Lohengrin, Vienna State Opera, 1 May 2025

Henry the Fowler – Günter Groissböck
Lohengrin – Klaus Florian Vogt
Elsa – Camilla Nylund
Telramund – Jordan Shanahan
Ortrud – Anja Kampe
Herald – Attila Mokus
Brabantian nobles – Wolfram Igor Derntl, Thomas Köber, Panajotis Pratsos, Jens Musger
Pages – Daliborka Lühn-Skibinski, María Isabel Segarra, Charlotte Jefferies, Viktoria McConnell

Directors – Jossi Wieler, Sergio Morabito
Designs – Anna Viebrock
Lighting – Sebastian Alphons
Assistant set designer – Torsten Köpf

Vienna State Opera Chorus

Extra Chorus, and Choir Academy (chorus director: Thomas Lang)

Vienna State Opera Orchestra and Stage Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

Images: © Wiener Staatsoper / Michael Pöhn
Gottfried (member of the Wiener Opernschule), Elsa (Camilla Nylund)

Lohengrin has sometimes been described as Wagner’s ‘Italian opera’. I do not hear it that way myself, thinking rather that if such a thing were to exist, it would be with a pronounced Teutonic accent in the guise of Das Liebesverbot. For me, if one is to classify in this way at all, Lohengrin marks Wagner’s fond farewell to German Romantic opera. However, if I remember correctly, Christian Thielemann said during his time in Dresden he subscribes to the ‘Italian’ conception of the work, and for the first time, I found myself hearing it as a valid, indeed convincing reading (it not the only one). The lyricism, orchestral and vocal, of Thielemann’s reading – and there was no doubt here that this was Thielemann’s Wagner – swept along, even enveloped spectators and artists alike, not at the expense of harmony, timbre, and other musical parameters, but as arguably the guiding force in their interaction. Transitions were very much of a piece with the conception outlined in a fascinating programme note in which the conductor characterised Lohengrin as ‘Wagner’s first truly though-composed work’. 

It can be otherwise understood – arguably was by Wagner himself, in a letter to Schumann – but the point is that the conception compelled and convinced. The Vienna orchestra, which clearly adores playing with him, was not only a willing participant, but also, it would seem, an inspiration in this particular conception. I had the sense that, like a Wagner conductor of old – naming no names for now – this was his ‘Vienna’ Lohengrin, whilst his Berlin or Dresden version of the work might be quite different. Indeed, it marked quite a contrast with what I heard from him at Bayreuth in 2019, almost entirely for the better. Viennese strings glowed, woodwind spoke with a magic born in Mendelssohnian forest, yet turned somewhat phantasmagorical, and brass thrilled and threatened by turn or in tandem. This was no Bruckner orchestra-as-organ, insofar as the cap fits in that case, but there was as ever no denying the conductor’s virtuosity in leading it as an organist of sorts, less in bending it to his will as allowing wills to merge in coherent collaboration. And of course, the orchestra sounded as it never could emerging from a covered pit. 

Interestingly, it was not only Thielemann and the orchestra whom we had also seen and heard in the previous week’s Parsifal; it was the five most prominent soloists and the outstanding chorus too. Only a sharply characterised Herald from Attila Mokus had not been heard in connection with the swan-knight‘s Monsalvat father. This was quite a Wagner ensemble, by any standards, Bayreuth’s included, headed again by Klaus Florian Vogt. If Lohengrin were the role with which Vogt made his name, I felt if anything his Parsifal had proved a little stronger. This was still a tireless performance, though, with precisely the timbral quality that continues to divide opinion. Vogt can certainly act too, even when lumbered as here with a deeply unflattering wig. 

Henry the Fowler (Günther Groissböck),
Lohengrin (Klaus Florian Vogt)

Camilla Nylund’s Elsa was anything but a portrayal-by-numbers; she entered wholeheartedly into the stage concept at work here, on which more soon, initially rousing our suspicions and engaging our compassion in apparent contrition. Anja Kampe’s Ortrud was similarly complex and uniquely fiery, a portrayal very much her own, yet marking her a worthy successor indeed to the likes of Waltraud Meier (my first, at Covent Garden in 2003) and Petra Lang. Jordan Shanahan and Günther Groissböck brought both ambiguity and clarity to their roles as Telramund and King Henry. No praise could be too high for the contribution of an augmented Vienna State Opera Chorus, trained by Thomas Lang: harmonically grounded, agile on stage, and as gleaming of tone where required as the orchestra. Partners in crime, as it were—and with Thielemann too, his shading of the chorus at the close of the first act astonishingly variegated and quite unlike any performance I have heard before. 

For the somewhat odd conception, or part-conception of this new production from Jossi Wieler and Sergio Morabito was of a crime scene. Or, as designer Anna Viebrock described it in the programme: ‘We’re not telling a story of salvation, we’re making a thriller. This criminalistic perspective alone takes us way beyond the horizons of expectation.’ Since we pretty much witnessed Elsa disposing of her brother Gottfried during the Prelude to the first act, there was nothing much of a crime to be solved, and indeed everything turned out just as we might have expected. Leaving the ‘criminalistic perspective’ on one side and turning to the broader dramaturgical standpoint, there was a considerable amount to be gleaned from the ‘basic premise … [of] “Elsa did it”’. 

Ortrud (Anja Kampe)

Immediately distrusting her and Lohengrin, engaging more sympathetically perhaps with Telramund and Ortrud was an enriching experience not only dramatically but musically too, the flick of that switch having one hear not only them but at times the orchestra differently too. The broader portrayal of a time of political instability in which religion – less so, theology – appeared to take on a sinister German-Protestant hue and, needless to say, play a deeply sinister role was full of historical resonance, without being pinned down to specific reference. If the production concept seemed strongest in the first act, somewhat running out of steam by the third, the level of musical excellence was such that it was difficult to mind too much. Ultimately, here was a Lohengrin that demanded to be heard and was worth seeing too.

Lohengrin, Royal Opera, 24 April 2022

Royal Opera House

Henry the Fowler – Gábor Bretz
Lohengrin – Brandon Jovanovich
Elsa – Jennifer Davis
Friedrich von Telramund – Craig Colclough
Ortrud – Anna Smirnova
King’s Herald – Derek Welton
Brabantian Nobles (‘Four Followers of Telramund’) – Elgan Llŷr Thomas, Thando Mjandana, Matthew Durkan, Thomas D. Hopkinson
Pages (‘Four Women at the Wedding’) – Katy Batho, Deborah Peake-Jones, Renata Skarelyte, Louise Armit
Gottfried – Alfie Davis

David Alden (director)
Peter Relton (revival director)
Paul Steinberg (set designs)
Gideon Davey (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Tal Rosner (video)
Maxine Braham (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Jakub Hrůša (conductor)

Considering the first night of David Alden’s (then) new production of Lohengrin in 2018, I found ‘a conceptual weakness at ... [its] heart. I suspect it can be remedied: if a shell, it is a fine shell. It will not, however, remedy itself.’ Rather to my surprise, I found this first revival, notably under a new director, Peter Relton, much stronger. It is not always easy to be sure what has actually changed, and what one is viewing differently for oneself. I shall not try; the earlier review remains for anyone who wishes to read it. In at least partial recantation, then, I am happy to say this made for a far more satisfying evening, dramatically and musically, than that experienced four years ago. Moreover, for Wagner to have returned so emphatically to one of the city’s main houses marked a step-change in London’s operatic recovery. However much one wished it to succeed, ENO’s autumn Walküre proved a bitter disappointment. If Lohengrin did not quite match the success of Covent Garden’s astonishing recent Peter Grimes, it stood closer to that than to November’s dispiriting evening at the Coliseum. 

An interwar fascist regime, on the verge at least of further war, is the setting (albeit with certain irritating Alden anachronisms of the sort that conceive postmodernism as style rather than philosophy). The aftermath of war, presumably the Great War, that haunts the first act in particular, every character seemingly damaged, mentally and often physically too. The charge of war and of preparations for another has obvious resonances to spring 2022; they could hardly fail to speak. If King Henry cowers like a question mark—in his throne, with crown, he seems an all-too-obvious rip off from Hans Neuenfels at Bayreuth—and the Herald wears his injuries anything but lightly, others struggle to stand too. Telramund and Elsa act and react in caricatured expressionist style. Even Lohengrin adopts a foetal position of comfort with Elsa, presumably seeking a mother figure lacking in the Grail brotherhood. (As Nietzsche did not say, let us not go there.) 

Only Ortrud, doubtless significantly, operates as normal. Perhaps it is her ‘magic’, or perhaps that magic is a metaphor for something broader; that is really up to us. A fine touch, at the close of the second act, is her apparition in a box, toasting (cursing) with champagne the unhappy couple. Hemmed in by Paul Steinberg’s sets, their crossings and their disjunctures a striking visualisation of catastrophe, the action is never likely to end happily. This, after all, is a tragedy, probably the purest in Wagner; a signal strength here is that we do not forget that. That is not, of course, to say that it always need be played exclusively as such, but there is an ultimate trajectory here less in evidence than last time, which certainly strengthens the drama in this context. 

So too did Jakub Hrůša’s conducting of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House—and the golden orchestral playing itself. Hrůša is not afraid to take his time, the first act feeling especially broad, though never merely slow. Careful attention to detail and to its place in the whole had Wagner’s score veritably glow with inner life. The old operatic forms on which much of Wagner’s conception is ultimately based were clear. In Mein Leben, Wagner recalls Schumann’s puzzlement at a Dresden reading of the poem; he ‘liked it, yet couldn’t figure out the musical form I had in mind for it, as he couldn’t find any passages suitable for traditional musical numbers. I then had some fun reading him different parts of my poem just as if they were in aria and cavatina form, so that in the end he smilingly conceded the point.’ Full performance can heighten that sense further—yet also more dialectically. For equally clear were the development of those forms and the forces energising that development: harmony (especially that of Ortrud), of course, but also an energised conception of Gluckian accompagnato arising from Wagner’s work as conductor, editor, and director. 

At any rate, not only did Hrůša show a fine Wagnerian’s ability to hear vast structures—acts, at least—in a single breath, but he inspired the finest playing from all sections of the orchestra throughout. Each act had its own way of unfolding; no one-size-fits-all approach, but rather a patient, powerful strategic ear and mind. Moreover, he often favoured—unfashionably—long, quasi-vocal orchestral lines: not so much Straussian as with kinship to the Wagner of a conductor such as Karajan. The vertical was not ignored, but experience suggested ultimately a more horizontal conception of Wagner’s—‘endless melody’, perhaps—and convincingly so. 

Brandon Jovanovich offered a finely judged portrayal of Lohengrin, as acute in verbal as musical terms, its clarion heroism shielding—and sometimes not—a vulnerable and decidedly ambiguous inner core. Craig Colclough’s Telramund, tragically in thrall to Anna Smirnova’s sensational Ortrud, presented similar ambiguities, those similarities engaging sympathy and our appreciation of dramatic complexity. If there was something winningly ‘old-school’ to Smirnova’s vocal delivery and sheer star presence, that was not at the cost of more ‘modern’ engagement with directorial concept, far from it. Jennifer Davis’s movingly human Elsa grew in stature throughout a committed performance. Gábor Bretz vividly captured the King’s instability. Derek Welton made for an uncommonly vivid Herald, hinting intriguingly at psychological complications from a wartime past. 

Last but far from least, William Spaulding’s Royal Opera Chorus sounded on as fine form as I can recall for some time. How welcome, moreover, it was to have a large chorus seemingly unrestricted—reality may have been different—by pandemic restrictions in what it could do and, above all, how it could sing. Ultimately, then, it was that crucial, yet often elusive, sense of a dramatic whole that served to distinguish revival from first incarnation.

R.I.P. Hans Neuenfels, 1941-2022

 

Hans Neuenfels, who died today, played a very important role in my personal development towards greater understanding—I hope!—of opera as theatre that is, or should be, both alive and critical. The first production of his I saw was his 2000 Così fan tutte: my first ever Così, and one which in its determination to delve beneath the surface and to reveal the sadomasochism that lies at the heart of this richest of works, has informed my understanding and adoration ever since. (What a pity this walk through the treacherous pleasure gardens seems never to have been recorded, or at least released. Who knows? Maybe there is yet hope.)

Since then, I have seen a good few of his opera productions, including La finta giardiniera, Ariadne auf Naxos, The Queen of Spades, and most recently Salome, all of which were a privilege to have encountered—and which encounters continue to have me think and re-evaluate my standpoint. But of those I have seen it is his classic Bayreuth Lohengrin that will perhaps have the longest, at least most transformative impact upon opera.

Here I reproduce, from my book After Wagner, the relevant section from its seventh chapter, on staging Lohengrin:

Nor were there easy answers in another production, also mentioned earlier, by Hans Neuenfels for Bayreuth.[1] It has become celebrated and/or notorious for its rats, but the important thing remains what they might mean or at least imply. Neuenfels is a celebrated figure from an earlier generation of so-called Regietheater, whether in spoken or musical drama. Though many visual motifs from his productions have proved highly contentious when first seen – his 1980 Aida for Frankfurt, resolutely contemporary in setting, with the slave girl a modern cleaner, or a highly eroticised, narcoticised Così fan tutte for the 2000 Salzburg Festival – a few years subsequently they will often have passed into common currency. Der Spiegel reported heavy booing for Neuenfels in 2010, yet by the time of my second visit in 2012, the staging seemed almost to have attained the status of a modern classic.[2] And, although it would be difficult to claim that Neuenfels engaged so closely with the music as, say, Herheim did in Parsifal, he did not work against it – unless one were of the opinion that rats on stage did so ipso facto. Shifts in the action at times certainly appeared broadly to reflect the contours of the score. I saw this Lohengrin twice, in 2011 and 2012. [I would see it again, in 2014, too.] Vogt again offered his uncanny – and doubtless very different – reading on both of my visits to the Festspielhaus. Again the purity of this individual, some might say idiosyncratic, tenor delighted: coldly seductive in its (apparent) honesty, and yet chilling – an excellent fit with both work and production.

Neuenfels presented a laboratory experiment; those experimented upon were rats – or at least, they often were, for there were times when they shed much of their rat-like appearance and resembled humans. Their feet nevertheless always gave them away. Lohengrin was shown during the Prelude – opening without stage action – trying to break into the realm of experimentation. The experiment seemed at least in part political in nature – though this was never hammered home; the work made one reflect upon the staging and vice versa. Again, the darker side of Lohengrin, the nature of its ultra-mysterious charismatic hero and the way a crowd would follow him, was the stuff of the conflict. (That could not help but leave one asking: were Ortrud and Telramund right to resist? Were they the true rebels, revolutionaries even?) It was a pity, therefore, that we did not hear the word Führer when Lohengrin introduced his successor, Gottfried (‘Seht da den Herzog von Brabant! Zum Führer sei er euch ernannt!’) Schützer, the ‘Protector’ employed earlier for Lohengrin, was used instead.

Perhaps the abiding question with which we were left related to who was actually running the experiment? Who was on the outside? It is, in a sense, a variation upon a perennial problem of political philosophy, never more so than in Rousseau: who is the Legislator? ‘A superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed.’[3] The audience, perhaps? It was certainly not the sickly, flawed, proto-Amfortas figure of King Henry the Fowler, as much a pawn as anyone else – an aspect granted added resonance when one considers the historical King Henry, founder of the Ottonian dynasty, and the Romantic as well as National Socialist view of him as father of the German nation. Wagner’s twilight world between history and myth is an especially interesting feature of Lohengrin, fully relished here. Indeed, this shrivelled Henry found himself dragged off-stage by attendants, redolent perhaps of those enigmatic ‘authorities’, somehow both ominous and strangely irrelevant, to whom Don Ottavio refers in Don Giovanni. (We shall revisit them in the next chapter.) The two characters who briefly managed to throw off the shackles of supervision were Ortrud and Lohengrin, at a time when arguably both of them are at the height of their powers, during the second act. So perhaps no authority was absolute though whatever this was behind the experiment – Fate? the near-omnipotent surveillance of late capitalism? The illusion of the Gesamtkunstwerk? Nothing at all? – would in both cases manage to reassert itself, before bringing forth the fragile infant figure of Gottfried from an egg. Leaders, such as they be, were clearly to be moulded, nurtured, not born: a typical, eminently understandable, German preoccupation. The Protector/Führer needed protecting too.

---

[1] This production is also available on DVD, from BBC/Opus Arte: B007ZB7U00.

[2] Review by Werner Theurich, ‘Neuer Lohengrin in Bayreuth: Wie man der Schwan rupft’ http://www.spiegel.de/kultur/musik/neuer-lohengrin-in-bayreuth-wie-man-den-schwan-rupft-a-708441.html (accessed 23 October 2012).

[3] Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses, tr. G.D.H. Cole, revised J.H. Brumfett, John C. Hall, and P.D. Jimack (Dent: London, 1993), p.213.

Wagner and Ludwig II

(Article, ‘Ludwig II, King of Bavaria,’ first published in The Cambridge Wagner Encyclopedia, ed. Nicholas Vazsonyi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013))

Lohengrin's arrival in Brabant, August von Heckel, 1882-3 (Neuschwanstein)

 

Ludwig II, King of Bavaria (b. Nymphenburg Palace, Munich, 25 Aug. 1845; d. Lake Starnberg, near Munich, 13 June 1886; reign 10 Mar. 1864 to 13 June 1886). Succeeded his father, Maximilian II, but closer in artistic ambition to Maximilian’s deposed father, Ludwig I. Aestheticism was a hallmark of Ludwig’s reign, which witnessed construction of neo-Romantic, “fairy-tale” castles such as Linderhof, Herrenchiemsee, and Neuschwanstein; the latter’s wall frescoes depict Wagnerian scenes. Though Ludwig was hardly devoted to the more mundane of his duties and was no consummate politician, Bavaria under his rule nevertheless successfully held out for a high price even when there was no alternative to German unification. Ludwig won a private, secret income from Bismarck’s Guelph fund in return for putting his name to Bismarck’s “Kaiser letter,” bidding Prussia’s William I to “re-establish a German Empire and German imperial dignity.” Extensive correspondence, both with Wagner and Cosima, is an invaluable source for the Wagner scholar.

At thirteen, Ludwig was enthralled by reports of Lohengrin in Munich. He heard it there in 1861 and, inspired by the swan knight (cf. “Neuschwanstein”), engaged in study of Wagner’s writings. Increasingly tormented by his homosexuality, he would sooner withdraw from society, always preferring to experience private performances of Wagner’s works. In response to Wagner’s 1863 call for a German prince to fund model operatic performances of the Ring, Ludwig dispatched Cabinet Secretary, Franz von Pfistermeister, only a month after his accession (1864), to bring Wagner to Munich. The King’s “Friend” received a generous stipend, so that he might compose and perform his works. Soon exiled, if temporarily, to Tribschen, following machinations by Pfistermeister and Ludwig von der Pfordten, Wagner’s counsel persisted. Such was his influence that Bismarck attempted to have him ensure Bavarian neutrality between Prussia and Austria in 1866. In this context, and partly influenced by Constantin Frantz, if not Bismarck, Wagner penned “What is German?” (1865) for Ludwig’s instruction. Wagner counseled Ludwig against abdication, apparently strengthening his resolve – not least since, as King, he would be better placed to assist Wagner.

 

Ludwig paid the most pressing of Wagner’s debts, afforded him free residence, and supported the world premieres of Tristan und Isolde (1865), Die Meistersinger (1868), Das Rheingold (1869) and Die Walküre (1870), the latter two against Wagner’s will. Plans for a Munich festival theater by Gottfried Semper were thwarted, yet land for the Bayreuth Festspielhaus was provided at no cost and the first Bayreuth Festival was saved by Ludwig’s loan of 100,000 thalers. Ludwig also sponsored land-purchase and construction costs for Wahnfried.

Bayreuth Festspielhaus, 1882

  

Ludwig grew heavily indebted, though Wagnerian expenses totaled under a seventh of the Civil List. (He funded artistic projects personally.) In 1886, exasperated by Ludwig’s refusal to economize and fearful of dismissal, ministers presented a medical report signed by four psychiatrists, none of whom had ever met Ludwig, declaring him unfit to rule – for life. Maximilian’s brother, Leopold, was declared Regent; Ludwig was transported to Schloss Berg. The cause of his tragic drowning in adjacent Lake Starnberg remains unclear: suicide, accidental death through escape, or murder?

 

Detta Petzet and Michael Petzet, Die Richard Wagner-Bühne Königs Ludwig II. (Munich: Prestel, 1970).

Otto Strobel (ed.), König Ludwig II. und Richard Wagner. Briefwechsel. Mit vielen anderen Urkunden, 5 vols (Karlsruhe: Braun, 1936-9).

Lohengrin, Bavarian State Opera, 21 November 2019

Nationaltheater

Ortrud (Karita Mattila)
Images: © Wilfried Hösl

King Henry the Fowler – Christof Fischesser

Lohengrin – Klaus Florian Vogt
Elsa – Anja Harteros
Friedrich von Telramund – Wolfgang Koch
Ortrud – Karita Mattila
King’s Herald – Martin Gantner
Four Brabantian Nobles – Caspar Singh, George Virban, Oğulcan Yilmaz, Markus Suihkonen
Four Pages – Soloists from the Tölz Boys’ Choir
Gottfried – Lukas Engstler

Richard Jones (director)

Ultz (designs)
Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)
Silke Holzach (video)
Lucy Burge (choreographical assistance)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)

Chorus and Extra Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Lothar Koenigs (conductor)

An exceptional Lohengrin, this. I had better explain. Yes, it was exceptional in the quality of much of the singing, especially the two principal female roles, yet also in luxury casting such as Martin Gantner as the King’s Herald. It was also—and perhaps more surprisingly to me—exceptional in that fine musical performances rescued the evening from one of the silliest and most bizarrely irrelevant productions of the work I have ever seen. (For what it is worth, staging Lohengrin is an issue to which I have given a good deal of attention; it is, for instance, the subject of a chapter in one of my books, After Wagner.) Increasingly, I have felt that opera performances working only as music—shorthand, I know—and not as theatre have little interest for me any more; I may as well stay at home and listen to a recording or read the score. This, however, was exceptional in that orchestra, singers, and conductor managed to convince me that I had experienced a dramatic performance of Lohengrin, acting included, that had little or nothing to do with what Richard Jones had served up.

Telramund (Wolfgang Koch), Lohengrin (Klaus Florian Vogt), Elsa (Anja Harteros)

Jones presented a banal tale, if one may call it that, of a middle-aged, middle-class heterosexual couple—a neglected group of whose experience we all should hear more—marrying somewhere provincial and building a new house there. That seemed to be it, save for when the house project did not work out as planned and the house was no longer present. There was occasionally promise of something else: brown-shirted uniforms suggested something obvious at the start, yet disappeared in favour of an eccentric combination—at least in any circles I know—of Tracht and tracksuits. (Maybe savings needed to be made to finance the crane that hoisted the roof onto the house.) For some reason, a difficult-to-read floral inscription in the front garden imitated that on the front of Wagner’s Wahnfried villa. Doubtless one could propose all manner of symbolic explanations concerning what various things might have meant; one would have to, really, since the production appeared not to bother. I am sure we are all, ‘in a very real sense’, as an Anglican bishop might have it, building a house, and so on and so forth, but really. King Henry the Fowler appeared to be a marriage celebrant, not unreasonably confused by proceedings around him; quite who most of the others were eluded me. Swords sat awkwardly with the narrative, to put it mildly, yet at least reminded us that Wagner’s opera has a more involving story to tell. All was blocked well: credit where credit is due to the Abendspielleitung (Georgine Balk) and, presumably, to the original production. I cannot imagine otherwise what else, if anything, ran through Jones’s head. O for a Hans Neuenfels, a Peter Konwitschny, a Stefan Herheim…

Ortrud and Elsa (Anja Harteros)

Lohengrin ‘itself’ fared much better. Anja Harteros took a while to warm up, her first act Elsa veering in and out of focus, verbally as well as musically. Once focus had been achieved however, hers was a battle royal with rival Schillerian queen—and sometime Elsa—Karita Mattila. To see and hear the two was to experience something akin to a duet between finest woodwind principals, timbres contrasting yet complementary, albeit with finely honed words and gesture too. The greatest Ortruds command attention even during the first act, the character onstage yet having little to sing. Waltraud Meier did the first time I saw her on stage; so here did Mattila, her interpretative and communicative zeal amply compensating for the vacuity of Jones’s production. Klaus Florian Vogt’s Lohengrin did not settle immediately and is famously not to all tastes. For me, it works considerably better than his other Wagner roles, a sense of unearthly ‘purity’ not at all inappropriate; like his Elsa and Ortrud, he offered a consummately professional performance throughout. So too did Wolfgang Koch as Telramund. An estimable, always likeable artist, he sometimes seemed slightly out of sorts, but there was no doubting the intelligence of his properly Wagnerian blend of word and tone; likewise Christof Fischesser’s King Henry. Gantner’s excellent Herald fully lived up to expectations, as did the Tölz trebles acting as pages and their Brabantian noble colleagues.

Lohengrin, King Henry the Fowler (Christof Fischeser), Elsa

If the orchestra was not always quite on peak form, the first act Prelude a little bumpy at times, one would have had to be wishing to find fault to be disappointed. Its strings sounded golden, more Vienna or Dresden than, say, Berlin, though there were naturally darker passages too, not least during the Prelude to the second act. Characterful woodwind and a brass section capable of sometimes breathtaking tonal variegation offered further orchestral pleasure and insight. Lothar Koenigs’s direction of the whole was sane, sensitive, and unassumingly purposeful. It certainly never drew attention to itself, which, after a certain conductor at Bayreuth this summer was more than welcome, but instead gave the impression of ‘natural’ communication of Wagner’s melos. There were a few cases of surprising disjuncture between pit and chorus, but they were rectified soon enough and did little to spoil one’s enjoyment of some fine choral singing. All in all, then, an interesting evening—if not quite in the way one might have expected.

Bayreuth Festival (3) - Lohengrin, 11 August 2019

Festspielhaus

Henry the Fowler – Georg Zeppenfeld

Lohengrin – Piotr Beczala

Elsa – Camilla Nylund

Friedrich von Telramund – Tomasz Konieczny

Ortrud – Elena Pankratova

King’s Herald – Egils Silins

Brabantian Nobles – Michael Gniffke, Tansel Akzeyebek, Marek Reichert, Timo Riihonen

Yuval Sharon (director)

Neo Rauch, Rosa Loy (designs)

Reinhard Traub (lighting)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

The origins of this production of Lohengrin, first seen at last year’s Bayreuth Festival, are interesting and unusual. Alvis Hermanis, an avowed ‘conservative, and proud of it’ – for which, as usual nowadays, we should read something considerably more extreme – had been due to direct the new production. Hermanis withdrew in 2016, to little sadness from the rest of the world, yet nevertheless bequeathing the Festival a serious headache. By that time, work on the designs by the New Leipzig School artists, Neo Rauch and Rosa Loy, was already far advanced. Yuval Sharon, as incoming director, was presented with a greater challenge than simply directing a new production of Lohengrin (and, incidentally or otherwise, being the first American director to work at Bayreuth). He had to formulate and put into practice his own production, using designs intended for another production.

Watching the dress rehearsal last year – I did not see a public performance, and thus did not write about it – I saw a productive tension, an immanent critique, which fascinated me: broadly, and thus misleadingly, politics pitted against fairy-tale, not unlike the work itself. It was doubtless in some respects still a work-in-progress: every production, every performance is. It made me think, though, and I was greatly looking forward to seeing it again this year, to seeing how it had progressed, hoping that the cracks, the fissures, the contradictions would have provocatively deepened. Alas, that did not seem to have been the case; if anything, the production seemed to have reconciled itself to the designs. Perhaps it is too much to ask of a staging that the two can continue to struggle like that, especially when performers have their own imperatives. I genuinely do not know and it may have been entirely my own fault, but I must confess that, to my great sadness, I missed a good deal of what I saw and gleaned last year.

At first, this was not apparent. Indeed, the first act engenders considerable expectancy (at least on my part!) It comes across, or at least did to me, in painterly fashion: a Romantic fairy-tale world, slightly frozen – so blue, so very blue! – from which things can and must progress. It is, then, waiting for Lohengrin; as are we all. When he comes, he ignites the world. He brings electricity, literally as well as figuratively. Is this the beginning of the route from an early-modern Brabant to socialism, a short-circuit, as it were? If so, only fitfully – and that, this time, does not necessarily seem to be a deliberate undercutting. Instead, the critique seems to halt, even to vanish, in the second act, not helped at all by Christian Thielemann’s sometimes interminable scenic-route reveries. At times, other than marshalling of the forces onstage, little else comes across. There is more in the third act, though even that seems considerably less bold. Lohengrin tying Elsa up comes across more as pretty choreography than a deadly game of sado-masochism. And the hints at green politics, culminating in a bizarre, if intriguing green Gottfried, do not come across nearly as strongly as they might. Ortrud’s rightful oppositional status – what if she is right, seems to be the question – is likewise considerably less clear. It is a pity, since I remain convinced that there is potentially much to be admired here. Perhaps 2020 will sharpen things up.

Thielemann’s conducting proved variable. Like the production, he was stronger in the first and third acts, although, as in his Tristan the night before, there was no doubting his extraordinary ability to have the superlative Bayreuth Festival Orchestra do whatever he asks of it. Speed, or otherwise, was not in itself the problem: indeed, speed is only a part, often a relatively unimportant part, of what we really mean by ‘tempo’. The listlessness and at times the self-regard we heard in the second act most certainly was. A little study of Wagner’s essay, Über das Dirigieren, might help. There were magical moments, magical passages, yet sometimes – only sometimes – they came at the expense of musico-dramatic momentum.

There was much to admire from the cast. A few vowels aside, Piotr Beczala’s Lohengrin approached the ideal. ‘Italianate’ might be a lazy way to describe his phrasing, but I hope it will be understood for what it is, in the very best sense. Not that it came at the expense of words, far from it. Beczala’s golden tone could be relished in and for itself, but that would have been to miss an acutely, astutely dramatic portrayal, one I should dearly love to hear again. Camilla Nylund’s Elsa had the occasional rocky moment in the first act, but hers was likewise an intelligent, committed, and beautifully sung performance. Tomasz Konieczny and Elena Pankratova offered similarly intelligent, highly musical portrayals of Telramund and Ortrud, although the latter’s diction occasionally left one having to fill in verbal gaps for oneself. Georg Zeppenfeld never, in my experience, disappoints; that is no reason to take singing such as that for King Henry for granted. Egils Silins’s Herald likewise compelled attention and admiration. So too, last but not least, did the outstanding performances of the Bayreuth Festival Chorus, vocal heft, stage versatility, and verbal comprehensibility all second to none.

Still a work-in-progress then? Doubtless. However, whatever work may remain to be done here – there is always work still to be done – we may give thanks that this was not an Alvis Hermanis production. Catastrophes such as his Vienna Parsifal and, perhaps still more, his Salzburg Liebe der Danae warn of what might have been.

Lohengrin, Royal Opera, 7 June 2018

Royal Opera House

Images: Clive Barda

King Henry the Fowler – Georg Zeppenfeld

Lohengrin – Klaus Florian Vogt

Elsa – Jennifer Davis

Friedrich von Telramund – Thomas Johannes Mayer

Ortrud – Christine Goerke

King’s Herald – Kostas Smoriginas

Brabantian Nobles – Konu Kim, Thomas Atkins, Gyula Nagy, Simon Shibambu

Pages – Katy Batho, Deborah Peake-Jones, Dervla Ramsay, Louise Armit

Gottfried – Michael Curtis

                                        

David Alden (director)

Paul Steinberg (set designs)

Gideon Davey (costumes)

Adam Silverman (lighting)

Tal Rosner (video)

Maxine Braham (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus director: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Andris Nelsons (conductor)

Elsa (Jennifer Davis) at her wedding

Since returning to London in January, I have been heartened by much of what I have seen – and indeed heard – from the Royal Opera. If Barrie Kosky’s Carmen proved something of a flop, there has been much to ponder and indeed to inspire from Krzysztof Warlikowski’s From the House of the Dead, superlatively conducted by Mark Wigglesworth, and most recently, George Benjamin’s new operatic masterpiece, Lessons in Love and Violence. David Alden is perhaps not the most obvious directorial choice for Wagner, though his ENO Tristan – the first I saw – certainly had its merits. He pretty much had the field to himself, though, given that Covent Garden’s previous staging was the lamentable fancy-dress pageant served up by Elijah Moshinsky, its final reheating coming as late as 2009. On the face of it, Alden’s move to the 1930s must have come to a shock to the more reactionary elements always present in a Wagner audience. That it does not seem to have done so suggests either a welcome opening of minds or something – at least, according to one reading, like Lohengrin – rather less substantial than one might have initially presumed.

I wish it had been the former but Alden’s production ultimately proved conventional, all too conventional: more a potential shell for something more interesting than a remotely finished – even ready – production in itself. Designs and some stage direction, notably that of the chorus, are suggestive, but where is the dramatic grit? To offer a Lohengrin come as redeemer to a society broken by war is of course to follow Wagner precisely; to shift the actual war to something closer to our modern concerns is no bad thing at all. He unifies a people in disarray through his charismatic authority, yet ultimately cannot fulfil his duty and rejects his people.

Lohengrin (Klaus Florian Vogt) and Telramund (Thomas Johannes Mayer)

Ortrud (Christine Goerke) and Telramund

Nazi parallels, or rather premonitions – like Marx, Wagner is often at his very strongest in pointing to where the twentieth and twenty-first centuries would go wrong – are obvious, yet none the worse for that. Even that level of critique will, after all, stand as a rebuke to those who follow that disingenuous old Nazi, Curt von Westernhagen, railing against the fresh theatrical wind of the 1970s: ‘Directors who deem themselves progressive when they transform the Ring back into a drama with a “message” have no idea how regressive this approach is in relation to the genesis of the work itself.’ Westernhagen’s scholarly methods are now as discredited as his ideology. Disciples remain, though, and few things get them so hot under the collar as Nazis on stage. Clue: they like it, really.

That said, simply to update is never enough. Indeed, it is to adopt the Westernhagen fraternity’s strange delusion that a production more or less is its designs (here, handsome indeed, for which great credit should be accorded to Paul Steinberg in particular). In many ways, when and where something is set, or is not, is the least interesting thing of all; at best, it is a starting-point. Save for that arresting, almost cinematic (Riefenstahl at a push) direction of crowd movement, its dramatic import obvious yet undeniably powerful, there is not much to get one’s teeth into. If the setting remains largely undeveloped, too much also seems awkwardly reminiscent of other productions. Had you never seen a German Lohengrin, you might remain, often literally, in the dark; Wagner and indeed many in his audiences surely deserve greater credit than that.

Henry the Fowler (Georg Zeppenfeld)

A King Henry whose hunched body language was a little too close to comfort to that of Hans Neuenfels’s Bayreuth production is one thing, but a falling of banners for war that aped the close of the second act of Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal is another again. If some point had been made about Wagner, the Nazis, and Bayreuth, it might have worked, I suppose; here, it seemed gratuitous and frankly derivative. What the point of describing the pages as ‘four women at the wedding’ may have been I do not know: if you like that sort of thing, then that will doubtless be the sort of thing you like. A sudden design apparition from Neuschwanstein seems merely a change of scene. Again, one can see why such an image might have a point in a fascist, even Nazi, setting, but it needs at some level to be made, not merely assumed. Dramatic motivation, then, largely eluded me. Such irritations pointed to a greater problem: a conceptual weakness at the heart. I suspect it can be remedied: if a shell, it is a fine shell. It will not, however, remedy itself.

Perhaps the same once had been true of Moshinsky. At any rate, this evening shared something else important with that final outing of 2009: musical excellence. Andris Nelsons, who conducted Neuenfels’s production at Bayreuth, was not at his strongest here, especially in the first act. Indeed, there both Nelsons and Alden seemed intent, consciously or otherwise, to underline what can often seem to be its rather static nature rather than to enliven the drama. However, Nelsons drew increasingly lovely playing from the orchestra, lower strings and woodwind in particular, and made often quite extreme second-act rubato – not to be confused with tempo variation – work, rather than seem merely mannered. His command of the architecture in the second and third acts impressed. Still more so did the outstanding singing from the chorus and extra chorus. William Spaulding’s work here is clearly reaping rewards, just as it did at Berlin’s Deutsche Oper.

Klaus Florian Vogt’s Lohengrin is a known quantity: known also, of course, to Nelsons from Bayreuth. I am less enthusiastic than once I was: the purity is less consistently apparent, the blandness more so. (Or maybe I am just tired of it.) However, it remains impressive on its own terms; one’s response to his singing will perhaps be more than usually personal. Replacing the originally advertised Kristine Opolais, Jennifer Davis impressed greatly as Elsa. This was by any standards a high-profile debut. Vocal and dramatic sincerity were matched by a security one had little right to expect. Thomas Johannes Mayer, also of recent Bayreuth fame, more than hinted at a properly complex Telramund, even if his artistry received little help from the staging. Christine Goerke’s Ortrud climaxed in properly blood curdling cries at the close, although again I had the impression a deeper production would have brought out something – well, deeper. Georg Zeppenfeld did what he could with the Neuenfels King-redux; that again was impressive indeed. Only Kostas Smoriginas, as his Herald, disappointed: often uncertain of verbal and musical line alike.

 

Ortrud waiting

The audience, part of one’s experience whether we like it or not – unless one happens to be Ludwig II, and even then… – proved something of a trial. Someone’s telephone vibrated throughout the first minute or so of the first-act Prelude, the culprit eventually shouting ‘Yes! I’m going to turn it off’. A friend heard someone else announce upon Lohengrin’s arrival: ‘I prefer it when he wears golden armour.’ Coughing, electronic terrorism, and inanity aside, they seemed to like the production: rarely a good sign. Given what they will boo… Still, there is, I am sure, room for something more to take shape within its framework; perhaps they will do so then. Moreover, there is, I assure you, a genuinely exciting prospect for the new Lohengrin at Bayreuth this year. At least on this occasion, my lips must remain better sealed than Elsa’s. The world, however, is likely to see a worthy successor to Neuenfels from Yuval Sharon, in a production that penetrates more deeply to the work’s essence and grapples with its implications.