Salzburg Festival (6) - Die Liebe der Danae, 8 August 2016

Grosses Festspielhaus

Images: © Salzburger Festspiele / Forster
Jupiter (Tomasz Konieczny)

Danae – Krassimira Stoyanova

Jupiter – Tomasz Konieczny
Merkur – Norbert Ernst
Pollux – Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke
Zanthe – Regine Hangler
Midas – Gerhard Siegel
Four Kings – Pavel Kolgatin, Andi Früh, Ryan Speedo Green, Jongmin Park
Semele – Mária Celeng
Europa – Olga Bezsmertna
Alkmene – Michaela Selinger
Leda – Jennifer Johnston
Four Watchmen – Hacik Bayvertian, Konrad Huber, Michael Wilder, Csaba Markovitz

Alvis Hermanis (director, set designs)

Juozas Statkevičius (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Ineta Sipunova (video)
Alla Sigalova (choreography)
Gudrun Hartmann (assistant director)
Uta Gruber-Ballehr (assistant designer)
Ronny Dietrich (dramaturgy)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Franz Welser-Möst (conductor)

 

It is not every year one has the opportunity to see two different productions of Strauss’s penultimate opera, still – still! – never staged by either the Royal Opera or ENO. Before the Deutsche Oper’s revival earlier this year, I had indeed only seen Die Liebe der Danae once in the theatre before, also in Salzburg, in Günter Krämer’s 2002 production. I can only wish that Krämer’s production had been revived, for, despite its faults, its Salzburg successor from Alvis Hermanis is truly atrocious.

At best, it is a total waste of money (and bizarrely, given the golden subject matter, a non-ironic one). The sets and costumes look – and surely must have been – very expensive indeed, the dimensions of Midas’s hut threaten to have Franco Zeffirelli, surely the unacknowledged progenitor of Hermanis’s ‘aesthetic’, seem a model of modesty in his garretted vision for La bohème; indeed, we veer dangerously close to Zeffirelli-Turandot-land (far from coincidentally, as we shall have cause to discover). If the very occasional image, notably the portrayal of the shower of gold through dancers, augurs well, everything else is empty indeed. Chorus members wear individualised giant – and yes, I mean ‘giant’ – turbans. Why? Who knows? No one even seems to care. A still-more-giant elephant is wheeled on and off the stage. At the beginning of the third act, someone walks a real donkey on and off the stage in bizarre hommage to Francesca Zambello’s Carmen, or maybe not. Nothing seems to have any meaning. There is a total lack of interest – truly extraordinary in our own times – in the dramatic meaning and possibilities of temptation by and rejection of gold. Nor, unlike in Krämer’s production – which took us from the period of 1944 dress rehearsal, through 1952 for the first production, also of course in Salzburg, to its own time – is there any interest whatsoever shown in genesis and reception. This opera needs help to release its myriad of musical riches; it receives none; indeed, none is so much as attempted in a lengthy essay in – at best – vacuity.

 

Danae (Krassimira Stoyanova) with dancers (gold)

In a valiant attempt to defend or at least to skate over Hermanis’s indefensible, dramaturge Ronny Dietrich writes: ‘This blend of the traditional with the fictitious … has induced Alvis Hermanis to stage Die Liebe der Danae as a fairy tale, especially as the opera’s storyline takes us to the Orient. Even if the libretto mentions Syria as the country in which the encounter between god and man, i.e. Jupiter and Midas, took place, Alvis Hermanis prefers not to commit himself to any location or period in his production.’ It is not, on a moment’s reflection, so valiant after all (and I have checked the original German, lest the words were mistranslated). Why is a ‘fairy tale’ ‘especially’ suited to ‘the Orient’. Did Edward Said, let alone any of his successors, never exist? And why is a fairy tale somehow held to be devoid of meaning, of all manner of implications, psychological, social, political, cultural…?

 

The claim that no location is committed to is at best questionable. Why, then, do we see, for no obvious reason, that most noble passage in the whole opera – the interlude depicting ‘Jupiter’s resignation’ – ruined by a procession on stage of women in burqas? Well, I say burqas, but, in contrast with the expensive if vulgar designs for everything else, they are simply white sheets: childish, if one were to be charitable, but more likely deliberately insulting? We return to Hermanis. Now notorious for his anti-migrant outbursts – one of his most staggering, brazenly untruthful, brazenly racist claims having been ‘While not all refugees are terrorists, all terrorists are refugees or their children’ – I think we can hazard a guess why he might wish to hold to ridicule Muslim women, in a setting that is anything but non-specific, whatever Dietrich might claim. Likewise why Hermanis might depict ‘the Orient’ – have we really not moved on from that? Yes, we, of course, have – with an essentialism shading between ludicrous and sinister. There is no reason whatsoever for those women to have trekked on stage at all, setting up shop with looms in Midas’s bafflingly large tent; Dietrich offers the claim that carpets, ‘which epitomise the oriental topos’ (we are long past the time to stop digging) establish ‘a connection to the genesis of the opera – a process of intertwining and interweaving themes and motifs’. You could have fooled me. Hermanis’s recent interview with Der Standard, in which he defiantly nails his ‘conservative’ – for which, we can read something a little more than that – credentials to the mast tell us, sadly, much more about what has been going on. Why theatres continue to hire someone whose directorial skills are as impressive as his politics is beyond me – more so than ever, given the results of this production.

 

We had, then, to rely on the singing for anything in the way of enjoyment or edification. It is just as well that much of it was very good indeed. I doubt that the role of Jupiter has ever been better sung than it was by Tomasz Konieczny; his was a towering, tireless performance, as impressive in its moments of tenderness as of godly pride. Krassimira Stoyanova’s Danae was, for the most part, beautifully sung, in an evidently heartfelt assumption. Both singers showed themselves excellently matched in that glorious final duet. Gerhard Siegel’s musical and verbal skill was never in doubt, but I was not always entirely convinced that the voice of an excellent Mime offered a plausible Midas challenge to our Wotan-Jupiter. Norbert Ernst made for a lively Merkur and Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke once again proved himself a fine singing-actor as Pollux. Jupiter’s wives – what to say about their painted-on nipples, another Orientalist ‘fantasy’? – struck me as an altogether superior collection of consorts. Mária Celeng, Olga Bezemertna, Michaela Selinger, and Jennifer Johnston worked so well together, both individual of voice and indeed of character, and yet also cohesive as a vocal quartet, that I longed to hear more from them: a spin-off, please.

 

That leaves us to consider the orchestra and the conductor. Franz Welser-Möst, lavishly praised by Hermanis in that Standard interview, conducted somewhat stiffly for much of the evening. If Hermanis thinks, as he claims, that Welser-Möst is an aural equivalent of ‘strong LSD’, he needs to find himself a new dealer. When the conductor relaxed, when he let the music yield a little more, the Vienna Philharmonic came more into its own. There is much more to this score in terms of harmony, colour, a myriad of orchestral melody than we heard here, though. It was not only Hermanis’s fault that the aforementioned ‘Jupiter’s resignation’, one of the most moving orchestral passages in all of Strauss’s operas, went for so little.

 

Salzburg Festival (7) - Der Rosenkavalier, 17 August 2014

Images: © Salzburger Festspiele / Monika Rittershaus

 

Grosses Festspielhaus

Die Feldmarschallin Fürstin Werdenberg – Krassimira Stoyanova

Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Günther Groissböck
Octavian – Sophie Koch
Herr von Faninal – Adrian Erőd
Sophie – Mojca Erdmann
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Silvana Dussmann
Valzacchi – Rudolf Schasching
Annina – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Police Officer – Tobias Kehrer
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Franz Supper
Faninal’s Major-domo – Martin Piskorski
A Notary – Dirk Aleschus
A Landlord – Roman Sadnik
A Singer – Stefan Pop
A Milliner – Alexandra Flood
A Vendor of Pets – Franz Gürtelschmied
Leopold – Rupert Grössinger
Lackeys/Waiters – Won Cheol Song, Franz Gruber, Friedrich Springer, Jens Musger
Lerchenauischen – Florian Boberski, Kiril Chobanov, Manuel Grabner, Helmut Höllriegl, Boris Lichtenberger, Christian Schläpfer
House Servant (Mohammed) – Liviu Burz 

Harry Kupfer (director)

Hans Schavernoch (set designs)
Yan Tax (costumes)
Jürgen Hoffmann (lighting)
Thomas Reimer (video design)

Salzburg Festival and Theatre Children’s Chorus (chorus master: Wolfgang Götz)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Franz Welser-Möst (conductor)

 



Sophie (Mojca Erdmann) and Octavian (Sophie Koch)

Harry Kupfer’s production of Der Rosenkavalier is without a doubt the most thought-provoking of the stagings I saw at this year’s Salzburg Festival. It intrigued me during the first act, though I was not really sure how I felt about it; it grew on me during the second, and had won me over by the third. That seems to be a deliberate strategy, conducted in tandem with a gradual blossoming of colour from the severe near-monochrome of the early twentieth-century (time of composition) Marschallin’s palace to the more colourful inn of the third act, with certain carefully colour making its point in between. All around, photographs – untrustworthy memories – of celebrated Viennese landmarks from the Kunsthistorisches Musuem to the Prater make their point concerning recollection and reimagination. What I felt was missing was a further layering from an imaginary eighteenth century in which Hofmannsthal – if not necessarily Strauss – so painstakingly sets the action, but I learned to live with that, and again, by the time of the third act, had quite forgotten about it. Perhaps there is a lesson to be learned there too.

 

For pretty much all of the action one would (rightly?) expect is present and correct, except not necessarily quite as one might initially have expected it, not the least of this opera’s lessons. A particular strength of Kupfer’s production is its light insistence upon the work’s metatheatricality, less overt than, say, Ariadne auf Naxos or Capriccio, but still important to its layering. One certainly has a good sense of the Marschallin as director, and indeed as fallible narrator/director. Are the snapshots hers, as might be suggested by the arrival of her extraordinarily – deliberately so – car at the end of the third act? What are the implications for agency here? Is she still in control? And what might that mean for Octavian and Sophie, here directed – and played – as a much stronger woman than one generally experiences?

 

The Marschallin (Krassimira Stoyanova)

 

The case of Sophie is especially interesting, since I admit that, in purely vocal terms, I did not find Mojca Erdmann’s portrayal especially inviting, hearing more of an Olympia than a Sophie, a strangely mechanical rendering at times. Yet, somehow, it worked, and the strength of character came across more strongly than I can recall. For once, it was quite possible to understand why Octavian might have made the choice he did. Sophie Koch’s portrayal of the role is well-known and did not disappoint on this occasion, the opera’s play with gender as captivating as ever. Krassimira Stoyanova presented a dignified Marschallin: no vulgar playing on the heart-strings here, and probably all the more moving for it. Moreover, her careful attention to the words could usefully be aped by certain more fêted exponents of the role. Günther Groissböck worked hard to present a less caricatured Ochs than one often suffers. What remained of caricature was probably ineradicable: a pity, but there is only so much one can do with the part. Groissböck’s was an uncommonly subtle reading, though, again born of laudable attention to the text. (It is perhaps a pity, though, that Kupfer seems to want to have Sophie having made up her mind against him from the very start; a little more contest and development would not necessarily go amiss.) To start with, I thought Adrian Erőd’s Faninal a little dry in tone, but that soon ceased to trouble me; perhaps I was just imagining it. The supporting cast was not always of the highest quality, but then there is a huge amount to cast here, and much, by the same token, was impressive. Rudolf Schasching’s coarsely sung Valzacchi was a rare true disappointment; Wiebke Lehmkuhl’s Annina was much more characterful. Roman Sadnik’s Landlord – intriguingly, though probably coincidentally, dressed and even very much looking like the owner of Triangel, the restaurant outside the house – offered a particularly vivid portrayal, whilst Rupert Grössinger (and Kupfer) made considerably more of Leopold, Ochs’s son, than is generally the case.

 

 

Ochs (Günther Groissböck)

The performances were originally to have been conducted by Zubin Mehta, who had to withdraw on medical grounds. Franz Welser-Möst was a generally efficient, if not exactly inspiring, replacement, the exception to efficiency lying in an inordinately drawn out close to the first act. (I thought it was never going to end, and I am rarely opposed to slower tempi.) It was certainly not a warm reading, but that to an extent married well with the production, especially earlier on. A little more whipped cream would not necessarily have done any harm, and there were perhaps a few more discrepancies between pit and stage than one might have expected. Still, there was much to savour, and to think about, both from production and from the performances on stage.

 

Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera, 11 February 2013

Eugene Onegin (Simon Keenlyside)
Images: Bill Cooper

Royal Opera House

 

Tatyana – Krassimira Stoyanova

Eugene Onegin – Simon Keenlyside
Young Tatyana – Vigdis Hentze Olsen
Mme Larina – Diana Montague
Filipyevna – Kathleen Wilkinson
Olga – Elena Maximova
Peasant Singer – Elliot Goldie
Young Onegin – Thom Rackett
Lensky – Pavol Breslik
Monsieur Triquet – Christophe Mortagne
Captain – Michel de Souza
Zaletsky – Jihoon Kim
Guillot – Luke Price
Prince Gremin – Peter Rose

Kasper Holten (director)
Mia Stensgaard (set designs)
Katrina Lindsay (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Leo Warner (video)
Lawrence Watson (animation)
Signe Fabricius (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Robin Ticciati (conductor)

Kasper Holten’s new production of Eugene Onegin, his first staging for the Royal Opera House, was in many ways excellent, an auspicious debut indeed. Unfortunately, it was truly let down by some of the most lacklustre conducting I have heard at Covent Garden. Whilst an interesting, intriguing evening was still to be pieced together from production and singing, it would be idle to pretend that Robin Ticciati’s jejune performance did not detract significantly from the experience. To start with, it seemed as though Ticciati’s reading might prove interestingly different. The balletic side to Tchaikovsky seemed on the verge of shining through, the woodwind section of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House offering sparkling playing, and what a nice change it made for once to hear the harp! Alas, it soon emerged that those advantages had been achieved largely by default. It became impossible to ignore the thinness of the string sound, despite a sizeable number of strings in the pit. That was not on account of any ineptitude of execution by the players, who remained polished throughout, but because Ticciati seemingly wished to elicit the sound of a middle-ranking chamber orchestra from one of the best opera house bands in the world. Fair enough if you simply have to put up with a small number of strings, or even if you are playing in a small house, but such was not of course the case here. More damagingly still, the performance dragged, at times interminably so. Without any sense of life – not to be confused with alleged ‘airiness’ – and without any sense of Tchaikovsky’s tormented soul, the only signs of anything dramatic being at stake had to be gleaned elsewhere: a great pity. Let me be clear. This was not about ‘intimacy’, about approaching Tchaikovsky’s ‘scenes’ in the manner in which they were first performed at the Moscow Conservatoire – although the perversity did have something in common, albeit significantly magnified, with the attempt by Ticciati’s mentor, Sir Simon  Rattle, to present an ‘intimate’ Carmen upon the vast stage of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus. Nor was it about actual speed; I genuinely have no idea whether the performance was fast, slow, or middling, by the clock. What I do know is that it dragged, despite sometimes being unduly driven, because Ticciati proved hopelessly incapable of finding a pulse, variable or otherwise. Instead of intimacy and interesting if unusual tempi, we had mere thinness and tedium.

 

Tatyana (Krassimira Stoyanova)

Holten’s production, on the other hand, offered what was often a searching exploration of memory. Inscribed into the score, its visual manifestation was effected by a number of means. Most obvious, but far from the only example, was the use of doubles, a young Tatyana and a young Onegin, to observe, to remind, to haunt. Mirroring the structure – some might say the lopsidedness – of Tchaikovsky’s drama, the young Tatyana is often seen during the first four scenes, whereas her counterpart does not emerge until the older, wiser Onegin appears in St Petersburg. The two young figures meet only in the final scene, offering a glimpse of what might have been, but what is now cruelly denied. Or should that read, 'wisely denied'? For in a fascinating gloss, Prince Gremin appears in that scene too: no longer a mere doddery if noble old fool, he too will have to learn to live with the truth. I can imagine that some might have found the histrionic display of the young Tatyana during the Letter Scene a little much, but by the same token, it seems a valid response to one side at least of the music – and Tchaikovsky’s character. It does not last very long, moreover, and more important seems to be the slippage between the two Tatyanas: who is writing? Who is truly affected? Is this for once an attempt to construct, with all the potential for failure that might entail, a character who is more than Tchaikovsky’s self-projection?

 

Colour is used to great effect: an especially telling moment is the infection through lighting and film of the outside world – or is it again a projection, this time from Tatyana herself? – with Tatyana’s scarlet, following the Letter Scene? Has she been rash, to put it mildly? Is this foreboding? Does her uneasy relationship to the outside world doom her to an unhappy, unsociable life? Is this where it all goes wrong, the moment to which her elder self will perforce return, time and time again? The relationship between books and memory is of course not a new concept in Onegin productions, but it is a good one, and their presence at Mme Larina’s house, not least in Tatyana’s hands, makes its point well. As time went on, above all in St Petersburg, it was as if Tchaikovsky’s and Pushkin’s reminiscences were straining towards Wagnerian leitmotif. They did not and could not reach it; technique and indeed aspiration are quite different. But I could not help but wonder if Holten’s Wagnerian experience played a role here. If only there could have been some counterpart to that in the conducting, which continued signally to fail to join up the dots. Let us hope that the production will be revived with someone else in the pit. A conductor with whom the Royal Opera House has a strong relationship, such as Semyon Bychkov, who has a fine Onegin recording to his name already? That might really be something.

 

Lensky (Pavol Breslik)

The cast was for the most part excellent too. Krassimira Stoyanova’s Tatyana was beautifully sung, no mere cipher, but a strong, flawed character, uncertain of where she was heading and all the more credible for that. I was a little disconcerted by Simon Keenlyside’s Onegin during the first act; it seemed coarser than I recalled from a few years ago. But dramatic truth gained over ‘mere’ beauty, for this Onegin gained in insight as the work progressed, quite in tandem with the production. As ever, Keenlyside’s way with words, just like Stoyanova’s, was pretty much beyond reproach. Beauty there was aplenty in the honeyed tones of Pavol Breslik, every inch the Romantic poet; his verbal acuity was no less impressive. Holten had elected to downplay, even to ignore, the homoeroticism of the relationship between Onegin and Lensky: a pity, since it so permeates the score, but of course the director had other ideas to explore. Instead we witnessed two young, quite immature men as genuine rivals for the affections or at least the attentions of their women. Olga was finely and richly sung by Elena Maximova, whilst Diana Montague and Kathleen Wilkinson almost stole the show with their equally fine portrayals of Mme Larina and Filipyevna. The only disappointments were an unidiomatic Zaretsky from Jihoon Kim and an intonationally-challenged Triquet from Christophe Mortagne. Peter Rose’s Gremin did everything it should – and more. Likewise the Royal Opera Chorus was on splendid form, for which Renato Balsadonna should once again receive considerable credit.

 

Mutter/LSO/Davis - Dvořák and Janáček, 10 October 2010

Barbican Hall

Dvořák – Violin Concerto in A minor, op.53
Janáček – Glagolitic Mass

Anne-Sophie Mutter (violin)
Krassimira Stoyanova (soprano)
Anna Stephany (mezzo-soprano)
Simon O’Neill (tenor)
Martin Snell (bass)
London Symphony Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra (chorus master: Joseph Cullen)
Sir Colin Davis (conductor)


First things first: not even a performance of this distinction could salvage Dvořák’s Violin Concerto. I suppose it is worth hearing occasionally, perhaps as part of a large scale Dvořák retrospective, but even the combined forces of Anne-Sophie Mutter, the LSO, and Sir Colin Davis could not conceal its ramshackle structure, or lack of it. ‘Rhapsodic’ might be a polite way of describing the work, but it would barely do such aimlessness justice. There are small sections that are relatively attractive in themselves, though it is difficult to discern the melodic or other attractions of the composer’s better works. But where do they come from and where do they go? Davis and Mutter launched the first movement in grandly symphonic, Brahmsian style. Unfortunately, this valiant attempt to shoehorn the composer’s meanderings into an intelligible structure was doomed to failure. Everything one could have wished for was there in performance terms. The LSO’s woodwind contributed delectable solo work. Mutter’s tone was simply ravishing, generous vibrato and precise intonation– none of the pain inflicted a week ago by Viktoria Mullova – happy bedfellows. As ever, her commitment seemed complete. Leaving aside a couple of ever so slight disjunctures between soloist and orchestra during the finale, I cannot imagine the concerto being better performed, but it still could not come off. No wonder Joachim rejected it. If only these musicians had been playing Brahms, Beethoven, or Berg.

Janáček’s Glagolitic Mass was another matter entirely. The performance matched at the very least that preceding the interval, but here we are concerned with a masterpiece of staggering originality. Sir Colin is not a conductor I especially associate with Janáček; I do not know whether he has conducted any of the operas, but on the basis of this performance, I hope that he might yet be persuaded. This was not a reading that went out of its way to stress the work’s Moravian roots, but it is arguably high time that Janáček was freed from nationalist constraints. There were elements of Romanticism, not least in the gorgeous cello lines of the Introduction, but the work was never unduly romanticised; it stood stark, craggy, and wondrous. Indeed, there was a stentorian quality to the structural whole: not unlike an imaginary Klemperer Glagolitic Mass. Above all, Davis and his forces imparted the requisite awe and joy. Just as Janáček, especially later Janáček, should not be reduced to regional status, his affirmation cannot be restricted to any creed, whether Christian or pantheist. That was what we heard here.

The LSO was on simply outstanding form, the only fault I can recall a very minor brass slip in the concluding Intrada. Unanimity of attack, orchestral weight and colouring, and burning commitment to the score: the orchestra’s players had it all. Catherine Edwards’s rendition of the extraordinary organ solo was similarly distinguished, despite the feeble Barbican electronic instrument: a pity. Nevertheless, I was left wishing that the composer had written a mature solo work or two for the King of Instruments. Following that postlude, I found myself wondering briefly whether the orchestra's tuning was quite that of the organ's, but my ears soon adjusted and it may have been my imagination. Davis also seemed to drive the opening of the Intrada a little hard, though there was no denying the grandeur of its conclusion.

The performance from the London Symphony Chorus was outstanding too. I do not think I have ever heard a bad performance from this chorus; that state of affairs was not about to change here. Shouts of exultation are mightily impressive, and they were on this occasion, but equally so was the singers’ way with the language and its connection to the notes. The vocal soloists impressed too. Krassimira Stoyanova and Simon O’Neill had most to do, all of which they did very well indeed, complementing and extending the orchestral and choral rapture. The sensuous quality of Stoyanova’s delivery drew one in, seduced one even, whilst O’Neill’s Heldentenor portrayed and commanded awestruck respect. Anna Stephany had little to do, though the tone quality of her mezzo-soprano pleased briefly; Martin Snell’s bass was warm and rounded, yet nevertheless precise.

Microphones were present, so I assume the performance was being recorded for LSO Live. The programme will be repeated, prefaced by Sasha Siem’s Trickster, on 12 October.