Die dunkle Seite des Mondes, Hamburg State Opera, 18 May 2025

Images: Bernd Uhlig
Dr Kieron (Thomas Lehman), Creature of Light (Andrew Dickinson)

Dr Kieron – Thomas Lehman
Meister Astaroth – Bo Skovhus
Miriel – Siobhan Stagg
Creature of Light – Andrew Dickinson
Anima – Kangmin Justin Kim
The Bright Girl – Narea Son
Cornelius – Aaron Godfrey-Mayes
Dr Pulski – William Desbiens
Dr Raubenstock – Karl Huml
Dr Spinberg – Jürgen Sacher

Directors – Dead Centre (Ben Kidd and Bush Moukarzel)
Designs – Jeremy Herbert
Costumes – Janina Brinkmann
Lighting – James Farncombe
Video – Sophie Lux
Choreography – Sasha Milavic Davies
Dramaturgy – Angela Beuerle, Michael Sangkuhl

Live camera – Benjamin Hassmann  

Chorus of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Christian Günther)

Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra

Kent Nagano (conductor)

I really wanted to like this opera, Unsuk Chin’s second, following her widely and justly acclaimed Alice in Wonderland (2004-7). After all, I travelled from London to Hamburg expressly to attend its opening night. In some ways, I liked and admired it; or rather I liked and admired much of the music and stage performances, above all Thomas Leaman’s commanding account of the central role. It pains me to say that, nonetheless, as a dramatic and even theatrical experience what we saw and heard in Die dunkle Seite des Mondes (The Dark Side of the Moon) fell considerably short of the considerable hopes invested in it. My sense, moreover, was that mine was not, sadly, an eccentric reaction. 

A Faustian tale is no bad start; opera in particular and drama more broadly continue to flourish in development and variation of time-honoured subjects, to which something more timely will necessarily be brought. The (anti-hero), Dr Kieron, is a scientist, Dr Kieron, an unbearable, impossible colleague, who dismisses and needs the work of others, but who harbours the secret of his haunting by visions, which lead him to the realm of a ‘soul healer’, Meister Astaroth. Inspiration came originally from Chin’s interest in the relationship between the physicist Wolfgang Pauli and the psychologist Carl Friedrich Jung. 

Meister Astaroth (Bo Skovhus)

Chin’s score announces a darker soundworld, aptly enough, than that of her previous opera and indeed many other of her works, yet it is possessed, at least in its stronger sections, of many of the inventive qualities, especially rhythmic and timbral, that have justly lent her great esteem. There is exuberance and a true sense of potential in the orchestral lines, vividly brought to theatrical life, so far as I could discern, by the Hamburg State Philharmonic Orchestra under Kent Nagano, the house chorus a welcome addition in its several appearances. The beginnings of both acts, more than just the beginning in the first, offered the most compelling music and also, doubtless far from coincidentally, registered strongest in dramatic terms. Broadly, Kieron’s world convinces more than Astaroth’s, which may or may not be the point. Dramaturgically and theatrically, it seems conceived – in my case, it was certainly received – in a traditional way. A story is told on stage through words and music. There are no obvious metatheatrical questions posed; nor is there an evident desire to play with narrative, let alone a sense of the postdramatic. There is nothing wrong with that; many fine operas still take on such a form and probably always will. Traditional operatic virtues, then, probably need to register more strongly.   

The libretto, however, and more generally the plot come across as hopelessly contrived: not artificial in an arch or detached aesthetic sense, but mostly unfortunate. This, I am afraid, is also Chin’s work, written in collaboration with Kerstin Schüssler-Bach. It piles up words, fails to establish characters – most glaringly, in the case of the women, mere projections in a sense that surely extends beyond feminist critique – and often seems bizarrely unsuited to opera. I should actually go a step further and say that the problem was less its wordiness, although that certainly did not help, than that wordiness simply not having been very good. It would have come across unfortunately, had there been no music at all. Put another way, literariness needs to be good – very good – and if you are not a Hofmannsthal, remains better avoided. When something merely aspires to literariness, if indeed that is what is going on here. I honestly cannot imagine anyone caring about the characters—and it was not clear what else there was to care about. At times, an anti-war message seemed to surfacebut then it disappeared; or perhaps I had imagined it. It is surely not coincidental that the music’s invention registered most strongly when there were no words to get in the way. Then there is the length. On the face of it, it was refreshing to be presented with something that dared to be different, not to be confined to the consensus of how long an opera ‘need’ be. Like any artwork, it should probably be as long as it needs to be, but no longer. Offering something roughly the length of a Mozart-Da Ponte opera (done whole) shows ambition, if only it were realised. 

There was a good deal to suggest, however, that this had been developed as a whole, extending considerably beyond the composer’s work on her libretto. At its best, Dead Centre’s production seemed to ‘listen’ to the score and not only to the words. Without merely mirroring, movement, lighting, and much else seemed to spring from the same source, for instance in the set’s swaying to convey the drunkenness of the bar. If anything, though, it seemed too often to remain tied to the words and drama. If it would be too much to hope that a different staging might have redeemed them, something a little more interventionist might nonetheless have added something, perhaps fleshing out the characters rather than simply presenting them, such as they were. Even something that accentuated the c.1930 setting, present when one reflected yet not registering as something that mattered, might have contributed something. Live camera did, in a straightforward way, homing in on particular characters – for instance, during bar ‘crowd’ scenes – and register their facial reactions. 

Thomas Lehman’s assumption of the principal role, Dr Kieron, was thus in some ways all the more impressive: a fiercely intelligent act of apparent conviction, which created a character almost in spite of what he was presented with.  Bo Skovhus, as Meister Astaroth, similarly impressed with great stage presence throughout. Kieron’s former lover and morphine addict, Mirel, was woefully under-characterised in the work, but Siobhan Stagg did what she could, her coloratura duly sparkling—and suggestive of what might have been. Kangmin Justin Kim’s Anima was quite a star turn, splendidly feminine of tone and gesture, so much so that it was only when I checked the cast list I realised this had been a countertenor. Aaron Godfrey-Mayes made for a sympathetic Cornelius, assistant to Kieron. All seemed well sung; there was nothing evident for which to reproach the musicians, whether on stage or in the pit. 

A puzzling and, in many ways, frustrating evening, then, but one I was nonetheless pleased to have experienced. Not only because one learns from when things go wrong, though surely there is much to be learned here; but because I remain convinced there is something waiting to be released here. Where that leaves the opera, I am not sure. It is difficult to imagine the music, or rather some of it, retained and a new libretto fashioned. Perhaps there is some radical surgery that could be performed. Perhaps the best of it could be reworked into a shorter opera or another work entirely. Perhaps different performances and stagings would make a difference. Or perhaps I am entirely wrong: first night reports are notoriously littered with wrongheaded criticism. No one would be more delighted than I to find my criticisms misplaced, to owe the creators an apology, and to welcome a new work to the repertory. We shall see.

Munich Opera Festival (1) - Le grand macabre, 4 July 2023

Nationaltheater

Images: © Wilfried Hösl

  

Gepopo, Venus – Sarah Aristidou
Amanda – Seonwoo Lee
Amando – Avery Amereau
Prince Go-Go – John Holiday
Astradamors – Sam Carl
Mescalina – Lindsay Ammann
Piet vom Fass – Benjamin Bruns
Nekrotzar – Michael Nagy
Ruffiack – Andrew Hamilton
Schobiack – Thomas Mole
Schabernack – Nikita Volkov
White Minister – Kevin Conners
Black Minister: Bálint Szabó
Refugees – Isabel Becker, Sabine Heckmann, Saeyong Park, Sang-Eun Shim

Director – Krzysztof Warlikowski
Set designs – Małgorzata Szczęśniak
Lighting – Felice Ross
Video – Kamil Polak
Choreography – Claude Bardouil
Dramaturgy - Christian Longchamp, Olaf Roth

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (director: Christoph Heil)
Bavarian State Orchestra

Kent Nagano (conductor)

The Fourth of July has obvious political meaning in the United States. This year, it also offered the date of the long-awaited British General Election: a curious event, strangely without drama given the near-certainty of its result, in strong contrast to others over the past two decades, yet with deeply ominous hints at what might be come, as well as the occasional moment of hope. Ligeti’s apocalyptic anti-anti-opera Le grand macabre could add a little piquancy to the date, its activity, and its commemoration—and certainly did, in what, perhaps surprisingly, is its Munich premiere production. The end of the world, after all, seems no less nigh than it will have done at the 1978 Stockholm world premiere and, rightly or wrongly, rather more so than at the first performance of Ligeti’s 1996 revision, at the Salzburg Festival in 1997 (from whose post-Chernobyl production, by Peter Sellars, the composer angrily dissociated himself). 

Many now appear to find it dated, at least dramatically. Hand on heart, much of its humour – post-Dadaist if you will, but often plain silly – is not mine, though it arguably comes closer to that strange beast ‘German humour’. I can see how the ‘naughty schoolboy’ shouting of ‘rude’ words, the fart jokes, and so on would irritate, but for me it is probably better to see this as part and parcel of an absurdism that may well be the only way we can face the incomprehensible insanity of an impending nuclear holocaust. Beckett’s – and Kurtág’s – Fin de partie may come closer to our taste, but taste is at best a matter purely for the individual, and Ligeti’s work is rightly admired to the skies by Kurtág, as by many of the rest of us. The Haydnesque riot of musical invention is at least as much the thing, if one cares to listen—and why on earth, or, as at the close, beyond it, would one not? 

Leading the Bayerische Staatsorchester, Kent Nagano offered a worthy conspectus of the array of musical strategies on offer, from the brilliant car-horn reinvention of the opening Toccata to Monteverdi’s Orfeo (surely a nod to Agon there too) to the inevitable – in dramaturgy and musical nature – closing passacaglia. The orchestra was on outstanding form, keenly responding to Nagano’s direction. I did wonder at times whether he might have opened things up a little, both in terms of greater dramatic sweep, but would I then have complained that too little attention was paid to the character of individual, closed forms? And if the silliness was not underlined, surely that is in any case the last thing it needs. Again, this is probably more a matter of taste than of anything else. I found it for the most part engrossing, and a salutary reminder of where the work’s greatest merits lie, as well as the (productive) aesthetic crisis that followed. In more than one way, this is an end-of-the-road work. 

Astradamors (Sam Carl), Mescalina (Lindsay Ammann)

In this sort of work, it is rare for vocal performances to disappoint. You do not really sing (nor, for that matter, play) Ligeti if you are not well equipped to do so, though there are always exceptions. Moreover, the sort of singers who do are unlikely to put ‘star’ behaviour over the needs of the ensemble. The work in any case gives them plenty of character behaviour in which to shine, which pretty much everyone did. Benjamin Bruns’s Piet vom Fass proved an excellent everyman, framing and participating our visit to Breughelland as required; he worked well with Sam Carl’s Astradamors, much in the same vein, albeit properly different too. Michael Nagy’s rich-toned Nekrotzar suggested a very human weakness at the heart of his caprice. Sarah Aristidou’s Venus, perhaps surprisingly, grabbed my attention more than her Gepopo; not that I could put my finger on why, so that was perhaps just me (or the production). John Holiday’s Prince Go-Go and Lindsay Ammann's Mescalina were very well drawn, dramatically and vocally. The soldiers, post-apocalypse, made a fine impression. I even found the copulating duo Amanda (Seonwoo Lee) and Amando (Avery Amereau) relatively non-irritating. 

Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production for the most part did its job, but at times seemed a bit ‘phoned in’. One had the impression the singers were providing their own Personenregie, the production simply offering a chance to wander around the large stage. Warlikowski’s ideas were promising enough: refugees watching the events from a bureaucratic reception centre (probably a converted school gymnasium). Computer activity doubtless made decisions that hastened the end, whilst properly banal in immediate nature. Animal masks added an air of mystery later on, though it was somewhat unclear what, beyond the general kink scene, motivated their appearance. One might, I suppose, argue that wider issues were suggested rather than hammered home; that would perhaps, though, be unduly charitable, for what ultimately came across as a half-hearted engagement. 

Piet vom Fass (Benjamin Bruns), Nekrotzar (Michael Nagy)

As now seems to be his wont, Warlikowski showed us some silent film clips (David Wark Griffith’s Intolerance and Abel Gance’s Napoléon). In the case of historical collapse of civilisations, the association was reasonably obvious, even if the reasoning remained a little obscure. Most of us at least think we oppose intolerance; outside France, few of us are fervent Bonapartists either. The contribution made by pictures of Ligeti, both as a child and in more familiar guise, along with quotations such as one outlining his belief that he would grow up to be a prize-winning scientist, was less clear: more suited to the programme book, perhaps, or a pre-performance talk? The music, though, was undoubtedly the thing—and that, perhaps, is not the worst message for an anti-anti-opera.

Boris Godunov, Hamburg State Opera, 4 October 2023

Images: Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Boris Godunov (Alexander Tsymbalyuk)

Boris Godunov – Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Andrey Schchelkalov – Alexey Bogdanchikov
Nikitch (Police Officer) – Hubert Kowalczyk
Mityukha – Julian Arsenault
Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky – Matthias Klink
Pimen – Vitalij Kowaljow
Grigory Otrepiev – Dovlet Nurgeldiyev
Hostess of the Inn – Marta Swiderska
Varlaam – Ryan Speedo Green
Missail – Jürgen Sacher
Xenia – Olivia Boen
Xenia’s Nurse – Renate Spingler
Fyodor – Kady Evanyshyn
Boyar – Mateusz Lugowski
Holy Fool – Florian Panzieri

Frank Castorf (director)
Wolfgang Gruber (assistant director)
Aleksandar Denić (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretzki (costumes)
Rainer Casper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert, Severin Renke (video, live camera)
Maryvonne Riedelsheimer (live editing)
Patric Seibert (dramaturgy)

  
Children’s and Youth Choir of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Luiz de Goday)

Chorus of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra

Kent Nagano (conductor)

It is, of course, the opera for our time; arguably, it is for many other times too. Boris Godunov, in whatever incarnation – a more complex question than it is even for a Bruckner symphony – has nonetheless come under attack from some frankly bizarre nationalists who consider it should not currently be performed. The Polish National Opera’s Waldemar Piotr Dąbrowski announced cancellation of a Warsaw staging with a string of non sequiturs he could not possibly have believed. Ukrainian protestors mobbed La Scala to demand cancellation there. The country’s Minister of Culture went further and, incredibly, demanded other countries boycott all Russian culture. What on earth do they think happens in the opera? Boris’s reign is hardly characterised by its success; whatever this opera is concerned with, it is certainly not a ‘how to’ guide. It is rather like those strange people who think Hitler might have been politically inspired by the Ring. We can be fairly certain he noticed what happened to Wotan, Siegfried, and any other hero. And if we are to take the claims made for Russian culture seriously, surely we should seek to understand it, as of course we should Polish, Ukrainian, and any other culture: all part of our world.

Frank Castorf’s new production for the Hamburg State Opera is arguably not so new. It was due to open in September 2020, but was thwarted by coronavirus. Three years later, it has its chance in a very changed Europe. (You will struggle to go far in Germany without seeing a Ukrainian flag.) Layers of resonance, like those in the work, make it more rather than less relevant, and show those who would cancel or ban artworks for the fools, as well as the knaves, that they are. All societies write and rewrite their history. All respond to myth as well as to evidence, to the present as well as to the past. This is what we see here, in a Russian Empire whose costumes (brilliantly designed by Adriana Braga Peretzki) may be of the twentieth century, but also look back all the way to the Time of Troubles and beyond, boyars from before Peter the Great had their beards shorn. (Is that not, after all, what Stalin did with his ‘Great Patriotic War’?) These pasts are, in many ways, now, whether in Pimen’s chronicle or the electronically changing and updating battle maps of Boris’s imperial quarters, whose billiard games afford little relaxation, yet provide plentiful metaphors for surrounding machinations.

The writing and the dramatising are the thing. Many of us have probably fallen into the trap of taking Pimen’s witness for the truth. He seems so plausible. Perhaps Grigory/Dmitri did too; that is left rather more to our imagination. And does not the tragedy make more sense if Boris was guilty? (Yet if he was, why not, as dramaturge Patric Seibert points out in an excellent programme essay, give the people what they want? Confess and crush his enemy, who is nowhere near victory, in any case?) Perhaps it would, if this were a ‘classical’ anything, yet the rough edges of Boris, its very problematical qualities, are itself the grit of its drama and, perhaps, of its truth. In this, the 1868-9 version (speaking of ‘original’ or otherwise only muddies the water further), we see and hear, to quote Richard Taruskin in typically trenchant yet not unpersuasive form: ‘a set of scenes very roughly hewn from Pushkin’s unwieldy block of poetic marble, selected according to diverse and unrelated criteria. … Far from showing how carefully Mussorgsky structured his dramatic conception, the first Boris boldly displays a quintessentially realist disdain for a well-made play.’ 

‘No Polish scene?’ I hear you lament. Well, yes or no. For Castorf, permitted a degree of leeway here in the opera house to draw on his theatrical practice of introduction of other texts, fills in some of the gaps on film between scenes. Avaricious, cynical, lustful, and a great deal more: it is difficult to imagine the Grigory and Marina we see there as offering much of a solution for the ever-suffering Russian people, whose manipulation by church and nobility is clearly signalled. So too is that of Poland and the Roman Catholic Church more generally, as we see in the presence, also on film, of John Paul II and dispersal of propaganda leaflets headed by iconic – for once, surely, the term holds – emblems of ‘Solidarność’. More traditional icons are to be seen amongst flags and other emblems too: here is nothing if not a contested sphere.

This is less a revisionist (or, if you prefer, historically informed) portrayal of Boris and his rule than one which, in Shakespearean style, declines to judge and leaves that to us, should we wish. We may, of course, learn more by similarly declining: a controversial message,’ if message it be, right now. We certainly learn more by being afforded the privilege. As the action progresses, framed by yet another superlative revolving set of contrasts and connections from Castorf’s longstanding collaborator Aleksandar Denić, we head towards more than one tragic denouement. There is that of Boris, and what we might read into him as representing: perhaps a more ideal form of Soviet rule? His concern for the people seems genuine enough and he feeds them: a point made clearly here. One thing, moreover, that differentiates Boris from today’s politicians – those in power, anyway – is, as Seibert notes, his a conscience. His personal tragedy, and that, it seems here, of Russia too, is that that conscience proves his undoing; it kills him. A Gorbachev, perhaps? For there is the greater political tragedy too. What comes of nefarious external interference, aided and abetted by the Shuiskys (and Romanovs) within?

Fool (Florian Panzieri)

Boris dead, the set revolves once more for Fyodor to see what the future holds: the swift substitution for socialist realism of Coca-Cola, in the form of a huge, again ‘iconic’ bottle centre stage, with a straw whose colours are that of Yeltsin’s (and Putin’s) Russia. ‘Flow, flow, bitter tears,’ as the Fool would have sung again in a different version; the words nonetheless ring in our ears and the curtain falls. What we have seen, whether on stage, on live video close-up, or on film, and what we have still not seen, that variety of sources notwithstanding, may have helped us make up our own minds. What does Pimen do when he retreats inside? Who is exploiting whom at the Polish court? To what extent, if you will forgive the school examination format, is Boris the victim of psychological manipulation? Or we may emerge all the more confused at the complications of art and reality. There are far worse lessons than that. 

Kent Nagano’s conducting of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra intrigued me too. On the one hand, some of it sounded what I am tempted to call unidiomatic, though I should not exaggerate: closer to Tchaikovsky (though hardly Rimsky) than to Mussorgsky. Yet if we draw those lessons from the production, what of the musical performance? Should we not beware the idea that there is a correct or true path? If we cannot settle on a text for the work ‘itself’, should we not open that out in other ways? Nowadays, we pride ourselves on appreciating the radicalism of ‘pure’ Mussorgsky, even to the extent of preferring (to my mind, somewhat dubiously) the version heard here. What have we lost in the meantime? And can we seriously maintain that those before did not know what they were doing? For Nagano certainly knew where the music was going and, so it seemed, where it had more broadly come from. It was a reading that complemented and even complicated what we saw in stage, even if sometimes I longed for a little more starkness and bite.

 

Fyodor (Kady Evanyshyn)

In the title role, Alexander Tsymbalyuk offered a similarly thoughtful and complex portrayal: sympathetic yet never banally so. We might trust his witness no more than that of anyone else, but we could certainly trust the alchemy between music, words, and gesture. Matthias Klink’s wheedling Shuisky and Dovlet Nurgeldiyev’s sweet-toned faux-innocence as Grigory made their points in similarly thoughtful ways. Shuisky’s first-hand ‘happening’ to see Boris’s breakdown offered a duly chilling moment. Marta Swiderska presided in colourful, characterful fashion over a raucous hostelry close to the Lithuanian border, Ryan Speedo Green’s Varlaam a properly larger-than-life patron. Vitalij Kowaljow’s Pimen seemed very much the holy man we were given to believe, yet far from ruled out more sinister possibilities. All contributed to the greater whole, as of course did the chorus, whose disappointments, privations, and other sufferings were all too real. Not that they were not in some sense responsible too. Expertly trained by Eberhard Friedrich, with them we knew where we were—or rather, we thought we did.

Salzburg Festival (3) - The Bassarids, 23 August 2018

Felsenreitschule

 Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Agave / Venus), Károly Szemerédy (Captain / Adonis), Vera-Lotte Böcker (Autonoe / Proserpine), Nikolai Schukoff (Tiresias / Calliope)
Images: © Salzburger Festspiele / Bernd Uhlig

Dionysus – Sean Panikkar

Pentheus – Russell Braun

Cadmus – Willard White
Tiresias, Calliope – Nikolai Schukoff
Captain, Adonis – Károly Szemerédy
Agave, Venus – Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
Autonoe, Proserpine – Vera-Lotte Böcker
Beroe – Anna Maria Dur
Dancers – Rosalba Guerrero Torres, Hector Buenfil Palacio, Flavie Haour, Katharina Platz, Javier Salcedo Hernandez

Krzysztof Warlikowski (director)

Małgorzata Sczczęśniak (designs)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Denis Guéguin (video)
Claude Bardouil (choreography)
Christian Longchamp (dramaturgy)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Huw Rhys James)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Kent Nagano (conductor)

 

The Bassarids returns to Salzburg, where it was born, now more than half a century ago, in 1966, only this time in Auden and Kallman’s original English. (That premiere had to wait until two years later, in Santa Fe.) What a thrill it proved to hear those opening orchestral cries once again from the Vienna Philharmonic, swiftly followed by its equally fine chorus: ‘Pentheus is now our Lord!’ Kent Nagano succeeded admirably, moreover, in balancing the claims of reason and abandon. How one does that may remain a matter of debate – I should not have minded a little more of the latter, especially during the ‘Hunt of the Menads’ – but, drawing upon his experience of having conducted the work (in German) in Munich ten years ago, Nagano made his own case, revealing oft-hidden, if not quite unsuspected Stravinskian neo-Classical tendencies: very much in the line of the contest – all too often misunderstood as synthesis – between Stravinsky and Schoenberg in Henze’s preceding Prince of Homburg.

 

Russell Braun (Pentheus), Sean Panikkar (Dionysus)

The return was, doubtless aptly, not quite a return: restoration, rather than renewal, should never be the aim. The premiere production, conducted by Christoph Dohnányi, had been seen and heard next door to the Felsenreitschule, in Karajan’s Grosses Festspielhaus. It was near enough, though, to claim lineage – so important a concept for the authority and authoritarianism, as well as attempted, pretended liberation therefrom, in this work, be it ‘dramatic’ or ‘aesthetic’. (Is there, should there, be a distinction?) This was the work, above all, that made Henze’s name in the mainstream – and had him fear what he had become, had him urgently question his ‘world success’. (What did that mean, he asked in an interview many years later? To be a Leonard Bernstein? No, thank goodness. And now the latter’s centenary has peaked, perhaps we can return to considering him a great conductor and a negligible composer.)

Only two years later, Henze would proclaim, with all the natural theatricality that had stood him in such good stead here: ‘Unnecessary are new museums, opera houses, and world premieres. Necessary, to set about the realisation of dreams. Necessary, to abolish the dominion of men over men.’ There was, however, and still is a great deal of revolution in The Bassarids. As with Wagner, as with Stravinsky, as with any number of other artists, we should be wary of taking Henze’s self-assessment on trust. He had his reasons, many of them good, for reacting and indeed for presenting himself as he did. Excessive cynicism is (by definition) unnecessary. Nevertheless, a fine production from Krzysztof Warlikowski – we might well consider it almost a companion piece to recent operatic work of his on Die Gezeichneten (Munich) and From the House of the Dead (London), as well as to his justly celebrated Iphig­­énie en Tauride (Paris) – reminds us not only why many consider this the composer’s single finest stage work, but how in some senses it may be seen pre-emptively to criticise as well as necessitate his most overtly ‘politically engaged’ works of the decade to come.

Dionysus

The opening takes us back to Euripides, to Dionysus before the palace at Thebes, outlining the reasons for his visit. (Some of that material is also present in the introductory ‘Mythological Background’ section to my Schott score, at least implied to be part of the penumbra to the ‘work’.) Dionysus speaks, amplified, very much as a god from beyond. We see a mysterious hooded figure, whom we presume to him – he is subsequently confirmed as such – who may or may not actually be speaking these words. His mission, however, is clear – at least from his side of the family, argument, and palace walls. He will avenge himself and his mother, Semele, upon their remaining earthly family and, as we guess and soon will learn, upon the society, politics, and cultural practices of the city over which it rules. When we see the royal family, its old guard first, Pentheus only later, its classic modern authoritarian-fascism is clear. Warlikowski’s frequent collaborator, Małgorzata Sczczęśniak accomplishes much with male military uniforms and female ‘look’. Cadmus in a wheelchair veers just the right side of cliché, which seems just about right: he is, after all, a retired dictator, and he would wear dark glasses; more to the point, perhaps, our thoughts concerning such matters are more often than not clichés, in need of a little revision – or revolution.

Cadmus (Willard White)

But is it this revolution? Is it indeed possible to revise or to overthrow what needs to be revised or overthrown, whether in or out of the opera house? Dionysus’s conquest is one we all want. None of us wants Pentheus’s authoritarianism: as much, surely, Theodor Adorno’s ‘authoritarian personality’ and Herbert Marcuse’s ‘one-dimensional man’ as previously existing fascism. Indeed, ussell Braun’s performance proved well judged: a tricky and thankless task. That, perhaps, is why we find Cadmus, here in a richly sympathetic performance from Willard White (the best I have heard from him in some time), more sympathetic than perhaps we ought. We are most likely to sympathise, indeed to empathise, with the women – note, as dramaturge Christian Longchamp advises us, ‘couples are absent. Cadmus, Agave, Antonoe and Pentheus live alone, as do the prophet Tiresias and the wet-nurse Beroe’ – who lead us if not on then towards Dionysus’s merry, intoxicating, catastrophic dance, towards Semele, ‘at one free, dominating and castrating’. Nikolai Schukoff, a mesmerising Dionysus in Munich, returned as a Tiresias both manipulator and manipulated, blind and yet seeing, in an equally brilliant, disconcerting performance here.

Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Agave), Vera-Lotte Böcker (Beroe)

 

As the Pasolini-echoing (120 Days of Sodom) narrative unfolds, as bourgeois, patriarchal repression comes under assault, none of us would wish it otherwise – certainly not the figures of the court who sado-masochistically enact the Calliope Intermezzo (here included, although sometimes cut with the composer’s approval), and certainly not Pentheus’s own mother, Agave, whose personal tragedy will be revealed as glorification of the hunt-revolt that has killed her son. Think not only of the price, which is obvious (heart-rendingly so as we observe, share in the recognition of Tanja Ariane Baumgartner), but the gain? Dionysus has moved on. He is as much our unconscious desire, certainly so in so superlative performance as that of Sean Panikkar, as god. Or is that not what a god is anyway? Might not Pentheus have told us that? For whilst we were won over – we were, were we not? – by Panikkar’s mystery, his lyrical yet also heroic tenor, the vulnerability and indeed the mental instability implied by his involuntary shaking, we persuade ourselves that we knew all along there was something unhealthy to the cult of Semele, show tomb we always see before us, venerated by many who should have known better.

 

Beroe and Agave

We always knew better, did we not? We never really backed the Nazis, the fascists, the misogynists, the homophobes, the… And yet, on the other hand, we had already foreseen the objections. We actually rather liked those ‘new museums, opera houses, and world premieres’ all along.  The ‘realisation of dreams’: no, that was someone else, not us. Until Dionysus returns and we, the crowd, the sheep, continue the revolutionary dance we had always wanted. ‘Perché siamo tutti in pericolo.’ Or, to quote Helmut Lachenmann, in his far from conciliatory open letter to Henze (who had, in fairness to Lachenmann, proved far more hostile to him):

… that outbreak of the muzzled subject into a new emotional immediacy will be untrue, and degenerate into self-deception, wherever the fat and comfortable composer, perhaps slightly scarred structurally and therefore the more likely to complain, sets up house once again in the old junk-room of available emotions.

… Those who believe that expressive spontaneity, and innocent drawing from the venerable reservoir of affect, make that struggle of the fractured subject with itself superfluous, and spare it an engagement with the traditional concepts of material, have disabled their own voice. They are gladly allowed to sit in the lap of a society which encourages those who support its repressive game.

Did Henze, or at least his material, know that all along – in their way, just as much as Lachenmann? Wolfgang Rihm, admired by both, might tell us; did he not, after all, write a Nietzschean opera entitled Dionysos, also premiered at Salzburg? Or is that, like other third ways, just to prolong the agony? Are such ready equations between the aesthetic and the political part of the problem, the solution, or both?

Wagner advertising that might have made Goebbels blush

A friend has just brought to my attention a report (click here) concerning an extraordinary piece of German advertising. Can this brazenly racist depiction of Wagner metamorphosing into a caricature beyond crudity of Kent Nagano be for real? It looks as though it might have been rejected as not subtle enough for Der Stürmer. Most staggering of all, perhaps, is the fact that Michael Preiswerk, company board spokesman for the Art Directors Club, the advertising group that awarded the this image a gold medal prize (!), commented: 'It's an excellent poster that goes beyond cultures to form a great work and that very strikingly and succinctly shows Asian culture. It's charming and funny and shows openness and multiculturalism.' I doubt that even Dr Goebbels would have been able to keep a straight face whilst delivering those words.

Munich Opera Festival: Das Gehege and Salome, 26 July 2008

Nationaltheater, Munich

Die Frau – Gabriele Schnaut
Der Adler – Steven Barrett

Herod – Wolfgang Schmidt
Herodias – Iris Vermillion
Salome – Angela Denoke
Jochanaan – Alan Held
Narraboth – Wookyung Kim
Ein Page der Herodias – Daniela Sindram
Erster Jude – Ulrich Reß
Zweiter Jude – Kenneth Roberson
Dritter Jude – Tommaso Randazzo
Vierter Jude – Kevin Conners
Fünfter Jude – Alfred Kuhn
Erster Nazarener – Christian Rieger
Zweiter Nazarener – Markus Herzog
Erster Soldat – Steven Humes
Zweiter Soldat – Andreas Kohn
Ein Cappadocier – Rüdiger Trebes
Eine Sklavin – Stephanie Hampl
Engel des Todes – Steven Barrett

William Friedkin (director)
Hans Schavernoch (designs)
Petra Reinhardt (costumes)
Mark Jonathan (lighting)
David Bridel (choreographer)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Kent Nagano (conductor)

And so, ‘Richard Strauss Woche’ concluded with Salome, the first Strauss operatic masterpiece. In 2006, this double-bill with Wolfgang Rihm’s Das Gehege (‘The Enclosure’) had inaugurated Kent Nagano’s music directorship. I thought it a reasonable performance, more so in musical than stage terms, but nowhere near so good as the festival’s superlative Ariadne auf Naxos.

It was certainly interesting to make the acquaintance of Das Gehege. Based upon a story extracted from Botho Strauss, the action runs as follows (I quote from the programme synopsis):

A woman comes out of the darkness. It is night and the woman is alone. She arrives at the zoo. She speaks to the golden eagle in his aviary, takes a knife, frees the bird and admires the eagle’s body. She challenges the eagle to attack her. She mocks it. The more she irritates the eagle, the closer it comes to her. When the woman realises how old and powerless the bird is, she feels superior to it. The eagle pounces on her; she kills it.

The eagle’s is an unspoken part, so this is essentially a Schoenbergian monodrama. Gabriele Schnaut, creator of the role, was certainly more suited to it than she had been to that of Elektra. The vocalism remained flawed but her prowess as a singing actress was generally compensation enough. Nagano and the Bavarian State Orchestra sounded fully at home with Rihm’s language, which, the odd instance of extended instrumental technique notwithstanding, should not frighten away anyone who has come to terms with Berg. The composer can certainly write for orchestra, evincing an almost Henze-like fluency in that respect, replete with reminiscences and evocations of the dance and of the natural world. He also plots a convincing vocal-dramatic line. There are inevitably shades of Erwartung, although I do not think the newer work would come off so well in a straight comparison, for Schoenberg’s score is infinitely more complex. Rihm’s broader brush strokes might well seem a little too obvious – and generalised. William Friedkin’s production emphasised the psychological rather than the political. This seemed something of a missed opportunity, given the original play’s status as something of a commentary upon the fall of the Berlin Wall and reunification. In Germany, an eagle will rarely if ever just be an eagle. The production was unexceptionable on its own terms, although the stage direction itself seemed uninspired and unduly reliant upon Schnaut’s charisma; it is unclear that a concert performance would have been in any sense inferior. As a companion piece for Salome, Rihm’s piece works well enough, although I see no reason why it should be restricted to this role.

Nagano’s reading of Strauss's score lacked the magical delight of his Ariadne. It was an analytical account, bringing certain neglected lines to the fore, but at times a little deficient in dramatic thrust. Still, the orchestra sounded excellent on his terms. I had expected great things of Angela Denoke as Salome. Judging by the audience’s reaction, it believed it had heard them; however, I was less sure. Although she is possessed of a great stage presence and certainly used it on this occasion, there were times when she sounded vocally overwhelmed. I was delighted that she did not merely belt out the part after the all-too-approximate manner of Schnaut as Elektra, yet equally – and perhaps surprisingly – the Marschallin had seemed more suited to her. There was intelligent shading but sometimes a lack not only of power but also of sustained line. Alan Held passed muster as John the Baptist but did little more than that. Wolfgang Schmidt, whom I had last heard as a none-too-successful Siegfried, presented a somewhat caricatured but nevertheless perfectly reasonable Herod. Iris Vermillion sounded a bit out of sorts as his consort, although she certainly looked the part. Daniela Sindram was a truly excellent page to her. As Narraboth, Wookyung Kim wooed with his voice, but seemed a little at sea as an actor. The Jews and Nazarenes were an impressive bunch, both individually and as a whole, although Friedkin seemed to think them more important than they were. His would-be provocateur ‘Angel of Death’, the same actor and costume as the Eagle, was little more than a visual irritant.

Indeed, the greatest failing lay with the production. It sounds all too predictable to say this, but Friedkin seemed constrained by cinematic thinking, unable to accept the suggestive possibilities of the stage. Scene changes were all too frequent and all too pseudo-realistic. The Personenregie seemed almost quaint, reliant upon hammy stock gestures, that is, when it was not merely absent. Despite the partial nudity of Salome from her dance onwards, there was nary a trace of the erotic. For that, one had to turn, sometimes more successfully than others, to the pit. Nagano is on record as saying, quite rightly, that opera is first and foremost musical theatre, but I cannot believe that he meant this should be by default. For an example of theatre truly growing out of the music – and a tremendous musical performance – turn to Ariadne instead.

Munich Opera Festival: Ariadne auf Naxos, 24 July 2008

Prinzregententheater, Munich

Ein Musiklehrer – Martin Gantner
Haushofmeister – Johannes Klama
Der Komponist – Daniela Sindram
Bacchus/Der Tenor – Burkhard Fritz
Ein Tanzmeister – Guy de Mey
Ein Offizier – Francesco Petrozzi
Ein Lakai – Christian Rieger
Zerbinetta – Diana Damrau
Ein Perückenmacher – Adrian Sâmpetrean
Ariadne/Primadonna – Adrianne Pieczonka
Harlekin – Nikolay Borchev
Scaramuccio – Ulrich Reß
Truffaldin – Steven Humes
Brighella – Kevin Conners
Najade – Aga Mikolaj
Dryade – Anaïk Morel
Echo – Sine Bundgaard

Robert Carsen (director)
Peter Pabst (designs)
Falk Bauer (costumes)
Manfred Voss (lighting)
Marco Santi (choreography)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Opera Ballet of the Bavarian State Opera
Kent Nagano (conductor)

This was just the tonic following the relative disappointment of Arabella, the perfectly taken opportunity to restore my faith in Strauss and Hofmannsthal, with what is probably my favourite Strauss opera. Elektra may be the greatest but Ariadne auf Naxos approaches the magic of Così fan tutte, at least when performed as it should be. Yet this last of the festival's three premieres - the others having been Idomeneo and Doktor Faust - was no mere restorative: it was an unforgettable evening, probably my operatic highpoint so far for 2008.

Robert Carsen’s production is unquestionably the finest I have seen. It is by now relatively well established, at least amongst those productions that exist in the land of the theatrically alive, that the Prologue is an opportunity not only to show the making of the Opera, not only to show the making of an opera, but also to examine our attitudes, preconceptions, and prejudices. Vanities and other excesses were present but so was the genuine human enthusiasm so necessary to put together a show, which, when put together properly, can be one of the most wonderful experiences known to man. The production did all of this very well, without falling into unnecessary didacticism, and scored extra points by introducing the ballet corps as well: quite rightly, given the imaginative role it would be allotted during the Opera itself. Indeed, we saw the dancers warming up on stage as we took our seats in the theatre. Sparing use was made of the auditorium too, which involved the audience in the action without becoming tiresome. The relationship between the Composer and Zerbinetta was astutely moved into the foreground as the clutter of the rehearsal miraculously disappeared to focus upon their interaction. Manfred Voss’s lighting was extremely important here as elsewhere. And something simple yet extraordinarily powerful in context was the role allotted to the Composer from the moment the curtain went down upon the Prologue. Trapped on the other side of the curtain and stunned by the apparent desecration of his masterpiece, he found it within himself to walk round to the opening of the pit and to hand his score to the conductor. Thereafter, seated at the edge of the pit, he would watch the first performance of his work, be revisited by Zerbinetta, and finally, in what was arguably Carsen’s coup de théâtre, retreat to the suddenly revealed backstage, where the performers would congratulate each other and be congratulated by us. The lines, properly, were blurred.

At least an equal achievement and arguably greater was the treatment of the Opera. As I hinted above, one ought not to be able to go too far wrong with a treatment of the Prologue, given a degree of thought and theatrical imagination. (This has not, of course, prevented many from going far wrong indeed.) Yet how to present the Opera, especially how to build up to its conclusion, rather than having it seem bizarre or anti-climactic – neither of which it is – is probably the harder task. What one needs above all to do here is to listen to composer and librettist. They need not be slavishly followed but a sense of transformation, transfiguration even, is crucial. To a degree I do not recall experiencing before, Ariadne and Bacchus seemed real characters, not archetypes or cardboard cut-outs of ‘soprano’ and ‘tenor’. Of course, their relationship towards the vain artists we saw in the Prologue is important, but the magic of opera and of this Opera is how such failings may be put to good use. Zerbinetta played a crucial role in this respect, providing something of an example for Ariadne, persuading her – again to a degree that I do not recall from previous performances – that there may be something to be gained from taking a man after all. This need not be one of the host of dancers with whom Zerbinetta has so show-stoppingly played during her aria; such would hardly be proper for our princess. But Zerbinetta has ignited a change of heart or at least an openness to possibilities other than that of the departed Theseus. Ariadne must still go though her Brünnhilde’s awakening moment, frightened and repelled by her visitor, but the eventual outcome has been hinted at if not foretold. It is also stylishly mirrored in the male and female dancers who, during the final scene, come to reflect the actions of Ariadne and Bacchus. Once they have become real characters, this pair may then once again become more archetypal.

It is a somewhat false exercise to separate individual performances from the production, given how tightly integrated all aspects of this were, but I ought nevertheless now to turn to the performers themselves. My only slight doubt occurred at the beginning of the Overture, which sounded a little matter of fact. (Or maybe it was that I had not yet settled down to listen properly.) Thereafter, helped by the glorious acoustic of Munich’s Prinzregententheater – far superior, I think, to that of the far from negligible Nationaltheater – this would be a reading that exhibited a winning combination of clarity, warmth, flexibility, and narrative drive. One can hardly ask for more than that. This performance confirmed Kent Nagano as a Strauss conductor of the first order and the Bavarian State Orchestra as a Straussian instrument of at least equal rank. I shall not single out individual instruments or sections, since all were equally accomplished, but I shall note with pleasure how much one could hear of the piano and harmonium parts and not merely in their continuo role.

There was not a weak link in the cast, whether one considers the poise and athleticism of the dancers, superbly choreographed by Marco Santi, or, as I shall now do, the singers. All were fine singing actors but this should in no sense be taken to imply acted compensation for vocal shortcomings. Rather the musical and the theatrical acted in a truly complementary, indeed dialectical, fashion. Martin Gantner as the Music Master imparted wisdom to his Composer charge. In that crucial role, Daniela Sindram overcame a slight initial colourlessness, to inhabit the Composer’s person with moving credibility. Adrianne Pieczonka was a very fine Primadonna/Ariadne, who grew as her character did. Her voice was extremely beautiful throughout but the beauty was put to good dramatic ends. Likewise the most accomplished Najade, Dryade, and Echo, in the respective persons of Aga Mikolaj, Anaïk Morel, and Sine Bundgaard, I have ever heard. Burkhard Fritz was most convincing as the Tenor and hardly less so in the unenviable role of Bacchus. As I mentioned above, to have turned him into a real, flesh-and blood character is no mean achievement. Zerbinetta’s troupe did everything that could have been asked of it. All four of its members were fine singers and fine actors, utterly engaged and utterly engaging. Their several changes of costume astutely helped drive the narrative forward, for which many thanks to Falk Bauer. If I would single out Nikolay Borchev’s Harlequin, once again quite simply the finest I have seen and heard, that is probably more a consequence of the greater weight ascribed to the character in the work than of any manifest superiority in performance.

But it was Diana Damrau as Zerbinetta who delivered the absolute knock-out performance. Vocally and theatrically, it was of a level I doubt I shall ever witness again in the role. In lesser hands, her aria can become tedious as we wait for the preliminaries to be over and the coloratura to begin. Here, every aspect of what became a fully fledged scena, replete with full participation by the male dancers, Zerbinetta as their leading lady, was more compelling than one could ever imagine. She inhabited the text, the music, the production, and wrought true magic. No wonder the men stripped to their underwear as they sought to impress her, to win the contest for her favour. The give and take between singer and orchestra was every bit as impressive, leaving recollections of most other renderings seeming uninflected and downright unimaginative. Zerbinetta may have been in charge but this was not merely wilful; Damrau listened as well as led. Her aforementioned return to the watching Composer and the parodying of this action with her own troupe were strokes of theatrical genius too. This instance will give, I hope, some indication of how all aspects of the production were at one, so very much more than the sum of their parts. Any Straussian, any musician, or indeed any human being, should make strenuous efforts to share in this experience.