Festival d’Aix-en-Provence (3) – ‘Songs and Fragments’: Eight Songs for a Mad King and Kafka-Fragmente, 10 July 2024

Théâtre du Jeu de Paume

Man – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Woman – Anna Prohaska
Violinist – Patricia Kopatchinskaja

Director – Barrie Kosky

Design and lighting – Urs Schönebaum  

Ensemble Intercontemporain

Pierre Bleuse (conductor)

Images: Festival d'Aix-en-Provence 2024 © Monika Rittershaus

Virtuosity of the highest degree, entirely at the service of musical drama, characterised this Aix production under Barrie Kosky’s direction. Peter Maxwell Davies’s Eight Songs for a Mad King and György Kurtág’s Kafka-Fragmente formed a staged double bill, given without a break, at that eighteenth-century jewel among theatres, the Théâtre du Jeu de Paume. The ghost of Schoenberg’s Pierrot lunaire haunted proceedings, audibly in the Davies’s music theatre monodrama, written for the composer’s own, Schoenberg-inspired Fires of London (here, Schoenberg’s ensemble plus percussion), and more scenically in the Kurtág fragments, not of course intended to be staged, but here given an intriguing new slant through the mediation of expressionist cabaret.   

Johannes Martin Kränzle’s assumption of the mad king – referred to in the cast list simply as ‘Un homme’, though it is of course George III – was something never to be forgotten. Quite how much was his, how much was Kosky’s, we shall never know—and why should we particular care? Theatre is collaborative, even in what might seem to be a one-man-show. With a single spotlight, a single unsparing spotlight, this poor (rich) man, clad only in sagging underpants, bared his soul to the birds, the audience, and indeed the musicians of the Ensemble Intercontemporain, incisively conducted by Pierre Bleuse, who in turn offered us their own, related musical tour of whimsy, parody, and brutal violence. From an early promenade, through the haunting of an imaginary yet ever-so-real queen ‘Esther’, via the king’s beloved Handel – with biting irony, ‘Comfort ye…’, to the final, shocking smashing of the violin, this was a psychological study, which in a sense revealed nothing other than itself, and thus in another sense proved all the more revealing. Through the countless ways he marshalled his voice and his entire body, Kränzle touched, amused, and horrified us. It was gripping, concentrated theatre, which one might well have wished to experience again, but knew one could not, even if the attempt had immediately been made. 

Anna Prohaska and Patricia Kopatchinskaja, minus the EIC, were our guides for Kurtág’s extraordinary set of miniatures. The violin provided, as it were the bridge: destroyed and now resurrected as a one-woman orchestra who was also a protagonist—and by her double-companion. Equality here, between two more consummate musicians and communicators seemed, by virtue of staging and performance, the former still astutely straightforward yet minutely observed, to be both immediately, immanently manifest and yet also maintained through ever-shifting dramatic power relationships: one conducting the other, one pulling the other’s strings, one inciting and consoling, and so on. Where Davies’s expressionist nightmare had stunned us into submission, here a different ghost of Pierrot – perhaps surprisingly given the more ‘abstract’ nature of the work – proved more founded in re-gendered harlequin character. We turned inwards, Kurtág’s Webern-like miniatures commanding and receiving absolute concentration, in more than one sense. Prohaska’s spellbinding performance – imagine having to sing that by heart, and engage in minutely planned physical performance too – was impossible to dissociate from Kopatchinskaja’s. The two musicians seemed almost to emerge as two emanations of the same soul. A response to their male counterpart in the first half, or something subtly yet, in that subtlety, defiantly different? Why choose? Again, there was so much one could not possibly have taken in, which cried out for another chance to do so, yet which was tantalisingly lost in the passage of concentrated time. Above all, though, and this may be the ultimate ‘lesson’, we learned a little better to listen to one another.

Munich Opera Festival (1) - Così fan tutte, 17 July 2023

Nationaltheater

Fiordiligi – Louise Alder
Dorabella – Avery Amereau
Guglielmo/Gulielmo – Konstantin Krimmel
Ferrando – Sebastian Kohlhepp/Jonas Hacker
Despina – Sandrine Piau
Don Alfonso – Johannes Martin Kränzle

Benedict Andrews (director)
Magda Willi (set designs)
Victoria Behr (costumes)
Mark Van Denesse (lighting)
Katja Leclerc (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Kamila Akhmedjanova)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

 

Images: ©Wilfried Hösl
Don Alfonso (Johannes Martin Kränzle), Despina (Sandrine Piau)

  

It is refreshing to find a Così fan tutte that takes the very greatest of Mozart and Da Ponte’s three masterpieces (for the most part) seriously. The amount of nonsense I have seen and heard said of it at least matches that for Don Giovanni. That the nonsense may be genuinely ‘felt’ is neither here nor there, we are not supposed to say that; uninformed misunderstanding is just that, whether it concern an artwork, politics, or particle physics.

Benedict Andrews’s production takes its lead, as probably must any serious attempt, from the work’s subtitle, La scuola degli amanti (‘The School for Lovers’). It opens with Don Alfonso in a black mask – contemporary fetish rather than classic Venetian (or Neapolitan) – taking candid Polaroid snaps of Despina. His lair has all the anonymity of a hotel room, though it may be some similarly liminal space: an empty office or flat, for instance—empty, that is, save for the mattress. He is no pimp, though, at least not conventionally. It appears to be as much a game, perhaps instruction, as anything else, for he does as he seems to have promised, destroying the evidence. When Gulielmo (the spelling used here) and Ferrando arrive, full of young, male confidence and concomitant naïveté, they fool around with Alfonso’s toys, but it is he who will instruct them. According to a programme interview with Andrews and music director Vladimir Jurowski, the two have their ‘own fantasy concerning him to develop: Don Alfonso therein is Don Giovanni’s elder brother, who however never had the sex appeal and courage of his younger brother.’ I only read Jurowski’s claim afterwards, so it played no role in my understanding of what I saw; nor should it have done, since it does not seem to be presented onstage. It is perhaps, though, worth mentioning out of interest, and to show that, quite rightly, both Andrews and Jurowski understand Così as following on from Don Giovanni. For what it is worth, I do not think Don Alfonso ‘needs’, at least on a tactical level, to be so irresistible as Don Giovanni; he has other strengths, is in some respects subtler, and is a survivor. But it is true: he is more limited, and probably must be, in order that the lovers may grow. 

Andrews and his ingenious Alfonso, Johannes Martin Kränzle, take the lovers through the requisite trials. We are not, after all, so far away from Die Zauberflöte, if heading in the opposite direction, as many might think. (At the very least, we might do well to consider ‘love’ in the latter work through the former’s prism, rather as Wagner tells us we must Die Meistersinger via Tristan’s.) They happen more or less as they should, though sometimes with a degree of viewing that is perhaps important to the framing, though could probably be left aside in the name of clarity and elimination of narrative confusion. That may, of course, not be the priority, but there is a danger, intriguingly if somewhat frustratingly also apparent in the musical direction of pushing the work beyond an ideal minimum of coherence—at least for me.

Some devices arguably work better than others. (The double entendre was not initially intended, yet seems apt enough to welcome to the show.) Sudden appearance of something esembling an underground walkway, replete with direct yet unenlightening graffiti such as ‘TITS’ and ‘My penis is huge’, added little; it quickly disappeared. An inflatable, Disney-like castle, first seen in miniature, then blown up undercutting (unnecessarily?) Ferrando’s ‘Un’aura amoroso’, is subsequently restored to suggest gateway orifices and turret protusions. That sort of works, and has a winning, Alfonso-like cynicism to it, although Andrews’s inability to go beyond Alfonso is perhaps a problem. Indeed, I suggest ‘unnecessarily’ because where Andrews for me unquestionably errs is in insistence that the ‘love’ on offer here must only be erotic, or perhaps better in a delimitation of the ‘erotic’ that the Christianity of both Mozart and Da Ponte – something neither Andrews nor Jurowski seems to accept – would always rightly deny. Across Europe and beyond, even in France, not only religion but the Church stood at the very heart of the Enlightenment. 

Gulielmo (Konstantin Krimmel), Fiordiligi (Louise Alder), Don Alfonso

That Andrews offers a garden – an open goal so often missed by directors – is a definite advantage; for me, it recalled, if without the cruel yet magical fantasy, the sadomasochistic delights of Hans Neunefels’s Salzburg production in 2000 (the first I saw). Pathways, petals, and the liberation of being outside – the ‘Zephyrs’ libretto and score present so eloquently and enticingly included – deserve better than the casual omission they often suffer. 

The crucial thing about teaching, of course, is that good pupils will go beyond their teachers. The violent anger Gulielmo and Ferrando show towards Fiordiligi and Dorabella at the close is shocking for all manner of reasons, starting with the fact that the wager was theirs, not their lovers’. This extremely powerful moment, when one wants to avert one’s eyes yet cannot, indeed should not, will linger long in the mind. But it is, of course, through musical means, through Mozart, that the lovers surpass their instructor. Don Alfonso, who arguably has least musical character of his own – partly a reflection on the singer for whom Mozart wrote, but also an opportunity, not least to go beyond Da Ponte – takes them forward yet could never comprehend what they and we have learned or, at least, been confronted with. That this ultimate truth is lacking in the staging is no bad thing, though the programme interview does not necessarily suggest awareness of it, for it is arguably something to be musically rather than scenically realised. (I see no reason why it should not be both, and indeed every reason given the musical inattentiveness of most audiences why it should, but that is a slightly different matter.) There were some strange textual choices, but no version is forever; it is not as if we shall never have chance to hear another Così.

Don Alfonso, Dorabella (Avery Amereau)

 

What, then, of Jurowski? I heard him conduct relatively little Mozart in London, a little more Haydn, so I had no particular preconceptions. There is, on this evidence, no doubting the thoughtfulness of his approach. Nothing is taken for granted; everything has clearly been considered, perhaps on occasion a little too considered. (Am I asking the impossible? Utter spontaneity, whilst taking the work as seriously as it deserves? Perhaps, but that is part, at least, of the Mozartian riddle.) There were some strange textual choices, but no version is forever; it is not as if we shall never have chance to hear another Così. Tempi were varied: some a little odd to my ears: I have never heard ‘Soave sia il vento’ taken anything like so quickly. Yet, even when in a hurry – and there was a good amount of lingering too – Jurowski did not harry. It was, perhaps, a little like what Nikolaus Harnoncourt might have managed, had he had a better sense of harmonic rhythm. There was fussiness, for instance in some strange tailing off of pieces, but there remained a sense of the greater whole, and also a delight in instrumental colour, especially from the woodwind. The use of period trumpets and drums is something I recall from his LPO Haydn; here, he made a better case for it than there, though it is neither something I like nor understand. 

Far more troubling, I am afraid, was the hopelessly exhibitionist continuo playing. One might have hoped this fad had reached its ne plus ultra with René Jacobs, but it seems alas we still have some way to go. Here the fortepianist – harpsichordists generally seem more sparing – never missed an opportunity to signal his presence. The odd witty or even would-be-witty aside is fine, but taking us into the realm of ‘easy listening’, with frankly inappropriate and anything but ‘period’ harmonies, is rather less so. It has nothing to do with Mozart; this is not where his music ‘leads’. And it is not what continuo playing is for. Matters were not helped through much of the performance by pervasive electronic interference: perhaps from a hearing aid. Doubtless the person concerned had no idea, but it made for very difficult listening at times. Mozart may or may not lead to Stockhausen, but the concept would need to be more fully realised. 

An excellent cast did everything that was asked for it and more. Louise Alder’s Fiordiligi, spun from finest Egyptian cotton, was equally possessed of due heft and spirt. That her second-act aria suffered both from that interference and from something less forgivable, premature applause, did not detract from her achievement. Avery Amereau made for a splendid counterpart as Dorabella, properly different in character and very much an enthusiast once fully enrolled in Don Alfonso’s ‘school’. I doubt anyone has ever had to do quite what she did whilst singing ‘È amore un ladroncello’, but she graduated with flying (orgasmic) colours. Konstantin Krimmel’s Gulielmo was dark, dangerous, even impetuous, yet always fully in vocal control. Sebastian Kohlhepp was unwell, though one would never have known from his excellent first-act performance; after the interval, though, he continued to act, whilst ensemble member Jonas Hacker put on an equally excellent vocal performance, splendidly at ease with Da Ponte as well as Mozart, from the wings. Sandrine Piau’s knowing, fun-loving, easily intelligent Despina will surely have been loved by all. And as master of ceremonies, Kränzle brought a typical match of musical and dramatic intelligence to his role. It was his school, after all: we followed his lead and felt a properly Mozartian twinge of regret when he was no longer required.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 10 August 2019

Festspielhaus

Hans Sachs – Michael Volle

Veit Pogner – Günther Groissböck

Kunz Vogelgsang – Tansel Akzeybek

Konrad Nachtigall – Armin Kolarczyk

Sixtus Beckmesser – Johannes Martin Kränzle

Fritz Kothner – Daniel Schmutzhard

Balthasar Zorn – Paul Kaufmann

Ulrich Eißlinger – Christopher Kaplan

Augustin Moser – Stefan Heibach

Hermann Ortel – Raimund Nolte

Hans Schwarz – Andreas Hörl

Hans Foltz – Timo Riihonen

Walther von Stolzing – Klaus Florian Vogt

David – Daniel Behle

Eva – Camilla Nylund

Magdalena – Wiebke Lehmkuhl

Night Watchman – Wilhelm Schwinghammer

Helga Beckmesser (Harpist) – Ruth-Alice Marino

Barrie Kosky (director)

Rebecca Ringst (set designs)

Klaus Bruns (costumes)

Franck Evin (lighting)

Regine Freise (video)

Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

As a Wagner scholar, one becomes wearily accustomed to the most arrant nonsense being spoken and written about him and his work. The so-called ‘popular imagination’ – usually nothing of the sort, instead a carefully manufactured commercial view – will stop at literally nothing in its hunt for grievances. The actual problems Wagner’s work presents us with are far more important, far more interesting, but no matter. Perhaps worst of all is the pseudo-– very pseudo- – ‘literature’ that has been the bane of discourse concerning Wagner since at least the 1850s. It sells books, makes its way into newspapers; alas, it now makes its way onstage too. If only Barrie Kosky had been given a Wagner reading list by someone who knew what (s)he was talking about. Presumably his dramaturge, Ulrich Lenz, should bear some responsibility here; if his programme note is anything to go by, he surely does. Moreover, when we reach Kosky’s own note, we read the following extravagant claim, swiftly moving from the tendentious to the Ken-Russell-fantastical: ‘Wagner transforms medieval blood libel and reinvents it into 19^th[-]century music libel. Jews used to drink the blood of Christian children but now they drink the blood of German culture. And for this crime, for this act of “Crimes against Culture”, Beckmesser must be expelled from Nuremberg. Rather like those little Jewish figures in the anti-Semitic 1930’s [sic] board game “Juden raus!”’ 

Where to start? Where does Wagner say that Beckmesser is expelled from Nuremberg? Wagner’s stage direction reads ‘Er [Beckmesser] stürzt wütend fort und verliert sich unter dem Volke.’  He dashes off in fury, then, and disappears into the crowd. He has been humiliated, yes, in a fashion that may contain disturbing traces of anti-Semitism but which ultimately owes more to Shakespeare’s Malvolio and to Wagner’s earlier comedic villain in Das Liebesverbot: Friedrich, hypocritical German viceroy of Sicily, permitted likewise to lose himself during that work’s carnival finale. He has certainly not been expelled, let alone on the grounds of drinking blood, metaphorical or otherwise. No, let us not bother: it is not worth it. No one ever listens; it is always easier – ironically, as in the case of anti-Semitism, Wagner’s own certainly included – to blame the ‘other’, in this case a manufactured Wagner of lies, half-truths, and the odd fact taken out of context. In any case, whatever the misunderstandings – let us try to be charitable here – presented in such talk, it is always possible that something dramatically engaging might result.

Does it? Alas not. Familiarity may have blunted somewhat the offence of this Meistersinger (first reviewed here) onstage, but that is the best one can say for it. Whether that offence spring from ignorance or dishonesty is arguably beside the point. So, however, are the production and its underlying ideology. Moreover, it remains irredeemably glib, surely a very odd standpoint if one actually believes the things Kosky claims to, punctuated as it is by reams of slapstick and trademark silly dances. (And no, Chaplin is not a helpful comparison here: not even slightly.) Still, notwithstanding a few boos for Kosky on a surprise curtain call, most of the audience seemed to love the ‘entertainment’ placed before it. Interpolation of all-too-predictable campery will usually elicit wild applause from a good few. Doubtless others will flatter themselves that they were made to think. I doubt, though, that they could tell us how.

Once more, then to Wahnfried. It is not an original idea, but many things are not. What is ‘original’ – some might prefer ‘disingenuous’, ‘misleading’, or perhaps something stronger – is to present Die Meistersinger as somehow having originated there, in 1873, as part of an invented incident from Wagner’s life when he supposedly bullied Hermann Levi into kneeling and genuflecting. Wagner sometimes treated Levi appallingly, quite inexcusably; sometimes he treated him otherwise. What on earth that has to do with Die Meistersinger I do not know, given that he completed it in 1867. So all the alleged documentary evidence beamed onstage – including a temperature for the day, which some in the audience found side-splittingly hilarious – is untrue. It is not quite presented as ‘true’, of course, or at least it might be argued that it is not; it is difficult, however, to avoid the implication that it is so even then, still less when the production later becomes explicitly an attempt to put Wagner in the dock, on trial. No evidence for permitted: only (largely) manufactured evidence against.

A weird play of confused, confusing identities ensue, in which not only does Wagner become both Hans Sachs and Walther – in a sense, of course, that is fair enough, if a little restricting – but Liszt becomes Pogner, giving away his daughter, Cosima/Eva. Why, then, is Levi/Beckmesser – yes, I am afraid so – also wooing Cosima? Hans von Bülow, maybe, even Nietzsche, but Levi? The Masters have to be made to loathe Beckmesser from the start, although the words and music tell us quite differently. Why? Because, in the typical circularity of so much writing on Wagner and anti-Semitism, Beckmesser is an unattractive character, doing unattractive things, and therefore must be… well, you know the rest. He therefore ends up the victim of a pogrom at the close of the second act, replete with gigantic, horrifying, Völkische Beobachter caricature of a Jew. None of it makes any sense, because none of it ever seems either to have been thought through or properly prepared. At the moment any difficult question arises, one can always have another silly dance, or zoom in on a Nuremberg courtroom in, you guessed it, 1945. Even better, do both. Why choose?

Goodness only knows who ‘Helga Beckmesser’, onstage harpist for Beckmesser’s attempted rendition of the Prize Song, is supposed to be. She can hardly be his wife, given that he is attempting to woo Eva, or Cosima, or whomever the poor woman is supposed to be; unless, that is, Beckmesser nurses aspirations to bigamy, which seems an eccentric way to work towards his rehabilitation. ‘Helga’ seems actually to be dressed like Helga from the 1980s BBC sitcom, ’Allo, ’Allo! but perhaps that is just a coincidence. I hope it is, at any rate. At least much of the second act is played out with greater theatrical awareness than last time, Wahnfried clutter providing a backdrop, rather than Sachs and Beckmesser simply sitting in a green space inside a courtroom. That is a definite improvement, but the concept, if we may call it that, remains beyond questionable.

Musically, there was much to admire. Philippe Jordan’s conducting was fluent and inobtrusive (the opposite of the production, one might say). He handled the massive orchestral and choral forces with great skill; they responded with all the excellence one should expect from Bayreuth. This was probably the best Wagner I have heard from him, perhaps because he responded so keenly to the affinities with Mozart. I was put in mind of Georg Solti, shortly before his death, speaking of recognition that much in this work should be conducted as if it were Così fan tutte. Michael Volle’s Sachs was as magisterial as ever: word, tone, and gesture an object lesson to all. So too, in different vein, was Johannes Martin Kränzle’s keenly observed Beckmesser. Their chemistry was a wonder to behold. Klaus Florian Vogt’s assured Walther and Camilla Nylund’s lively Eva were beautifully complemented by similarly excellent, yet contrasting, performances from Daniel Behle as David and Wiebke Lehmkuhl as Magdalena. The relationship between the two couples might justly have been described, in line with Jordan’s conducting, as Mozartian. Günther Groissböck’s Pogner was similar impressive, the guild at whose head he stood cast from commendable depth.

As for the production, Wagner and his works will survive; they survive worse most days. It does not follow that they should have to.

Così fan tutte, Royal Opera, 22 September 2016

Royal Opera House

Dorabella (Angela Brower) and Fiordiligi (Corinne Winters)
Images: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

Ferrando – Daniel Behle

Guglielmo – Alessio Arduini
Don Alfonso – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Fiordiligi – Corinne Winters
Dorabella – Angela Brower
Despina – Sabina Puértolas
 

Jan Philipp Gloger (director)

Ben Baur (set designs)
Karin Jud (costumes)
Bernd Purkrabek (lighting)
Katharina John (dramaturgy)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

Dorabella, Ferrando (Daniel Behle), Guglielmo (Alessio Arduini), and Fiordiligi

At last: something at the Royal Opera to replace Jonathan Miller’s slapstick onslaught on Così fan tutte, not only the most sophisticated, most profound of Mozart’s operas, but the most sophisticated, most profound opera of all. (At least, that is how I feel at the moment.) It broke my heart to hear Colin Davis, conducting the greatest musical performances of the work (2007 and 2012) I have ever heard and am ever likely to hear, undermined at every juncture by Miller’s antics. Alas, the good news is not unmixed. It rarely is, of course; however, once again, we see and hear a split between music and production: not, I think, a productive mutual questioning, but just a dissociation. The fault, I am sorry to say, lay squarely with the production, although it was compounded by different – both valid, but undeniably different – conceptions of the work from conductor and singers. I suspect that some issues will be resolved as the run proceeds, but it is difficult to imagine that they all will be, especially when it comes to Jan Philipp Gloger’s production – although, paradoxically, I suspect that the lively young cast might even salvage something from that once the director is out of the way.

 

My sole previous encounter with Gloger’s work had been at Bayreuth. A weak irrelevant Flying Dutchman did not augur well, but everyone deserves a second chance. Even in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, I found ‘too many instances where the action, especially for a relatively small theatre, was on too small a scale properly to understand, or was simply, at least to me, obscure. I had the sense that there was a better production waiting to break out.’ Much the same might be said about this Così fan tutte, save that, in a larger theatre, especially from the Amphitheatre, some of the problems of scale are amplified. In both productions, one has a sense of a good idea or two, anything but original, indeed seen in many other stagings of the work in question, obscured by both a director who thinks his production is far cleverer than it actually is, and by a certain lack of basic theatrical craft, the designs, impressive though they may be, being made in the absence of anything else, to do, or to try to do, far too much of the work for themselves.

 

The production begins, reasonably enough, if in wearisomely clichéd fashion, with an attempt to set up its metatheatrical stance. During the Overture, a cast in ‘period’ dress – presumably a ‘traditional’ production in our here and now – takes its bows in affected style. There is an element of welcome surprise when our real cast, apparently members of the audience, rushes into the Stalls in fashionable, contemporary – to us – dress, and replaces that on stage. From the audience reaction, anyone would have thought such an idea had never been attempted before, whether in Così or anything else. Members of the audience – one of the worst-behaved, alas, I can recall – seemed to find that all utterly hilarious, in well-nigh uncontrollable laughter because some people walked through the stalls of a theatre whilst others were bowing on stage. They need, I think, to get out a little more; perhaps, dare I suggest it, they might acquaint themselves with some less derivative ‘modern’ theatre, in and out of the opera house, if they think there is anything daring in what they saw here.

Guglielmo

 

Anyway, in another ‘borrowing’ from other recent-ish productions, Don Alfonso, who has been on stage all along, and who, for reasons unclear to me, remains in ‘period’ dress, is revealed as director of both ‘old’ and ‘new’ productions. The play’s the thing. It is one way, not a new way, as many seemed to think, to address the perceived ‘problem’ with the work. Our Ferrarese ladies and their nobles play roles in the theatre, in a number of different settings – the public area of an (our) opera house, a Brief Encounter railway station, a somewhat dated cocktail bar, the Garden of Eden, the costume department of the house, etc. – and thus suspend the alleged need for ‘suspension of disbelief’, perhaps the most tiresome operatic cliché of all.

 

I am far from convinced that the intricacy and overt artificiality of Da Ponte’s and still more Mozart’s work, that very artificiality permitting the most profoundly human predicament to come, unflinchingly to the theatrical fore, need such ‘help’, but that need not have mattered. The problem, to reiterate, is that, especially during the first act, the designs are more or less made to do a good deal of the work that stage direction should be doing. When we come to a potentially fruitful inversion of roles, as in the Garden of Eden, it comes across as hapless, not as transgressive or alienating. It is one thing, often a good thing, to have the audience do some thinking for itself – not much chance here, given the loud applause from far too many in the middle of Despina’s ‘Una donna a quindici anni’: can they not hear the music has not returned to the tonic? – but not at the expense of doing one’s job as director. Otherwise, we should all simply sit at home with a score and/or recording, and imagine the work for ourselves. (We often do, of course, but that is not really what a visit to the opera house is for.) The final emendation, spelled out in glitzy letters above the stage, to Così fan tutti does no harm, is perhaps welcome, but again would gain in strength with something more than a scenic flourish.

 

Semyon Bychkov’s reading of this most wondrous of Mozart’s scores grew in stature as the evening progressed. No, it was not Colin Davis, but we have to accept, alas, that he is no longer with us. Bychkov’s conducting offered, at its best, an intriguing alternative, although, in the first half hour or so, some of the tempo variations sounded a little arbitrary and the sensuous quality of the music was occasionally undersold. There were no ‘period’ affectations, though, and as Bychkov hit his stride, the laudable flexibility he had always shown felt more ‘natural’ – however artificial a construct that, like the onstage drama, might be. I heard some people complain of ‘slowness’ and can only presume them to have been ignorant of the varied performance history of the work. Very little was ‘slow’, in any meaningful sense, but it was varied, and deeply considered. The lamentable alternative is to make Mozart sound like Rossini; that is a straitjacket we can all do without.  
 

Despina (Sabina Puértolas)

More of a problem was that the singers did not always, again especially in the first act, sound attuned to Bychkov’s understanding. They sounded as though they would have been happier in the swifter, less contemplative performance, impressive on its own, very different terms, which I had heard last month in Salzburg, conducted by Ottavio Dantone. Indeed, the Guglielmo, Alessio Arduini, offered the common link between the casts. I wrote then of an assumption that was ‘proud, assertive, flawed: just as he should be, whether vocally or in stage manner,’ and much the same might be said here; Arduini is a fine performer, not just a fine singer. Daniel Behle proved an estimable successor to Salzburg’s Mauro Peter, similarly honeyed of tone, ‘Un‘aura amorosa’ as so often a highlight. Corinne Winters mostly impressed as Fioridilgi, the coloratura well despatched, although her lower register was occasionally found wanting. The clarity of Angela Brower’s Dorabella was often married to a subtle richness of tone that was most welcome. Johannes Martin Kränzle took to his role as master of ceremonies with commendable enthusiasm and equally commendable musico-theatrical results. The fussiness of the half-baked concept was not his fault. Sabina Puértolas proved a spirited Despina, attentive to vocal as well as theatrical concerns (which is not always the case). Alas, there remains some way to go before different strands of production and performance come together.

Prom 20: Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim - Götterdämmerung, 28 July 2013

Royal Albert Hall

Brünnhilde – Nina Stemme

Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Gunther – Gerd Grochowski
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Hagen – Mikhail Petrenko
Gutrune, Third Norn – Anna Samuil
Waltraute, Second Norn – Waltraud Meier
First Norn – Margarita Nekrasova
Woglinde – Aga Mikolaj
Wellgunde – Maria Gortsevskaja
Flosshilde – Anna Lapovskaja

Justin Way (director)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Staatskapelle Berlin                 
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

Images: BBC/Chris Christodoulou

 

 

By the end of the first act, I was convinced that, barring a catastrophe of, well, Götterdämmerung-like proportions, this would now turn out to be the greatest Ring since Bernard Haitink’s 1998 Royal Opera performances– also semi-staged, also at the Royal Albert Hall. And so it came to pass. Not only did we continue to hear superlative conducting from Daniel Barenboim and equally superlative playing from the Staatskapelle Berlin. (To guard my back, unlike Siegfried, I shall mention in passing very occasional signs of tiredness towards the end, if only so as not to have to return to such Beckmesserish thoughts.) We also at last heard a Siegfried and Brünnhilde worthy of the roles. Götterdämmerung, by virtue of its placing as the third ‘day’ of the Ring, should always be a special occasion, though sadly that is anything but a foregone conclusion; this performance, however went beyond ‘special’, to ‘great’.

 

The weight of history was apparent in those portentous opening chords to the Norns’ Scene, but so was sonorous magic. Wagner’s goal-orientation is not Beethoven’s, though it is not diametrically opposed either; Barenboim’s guiding of this crucial scene opened up possibilities rather than closing them, whilst at the same time ensuring that the drama’s tragic import won out. The bassoon line following the Second Norn’s ‘...woran spannst du das Seil?’ sounded as if it were itself the guiding thread of the Norns’ rope of Fate. More often than one might expect, conductors misjudge Wagner’s climaxes; often, indeed, they try to introduce irrelevant climaxes of their own. There was no such danger here, the outbreak of Dawn judged to perfection, the Staatskapelle Berlin in truly glorious sound, followed by a scene with an ebb and flow – Wagner’s melos – in which words and music truly melded together to form a musico-dramatic whole. And the tenderness of the strings, for instance when Brünnhilde here embraced Siegfried, far surpassed anything the BBC SO had been able to conjure up the previous evening, for Tristan. The final climax to the scene sounded as fully achieved as if Furtwängler himself had been at the podium; not that we should forget here the extraordinary contributions of Andreas Schager as Siegfried and Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde, on whom more below. As ever, Barenboim proved worthy of Wagner’s ‘most subtle art’ of transition, that wonderful Dawn followed by a masterly Rhine Journey, placed aptly midway between Beethovenian playfulness and Mahlerian contrapuntal involvement. (Special mention here should be afforded to the glockenspiel, veritable icing on the orchestral cake.) Once we reached the Rhineland proper, moving towards the Hall of the Gibichungs, we were afforded a veritable pageant, noteworthy not just in itself, but, in its ‘secondary’ diatonicism (to borrow from Carl Dahlhaus on Die Meistersinger, the mediated diatonic harmony being predicated upon the chromaticism it both negated and incorporated) already conveying the mediated unease of ‘civilisation’. Beneath the surface lay not only the nixies of the Rhine, but more worryingly, the snares of Hagen’s plotting. The aural stench of decay – how truly, truthfully ugly some of Götterdämmerung’s music is! – led us to the Hall itself. There was already something of the unhealthy air of Venice, of the Palazzo Vendramin.

 

And so to the first act proper. The sturdiness Barenboim imparted to Gunther’s rhythms – Lohengrin, as it were, aufgehoben – immediately made clear the hopelessness of that character’s plight. (If only Gerd Grochowski had managed a little better the difficult balancing act of a strong portrayal of a weak character, but anyway...) Throughout the act, orchestral exultancy would bid Siegfried to new deeds, all the more movingly for our knowledge of Hagen’s snares, his Watch again sick with chromatic decay, whilst the transition to Brünnhilde’s rock drew us into a more intimate, tragically fragile world. The phantasmagoria with which Brünnhilde’s anger was transformed into evening twilight again had to be heard to be believed, likewise the cruellest of interruptions – more so even the coitus interruptus of Tristan’s second act – upon Siegfried’s appearance (as Gunther). The violence of rape horrified, as it must, at the close.

 

How one relished the richness of the bass line – reinforced by those eight double basses – at the opening of the second act! The architecture of every act was perfectly in place: long familiarity, for conductor and orchestra alike, clearly pays off; the vengeance trio proved no mere set piece, but a true culmination. But moments told equally truthfully, whether the trombone interjections of ‘Hagen’ as Brünnhilde screamed of her deceit. Then the new sound-world of the third act came as a breath of fresh air, though just as soon as one had thought that, necessary doubts set in. The orchestra sounded languorous, almost Debussyan; one often hears Liszt here, in this first scene, but Barenboim’s balances imparted intriguing and apposite presentiments not so much of Pelléas as of Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune and even the Images. Integration was, as ever key, the Funeral March all the more impressive for acting as interlude rather than interposed set piece. Barenboim’s greatness in Beethoven now fully informs his Wagner, and did so until the closing bar, bathed in the after-glow of orchestral flames that might well have burned us. And yet, at the end there was a message of equivocal hope. Barenboim has no fear of comparisons with anyone, not even Haitink (from whom, in any case, we are extremely unlikely to hear another Ring).

 

From Siegfried’s very first line, we heard what had been missing earlier on. Lance Ryan had proved serviceable in the previous instalment, yet Andreas Schager proved preferable in every respect. The beauty of his voice alone here showed what earlier had been lacking, let alone the dramatic commitment he would show when acting his third-act narration or, indeed, stiffly as ‘Gunther’ with the Tarnhelm. It was clear even in the Prologue that this was a fully mature Siegfried, a man, no longer a boy, despite his fatal flaws; Schager’s interaction with the orchestra as part of a musico-dramatic whole that extended far beyond any single contributor was not the least of his virtues. Drinking the potion brought a touching hymn to lost innocence, soon enough followed by an eroticism entirely lacking in many portrayals (let alone Robert Dean Smith’s Tristan, the night before). There was, moreover, real anger to his contesting Brünnhilde’s claims in the second act, betokening a psychological understanding rarely present in this role. One might have taken dictation, of words and music, from either him or Stemme, for pretty much the whole of the performance. Anyone who did not respond both to the irrepressible vitality of this Siegfried’s swagger with the Rhinemaidens and to the detailed, loving narrative of his deeds recalled would be satisfied with no one, not even Lauritz Melchior. This might actually have been the first time I was moved as I should have been by the moment when he recalls Brünnhilde: a true monument to a truer love than I have heard.

 

Stemme’s Prologue ‘O heilige Götter!’ was a paean to a glorious age, an age which yet had passed; the realm of the gods was not belittled, but there was no doubt that the future held something different. The dramatic urgency she imparted to the Waltraute scene was every bit the equal of Waltraud Meier’s. ‘Denn selig aus ihm leuchtet mir Siegfrieds Liebe!’ revelled in tragic irony: Stemme sang in the present but the orchestra – and we – knew that she sang of the past, the ecstasy of her love notwithstanding. Her fear before Siegfried (as Gunther) was palpable, yet without loss to the commanding nature of her performance. And her Immolation Scene, delivered from the organ, somehow bringing together the strongest virtues of Flagstad’s womanhood and Nilsson’s authority, should become the stuff of legend. Meier’s turning to her sister as the latter asked ‘Weisst du, wie das wird?’ was a dramatic moment worth all (or most of) the stagings in the world. How she later made the words come alive as she told, for instance, of Wotan taming Loge! Though Meier’s Waltraute may be dangerously close to definitive, that is no excuse for overlooking the excellence of her contribution, here with a true sense of epic narrative in telling her tale of Wotan’s depression. Increasing desperation urged on the orchestra, as it in turn urged her on. Her departure had one think of Cassandra herself.

 

Mikhail Petrenko’s protean Hagen is now a known quantity. Sometimes, from force of habit perhaps more than from dramatic necessity, one finds oneself expecting a darker voice, but Petrenko’s vision is in many ways more dangerous than the traditional Ridderbusch-like performance. Rather than pitch-black ‘mere’ evil,  we hear someone devilishly intelligent, and troublingly alluring. Not that Petrenko’s voice is without heft, but, for instance, his ‘Heil! Siegfried, teurer Held!’ as the hero brought his boat ashore was curdled with a menace that went beyond brute force. (After all, it is through cunning that he will slay Siegfried, not though overpowering him.) ‘Dir ha ich guten Rat,’ seemed almost throwaway: ‘I gave you good advice,’ but the words were made to tell, to inform us that such advice to Siegfried was anything but ‘good’, however that might be understood. Aggression and restlessness suggested a power-lust that might have been enhanced by substances the modern would tends to deem illicit. This Hagen was one dealer no one would wish to encounter upon a dark night.

 

Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Alberich once again showed a fine way with words. His injunction to Hagen, ‘Hasse die Frohen!’ seethed with Nietzschean ressentiment, whilst the ghostliness of the regfrain, ‘Schläfst du, Hagen, mein Sohn,’ chilled as it should.  Our trio of Rhinemaidens if anything surpassed its excellence in Das Rheingold.  Anna Samuil, alas, proved somewhat on the shrill side as the Third Norn and blowsy as Gutrune, her vibrato, especially during the first act, uncomfortably unsteady. She was more honeytrap than dupe, and less interesting for it. There was, though, real vocal presence to be heard from Margarita Nekrasova’s First Norn. The Royal Opera Chorus excelled, its weight as impressive as its clarity.

 

All were rightly commended by Barenboim in a few closing words. Charming as ever, he praised the audience for its silence as well as for its most fulsome applause, and forewent to mention the selfish **** (fill in as appropriate) who had interrupted Hagen’s opening advice to Gunther with a mobile telephone call. There were many stars to this Ring, but once again, this proved above all others the achievement of Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin, no secret to those of us enamoured with the German capital, but now firmly ensconced in Londoners’ hearts too. Wolf-Dieter Batzdorf took a well-deserved bow, retiring as concert-master – surely only Barenboim could get away with an implicit Führer gag here, explaining that Germans do not favour the English term, ‘leader’ – but applause resounded for the whole of Wagner’s Attic chorus. And, one hopes, for Wagner himself, a fitting tribute, which is really saying something, to the composer’s bicentenary. Now, please, someone, a CD release...!

 

Prom 18: Staatskapelle Berlin/Barenboim - Siegfried, 26 July 2013

Royal Albert Hall

Siegfried – Lance Ryan

Brünnhilde – Nina Stemme
Wanderer – Terje Stensvold
Mime – Peter Bronder
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Fafner – Eric Halfvarson
Woodbird – Rinnat Moriah
Erda – Anna Larsson

Justin Way (director)

Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

The brightest star in this performance proved once again to be the Staatskapelle Berlin, under Daniel Barenboim’s guidance. It is to be hoped that those Londoners who do not travel much – though it remains unclear to me why they could not listen to the odd recording or broadcast – will finally be disabused by this Proms Ring of the strange claim that the sub-standard Wagner they have all too often been served up over the past decade represents anything but a pale shadow of the ‘real thing’. That is crucial not from the standpoint of drawing up some variety of ghastly league table, but because Wagner deserves so much better, as, barring a few noisy miscreants, do audiences. A friend remarked acutely earlier in the week that so much of the chatter concerning last year’s Covent Garden Ring concerned the work as some sort of ‘ultimate challenge’ and congratulated the forces for having (just about) withstood that challenge. Art is not, however, a school sports day; to come anywhere near realising Wagner’s potential requires musicians who understand his (admittedly strenuous) demands, who are as comprehending of his world-view and its implications, historical and contemporary, as possible, and who are expert at communicating his message at as many of its multiple levels as they can. ‘Muddling through’ – or, to put it another way, a self-congratulatory celebration of English amateurism – should never be an option.

 

Barenboim once again had the measure of the score, his understanding of which has deepened considerably over the years, from the outset. The Prelude to Act I opened very slowly, but its hallmark was flexibility, not least when a mini-Furtwänglerian accelerando led us, as the most natural development in the world, into Wagner’s menacing treatment of the no-longer-dormant Nibelung motif. Lesser conductors would simply present one thing after another, perhaps with the odd ‘shock’ effect imposed upon the meaningless progression; Wagner’s drama needs to be simultaneously communicated and reinforced through a tightly woven web of motivic interconnection. As Carl Dahlhaus put it, ‘the decline in importance of the symphony as a genre represented the obverse of an inexorable expansion of the symphonic style in other genres.’ It is inconceivable that a great Wagnerian would not also be a great Beethovenian.

 

The dark orchestral phantasmagoria, inevitably bringing to mind Adorno’s Versuch über Wagner, conjured up by Barenboim and his orchestra as Mime initially struggled to forge the sword told of dark forces, dramatic and musical, at work; one was drawn into the drama in the very best way, by the score ‘itself’. And yet, there was plenty of life: Siegfried’s music quite rightly evoked the world of a Beethoven scherzo, transformed into musico-dramatic material. Barenboim showed that lightness does not preclude depth; indeed, it often relies upon it. And depth one certainly heard from the Staatskapelle’s strings, heart-rendingly when Siegfried casually knocked the food Mime had prepared out of his hands; we empathised with Mime and his misery through Wagner’s extraordinarily sympathetic portrayal. Likewise, in the third scene, Barenboim – and Wagner, of course – conjured up the sheer horror of Mime’s predicament just as truthfully as the other, unconscious, heroic side of the coin. Competition between soundworlds, distinct and yet dialectically related, was very much the stuff of this first act. The dark Staatskapelle brass, never brash in the way sections from Anglophone orchestras might often be, told during the Mime-Wanderer scene of the darkness still cast by Alberich’s Nibelheim curse – even when the Wanderer was ostensibly talking of himself. Schwarz- and Licht-Alberich continued their dialectical dance of death (even though we never discover quite what becomes of the former).  

 

Act II opened in similarly magisterial fashion. Marking by kettledrums of that crucial tritone – the giants’ motif darkened, perverted, from its initially diatonic form – was effected to musico-dramatic perfection; that interval, that sound would hang over the act for at least as long as it took Siegfried to slay Fafner. A febrile undergrowth, scenic and harmonic, would soon find itself conjured up – that phantasmagorical phrase again – by composer, conductor, and orchestra together. The orchestra, moreover, gained a real spring to its step during those extraordinary exchanges between Mime and Siegfried, when the former, despite all his efforts, betrays his true intentions, Wagner’s sardonicism conveyed with the darkest of comedy. And that Feuerbachian moment of hope – love, revolution, love in revolution might yet emerge the victor – at the end of the act was captured to perfection, only to be contrasted, at the beginning of Act III, by a very different variety of dramatic urgency, the Wanderer’s dismissal of Erda (and thus of Fate itself) upon us.

 

Barenboim’s deceleration as Erda rose from the depths told of far more than mere handling of the score; this was an attempt to hold back history itself – likewise at the end of his confrontation with Siegfried in the following scene. The Wanderer’s urgency with Erda, rhythms buoyant and generative, would emerge victorious, but at what cost, and for how long? Questions rather than answers were proffered. His silence following ‘Weisst du, was Wotan will?’ was made to tell in a fashion not entirely unlike a silence in Bruckner, and yet, with its very particular musico-dramatic import, quite unlike it. By contrast, the transformation to the final scene was perhaps the most ecstatic I have heard, the orchestra revelling in Wagner’s wizardry, Barenboim ensuring that such revelry retained dramatic motivation. There were moments when one heard, for instance, the fresh air of Johannistag – ‘Ach! Wie schön!’ as Siegfried loosened Brünnhilde’s helmet – or delectable violin femininity, as Siegfried lifted the breastplate. But they never stood out, self-regarding, for their own sake; the drama was the thing.

 

Peter Bronder’s Mime was excellent. He wheedled without falling into caricature, projected a strong command of his line throughout, and even proved a dab hand pretty with his (small) hammer. There was real anger, moreover, as well as self-pity, when he dubbed Siegfried ‘dankbares, arges Kind!’ Lance Ryan is not possessed of a beautiful voice, but he showed the necessary tirelessness not simply to ‘get through’ the role, but also to shape its progress. If vocal lines were often less than mellifluous, one could hear pretty much every word. He had a nice – or rather nasty – line in cruelty of delivery, for instance when telling of how he longed to seize Mime’s neck, though there were undoubtedly occasions when he erred on the side of crudity, not least during the forging of Notung, and  clowning around over the horn was probably overdone. Johannes Martin Kränzle once again contributed an attentive reading of Alberich’s part, words, music, stage manner welded into something considerably more than the sum of its parts. Eric Halfvarson’s Fafner (from the organ) was properly evocative of the rentier as dragon: what he lay on, he owned. One even felt a degree of sympathy at the moment of death. Terje Stensvold’s Wanderer was not as large of life as some, but his solemnity told its own tale; this was, after all, a Wotan two generations on from Das Rheingold, scarred by events, working his way towards renunciation of the Schopenhauerisn Will. Whether that were actually how Stensvold thought of it or no, one could certainly understand his portrayal that way. His Norwegian way with Wagner’s words harked back to the the old sagas: perhaps not ideal in abstract pronunciation terms, but again opening up other associations for those willing to listen. As in Berlin, Rinnat Moriah proved a bright-toned Woodbird, perfectly contrasted with the deep contralto of Anna Larsson’s wonderful Erda, her tiredness and fading powers conveyed musically rather than by default. Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde gave an excellent impression of awakening, and handled very well this difficult transition from Valkyrie to woman. She more than whetted the appetite for what is now to come.