted of my life, there was nothing whatsoever to complain about in James Gaffigan’s direction of the score. It was certainly a far more impressive performance than a Vienna Figaro last year, which led me to wonder how much was to be ascribed to other factors, not least the truly dreadful production; perhaps, on the other hand, Don Giovanni is just more Gaffigan’s piece. The depth and variegation of the orchestral sound was second, if not quite to none, than only to Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin. This was far and away the best Mozart playing I have heard in Munich. Even if the alla breve opening to the Overture were not taken as I might have preferred, and certain rather rasping brass concerned me at the opening, I find it difficult to recall anything much to complain about after that; nor do I have any reason to wish to try. Tempi were varied, well thought out, and above all considered in relation to one another. Terror and balm were equal partners: on that night in Munich, we certainly needed them to be.

 

This was, I think, Stephan Kimmig’s first opera staging, first seen in 2009. I shall happily be corrected, but I am not aware of anything since. If so, that is a great pity, for the intelligence of which I have heard tell in his ‘straight’ theatre productions – alas, I have yet to see any of them – is certainly manifest here. There are, above all, two things without which an opera staging cannot survive: a strong sense of theatre and a strong sense of intellectual and dramatic coherence. Equally desirable is, of course, at least something of an ear for music, and coordination between pit, voices, and stage action seemed to me splendidly realised too.

 

A perennial lament of mine concerning Don Giovanni productions concerns refusal or inability to understand it as a thoroughly religious work. Here, there is certainly some sense of sin; its relationship to atheistic heroism is, just as it should be, complex. And the reappearance of the Commendatore and (excellent) chorus at the end, some, including the Stone Guest himself, in clerical garb, reminded us, without pushing the matter, that authority is at least partly religious here. There are other forms of authority too – Don Ottavio’s ever-mysterious reference to the authorities perhaps intrigues us more than it should, or perhaps not – and they are also represented: military berets, business suits, and so forth. A libertine offends far more than the Church; and of course, the Church as an institution has always been many things in addition to Christian (to put it politely).

 

Katja Haß’s set designs powerfully, searchingly evoke the liminality of Da Ponte’s, still more Mozart’s Seville. The drama is not merely historical, although it certainly contains important historical elements. But above all, there is a labyrinth – one I am tempted to think of as looking forward to operas by Berg, even Birtwistle, perhaps even the opera that Boulez never wrote – in which all manner of masquerading may take place. Social slippage and dissolution – above all the chameleon-like abilities of the (anti-)hero – need such possibilities, which are present here, in abundance, in a setting that both respects traditional dramatic unities and renders them properly open to development. A warehouse, containers revolving, opening and closing, changing and remaining the same, provides the frame. Yet we are never quite sure what will be revealed, languages of graffiti transforming, never quite cohering, Leporello’s catalogue – and, more to the point, its implications – foreseen, shadowed, recalled. There is butchery – literally – to be seen in the carcasses from which the Commendatore emerges. There is glitzy – too glitzy – glamour in the show Giovanni puts on to dazzle the peasantfolk; but it does its trick, coloured hair and all.

 

And there is an Old Man, observer and participant, sometimes there, sometimes not. Everyman? The nobleman, had he outstayed his welcome, not accepted the invitation? He is clearly disdained, even humiliated (what a contrast, we are made to think, almost despite ourselves, between his naked body and the raunchy coupling – or more – around him). That is, when he is seen at all: and that is, quite rightly, as much an indictment of the audience as of the characters onstage. Part of what we are told, it seems, is that this is a drama of the young, who have no need of the elderly. Not for nothing, or so I thought, did Alex Esposito’s Leporello exaggerate his caricatured sung response to Giovanni’s elderly women.

 

It is, then, an open staging: suggestive rather than overtly didactic. In a drama overflowing with ideas, that is no bad thing at all. Coherence is, whatever I might have implied above, always relative; the truest of consistency will often if not always come close to the dead hand of the Commendatore. For this was a staging that had me question my initial assumptions: again, something close to a necessity for intelligent theatre. (I assume that the bovine reactions from a few in the stalls were indicative of a desire for anything but.)

 

If religion lies at the heart of the opera, too little acknowledged, perhaps at least a little too little here too, then so does sex. Sorry, ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’, but there you have it; this really is not an opera for you, but then what is? Don Giovanni and Don Giovanni ooze – well, almost anything and everything you want and do not want them to. They certainly did here, which is in good part testament to this superlative cast. Erwin Schrott’s Giovanni may be a known quantity – I have certainly raved about it before, more than once – but it was no less welcome and no less impressive for that. ‘Acting’ and singing were as one. He held the stage as strongly as I have ever seen – which means very strongly indeed – and his powers of seduction were as strong as I have ever seen – which means, as I said… His partnership with Esposito’s Leporello was both unique and yet typical of the dynamically drawn relationships between so many of the characters on stage. Leporello was clearly admiring, even envious of his master; their changing, yet not quite, of clothes and identities was almost endlessly absorbing its erotic, yet disconcerting charge. Esposito brought as wide a range of expressive means to his delivery of the text as any Leporello, Schrott included, I remember. Their farewell was truly shocking, Giovanni picking up his quivering servant from the floor, kissing him for several spellbinding seconds, then wiping his mouth clean on his sleeve and spitting contemptuously on the floor. It was time finally to accept the Commendatore’s invitation, issued with grave, deep musicality by the flawless Ain Anger.

 

I had seen Pavol Breslik as Don Ottavio before. There could have been no doubting the distinction of his performance in Berlin, under Barenboim, although neither artist was helped by the non-production of Peter Mussbach. Here, however, Breslik presented, in collaboration with the production, perhaps the most fascinating Ottavio I have seen – and no, that is not intended as faint praise. This was a smouldering counterpart to Giovanni, unable to keep his hands off Donna Anna, and frankly all over her during her second-act aria. Their pill-popping – he supplied the pills – opened up all manner of possibilities, not least given the frank sexuality of their, and particularly his, reactions. The beauty of Breslik’s tone, silken-smooth in his arias, added an almost Così fan tutte-like agony to the violent proceedings. In Albina Shagimuratova, we heard a Donna Anna of the old school: big-boned, yet infinitely subtle, her coloratura a thing of wonder. Combined with the uncertainty of her character’s development – again, most intriguingly so – this was again a performance both physically to savour and intellectually to relish.

 

So too was that the case with Dorothea Röschmann’s Donna Elvira. Her portrayal – Kimmig’s portrayal – would certainly not have pleased, at least initially, those for whom this is in large part a misogynistic work. (It seems to me that they misunderstand some, at least, of what is going on, but that is an argument for another time, and I am only too well aware that it is not necessarily a claim that I, as a man, should be advancing anything other than tentatively.) Downtrodden, yet beautifully sung, in the first act, she nevertheless came into her defiant own in the second, above all through the most traditionally operatic of means: sheer vocal splendour. What a ‘Mi tradì’ that was!

 

Eri Nakamura gave the finest performance I have heard from her as Zerlina, seemingly far more at home in Mozart than when I heard her at Covent Garden. This was a Zerlina who both knew and did not know what she was doing – as a character, of course, not as a performance. And finally, Brandon Cedel’s portrait in wounded, affronted, unconscious yet responsive masculinity proved quite a revelation: I do not think any Masetto has made me think so much about his role in the drama. Nor can I think, offhand, of any Masetto so dangerously attractive – again, like Ottavio, in some sense an aspirant Giovanni, but one still more incapable of being so. Morally, of course, that is to the character’s credit – but in this most ambiguous of operas, and in this most fruitfully ambiguous of productions, one was never quite sure.  

Le nozze di Figaro, Vienna State Opera, 27 November 2015

 

Images: Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Count Almaviva (Adam Plachetka)

 

Vienna State Opera

Count Almaviva – Adam Plachetka

Countess Almaviva – Véronique Gens
Susanna – Aida Garifullina
Figaro – Alessio Arduini
Cherubino – Elena Maximova
Marcellina – Ulrike Helzel
Don Basilio – Thomas Ebenstein
Don Curzio – Peter Jelosits
Don Bartolo – Dan Paul Dumitrescu
Antonio – Manuel Walser
Barbarina – Maria Nazarova

Jean-Louis Martinoty (director)

Hans Schavernoch (designs)
Sylvie de Segonzac (costumes)
Fabrice Kebour (lighting)

Chorus of the Vienna State Opera (chorus master: Thomas Lang)

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera
James Gaffigan (conductor)

 

Four weeks precisely before seeing this Marriage of Figaro in Vienna, I had seen the Royal Academy of Music production at the Hackney Empire. It might sound as if I am exaggerating for effect, but I can assure you that I am not; in almost every respect, the RAM performance was superior. We should not become hung up on matters of cultural ‘ownership’ – Mozart was not really ‘Austrian’ at all, whatever the tourist board might tell you – but that nevertheless gives one pause for thought. Although I said ‘in almost every respect’, other shortcomings were dwarfed by Jean-Louis Martinoty’s catastrophe of a production: at least as bad as, if not worse than, Barrie Kosky’s effort for the Komische Oper in Berlin, albeit in different ways. I had been going to ask why Figaro, so long a relatively ‘safe bet’ with respect to staging – relative, at least, to Don Giovanni – was having such a bad time of it now. (Janet Suzman’s work for that wonderful RAM staging was a noteworthy exception.) Then I learned that Martinoty’s production had actually been imported from the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Why? As French friends have since told me, it was bad enough then, in the 1990s. Is it not a little odd that the Vienna State Opera could not create its own new production, even if the import were of better stuff than this?

 

It is difficult to know where to start with Martinoty’s incoherent, joyless mess. I am not sure whether the director is attempting to be ‘traditional’ or something else. The costumes are ‘period’ of a sort, I suppose, but more akin to a Carry On film idea of the eighteenth century than something into which any thought has gone. I have no objection to a properly thought-out ‘period’ production; indeed, there will often be problems, not insurmountable but problems nevertheless, when a society of orders is jettisoned for something else. This just seemed, however, an excuse for opportunities for the mildest, least risqué of molestations. The politics of Mozart’s opera – even Da Ponte’s libretto, shorn of the music – are not those of Beaumarchais, but they are far from non-existent. Here, it seems, we have something that wants to be a bit of a farce, but cannot quite bring itself to do what is necessary.

 

Countess Almaviva (Véronique Gens)

 

 

The direction, moreover, veers between excessive activity – not quite hyperactivity: that might be too much hard work – and people haplessly standing around. A servant extra might walk in but to no apparent end and then – well, just walk out again. Meanwhile, someone else will be in entirely the wrong place, making a nonsense – and certainly not in a questioning, let alone deconstructionist way – of libretto, score, logic, anything really. Something appears, for instance a kneeler for the Countess in front of one of the many pictures (more on which soon, this from the Crucifixion), has one think it might actually have something to say, then no sooner has she knelt down, she gets back up and nothing more is said or done with it. The prospect of the Countess seeking her salvation in the Church is an intriguing one, but it is certainly not explored here.

 

Perhaps the worst of Martinoty’s many lapses – he manages somehow to combine the reactionary qualities and general intellectual vacuity of Franco Zeffirelli with the downright incompetence in stagecraft of Katharina Wagner – lies with his ‘treatment’ of Cherubino and the chair during the first act. He is not there. The Count reveals all, or rather does not, because he cannot. A little while later, once music and words have moved on, someone else – Don Basilio, I think – finds him in what I think might have been a linen chest. We see nothing for a while, owing to its placing on stage, and then eventually Cherubino steps out, long after we, or even the characters onstage, have ceased to care. If this were an attempt to play with, even to confound, expectation, it fell flatter than a pancake.

 

Then there are the weird stage designs. Well, the paintings: there is little else on which to comment. Lots of them, randomly assembled, often but not always still lives, come and go. At random points, they come down from the ceiling; at random points, they go back up. They either bear no discernible relation to the action, or add nothing to it. Why on earth, for instance, is a selection of cheeses suddenly brought before us at the beginning of the fourth act, and why does it equally suddenly disappear? Answers on a Pythonesque postcard, please.

 

Enough! I do not intend to dwell on the musical performances, since they were not given a chance. However, I must say something. It is difficult to know what to say about James Gaffigan; maybe he was hamstrung by the staging. There was nothing especially wrong with his direction of the orchestra, which at its best could sound gorgeous, but had a surprising tendency towards thinness at times. I could not see the pit, but suspect that, in a house of this size, a few more strings would not have gone amiss. There was a tendency towards (over-)swift tempi, but less than we have had to endure from much of the ‘authenticke’ brigade. He made the same gross miscalculation I recall Sir Charles Mackerras – a bewilderingly overrated Mozart conductor – making when Susanna emerged from the cupboard, needless to say a bit late, in the second act. No wonder here: instead an absurdly fast tempo, doubtless born of ‘performance practice’ dogma, which made it sound as if a horse were released to canter around the paddock.

Susanna (Aida Garifullina) and Figaro
(Alessio Arduini)

 

 

The finest vocal performance came from Adam Plachetka as the Count: all heading, it seemed, towards the emotional turmoil and fury of his third-act aria, and all flowing from that thereafter. As alert as the production would permit to his character and its development, this was something one could, in the circumstances, still just about savour. Véronique Gens sang beautifully as the Countess but her voice sometimes seemed a little small for the house. I did not especially care for the ornamentation of her third-act aria, but tastes differ in that respect; if it is to be done, then I doubt it could have been done better than here. Aida Garifullina and Alessio Arduini were an attractive servant pair: visually and often vocally, but they struggled, again perhaps in part from relative smallness of voice, but above all on account of the production, to burn their characters into our affection. Arduini's easy way with the text, though, was indicative of something more, which would doubtless have been more fully realised in another situation. We know Figaro and Susanna, and all the rest so well: none of them fully came into being on this occasion. Elena Maximova and Ulrike Helzel both seemed at times ill at ease with the vocal demands placed upon them; Dan Paul Dumitrescu was an excessively bluff Don Bartolo. However, with a staging such as this, the singers should not necessarily be held responsible.