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?

 

Edward II, Deutsche Oper, 9 March 2017

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Edward II (Michael Nagy) and Piers de Gaveston (Ladislav Elgr)

Edward II – Michael Nagy

Isabella – Agneta Eichenholz
Piers de Gaveston – Ladislav Elgr
Roger Mortimer – Andrew Harris
Walter Langton, Bishop of Coventry – Burkhard Ulrich
Lightborn – James Kryshak
Angel – Jarrett Ott
Soldiers, Councillors, Guards, Tourguides, etc. – Markus Brück, Gideon Poppe
Spencer Jr – Gieorgij Puchalski
Prince Edward – Ben Kleiner

Christof Loy (director)

Annette Kurz (set designs)
Klaus Bruns (costumes)
Stefan Bolliger (lighting)
Yvonne Gebauer, Dorothea Hartmann (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: Raymond Hughes)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Thomas Søndergård (conductor)

Walter Langton, Bishop of Coventry (Burkhard Ulrich) and the crowd

Andrea Lorenzo Scartazzini’s new music theatre piece – ‘Musiktheater in zehn Szenen,’ although I am unsure in what sense it is not an opera as conventionally understood – seems to have generated quite some controversy. I have avoided reading the offending article or indeed anything else until seeing this, but I hear that one journalist has been accused of homophobia in the insults she has hurled at the work. Let us leave that on one side – I can hardly do otherwise, not having read any of the commentary – and attend to Edward II on its own terms, or what I take them to be.

Foreground: Spencer Jr (Gieorgij Puchalski), Roger Mortimer (Andrew Harris), Gaveston, Edward 

 

It turns out to be one of those difficult things to write about: perfectly serviceable as an opera, competently constructed, doing pretty much everything one would expect it to and almost nothing one would not expect. The work’s ten scenes do not overstay their welcome; the pacing seems just about right. There is a very traditional operatic and more broadly dramatic contrast between the public and private: think of Schiller, or the Petrarchan AMOR/ROMA dilemma, although here, not unreasonably, one never has any doubt that King Edward will choose love and ‘sodomite’ – a word endlessly repeated – lifestyle over matters of state. A vicious crowd, stirred up by hypocritical clergyman, bays for sodomite blood. The Queen moves – perhaps a little quickly, but such is opera – from sympathetic, lonely figure to vicious, vengeful, murderess. There is, moreover, a genuine sense of ‘this could be any family’, the young Prince Edward torn between his two self-obsessed parents. Scartazzini’s score follows the action, in what sounds on a first hearing (with all the caveats that must imply) like a generic not-quite-contemporary modernism. It screams when one would expect it to, likewise creates a hushed atmosphere when one would expect; it has structural impetus of its own within scenes.

 

And yet, there is little that adds up to anything more than that, or at least it did not for me. We can leave aside the playing fast and loose with history and with sources: that is what dramatists do. However, the framing devices of librettist, Thomas Jonigk, come across as forced, and indeed almost haplessly agitprop. Attempts, for instance in comments by the Angel, to present knowingly anachronistic references to other pertinent historical events and figures, are a bit embarrassing, likewise the historical tour’s visitation of Edward’s cell at the close. The comparison between wronged Jews and sodomites is not pursued in any depth, and merely seems glib. It is, moreover, only really at the close – and perhaps this is deliberate, but if so, it again needs better framing – that Edward as a character comes into focus; everyone else, despite extremely strong performances, remains something of a caricature. Derek Jarman, let alone Christopher Marlowe, did this, or something akin to this, so much better. Scartazzini never seems to lead the action, to have the orchestra partake in it, engender it, rather than predictably mirror the events on stage. His vocal lines, such as they are, hold little or no interest of their own; I could not help but wonder whether he would have been better off writing a symphonic poem or equivalent on the subject.

Edward and Gaveston

 

The sad conclusion I ended up drawing was that this opera’s creators seem to have thought it enough to write a gay opera. Perhaps it is; we are not exactly blessed with a huge number of examples, at least overtly, proudly so. (Subtexts, however close to the surface, are another matter.) Overall, though, it feels too much like box-ticking, too little like something that might have arisen from genuine artistic necessity. Imagine what might have been done in an opera that placed queer experience at its complex heart, doing something akin to what Nono did for women’s revolutionary experience in Al gran sole carico d’amore. There will, I hope, be other opportunities – and, to be fair, there is an abundance of mediocre, or worse, operas dealing with heterosexual themes.

Isabella (Agneta Eichenholz) and Prince Edward (Ben Kleiner)

 

That said, the Deutsche Oper deserves only praise for the commitment it has shown, both in staging the new work and, still more, doing so in performances of such quality. Its orchestra and chorus, the latterly brilliantly trained by Raymond Hughes, played under Thomas Søndergård with a confidence that suggested this might have been a repertory work. Balance, weight, incisiveness, tenderness: all those qualities and more were present in the pit; on stage, one could hardly have asked for more from the chorus, director Christof Loy’s blocking of the partly differentiated mass a joy in itself to behold. Indeed, Loy’s work in general – I speak as someone who has been far from a constant fan of his productions – deserves great credit, essentially presenting the opera as a somewhat abstracted version of classic grand opera, with slightly alienated invasions from without. The ‘family values’ crowd was an obvious ploy, replete with placards from any reactionary demonstration one might care to look at, but it made its (agitprop) point well enough.

Angel (Jarrett Ott), Edward, and Spencer Jr

 

Michael Nagy drew one in more than one had any right to expect in a visually torn, vocally secure performance of the title role. As the Angel only the King could see, Jarrett Ott offered all the strength and comfort Edward might ever have asked: a rock in a vicious world indeed. Ladislav Elgr, seen for about ninety per cent of his time on stage merely in well-fitted white vest and briefs, exhibited as the favourite, Gaveston, a near-ideal marriage of fun, born of social desperation no doubt, and magnetism. Agneta Eichenholz made the most of that abrupt transition from wronged woman to monster in a powerful assumption of the role of Isabella. The darkness of her relationship to Andrew Harris’s unreconstructedly masculine Mortimer could only really be hinted at, given the confines of the work, but hinted at it certainly was. There was a good deal of camp humour to be had from the recurring double act – from thirteenth-century soldiers guardedly admitting their sodomite tendencies to modern tour-guides – of Philip Jekal and Gideon Poppe. The Mime-like nastiness, with an undoubtedly chilling Nazi allusion of just following orders, of Edward’s murderer-with-abortionist’s-bag, Lightborn, was splendidly portrayed by James Kryshak. Ben Kleiner’s treble could hardly be faulted as the young prince; he knew how to deport himself on stage too. And last but not least, Gieorgij Puchalski’s performance in the non-speaking role as Spencer Junior, the new favourite risen from the ashes of the old, showed just what the suggestiveness and sheer physicality of a dancer in a vocal work can achieve.

 

If the above tends too much towards a list, that is part of my point. These were all, without exception, fine performances indeed; they did all they could with a work that could have been much worse, but ought to have been much better.

 

Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Glyndebourne Tour, 15 October 2015

Glyndebourne Opera House

Belmonte – Ben Bliss

Osmin – Clive Bayley
Pedrillo – James Kryshak
Pasha Selim – Franck Saurel
Konstanze – Ana Maria Labin
Blonde – Rebecca Nelsen

Sir David McVicar (director)

Ian Rutherford (revival director)
Vicki Mortimer (designs)
Andrew George, Colm Seery (choreography)
Paule Constable, David Mannion (lighting)

The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)

Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra

Christoph Altstaedt (conductor)

 

Strong musical values were in evidence at Glyndebourne’s ready-to-tour Entführung aus dem Serail. A generally young cast sang – and acted – well, giving rise to the not unfamiliar thought from this company that these are names we shall see and hear again. I found Ben Bliss’s Belmonte a little stiff to start with, but he seemed more in his stage element as time went on, revealing a lyric tenor of considerable beauty and sensitivity, both verbal and musical (a false opposition, I know). His third-act duet with Ana Maria Labin’s Konstanze was quite ravishing of tone. Labin’s performance was excellent throughout, Mozart’s coloratura holding no fears for her, but just as important, put to musical and dramatic use. Cleanness and keenness of delivery were as one.

 

The same could be said of their servants, Pedrillo and Blonde. Blondes rarely disappoint; that, however, is no reason not to acknowledge the spirited performance of Rebecca Nelsen, both in vocal and stage terms. I certainly should not wish to get on the wrong side of her. James Kryshak offered a splendidly eager, puppyish performance as Pedrillo. Again, vocal beauty and dramatic purpose were not to be rent asunder. The pair showed excellent chemistry too.

 

Clive Bayley trod Osmin’s line between comedy and a touch of pathos with consummate skill, although the production (more on which soon) did not necessarily help in that respect. Franck Saurel seemed a good actor to me, especially during the rare moments at which he toned things down; however, this Bassa Selim spent far too much of his time shouting and screaming tones of near-hysteria. He may have been following orders, since there was sensitivity to be seen and heard, especially at the end. A pity, though.

 

The Glyndebourne Tour Orchestra under Christoph Altstaedt offered warm, stylish playing: far rarer nowadays than it should be in Mozart. There were no ‘period’ grotesqueries, although a few more strings would not have gone amiss. (Karl Böhm’s Staatskapelle Dresden will surely always remain the model here.) Still, Altstaedt’s tempi and balances were well considered – well considered enough for one barely to notice them. Mozart’s all-encompassing Shakespearean dramatic sympathies were much in evidence, then, to the ears.

 

If you sensed a ‘but’ coming, you were, I am afraid, right to do so. David McVicar’s production, here revived by Ian Rutherford, proves a considerable disappointment. Rarely does it get in the way of the musical performance – to be fair, something not necessarily to be taken for granted – yet, by the same token, it seems to have little or nothing to say. I should be tempted to say McVicar was still languishing in his Zeffirelli period, save for the fact that it now seems too long to be a mere period. Whatever has happened to him is a great pity, since he used to be capable of interesting, theatrically alert productions, his ENO Turn of the Screw a case in point. Now it is ‘light entertainment’, at least for some, to the near-exclusion of anything else, the Royal Opera Trojans a particular low point. Here there is a vague updating to the time of composition, perhaps to underline the Pasha’s status as an Enlightened Despot, but ultimately to precious little effect. One has the distinct impression that it might just have been because the director liked eighteenth-century costumes better than those from a somewhat earlier period.

 

At any rate, we seem to be firmly in the realm of ‘costume drama’, as opposed to putting the history to dramatic work. Orientalism, as in that Trojans production, is reproduced, even heightened, rather than interrogated. If this is not a gift of a work in which to do just that, then I really do not know what is. What should we think of the ruler’s self-revelation as better than his Western charges? And how is it compromised by the fact that he is, by origin, a Christian himself, a ‘renegade’? What of the Janissary music; is it merely ‘pretty’, local colour? If so, does that not in itself raise questions? And what of all those darkly erotic, sado-masochistic suggestions arising from torture and the eagerness with which it is suggested?

 

Nothing, so far as I could discern, on any of those questions or many others. I could only long for what I imagine Calixto Bieito must have made of the work in Berlin. Instead, we have an extravagant barrage of extra actors, children included, and some jarring ‘low humour’. The Mozart family’s correspondence had a celebrated scatological element, but I am not sure that that translates into Osmin belching and farting. One need not go so far as, and would clearly be unwise to imitate, Stefan Herheim’s brilliant Salzburg production – the most recent I had seen, as long ago as 2006, prior to this – in completely reimagining the work as a profound meditation on sexual politics. If the Orientalism is going to remain, though, something needs saying about it – and to it.