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.

Munich Opera Festival (1) - Götterdammerung, 27 July 2018

Nationaltheater, Munich

Gutrune (Anna Gabler, Brünnhilde (Nina Stemme)
Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Siegfried – Stefan Vinke

Gunther – Markus Eiche

Hagen – Hans-Peter König

Alberich – John Lundgren

Brünnhilde – Nina Stemme

Gutrune, Third Norn – Anna Gabler

Waltraute, First Norn – Okka von der Damerau

Woglinde – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller

Wellgunde – Rachael Wilson

Flosshilde, Second Norn – Jennifer Johnston

Andreas Kriegenburg (director)

Georgine Balk (revival director)

Harald B. Thor (set designs)

Andrea Schraad (costumes)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Zenta Haerter (choreography)

Marton Tiedtke, Olaf A. Schmitt (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

What I am about to write must be taken with the proviso that I have not seen, this year or any other, the rest of Andreas Kriegenburg’s Munich Ring. Friends tell me that would have made little difference, yet I cannot know for certain. It is also an odd thing, perhaps, to start as well as to end with Götterdämmerung, although that oddness may well be overstated. Wagner’s initial intention was, after all, to write a single drama on the death of Siegfried; after a certain point in the formulation of the Ring project, much of what had been written as Siegfrieds Tod remained as Götterdämmerung. Might one even be able to recapture something of that initial intent, relying on the narrations here as they might originally have been conceived? Perhaps – and it is surely no more absurd intrinsically to watch – and to listen to – one of the Ring dramas than it is to one part of the Oresteia. On the other hand, a Götterdämmerung conceived as a one-off – whether in simple terms or as part of a series such as that presented some time ago by Stuttgart, each by a different director, glorying in rather than apologising for disjuncture and incoherence – will perhaps be a different thing from this. Anyway, we have what we have, and I can only speak of what I have seen and heard.

In that respect, I am afraid, this Götterdämmerung proved sorely disappointing – especially, although not only, as staging. Indeed, the apparent vacuity of the staging combined with what seemed a distinctly repertoire approach – yes, I know there will always be constraints upon what a theatre can manage – combined to leave me resolutely unmoved throughout. This did not seem in any sense to be some sort of post-Brechtian strategy, a parallel to where parts at least of Frank Castorf’s now legendary Bayreuth Ring started out – if not, necessarily, always to where they ended up. I distinctly had the impression that what acting we saw had come from a largely excellent cast. Is that at least an implicit criticism of the revival direction? Not necessarily. I know nothing of how what few rehearsals I suspect there were had been organised. I could not help but think, though, that once again Wagner’s wholesale rejection – theoretical and, crucially, practical too – of the ideology and practices of ‘normal’ theatres had once again been vindicated. This, after all, is the final day of a Bühnenfestspiel. At one point, he even wrote of post-revolutionary performances in a temporary theatre on the banks of the Rhine, after which it and the score would be burnt. Did he mean that? At the time, he probably did, just as we mean all sorts of things at the time we might not actually do in practice. Nevertheless, his rejection of everyday practice points us to an important truth concerning his works. As Pierre Boulez, whilst at work on the Ring at Bayreuth, put it: ‘Opera houses are often rather like cafés where, if you sit near enough to the counter, you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!”’ What was needed, Boulez noted approvingly, ‘was an entirely new musical and theatrical structure, and it was this that he [Wagner] gradually created’. Bayreuth, quite rightly, remains the model; Bayreuth, quite wrongly, remains ignored by the rest of the world.

Such unhelpfulness out of the way, what did we have? Details of Kriegenburg’s staging seem to borrow heavily – let us say, pay homage to – from other productions. The multi-level, modern-office-look set is not entirely unlike that for Jürgen Flimm’s (justly forgotten) Bayreuth staging. Brünnhilde arrives at the Gibichung Court with a paper bag over her head, although it is sooner shed than in Richard Jones’s old Covent Garden Ring. I shall not list them all, but they come across here, without much in the way of conceptual apparatus, more as clichés than anything else. Are they ironised, then? Not so far as I could tell.  I liked Siegfried’s making his way through a baffling – to him – crowd of consumers, as he entered into the ‘real world’, images from advertising and all. Alas, the idea did not really seem to lead anywhere.


A euro figure (€) is present; perhaps it has been before. First, somewhat bafflingly, it is there as a rocking horse for Gutrune; again, perhaps there is a backstory to that. Then, it seems to do service – not a bad idea, this – as an unclosed ring-like arena for some of the action, although it is not quite clear to me why it does at some times and not at others. Presumably this is the euro as money rather than as emblematic hate-figure for the ‘euroscepticism’ bedevilling Europe in general and my benighted country in particular. (That said, I once had the misfortune to be seated in front of Michael Gove and ‘advisor’, whose job appeared to be to hold Gove’s jacket, at Bayreuth; so who knows?) There also seems to be a sense of Gutrune as particular victim, an intriguing sense, although again it is only intermittently maintained. Doubtless her behaviour earlier on, drunk, hungover, posing for selfies with the vassals, might be ascribed to her exploitation by the male society; here, however, it comes perilously close to being repeated on stage rather than criticised. That she is left on stage at the end, encircled by a group of actors who occasionally come on to ‘represent’ things – the Rhine during Siegfried’s journey, for instance – is clearly supposed to be significant. I could come up with various suggestions why that might be so; I am not at all convinced, however, that any of them would have anything to do with the somewhat confused and confusing action here.

Siegfried (Stefan Vinke), Hagen (Hans-Peter König), Gutrune

Kirill Petrenko led a far from negligible account of the score, which, a few too many orchestral fluffs aside – it nearly always happens in Götterdämmerung, for perfectly obvious reasons – proved alert to the Wagnerian melos. It certainly marked an advance upon the often hesitant work I heard from him in the Ring at Bayreuth. However, ultimately, it often seemed – to me – observed rather than participatory, especially during the Prologue and First Act. The emotional and intellectual involvement I so admired in, for instance, his performances of Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger here in Munich was not so evident. Perhaps some at least of that dissatisfaction, however, was a matter of the production failing to involve one emotionally at all. The Munich audience certainly seemed more appreciative than I, so perhaps I was just not in the right frame of mind.

Waltraute (Okka von der Damerau), Brünnhilde

Much the same might be said of the singing. Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde redeemed itself – as well, perhaps, as the world – in the third act, recovering some of that sovereign command we know, admire, even love, although even here I could not help but reflect how surer her performance at the 2013 Proms under Daniel Barenboim had been. There is nothing wrong with using the prompter; that is what (s)he is there for, as Strauss’s Capriccio M. Taupe might remind us. Stemme’s – and not only Stemme’s – persistent resort thereto, however, especially when words were still sometimes confused, was far from ideal during the first and second acts. Stefan Vinke ploughed through the role of Siegfried, often heroically, sometimes with a little too grit in the voice, yet with nothing too much to worry about. It was not a subtle portrayal, but then, what would a subtle Siegfried be?

Hagen and Gunther (Markus Eiche)

Some might have found Hans-Peter König a little too kindly of voice as Hagen; I rather liked the somewhat avuncular persona, with a hint of concealment. Again, there was no doubting his ability to sing the role. Markus Eiche and Anna Gabler were occasionally a little small of voice and, in Eiche’s case, presence as his half-siblings, but there remained much to admire: Gabler’s whole-hearted embrace of that reimagined role, for one thing. Okka von der Damerau made for a wonderfully committed, concerned Waltraute: as so often, the highlight of the first act. John Lundgren’s darkly insidious Alberich left one wanting more, much more. The Rhinemaidens and Norns were, without exception, excellent. I especially loved the contrasting colours – Jennifer Johnson’s contralto-like mezzo in particular – and blend from the latter in the opening scene. If there are downsides to repertory systems, casting from depth as here can prove a distinct advantage. Choral singing was of the highest standard too.

Brünnhilde, Gunther, and the vassals

If only the production, insofar as I could tell, had had more to say and more to bring these disparate elements together. Without the modern look, it might often as well have been Robert Lepage or Otto Schenk.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Die Walküre, 24 August 2017

Festspielhaus

Siegmund – Christopher Ventris

Hunding – Georg Zeppenfeld

Wotan – John Lundgren

Sieglinde – Camilla Nylund

Brünnhilde – Catherine Foster

Fricka – Tanja Ariane Baumgartner

Gerhilde – Caroline Wenborne

Ortlinde – Dara Hobbs

Waltraute – Stephanie Houtzeel

Schwetleite – Nadine Weissmann

Helmwige – Christiane Kohl

Siegrune – Mareike Morr

Grimgerde – Weibe Lehmkuhl

Rossweiße – Alexandra Petersamer

 

Frank Castorf (director)

Patric Seibert (assistant director and dramaturgical collaboration)

Aleksandar Denić (set designs)

Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)

Rainer Kasper (lighting)

Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull (video)

 

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Marek Janowski (conductor)

 

Opera is such a difficult thing to get right: so many variables, so many contradictions. They are, however, part of its attraction and, when everything or most things in some sense come together, its greatness too. Not for nothing did Wagner designate the orchestra as his Greek Chorus: framer of, participant in, commentator and critic on the drama. During the first two acts of this Walküre, I found myself wishing that someone had told Marek Janowski. His reputation – largely amongst those who disapprove of treating Wagner as drama, with a fair sprinkling of pseudo-‘authenticists’ – is a mystery to those who know great Wagner conducting either of the present or the past. The best that could be said of the way he led these two acts – splendidly played, it must be said, by the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra – was that it was efficient. There were no catastrophes; we were not, thank God, on London’s Planet Pappano. But nor was there any great insight. What had come across as possible, even plausible objectivity in Das Rheingold, a very different drama, here merely sounded non-committal: a bit like those churned out Beethoven cycles certain fashion-victims excite themselves about. ‘Modern instruments and period style’ or some such nonsense: anything to avoid commitment, let alone a critical standpoint. Perhaps we should call it ‘Macron-meets-Vänskä’, or ‘music for the high street’; a few years hence no one will have heard of it, let alone listen to it.

 

I have never heard a less storm-like prelude to the first act; it proceeded smoothly, as if mowing a sufficiently, yet not excessively, watered lawn. As for the inconsequentiality of the orchestra during Wotan’s second act monologue, it sounded like recitative as understood by people who do not understand recitative. There is so much going on there: past, present, and future. It is one of the great turning-points of the entire Ring.  John Lundgren’s estimable efforts as Wotan notwithstanding, the tendency was more towards preparing a list for the weekly shopping. There is domesticating Wagner and there is that. Even the great climaxes were undersold – on the terms of the performance, let alone on other terms. I do not know what had been secreted in Janowski’s second-interval oranges, but it proved most welcome. If hardly Wagner on the level of a Barenboim, a Haitink, a Karajan, or a Furtwängler, we heard a much stronger sense of generative drama in the orchestra, more – if still not enough – of a dynamic range, and a greater willingness, occasionally at least, to let the Bayreuth strings have their head at climaxes. Woodwind solos also proved beguiling and, in a few cases, intriguingly curdling, Tristan not so very far away – as indeed the harmony tells us anyway.

 

I am not sure Frank Castorf’s production helped in that respect either. Although I found more to admire in it last year than I had in 2014 – I think! Again I shall re-read later – there was, at least in actual performance, a little too much generalised standing around and singing. I think I understand the reasoning behind it, or at least a possible reasoning behind it, and shall attempt to explain, but it seemed to me to need to be more forcefully projected. A post-Brechtian critique of Wagner’s (post-)Romanticism is apparent, but might have been much more so. And if we are going to deconstruct, even mock, ‘Du bist der Lenz’ and so on, we really need the orchestra – as well as the splendid singers – to be offering the case for the defence, or at least the material to be deconstructed. Alone, there is only so much even singers such as Christopher Ventris and Camilla Nylund can offer – although I loved the camera close-ups on Sieglinde’s knowingly exaggerated expressions as she prepares Hunding’s potions. (One need not agree that such plot devices are hokum to appreciate the accomplishment of both direction and interpretation – especially when allied to such singing.)

 

The scene-setting is good, indeed thought-provoking: both at the time and afterwards. An agrarian yet industrialising society is in many ways ideal, not least on account of little – or not so little – scenic complexities, contradictions, provocations. Hunding makes excellent sense: a barbarous killer in Victorian clothing, ultimately very much Wagner’s vision too. Sieglinde is his chattel; he plays with her, wishes to destroy her (refusing her initial greeting), and then forces himself upon her. Such is marriage. When a bookish Patric Seibert seemingly willingly – yet driven by what compulsion? – takes the caged place of farmyard fowl, becomes animalised, is rescued, and takes his place again as Azerbaijani oil is hit, all manner of possibilities present themselves. Life – and the mind – is never dull when he is on stage; perhaps it is no coincidence that we must wait until the third act for that. For Castorf’s intelligent, illuminating contradictions come into far greater relief then too – doubtless assisted by the greater orchestral canvas. The gods having adopted traditional, patriarchal guise and customs – Fricka with conjugally enforcing whip as much as Wotan, the lazy patriarch drinking shots and reading Pravda – inflict themselves and their continued oil project upon the world, but they might have done more strongly, more clearly. The lack of clarity in who Wotan here is to begin with does not seem to me an especially fruitful ambiguity, at least on this occasion. But perhaps the fault lies with me. At any rate, the shift to alternative historical and geographical paths – Baku, 1942, Hitler in pursuit of oil, such pursuit to be denied, thereby enabling the world of Siegfried... – retains its force, if more in retrospect than in the white heat, and/or Brechtian alienation, of the theatre.

 

It speaks extraordinary well, then, of Ventris and Nylund that they made such an impression – in almost ‘traditional’ terms – as they did. The Volsungs’ musical achievement was unquestionably theirs, not Janowski’s. Ventris’s ardent singing, verbal clarity, and verbal meaning were quite exceptional. I am not sure I have heard a better Siegmund.  Nylund’s Sieglinde, if lacking the final ounce or two of ecstasy in that third act solo, was nevertheless beautifully, thrillingly sung – and, insofar as permitted, acted. Following a surprisingly uncertain entrance – anyone can make a slip – Georg Zeppenfeld’s Hunding proved very much the dark, heartless foil. Again, he never forgets the importance of the words; nor will he let us do. Lundgren’s stage presence, again insofar as permitted, was godlike, the anger of his delivery palpable, indeed terrifying, especially during the third act; Castorf’s touch of undermining, childish petulance – a silly act with a bearskin, whilst Brünnhilde sings – proved a truer instance of what we surely should have seen more of earlier on. This was, by any standards, a commanding performance, sadly let down by Janowski during that crucial monologue. Tanja Ariane Baumgartner’s Fricka was probably the most chilling of the three assumptions I have seen and heard, as merciless in her instrumental reason as with her whip. And Catherine Foster’s enthusiastic, even lovable Brünnhilde was just the ticket for the character at this stage in her development. One felt with her as well as for her; we wish her well in her transition to humanity, such as it might be. The Valkyries were truly outstanding; one might have taken dictation, such were the individuality and clarity, within bounds, of their contribution. Almost all of them, I felt, might readily have been singing ‘larger’ roles; of course, Nadine Weissman is.

 

Perhaps, then, my expectations were unfeasibly high after the previous night’s Vorabend. And in a way, necessary contrast was provided here, at least on stage. Was it always quite the right sort of contrast, though? It may yet be that, reading back Siegfried and even Götterdämmerung into the staging here, more will emerge. Let us hope, though, that Janowski will be on final act form.

 

Bayreuth Festival (4) - Siegfried, 23 August 2016

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Siegfried – Stefan Vinke
Mime – Andreas Conrad
Wanderer – John Lundgren
Alberich – Albert Dohmen
Fafner – Karl-Heinz Lehner
Erda – Nadine Weissmann
Brünnhilde – Catherine Foster
Woodbird – Ana Durlovski


Frank Castorf (director)
Aleksandar Denić (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)
Rainer Kasper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull (video)


Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Marek Janowski (conductor)

Mea culpa. I am by now convinced that this Ring has been far more strongly presented than it was when I saw it in 2014. (I have kept to my resolution not yet to re-read my earlier reviews, but shall do so once my visit to the festival is over.) Everything is tighter; revisions to the productions have been entirely to their benefit; the cast is much stronger, vocally and otherwise; the director seems less hostile to, although not necessarily less critical of, Wagner; and so on. And yet, the difference in my response cannot, I think, be explained away entirely in such terms; even if it can, I should rather err on the side of generosity. I am happy, then, to say that I owe Frank Castorf an apology.

Viewed overall, it was this Siegfried’s epic scope, quite in keeping not only with Wagner’s vision but with so many other dramatic works too, that struck me most of all. The word ‘journey’ has so been so debased by the lucrative language of ‘self-help’ – in some cases, in more than one literal sense – that it is perhaps too late to use it non-ironically; indeed, after Castorf, it is perhaps too late to view the Ring without some degree, at least, of irony. But the tale of the boy who learns what fear receives as probing and, in many respects, as sympathetic a treatment as I have seen for quite some time. There is no doubt of the distance both he and we have travelled by the close – and there is genuine (neo-Feuerbachian?) hope to be experienced, especially at the ends of the second and third acts. It is not hope that is unalloyed; nor should it be. (Listen to the words in the nihilistic ecstasy of Siegfried and Brünnhilde’s duet, if you doubt me; listen also to the disturbing contrapuntal virtuosity of Wagner’s music there, both attempting, so it seems, to conceal and yet to celebrate the terrifying, pyromaniacal marriage of Bakunin and Schopenhauer.) But it celebrates, as did Marek Janowski, in what proved unquestionably his strongest performance so far, the very particular character of what, for once, truly emerged as, according to the cliché, the ‘scherzo’ of the Ring: less of a cliché, if one considers, post-Beethoven, what that might actually mean, both for Wagner and for us. If the Wagnerian hero would be a Hegelian, world-historical figure, responding to contemporary necessity; so must our (anti)hero be. For, as Feuerbach pointed out, ‘God did not become man for his own sake’; nor do we produce the Ring solely for Wagner’s.

 

Aleksandar Denić’s sets remain a thing of wonder – and wonder is surely an epic quality in itself. The sublimity – gone right, or gone wrong? both and neither? – of the alternative Mount Rushmore backdrop reminds us that much is at stake. Irony need not be ornamental: ask Heine. As Marx, Lenin, Stalin, and Mao look down on us, as we look up to (or down on?) them, as occasionally their faces metamorphose into those of others, unreliable narration kicks in once again: do we know the newcomers, both here and on video, or not? Is this actually, then, an alternative historical path? Can we, as Wotan still wishes, at least some of the time, avert Götterdämmerung – or, perhaps worse still, a return to the non-golden-age of the Golden Motel. What is intervention? Is it desirable, or even possible? As with the shocking golden concealment of Freia – and it was, for me, impossible not to hark back to that moment – the machine-gun brutality of Siegfried’s murder of Mime truly terrifies, truly casts its shadow. As the riddles, the narrations, play themselves out, Wagner plays along; or rather leads us – and the production. Does it mean anything, then, when Wotan rejects Fate (Erda)? Or has that idea been (rightly or wrongly) jettisoned? There are no easy answers, or indeed perhaps any answers at all, just as in the Ring.

 

But Wotan rejects Erda not in that location, of course; he rejects her on the other side of the revolving set, the extraordinary recreation – well, knowingly unfaithful creation – of Alexanderplatz, first seen, if I remember correctly, which is not necessarily the case, as a playground for Fafner and his floozies. It is at least as much a thing of beauty as the other side of the dialectical wall (or even Wall). And, crucially, like that other side, yet also unlike it, it is, as stations and their surroundings tend to be, a place of liminality. Whether or no we may salvage the idea and the experience of a ‘journey’, we seem fated, Wanderer-like, to remain in transit. We find meaning and meaninglessness in Everyman Patric Seibert’s activities, whether as house-animal-cum-servant chez Mime, the Nibelheim van pressed back into service, or as waitor-cum-post-office-manager in the mysteriously empty – in more than one sense – proceedings in East (is there even a West?) Berlin.

I did not regret the loss of the more excessive spaghetti-founded activities in the first scene of the third act. I most certainly did appreciate Erda’s varied reprise of her Rheingold actions. Having worried, with her assistant on film, about which wig to wear during the Prelude, she disappears and changes it for her final exorcism and/or intensification of Wotan’s Rheingold possession, consensual or otherwise, of her – which, amongst other things, may well, through the creation of Brünnhilde, have enabled the rest of the action to unfold. What had previously seemed to me – rightly or wrongly, in the context of the 2014 production – arbitrary, even plain silly, now seemed charged with meaning. Returning to the scene, unquestionably ‘up for it’, Erda asks us difficult questions about what we should do, faced with a god, or a God. Just as our politicians will fellate the nearest banker without a moment’s thought, so does she get to work – and so does Wotan contemptuously slip his banknotes where one might expect. Her final finger-gesture to our hapless waiter as he returns for his payment is a splendid gesture: again rich in both potential meaning and meaninglessness. Ditto the now ‘traditional’ addition to the now five-strong crocodile community. What, two years ago, to me seemed a mere scenic backdrop – or, at least some of the time, did so – is now crucial to the drama.

 

Janowski’s conducting, as I mentioned above, came much more into its own. Perhaps that personal impression of mine is owed, at least in part, to a long-term strategy on the conductor’s part. Many conductors, after all, present Das Rheingold in buttoned-up, almost frigid fashion. Nevertheless, there is, I think, more to it than that. The greater sense of ebb and flow, of harmonic ‘depth’ – yes, I know it is a nineteenth-century, Germanic, ideological construction, but is no less useful for that – was palpable and, more to the point, dramatically productive. Balances were much less problematical too. If wind instruments often, although not always, came to the fore, there is nothing wrong with that. There is arguable Beethovenian warrant for it; and we want to hear, of course, as much as is possible. The Bayreuth Festival Orchestra now, for the first time, seemed very much to be the same orchestra – if not necessarily quite so consistently – as that I had heard for Thielemann’s Tristan. Pacing, whether longer- or shorter-term could not really be faulted; it may not always have been how I imagine it in my head, but that is neither here nor there.

 

The cast was excellent too – and here, I think, we may come to the core of why I found this Siegfried so much more convincing than I had before. Lance Ryan’s Siegfried, however adept on stage, had been excruciating vocally; Stefan Vinke gave the most convincing vocal performance I have heard from him in quite some time, clearly benefiting from not having to force his voice to fill an absurdly large theatre. He entered into the stage proceedings with equal commitment too. As with the previous night’s Tristan, ‘untiring’ should not be understood here as a euphemism; pent-up energy spilled carelessly onto the ground, as it must in the case of this rebel without a consciousness. Catherine Foster gave a splendid performance – much more at home in the production, and in the role, than I found her last time – as Brünnhilde. Her problem is not to be untiring but, so late in the evening, to be immediately fresh, dramatically immediate; the problem proved not to be such, simply an opportunity very well taken. One truly felt her transition from immortal to human, its joy as well as its fears.

 

John Lundgren’s Wotan/Wanderer exceeded even its Walküre promise. His performance, born very much of the detail of Wagner’s poem, equally alert to the implications of its musico-dramatic flowering, was one for the sagas – mediæval and contemporary. Albert Dohmen’s highly intelligent portrayal of Alberich was spot on: as quicksilver in momentary response as it was determined by what had gone before. His verbal acuity was shared, responded to, by Andreas Conrad’s Mime: a brother-in-arms indeed. Karl-Heinz Lehner’s Fafner was just as sinister and, intriguingly, just as darkly, dangerously attractive as what we had seen and heard his Rheingold incarnation. What we lost in rentier sloth, we gained in other respects. Nadine Weissmann retained and developed that wonderful sense of musico-dramatic ‘presence’ from the earlier drama. And Ana Durlovski’s carnivalesque Woodbird came across – rightly, in the spirit of the production – as more woman than voice of Nature. I may be nearing the moment of a mea maxima culpa.

Bayreuth Festival (2) - Die Walküre, 21 August 2016

Bayreuth Festspielhaus

Siegmund – Christopher Ventris

Hunding – Georg Zeppenfeld
Wotan – John Lundgren
Sieglinde – Heidi Melton
Brünnhilde – Catherine Foster
Fricka – Sarah Connolly
Gerhilde – Caroline Wenborne
Ortlinde – Dara Hobbs
Waltraute – Stephanie Houtzeel
Schwetleite – Nadine Weissmann
Helmwige – Christiane Kohl
Siegrune – Mareike Morr
Grimgerde – Weibe Lehmkuhl
Rossweiße – Alexandra Petersamer
 

Frank Castorf (director)

Aleksandar Denić (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)
Rainer Kasper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert, Jens Crull (video)
 

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Marek Janowski (conductor)

Again, one’s memory can readily play tricks, but I think I can say with a good degree of certainty that this Walküre, like its Rheingold predecessor, marked a considerable improvement upon the performance I saw two years ago. How much of that relates to revision of Frank Castorf’s staging and how much to individual (and indeed ensemble) performances onstage, I am not entirely sure. Perhaps that is as it should be, for a performance without a little mystery – if not necessarily the mystification that might be seen as the ‘bad nineteenth-century’ part of Wagner’s, still more Wagnerian, aesthetics – will generally be found lacking.

It certainly, I think, made a difference having Christopher Ventris as Siegmund. In 2014, although Johan Botha could certainly sing the role – not something to be taken for granted, naming no names – his inability to act was a problem one could not simply ignore. Now, with Ventris at least Botha’s vocal equal, albeit very different in tone, but also a committed stage actor, the first act and the end of the second looked up completely. There are many different ways to sing Siegmund, and Ventris’s, perhaps inevitably, comes closer to the sound we expect from a Parsifal; his is not a baritonal tenor.  Nor need it be; this beautifully, though never just beautifully sung, performance, equally attentive to words and music, was quite beyond reproach. I was tempted to ask why we seemingly never hear Ventris in Britain any more, but why should we? Germany surely has much more to offer him.

 

Heidi Melton, on much better form, or rather much more consistent form, than as Isolde recently at ENO, offered a heartfelt reading of Sieglinde. Occasional intonational wobbles counted for little or nothing when set against such palpable sincerity and range. Much the same might be said of Catherine Foster’s Brünnhilde. Foster has always struck me as a very likeable artist, not at all inappropriate for Wotan’s wayward girl. Occasional waywardness was much in keeping with her character; the tenderness of her farewell – suggesting perhaps that Brünnhilde understood a little more than usual the finality of her sentence – was touching and dramatically productive indeed. John Lundgren’s Wotan was dark of tone, commanding of presence, highly attentive – crucial in this of all roles – to the marriage of words and music. His shaping of Wotan’s second act monologue, his communication of its verbal and musical contours, their interaction with each other and with the orchestra, was excellent. A sense of chill, of reserve, seemed very much part of the interpretation, and varied according to circumstances.

 

Georg Zeppenfeld’s Hunding proved outstanding: dark, although not so dark as one often hears of tone, dark of intent, yet not without charm. The return of video in the second half of the first act gave him a great deal more to do than would generally the case; his acting offstage, both before and after drugging, offered an important additional standpoint upon the action below. Sarah Connolly’s return as Fricka lived up to its Rheingold promise. There was no doubting her fury and righteous indignation. An excellent band of Valkyries worked together extremely well. Not unlike the Rhinemaidens the night before, their ensemble and solo work was equally distinguished; they, again, had much more to do, given close camera attention, than usual. Such was not a problem; it was, instead, an opportunity.

 

Where I felt that opportunity was slightly missed was in Castorf’s conception itself. By the time we reached the third act, perhaps especially its first part, I could not help but wonder whether he had somewhat lost interest. It was a feeling much less strong than last time, but what earlier exerts considerable post-Brechtian force – the alienation of the world of Aleksandar Denić’s wondrous set designs and their tale of striking oil in Azerbaijan, 1942, from suspect, one presumes, ‘Romantic’ Lenz and Liebe – comes at some points to seem arbitrary again. Or at least it did to me; I may well have been missing the point. The first act in particular, as I said, benefited from Ventris’s Siegmund. Lengthy stretches of almost nothing happening at all onstage are, mercifully, no longer with us. What seemed to betoken contempt for the work, or stretches thereof, in 2014, no longer does. However, even at the end of the third act, when things pick up again dramatically, I wondered whether there was a little too much of Wotan and Brünnhilde not listening to each other, not even being in the same place. The case is at least arguable, though; maybe I need a more thoroughgoing purge of my Romanticism.

 

Earlier on, the tension and indeed interplay work better. The trip back seventy years or so in time from the present-day (Wifi is available at the Golden Motel) does not bother me. Wagner plays with time, in any case, as is witnessed by the confrontation of his dual, Genesis-like creation myths (those of Alberich in Rheingold and Wotan in Götterdämmerung), with the march of dramatic time, both as experienced by us and, we presume, by the characters. He does not play with it as Castorf does, but Castorf’s play has us think: always a good and necessary thing in Wagner, whatever his preposterous ‘protectors’ might claim. I wish, as I think I did before, that more still might have been done with such disjuncture, but there we are. More to the point, however, we come to think of Rheingold all the more in retrospect as distant pre-history. That world of gods and giants is not identical to that of the succeeding three dramas, although there is, of course, much complex interconnection and interaction. We have seen, to a certain extent, where things might lead.

 

However, we also come to see that we are on different historical, even ideological trajectory. ‘Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Texas anymore.’ It is not just location, though; it is the shift to the Eastern bloc, as once we called it. Russian and Azerbaijani scripts, Pravda, even hints at socialist realism: are we perhaps giving Marx and Wagner a try, taking them at, if not their own word, then a sceptical yet not despising deconstruction thereof? If the world of the Golden Motel is so bad, then show us what you can do? Is Wagner, then, being found wanting by Castorf? Up to a point, I think, for it is difficult, on some level, to avoid the conclusion that the ‘real’ action is that of the oil strikes rather than that of Siegmund and Sieglinde? Unreliable narration nevertheless continues to make its point, although less so – a pity, I think – than in Das Rheingold.

 

Where Castorf really scores, though, at least for me, is in the return of the gods to this world. Adopting local dress, customs, commercial practices, and indeed leading the latter, the gods do what we have always thought they did when they assumed human form. One might think as much here of Greek myth as Teutonic – as, of course, did Wagner. Do they, or does capital, reinstate Fate? Or is the opposition false? We are led to ask such questions, difficult to resolve, perhaps incapable of resolution. Wotan’s loss of his 'local' beard (seen first on film towards the end of the first act, as the god drinks his vodka) comes to seem akin to dropping of a mask. We behold him, as, unforgettably, Hunding does, in all his godlike terror. And we also recall, with Wagner, student of Feuerbach, that we have made him, as we have our other gods of capital, law, ‘love’, and so on.

 

Marek Janowski and the Bayreuth Festival Orchestra seemed to me on surer form than the previous evening (not that they were bad then). There were still some odd orchestral balances: the clarinet line again, albeit to a considerably lesser extent. Perhaps the issue was more acoustical than intentional. More generally, though, Janowski’s emphasis on the woodwind in particular was balanced by a greater willingness to let the strings play out. He was more flexible of tempo too, usually to excellent effect. If the results remain more conventionally of the ‘opera’ world than its ‘musico-dramatic’ sibling or rival, increased command of the melos, the ebb and flow, worked very much to the drama’s benefit. We cannot always hear Daniel Barenboim, and there is much to be said for the marriage of general competence to a desire to bring out overlooked aspects of a work.

The Makropulos Case, Bavarian State Opera, 21 May 2016

Image: Bayerische Staatsoper, © Wilfried Hösl

Nationaltheater, Munich

Emilia Marty – Angela Denoke
Dr Kolenatý – Gustáv Beláček
Vítek – Kevin Conners
Krista – Rachael Wilson
Albert Gregor – Pavel Černoch

Jaroslav Prus – John Lundgren
Janek – Aleš Briscein
Hauk-Šendorf – Reiner Goldberg
Chambermaid – Deniz Uzun
Stage Technician – Peter Lobert
Cleaning Lady – Heike Grötzinger

Arpád Schilling (director)

Márton Ágh (designs)
Tamás Bányai (lighting)
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

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

Bavarian State Orchestra
Tomáš Hanus (conductor)

Opera houses’ neglect of Janáček remains one of the most baffling of the many baffling aspects of the ‘repertoire’. At least three of the composer’s operas would be perfect introductions to the art form: Jenůfa, Katya Kabanova, or The Cunning Little Vixen would surely hook most for life. From the House of the Dead might do likewise for someone of a rather different disposition, sceptical of opera’s claims and conventions. The Makropulos Case perhaps falls somewhere in between, although surely closer to the more ‘conventional’ trio, an unusual story notwithstanding. At any rate, no Janáček opera outstays its welcome. Every one is musically and dramatically interesting, without – save, arguably, in the case of From the House of the Dead – being ‘difficult’ (a silly concept, anyway, but let us leave that on one side). There are strong, central female characters in most (again, not in his final opera, but...) And yet…

 

What, then, is the problem? Is it simply that the works are in Czech? Is there still resistance to following titles, from those of us who do not have the language? Perhaps, although how many in the audience actually have an understanding, let alone a good one, of other, more typically-used languages? Translation is, perhaps even more than usual, a bad idea, since the music depends so much on Czech speech rhythms. One can tell that, even when one does not know the language. I mention that here, since a great virtue of this particular performance was the ability to follow the words (with German titles). The sounds are important, but it is not just a matter of sound. In conjunction with the orchestra, this made sense, even for those of us having to rely upon our memories and upon the titles.

 

First and foremost to be thanked for that excellent, indeed crucial, outcome must be conductor Tomáš Hanus. His direction of the equally (at least!) excellent Bavarian State Orchestra left us in no doubt that not only did the conductor know where he was taking us, and how to do so, but that just the right balance was struck between the demands of the moment, of the intricate relationships between words and music, between vocal line and orchestra, between melodic and harmonic impulses, were being observed and, above all, dramatically communicated. The golden sound of the orchestra – again, perhaps, like the Czech Philharmonic in a recent concert performance of Jenůfa, more Bohemian than Moravian, but none the worse for that – was no mere backdrop, but a musico-dramatic cauldron from which words emerged and in whose self-transforming broth they acquired their meaning and impulse. The disjunctures were not sold short either; they held their dramatic ground, without being fetishised.

 

Angela Denoke had also played E.M. – or whatever we wish to call her – in the Salzburg Festival performance I heard in 2011. Dramatically, Denoke’s performance here in Munich was at least as fine as in Salzburg; she remains an excellent singing actress. Vocally, however, it was, if anything, superior, with few of the occasional flaws of five years ago. The virtues of the orchestral performance were also her virtues. So indeed were they of the rest of the cast. Brno-born tenor, Pavel Černoch offered an Albert Gregor of what seemed to me (again with the caveat that I am not a Czech-speaker) of vocal beauty and verbal acuity in equal measure, his stage presence just as impressive. His first-act dialogue with Emilia Marty proved one of the musical and dramatic highlights of the performance. Gustáv Beláček and Kevin Conners impressed with their difficult legal performative briefs. John Lundgren’s darkly ambitious Jaroslav Prus and Rachael Wilson’s bright-toned Krista were similarly noteworthy. Aleš Briscein’s Janek furthered the excellent impressions given in that concert Jenůfa, his crestfallen withdrawal from the Marty game a study in musico-dramatic observation and communication. And how wonderful to welcome back Reiner Goldberg to the stage as Hauk-Šendorf: so much more than a mere ‘character’ appearance. Character and artist similarly rolled back the years: a moving moment indeed, not least given the opera in question.

 

I have left Arpád Schilling’s production until last, because I do not have much to say about it, I am afraid. The principal impression is made by Márton Ágh’s stylish designs, both sets – for instance, a visually arresting pile of chairs – and costumes, Černoch’s Gregor thereby enabled to look very much as he sounded. Of a concept, let alone a Konzept, beyond that, I struggled to discern anything very much. This, then, is stage direction of the kind operatic reactionaries claim to like: non-interventionist and pretty, if a little too modern in its style for them. The work could (sort of) speak for itself, I suppose, but that is hardly the point. Christoph Marthaler delved deeper in Salzburg.