For Palindrome Day

Today is a palindrome day: 12-02-2021. Herewith what is surely the most beloved of musical palindromes, followed by bonus intervention from clever audio software to play the entire sequence in reverse, offering a double palindrome. As noted by the mind behind this, Jason Haaheim, the only differences lie in attack and dynamics.

Lulu, English National Opera, 9 November 2016

Coliseum



Lulu (Brenda Rae) and Dr Schön (James Morris)
Images: Catherine Ashmore

(sung in English)

Lulu – Brenda Rae

Countess Geschwitz – Sarah Connolly
Dresser, Schoolboy Waiter – Clare Presland
Painter, Second Client – Michael Colvin
Dr Schön, Jack the Ripper – James Morris
Alwa – Nicky Spence
Schigolch – Willard White
Animal Tamer, Athlete – David Soar
Prince, Manservant, Marquis – Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Theatre Director, Banker – Graeme Danby
Fifteen-year old girl – Sarah Labiner
Girl’s Mother – Rebecca de Pont Davies
Artist – Sarah Champion
Journalist – Geoffrey Dolton
Dr Goll, Police Commissioner, First Client – Rolf Higgins
Servant – Paul Sheehan
Solo performers – Joanna Dudley, Andrea Fabi 

William Kentridge (director)

Luc de Wit (associate director)
Sabine Theunissen (set designs)
Greta Goiris (costumes)
Urs Schönebaum (lighting)
Catherine Meyburgh, Kim Gunning (video)

 

ENO’s new Lulu proved another triumph for the company: just what ENO should be doing; just, indeed, what ENO is for. Will the cabal of management consultants and the Arts Council – or, as it insists on calling itself, sans article, ‘Arts Council England’ – listen? No, of course not. Their priorities, as they have shown time and time again, and with increasing vindictiveness, are quite different. Whoever met a neo-liberal artist or, indeed a neo-liberal art lover? (How I wish the translation had not left ‘Jungfrau’, or ‘Virgin’, tactfully in the German original…) One might, I suppose, quibble, whether ENO needed a new production; Richard Jones’s excellent staging might well have received another outing. (It should certainly have been staged more regularly than it was, but that, I suspect is more a comment on opera audiences than on artistic design.) But ENO did not mount this by itself; it performed us ‘citizens of the world’ a signal service by granting us the opportunity to see this much-discussed William Kentridge production, already seen in New York and Amsterdam. To say we should only have one, is akin to saying that because we have heard Daniel Barenboim play Beethoven, we have no need to hear Maurizio Pollini. It is the language of enemies of art, of accountancy; worse still, it is the language of those journalists determined never to miss an opportunity to find fault.  



Joanna Dudley, Lulu, and Schigolch (Willard White)

I shall admit to having been puzzled by some of the discussion I overheard. More than once I heard people complaining about there having been too much going on, even ‘sensory overload’. Have such people, I wonder, ever seen a Stefan Herheim production? More to the point, did they not think of how visual layering, the interaction between layers, between the visual and the aural, might actually be the point, a point very much in keeping with the work? What I saw was actually a relatively conventional, but highly theatrical telling of the story, enhanced, questioned, developed by an extension of its painterly imagery both in expressionistic drawings and film – an exhibition of Kentridge’s art may be seen presently at Whitechapel – and in the alluring yet sometimes ironic commentary, still very much in allusive ‘period’ style, by the silent artists, Joanna Dudley and Andrea Fabi. It was not remotely too much; indeed, like Berg’s score, it left me wanting more. This blackest of comedies gained in darkness – this was the night following the US election, something readily observable on almost every face in the house – and in sophistication of comedic response. I began to think of Berg’s musico-dramatic roots in Mozart and Wagner, in particular, and also of what he had in common with Strauss, another heir to that exalted pair, yet one far too little thought of has having much in common with the more overtly ‘progressive’, yet perhaps equally ‘nostalgic’, Berg.

 

Lulu and Geschwitz (Sarah Connolly)

Mark Wigglesworth’s conducting of the score, superlatively played by the ENO Orchestra was, of course, crucial in that respect. As Boulez, at work on the three-act premiere, once observed, ‘It is not so much the use of symmetry as the exploiting of multiple musical forms that is one of the most complex and attractive features’ of the music. Rather it in the confrontation between what Boulez broadly considered to be characteristic Mozartian number opera and the continuous – to which, I might add, increasingly symphonic – forms of Wagner that Lulu, in a different, or at least more complicated, less overt, way than Wozzeck will best find its performative voice. For Boulez, ‘The great advance from Wozzeck to Lulu lies in the fact that, although the scenes are still separated by interludes, there is now no “passage” between them.’ He found himself, unsurprisingly, especially attracted by the ‘fusion between continuity and formal separateness’. That, I think, was very much what we heard, and perhaps also what we saw, or at least what was suggested by what we saw, here. An especially fine woodwind section could not help but bring Mozart to mind: not just the Mozart of Così fan tutte but the composer of the wind serenades too. It was not for nothing that, in one of his final recordings, Boulez returned to Berg’s Chamber Concerto, coupling it with the Gran partita, KV 361. Melodies, harmonies, audibly generated before our ears by Berg’s endlessly fascinating compositional processes, and yet audibly as ‘free’ as they were ‘determined’, tantalised, instructed, informed, criticised, rather as the drawings, films, words, actions did before our eyes. This was no mere mirroring; it was mutual enhancement and elucidation, a new path through the Bergian labyrinth.



 

An excellent cast was necessary too, of course, and an excellent cast we had. Brenda Rae, who so greatly impressed me in the Bavarian State Opera’s Schweigsame Frau – now there is an interesting Strauss-Berg comparison to consider – shone at least as brightly as Lulu. The canvas on which we more or less uneasily project our fantasies of Lulu was no more empty than the changing visual decoration of the set, but, amidst, or perhaps beneath, the despatch of the coloratura and the seduction of the more conventional melodic line, there was a fine balance struck between nihilism and defiant character. Sarah Connolly’s Geschwitz certainly had the latter in spades; if I have seen and heard a stronger, more compassionate performance from her, I cannot recall it (which seems unlikely). If James Morris’s Dr Schön was at times a little stiff, there was certainly authority to be felt there, and his way with the words was especially admirable. Nicky Spence’s Alva struck another fine balance, in this case between the ardent and the cowardly; again, an admirable way with words and music projected ambiguity without easy, or perhaps any, answers. Willard White’s Schigolch was less caricatured, less repellent than one often experiences; such ambiguity was also decidedly a gain. There were no weak links, and a host of splendid character performances, artists such as Michael Colvin and Sarah Labiner particularly catching my ear. At least as impressive, though, was the ensemble work. In the Paris Scene, one might almost have thought this a crack new music ensemble, such was the clarity and confidence with which the lines were projected and with which they were interacted. It might almost have been a rehearsal for, or a response to, Strauss’s homage to his adored Così in Capriccio.

Special offer: 25% off my new book, After Wagner

My new book, After Wagner: Histories of Modernist Music Drama from 'Parsifal' to Nono will be published this month. My publisher, Boydell & Brewer, has kindly offered 25% off the recommended price to readers of this blog. Please click here for the online flyer, which includes a discount code for any of you who might be interested. I reproduce below the blurb and front cover, which features a scene from Stefan Herheim's Bayreuth production of Parsifal:

 

 

This book is both a telling of operatic histories ‘after’ Richard Wagner, and a philosophical reflection upon the writing of those histories. Historical musicology reckons with intellectual and cultural history, and vice versa. The ‘after’ of the title denotes chronology, but also harmony and antagonism within a Wagnerian tradition. Parsifal, in which Wagner attempted to go beyond his achievement in the Ring, to write ‘after’ himself, is followed by two apparent antipodes: the strenuously modernist Arnold Schoenberg and the æstheticist Richard Strauss. Discussion of Strauss’s Capriccio, partly in the light of Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron, reveals a more ‘political’ work than either first acquaintance or the composer’s ‘intention’ might suggest.

 

Then come three composers from subsequent generations: Luigi Dallapiccola, Luigi Nono, and Hans Werner Henze. Geographical context is extended to take in Wagner’s Italian successors; the problem of political emancipation in and through music drama takes another turn here, confronting challenges and opportunities in more avowedly ‘politically engaged’ art. A final section explores the world of staging opera, of so-called Regietheater, as initiated by Wagner himself. Stefan Herheim’s celebrated Bayreuth production of Parsifal, and various performances of Lohengrin are discussed, before looking back to Mozart (Don Giovanni) and forward to Alban Berg’s Lulu and Nono’s Al gran sole carico d’amore. Throughout, the book invites us to consider how we might perceive the æsthetic and political integrity of the operatic work ‘after Wagner’.

 

After Wagner will be invaluable to anyone interested in twentieth-century music drama and its intersection with politics and cultural history. It will also appeal to those interested in Richard Wagner’s cultural impact on succeeding generations of composers.

 

 

 

American Lulu, The Opera Group, 14 September 2013

Young Vic Theatre

Lulu – Angel Blue

Clarence – Robert Winslade Anderson
Dr Bloom – Donald Maxwell
Jimmy – Jonathan Stoughton
Eleanor – Jacqui Dankworth
Photographer, Young Man – Paul Curievici
Athlete – Simon Wilding
Professor, Banker, Police Commissioner – Paul Reeves

John Fulljames (director)

Magda Willi (designs)
Guy Hoare (lighting)
Finn Ross (video)
Carolyn Downing (sound)

London Sinfonietta

Gerry Cornelius (conductor)

Images: Bregenzer Festspiele/Anja Köhler and Bregenzer Festspiele/Karl Forster
In the foreground: Jacqui Dankworth (Eleanor) and Angel Blue (Lulu); Simon Wilding (athlete) in background

 

I was a little taken aback by the reaction I received upon mentioning that I was looking forward to seeing American Lulu. One friend, perfectly reasonably, said that he had not taken to it when he had seen it in Berlin; I wish I had had the chance to press him more on why. However, he did suggest that the staging – presumably at the Komische Oper premiere – may have been a considerable part of the problem. Others, though, seemed to recoil at the very idea. Who did Olga Neuwirth think she was, adapting Berg’s opera into her own? For once, I almost felt myself the voice of reason, then stopped short when I recalled that to have been the title of an especially nasty right-wing newspaper column. At any rate, I had no a priori objection to what sounded as though it were simply the continuation of practices that dated back as long as any conception of the musical work, and indeed beyond. I have always preferred the Second Viennese School arrangements of Johann Strauss to the ‘originals’; Mozart’s Handel reworkings, whether in terms of arrangement or more thoroughgoing recomposition have long fascinated me; and as for Bach, whether his rewriting of other music, sometimes his own, sometimes that of others, or the multitude of rewritings, in whatever form, offered by composers from Mozart to George Benjamin... They vary wildly in quality, of course, and that seemed to me the only point; the question was not whether Neuwirth had any ‘right’ to adapt Berg’s opera, but whether it worked.

 

I think it did, or at least much of it did. I cede to no one in my love for Lulu – save, perhaps to one of Neuwirth’s teachers, Luigi Nono, who described  it as one of the two greatest operas of the twentieth century, the other being Schoenberg’s Die glückliche Hand. I know Berg’s score – and Friedrich Cerha’s completion – pretty well, and found myself not annoyed, but fascinated by the interplay between Berg and Neuwirth. In a work that lasts about half the time of the original, Neuwirth adapts, including reorchestration, the first two acts, and writes her own third act, both text and music. (English translations, concerning which, I found some more convincing than others, were provided by Richard Stokes and Catherine Kerkhoff-Saxon in the first two acts, and Kerkhoff-Saxon alone in the third.) One might miss the gorgeous post-Romantic labyrinthine depth of Berg, but to hear his music refracted as it was, pointed in a different direction by a new(-ish) story held its own interest – just as, say, Berio’s work on composers as different as Boccherini, Purcell, and Schubert has. (If only he had lived to complete his realisation of L’incoronazione di Poppea...) And so, with Berg’s – admittedly, selectively employed – jazz-influenced scoring in mind, Neuwirth’s reorchestration and composition alike make their move to New Orleans via a wind-dominated ensemble, Berg’s voluptuous strings put in their place and perhaps now heard through Brecht-Weill. (No one, I hasten to add, is saying that Berg is ‘improved upon’; that is not the point.) I was less sure about the introduction of more popular music ‘proper’, especially Eleanor’s blues music, into the score; its inclusion, presumably intentionally so, seemed oddly uncritical, as if, in a curious inversion or at least evasion of Adorno, Berg’s opera requires subjection to criticism but that of an allegedly purer popular culture does not. And yet, as I shall come to describe, there is a dialectical twist that would at least partially assist in that regard. The new version of the film music – what a relief it was actually to see a film, practically the only moment in present-day staging of opera where film seems to be eschewed – is brought to us, like the ‘jazz band’ music  via a recording of a Wonder Morton organ: evocative, contemporaneous, and yet also, rightly for a new work, somewhat oblique in its relationship to the ‘original’.

 

The third act of Lulu, which Neuwirth, wrongly to my mind yet perhaps nevertheless fruitfully, regards as ‘unsatisfactory’ – ‘after great trials and tribulations, two women are simply slaughtered by a serial killer; and that is that’ – becomes instead ‘an unresolved murder case’, but more to the point here, offers her own music, clearly flowing from that of Berg, still more from that of Berg-Neuwirth, and yet which quite properly takes on a life of its own: a twenty-first-century reimagination of post-expresssionist music. There are vocal leaps; there is vocal seduction; there is a hard-edged, yet sinuous quality, in line with Berg’s own. I should need to hear it again to say much more; yet, to answer the earlier question, for the most part, and bearing in mind my cavil concerning the blues music in particular, I think it worked.

 

I deliberately started with the music but ought to say something briefly about the new setting.  Instead of the Prologue, we start at the end, in 1970s New York, when Clarence (Schigolch) asks Lulu why, when she is now so wealthy, she is no more satisfied, prompting her to look back at her life, beginning in 1950s New Orleans. A photographer with whom she is living is soon supplanted by Dr Bloom, purchaser of the pictures; Lulu dances in Bloom’s club, music written for her by his son, Jimmy. (I do not need in laboured fashion to point out who is who with respect to Berg; it is perfectly clear, though some of Berg’s intricate parallelism falls by the wayside as Neuwirth’s drama takes on a different trajectory.) Initially I found the substitution of Eleanor, a singer, for Geschwitz, something of a disappointment. The ‘otherness’ – if I am honest, banality – of her music, however well sung by Jacqui Dankworth, seemed too obvious, too lacking in integrative or indeed disintegrative power. However, and I hope this was not merely a product of my fevered imagination, there is criticism, if not so much of her music, then of the hippyish psycho-babble in which her reproaches – she is by the third act a successful singer, though still hurt by Lulu’s prior rejection – are couched. She too, it seems, is capable of exploitative behaviour. As indeed are we all, and some of it, like Neuwirth’s, may even be construed positively. We should not fall for bogus notions of the ‘jargon of authenticity’. Meanwhile, all the while, the drama is punctuated by reminders of the Civil Rights Movement: words from Dr King, and sounds, in Eleanor’s final song, of ‘We shall overcome’.  It is certainly not subtle, and it is perhaps all too easy to say ‘that is the point,’ but its contribution was nevertheless greater than to make us appreciate more fully the balancing-act between existential and social – far too often tilted in favour of the former – in Berg’s opera. (Should we consider American Lulu in reference to Berg’s work, or as a work in itself? That depends, of course, on who ‘we’ are. Either we know the original or we do not, but a question that permits neither of ‘yes’ or ‘no’ as a ‘straight’ answer is a good question for Neuwirth to be asking audiences, steeped in the self-righteous delusions of Werktreue.)

 

This was a co-production by The Opera Group, the Young Vic, Scottish Opera, and the Bregenz Festival, in association with the London Sinfonietta. The latter was on excellent form throughout, splendidly guided, insofar as one could tell from an initial hearing, by Gerry Cornelius. I was certainly as gripped by the orchestral performance as by the puzzles and challenges of Neuwirth’s work itself. John Fulljames makes a great deal from relatively little on the small stage of the Young Vic. Video was used sparingly but to great effect, Finn Ross’s work employing characters from the stage greatly appreciated, as mentioned above. The uncomfortable voyeurism of having Lulu change on stage, taking her clothes from a wardrobe and almost defying us not to watch, has one’s mind working, as it should, in different directions: self-interrogation, heightened by the (Brechtian?) presence onstage behind a see-through curtain of the orchestra. Construction of reality, perception of what may or may not be epic, is not simply our own task, but it is so at least in part, as in Lulu’s mind.

 

Angel Blue offered a charismatic assumption of the title role. It is of course far shorter than Berg’s, but has different challenges, the slipping between speech, parlando, and glorious, if all-too-brief (deliberately so?), passages in which the voice may truly soar a case of ongoing reinvention. Her stage presence, just as in ENO’s recent Bohème, was scintillating. In this opera, more than Berg’s, the other cast members are lesser beings, but there was much to enjoy from their various contributions. Paul Curievici, for instance, furthered the strong impression he recently made in The Importance of Being Earnest, and Donald Maxwell continued to hold the stage even at what must be approaching the twilight of his career.

 

Emma Woodvine, credited as ‘dialect coach’ seemed to have done a good job. I still wonder about the practice, though, of having assumed accents, be they from the South or elsewhere. It seems curiously selective; for instance, when we have a performance of Carmen, whether in French or in translation, we do not usually hear the dialogue – or, for that matter, the vocal lines – delivered in the tones of Seville. Better, I think, to let actors, including singing actors, act than to have them turn impressionists. (That runs both ways, of course; those complaining, as sometimes they do, about American or other accents in English dialogue should probably find better things to do with their time.) No matter; it is a minor point, indeed more of a question. And a great strength of this evening was the questioning that it provoked.

Lulu, Staatsoper Berlin, 9 April 2012

Schiller Theater, Berlin



Images (c) Bernd Uhlig

Lulu – Mojca Erdmann

Countess Geschwitz – Deborah Polaski

Dresser, Gymnast – Anna Lapkovskaja Painter, Negro – Stephan Rügamer
Dr Schön, Jack the Ripper – Michael Volle
Alwa – Thomas Piffka
Athlete – Georg Nigl
Schigolch – Jürgen Linn
Prince, Manservant – Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke
Theatre Manager – Johann Werner Prein
Doctor of Medicine, Professor – Wolfgang Hübsch
Lulu's Doppelgängerin – Blanka Modrá, Liane Oßwald

Andrea Breth (director)
Erich Wonder (set designs)
Moidele Bickel (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Philipp Haupt (video)
David Robert Coleman (‘adaptation’ of the London Scene)
Jens Schroth (dramatic advisor)

Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Johann Werner Prein (Theatre Manager), Georg Nigl (Athlete), Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke (Prince, or whoever he was supposed to be here...)

I am genuinely at a loss to know where to start with this performance of Lulu, but perhaps a little chronological background would be as good a place as any. Having admired Andrea Breth’s Salzburg production of Eugene Onegin, which he conducted, Daniel Barenboim invited her to direct Wozzeck and Lulu in Berlin. Wozzeck was much admired at last year’s Festtage; I thought highly of it, albeit with a few more reservations than many seem to have felt. It was certainly, however, a good enough production to have me look forward to Berg’s second opera. Except that it was not really Berg’s second opera at all: instead, Breth and Barenboim served up a bowdlerised version, a ‘Berliner Fassung’ for which I cannot imagine anyone had called, and which certainly did not seem to satisfy anyone in the theatre. The Prologue disappears completely, replaced by a horizontal actor’s drawn out reading from Kierkegaard and Lulu’s third-act scream, as does the Paris Scene from the Third Act. This is not a reversion to the old two-act version, though, even if one discounts the bizarre excision of the Prologue, in which the terms of the drama are set up, the whole world a stage or a circus. For the final scene, set in London, has been rewritten, adapted, call it what you will, by one David Robert Coleman, of whom I freely admit that I had never heard before. On the basis of this encounter, I sincerely hope that reunion should be indefinitely postponed. One might be able to take the use of a radio – presumably a recording, though it may just have been a strange acoustic trick – during the first act, but Coleman’s sketchy orchestration sounded more akin to an undergraduate’s first attempt to look through Berg’s manuscripts than a finished ‘version’, let alone a competitor to Friedrich Cerha’s standard completion.

A metaphor for the production?

Why was the latter not used? Presumably permission was refused, not unreasonably, on account of the decision to make cuts. Whose decision? Breth’s? Barenboim’s? The former’s, with the latter’s acquiescence? Why, why, why? It sounded as much a mess as what we saw onstage, of which more anon, despite fine musical performances, of which more anon. Berg’s harmonisation of the hurdy-gurdy Lautenlied is tossed aside in favour of a manifestly inferior version by Wedekind. This is not, of course, simply a matter of an inferior harmonisation, nor indeed of having missed the tune’s first appearance in the excised Paris Scene; dodecaphonic writing and method are completely undermined. This is musical violence from which I am frankly astonished that Barenboim did not recoil. Likewise when it comes to the violence done to Berg’s symmetries, dramatic and musical, is unconscionable; this is not some Italianate number-opera. It is mystifying that one of the truly great musicians of our time, someone who has collaborated closely with Pierre Boulez and Patrice Chéreau, the team that brought us the first ever staging of the ‘complete’ Lulu, and one who has so excelled in the music of the Second Viennese School, should have acquiesced – if indeed, that is what happened. It was, apparently, at Barenboim’s invitation that Coleman put together his ‘version’, steel drums and all – yes, really! an intimation of an early jukebox, we are told – but was the original decision to travesty Berg’s opera made by Breth? Let us assume so, for it is difficult to imagine why someone conducting Lulu for the first time would wish not really to conduct Lulu at all.

Lulu (Mojca Erdmann), Geschwitz (Deborah Polaski)

Insofar as one can establish responsibility from Breth’s production, it seems likely that the idea was hers. She certainly seems to have no interest in Berg’s structures, substituting for them a tedious play of actors and mimed actions. The setting appears to be a cross between a production of a Beckett parody and a 1980s pop video, a grim warehouse with a crashed car and a great deal of scaffolding. (The latter actually provides a degree of relief; I found myself able to imagine in its structures some Bauhaus-like counterpoint to the constructivism, if not the Romanticism, of Berg’s score.) A great deal goes on, but relatively little seems to have anything to do with the opera itself, nor indeed with the ‘characters’ who sing in this production. Instead of a film of Lulu’s trial – why are directors, often so besotted with film, so reluctant to respect this necessary or at least advisable visual counterpoint to Berg’s palindrome? – we simply gaze upon a couple of filmed eyes, maybe Lulu’s, maybe not, whilst someone tips a woman out of a wheelbarrow, puts her back in again, and wheels her off. The sub-Beckett atmosphere is of questionable relevance to Berg, but I could discern no attempt even to make it fit. There is, of course, no change of scenery, despite the clear dramatic necessity to shift from one milieu to another. At the end, there is a minor conflagration, permitting more colour than has otherwise been permitted all evening. Just as with Christof Loy’s dreadful, indeed well-nigh unbearable, ‘minimalist’ production for Covent Garden, I cannot imagine that anyone not already well versed in the opera would have the faintest idea what was going on, or who anybody might be, let alone why one might care. If the idea were to excise supposed misogyny and perhaps other uncomfortably drawn characters – why, incidentally or perhaps not incidentally, is it so difficult to distinguish between attitudes voiced by characters and those voiced by creators? – then all that was achieved was to neuter, indeed almost to obliterate, the drama.

Lulu and Jack the Ripper (Michael Volle)

The truly odd thing about this whole fiasco is that Barenboim conducted what remained of Berg’s score superbly, so much so that one could almost, especially if one knew the score, fill in the gaps. Despite the ruptures, there was a true understanding of both dramatic and musical flow and the generative nature of Berg’s serial writing. Allied to a Staatskapelle Berlin on fine form, its dark, ‘old German’ sound a true joy to hear in this repertoire, one had a frustrating sense of what might have been. Much of the singing impressed too. Mojca Erdmann occasionally struggled, her voice running out of steam at one point until she elected to resume her cruelly high line an octave lower, but for the most part she sang as well as she acted: a credible doll-like approach that permitted all manner of coloratura parallels to be drawn. Michael Volle sang as well as one might have expected, in a role he seems well on the way to be making his own. If occasionally a little wobblier than one often hears in this part, Deborah Polaski’s Geschwitz was a forthright performance. If she did not tug on the heartstrings as one might hope, that was surely more a matter of the production and its cuts than anything else. Thomas Piffka sometimes sounded forced as Alwa, his lines consequently lacking shape, but elsewhere sang well enough. Stephan Rügamer was compelled to perform a very odd caricatured Negro dance, surely more offensive than anything alleged to be found in the opera itself, but nevertheless emerged with credit, as did Georg Nigl’s Athlete, who also had to perform a great deal of shadow-boxing in the background. Jürgen Linn’s Schigolch made surprisingly little impression, but again that may have been at least as much a matter of the production as anything else. The whole lasted about three hours, including one interval.

Again, why, why, why?

Lulu, Opéra national de Paris, 28 October 2011

Opéra Bastille

Lulu – Laura Aikin
Countess Geschwitz – Jennifer Larmore
Dresser, Schoolboy, Groom – Andrea Hill
Painter, Negro – Marlin Miller
Dr Schön, Jack the Ripper – Wolfgang Schöne
Alwa – Kurt Streit
Schigolch – Franz Grundheber
Animal Tamer, Athlete – Scott Wilde
Prince, Manservant, Marquis – Robert Wörle
Theatre Director, Banker – Victor von Halem
Fifteen-year old girl – Julie Mathevet
Girl’s Mother – Marie-Thérèse Keller
Artist – Marianne Crebassa
Journalist – Damien Pass
Professor of Medicine, Professor, Police Officer – Johannes Koegel-Dorfs
Servant – Ugo Rabec

Willy Decker (director)
Wolfgang Gussmann (designs)
Hans Toelstede (lighting)

Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris
Michael Schønwandt (conductor)


Lulu in Paris: one immediately thinks of the first performance of the full work, as realised by Friedrich Cerha. What it must have been to be present at the Palais Garnier when an opera hitherto known only through its first two acts (and the Lulu-Suite) finally saw the light of day, conducted by Pierre Boulez and directed by Patrice Chéreau. Bafflingly, Chéreau’s production seems never to have been revived, being supplanted in 1998 by Willy Decker’s staging for the Paris Opéra, now at the Bastille, here revived for the first time.



There is no initial curtain, so one is immediately confronted with Wolfgang Gussmann’s set, in which a stage of sorts is viewed by something akin to an amphitheatre above. Sometimes, there are people watching the events onstage, sometimes not; they are nearly always men. A red stepladder forms the initial circus-like – remember the Prologue with the Animal Tamer – setting for Lulu to be observed and manhandled. Ladders prove important throughout, not least in permitting some degree of movement between the ‘audience’ and ‘stage’: the final scene with Jack the Ripper has several. The focal point for the scene with the Painter is a sofa in the form of red lips, stylishly evoking, like much else, a vague sense of design-led era and also reminding us that this is often as much the blackest of comedies as it is tragedy. (Contrast with Wozzeck is instructive.) Gussmann’s designs – costumes and hairstyles in particular – look strikingly similar to those for Decker’s well-travelled staging of Die tote Stadt, which I saw in Salzburg, as strong a case as is ever likely to be made for a rather overblown, more than a little ridiculous work. But this Lulu of course came first – and the style is certainly appropriate. Serried mannequins in the final scene of the first act are a splendid touch of artificiality as well as an opportunity for an existentially bored Lulu to select her latest performing outfit.

One only has to recall Christof Loy’s dreadful ‘minimalism’ for the Royal Opera – in which no one and nothing were distinguished from anybody and anywhere else, Berg’s carefully-crafted parallelism coming to naught – to appreciate this lively, colourful setting in which the drama could be understood and experienced in all its bewitching variety. It does not especially matter where the different scenes are set, but there needs to be a sense of difference – which there is here. Loy achieved what one might have thought impossible, to render Lulu boring – with considerable help from a conductor, Antonio Pappano, utterly at sea with Berg’s music – but Decker draws one in, paints a picture but allows one to imagine and to think as well. Mention of the picture reminds us that, unlike at Covent Garden, there is one, into which – a very nice touch this – Lulu blends at the end. Likewise, there is, crucially, a sofa on which Lulu can chillingly remind Alwa of his father’s death. (The absence of any such props, or substitutes, simply made nonsense of the work in Loy’s hands.) And the phalanx of men all drawing their knifes upon Lulu at the end makes still more explicit what has been apparent all along.

Michael Schønwandt led a very good account of the score: perhaps not quite revelatory– we can listen to Boulez for that – but unfailing alert to the longer line as well as to the ever-shifting balances between the myriad orchestral voices. If I regretted somewhat the lack of film for the palindrome turning-point – why is it that directors, often so eager to use film in quite unnecessary places, seem reluctant to do so where it is actually stipulated? – the black curtain had the beneficial consequence of allowing one only to listen. It is testament to Schønwandt’s formal control that Berg’s design was searingly audible, with all the dramatic implications that follow. Another interesting point made was the closeness of the music for Lulu’s appearance in that act, before the scene with Alwa, to that of Gurrelieder, for which Berg of course provided the vocal score and an introductory thematic guide. Schønwandt and the excellent orchestra conjured up a golden yet darkly Teutonic sound quite in keeping with such references. Indeed, the orchestra was on splendid form throughout, strings silken and woodwind quite delectable.

Laura Aikin’s performance in the title role was in most respects excellent. Except for a couple of lines in the Paris scene, in which I could hear nothing at all, as if she were miming, she had the necessary stamina. If I were to quibble, I might say that her German, both sung and especially spoken, was a little too American-accented, but I should not wish to exaggerate. There was also the issue of presenting a relatively mature Lulu: the eternal childlike aspect of the character was often downplayed. (I am sure that it could be made to work, and indeed could truly intrigue, but it would require more appropriate direction.) In the first scene of the second act, Lulu seemed a little too comfortable as Hausfrau of the Schön residence. Wolfgang Schöne’s Dr Schön – what’s in a name? – was better acted than sung: the vocal performance had its moments, but dryness of tone inevitably led one to invidious comparisons with earlier performers such as Fischer-Dieskau. Kurt Streit was an impressive Alwa, thoughtful yet also honeyed of tone, the composer’s self-portrayal tugging the heartstrings as it should. Jennifer Larmore seems to have made the role of Geschwitz her own for the moment: hers once again was a moving portrayal, melding words and music together with beauty and meaning. As for Franz Grundheber’s superlative rasping and grasping Schigolch, I can only repeat what I said about his performance of the role in Salzburg last year: it was in the Norman Bailey class. Scott Wilde made a strong impression, both virile and humorous, as Animal Tamer and Athlete. Marlin Miller offered a finely observed Painter, not least in terms of uncommonly sweet-toned vocalism. What a delight it was also to welcome back the veteran Victor von Halem as Theatre Director and Banker, quite in his element as both.

Whatever misgivings I may have voiced about certain aspects of this performance, the ultimate truth lay in the work emerging once again as a towering masterpiece. Contrast that with Loy and Pappano at Covent Garden, who contrived to make Lulu neither look nor sound recognisable, or even comprehensible, let alone great: had that been the only Lulu of one’s life, one would most likely have wondered what all the fuss was about. Lulu in Paris continued to enchant, to disturb, to make one think.

Salzburg Festival (2) - Lulu, 14 August 2010

Felsenreitschule

Images: Salzburg Festival/Monika Rittershaus

Lulu – Patricia Petibon

Countess Geschwitz – Tanja Ariana Baumgartner

Dresser, Schoolboy, Groom – Cora Burggraaf
Painter, Negro – Pavol Breslik
Dr Schön, Jack the Ripper – Michael Volle
Alwa – Thomas Piffka
Schigolch – Franz Grundheber
Animal Tamer, Athlete – Thomas Johannes Mayer
Prince, Manservant – Heinz Zednik
Marquis – Andreas Conrad
Theatre Manager, Banker – Martin Tzonev
Fifteen-year old girl – Emilie Pictet
Girl’s Mother – Astrid Monika Hofer
Artist – Astrid Monika Jofer
Journalist – Simon Schnorr
Professor of Medicine, Professor, Police Officer – Gerhard Peilstein
Servant – James Cleverton

Vera Nemirova (director)
Daniel Richter (set designs)
Klaus Noack (costumes)
Manfred Voss (lighting)
Jens Schroth (dramaturgy)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Upper Austrian Jazz Orchestra (stage music: first act)
Members of the Angelika Prokopp Summer Acacdemy of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra (stage music: third act)
Marc Albrecht (conductor)


After the most boring production of Lulu imaginable – and then a bit more boring still – at Covent Garden (Christof Loy), I was predisposed to respond positively to a new staging. Certainly the feeling of immediate relief that there would be something to see, something that might respond to the words and music, was welcome. But it was not just a matter of contrast here: Vera Nemirova’s production had its particular advantages, not least a sense of theatre, and of appropriateness to the work, something of which one could hardly accuse Loy’s self-trumpeted ‘reductionism’. Daniel Richter’s designs played a crucial role in this respect, though the third act would prove more problematical. In fairness, it should be noted that to stage the third act at all was a relatively late decision. Quite why some people think there is any virtue nowadays in omitting Friedrich Cerha’s completion, I simply cannot understand. Perhaps it is a matter of not actually understanding what Cerha did, since I heard one person beforehand speaking of Cerha having ‘composed’ the music for the third act and how different it therefore sounded. It is difficult, though, to imagine that this could have been the motivation here. If I remember correctly, Nikolaus Harnoncourt was originally to have conducted, so it may well have been a matter of personal idiosyncrasy. Whilst Harnoncourt’s reading would doubtless have staked a claim to be filed under ‘interesting’, I cannot say that I was distraught to have had him replaced with Marc Albrecht.

Back to the production. It was not especially time-bound, which seems to me in this work a loss. People speak of the ‘mythical’ nature of the work, but equally important is a sense of time and place – which may or may not be the time and place specified, but might as well be – and, more importantly still, the interaction between specific and non-specific. There was compensation, however, to be gained in the sharpness of characterisation Nemirova imparted and in the sense, doubtless suggested by the Animal Tamer’s prologue, of meta-theatrical concern. Richter’s scenic designs added another layer to the ‘exhibition’: painterly backdrops, the first act flexible (often drooping) phallus, and the second act pyramid, out of which characters would emerge. I was baffled, however, by the end of the third act, which appeared to be set in a wintry, somewhat Russian-looking forest (or Parsifal, Act III?), a strange substitute for Whitechapel, at least the last time I looked. It raised irritating, rather than provocative, questions, along the lines of: whatever are these people doing here and what relation does this have to what we have seen before?

The Paris scene, however, was a triumph. It seemed that Nemirova had been liberated by the relatively short notice of staging and had relied upon theatrical instinct to extend her performative idea. There had been occasions earlier in which mirrors had revealed conductor, orchestra, and the audience, but the coup de théâtre was to open with toasts from within the audience, members of which were revealed actually to be characters. The action was thereafter played out in a space that blurred, if not quite obliterated, the boundary between ‘performance’ and ‘life’. I imagine that this might sound dreadful, but the question is whether it worked, and it did. Lulu’s emergence down the steps of the Felsenreitschule in a slinky, yet stylish gown (Klaus Noack’s costumes impressed throughout) enhanced her ‘star’ quality. I was unsure, though, about the animal masks donned by her retinue: presumably harking back to the prologue, but if so, reference during the first two acts would have helped. All the world, or at least all the riding school, was a stage, however, reminding one of Lulu’s oft-forgotten blackest of comedy. I thought it a pity that there had been no film for the film music: instead we merely saw some men of the world reading all about it from their newspapers. Still, at a time when video unnecessarily invades the most anodyne of productions, perhaps there was method in its absence.

Musically, there were many laurels to bestow. Patricia Petibon may not efface memories of Christine Schäfer – a wearily predictable comparison, I know – but she turns her particular abilities to good effect. I cannot say that I warm to her voice, but not warming to Lulu’s voice has its own dramatic consequences. A degree of alienation is no bad thing here, a blank canvas more telling than more naturally ‘expressive’ singing. Whilst some pitches are less accurate than others, one could doubtless say the same about every performance there has ever been. Most importantly, there was a strong sense of character, both on stage and vocally. Coloratura was in general effortlessly despatched, with a proper lack of heart. Pavol Breslik was simply outstanding as the Painter and the Negro. One really wanted the former to get away from Lulu as soon as possible, his honeyed tone making a bid for doomed sympathy belying his mere acts. (It probably did no harm that he was better looking than anyone else.) At any rate, he had his third-act revenge – sort of. Michael Volle was on just as good form here as at Covent Garden, but was given far greater opportunity, which he took, to flesh out Dr Schön as character rather than cipher. One rightly felt ambivalence and ambiguity, but one also savoured a fine command of line and subtle shading therein. Thomas Piffka replaced the originally slated Michael Schade as Alwa. During the first act, I was a little nonplussed, but this portrayal grew as time progressed – perhaps deliberately so? I was most taken with his selfishness as composer at the end of the second act: powerfully conveyed, whereas one often feels ‘mere’ sympathy for Berg’s partial self-projection. Tanja Ariana Baumgartner presented a less self-consciously ‘sympathetic’ Geschwitz than one often encounters; Lulu’s irritation was quite understandable. Perhaps we have at last progressed beyond the need to single out a lesbian character, though I must admit that I should not have minded a little more tugging at heartstrings here. It was good to welcome back Heinz Zednik (remember him in the Boulez-Chéreau Ring?) and Franz Grundheber, whose Schigolch was in the Norman Bailey class. There was a back story here, far beyond caricature, without attempting inappropriate dignity or, again, ‘sympathy’. Thomas Johannes Mayer, whom I did not recognise from his fine Wotan in Paris, did excellent work, especially as the ghastly Athlete, repellently raising the character to the level of an almost ultimate male response to Lulu’s charisma.

The Vienna Philharmonic was outstanding. One would have expected the devilish sweetness of the strings, though it still merits remark, but every section played superbly. I do not think I have ever heard, at least in this work, such fine xylophone playing, for instance. The sickness, the decadence, the beauty and the bite: all of these were there. This is of course the orchestra for which Lulu has always cried out. Albrecht’s direction was immeasurably superior to that of Pappano’s wishy-washiness at Covent Garden. Not only were there colour and depth; there was, crucially, iron-clad structure, on the micro- and macro-levels. Berg’s intricate writing needs to be projected in a way that relishes, is even seduced by, his formal games and turns them to dramatic ends. Orchestra and composer were here the brightest stars of all.

Salzburg Festival 2010: preview

Sadly, I was unable to fly to Salzburg for the press conference announcing the 2010 festival, but the press office kindly sent me press releases on the dot. Surely a better contender than any other for the title of greatest music festival in the world, this year's Salzburg Festival will run from the opening concert (Daniel Barenboim as conductor and soloist with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in works by Beethoven, Boulez, and Bruckner) on 26 July to the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra's concert with Sir Simon Rattle on 29 August (works by Wagner, Strauss, Schoenberg, Webern, and Berg, Karita Mattila as soloist in the Four Last Songs). Strictly speaking, the festival finishes and closes a day earlier and later, with performances of Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s mystery play Jedermann (‘Everyman’) in the cathedral square. Other spoken drama ranges from Sophocles, via Racine and Stefan Zweig, to the Young Directors’ Project, but I shall concentrate on the musical side of things.

The theme running through a number of the dramatic works, spoken and sung, is ‘Where God and Man Collide, Tragedy Ensues,’ from an essay by Michael Köhlmeier. Elektra, Strauss’s greatest opera, will benefit from the glowing Viennese strings, conducted by Daniele Gatti. A stellar cast – often a cliché, but surely a true one here – includes Waltraud Meier, Iréne Theorin, Eva-Marie Westbroek, and René Pape. Nikolaus Lehnhoff conducts. A new opera by Wolfgang Rihm, Dionysus, inspired, like the broader theme, by Nietzsche, will be conducted by Ingo Metzmacher (Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin) and directed by Pierre Audi. Metzmacher’s account of its intellectual genesis certainly tantalises. Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice – was there ever a more important opera? – will be led by, to my mind, the greatest Gluck conductor alive, Riccardo Muti. Joining the VPO will be Elisabeth Kulman and Genia Kühmeier, directed by Dieter Dorn. Patricia Petibon, Despina in 2009’s Così fan tutte, will essay the title role of Lulu, with a cast including Michael Schade, Michael Volle (Covent Garden’s recent Dr Schön too), and Franz Grundheber. Marc Albrecht conducts the Vienna Philharmonic and Vera Nemirova conducts. Mozart has but one opera this year, Don Giovanni, in a revival of Claus Guth’s production, this time with Yannick Nézet-Seguin conducting the VPO; Christopher Maltman and Erwin Schrott head another starry cast. Nézet-Seguin will also conduct the Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra in Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette, with Anna Netrebko and Piotr Beczala as the star-cross’d lovers. Finally, Edita Gruberová’s many admirers will have the opportunity to hear her in concert in the title role of Norma, with the Camerata Salzburg conducted by Friedrich Haider.

Rihm will also be honoured in a series of concerts, ‘Continent Rihm’. Performers include the Arditti Quartet, the Hilliard Ensemble, the Ensemble Modern, Metzmacher and his Deutsches SO Berlin, and the VPO under Christoph Eschenbach (Ernster Gesang, with Tzimon Barto as piano soloist) and Riccardo Chailly (Gesungene Zeit with Anne-Sophie Mutter).

Last year’s Liszt-Szenen give way to Brahms in 2010. Works by Brahms will appear with related works by an extraordinary range of composers: Isaac, Biber, Bach, Reger, Zemlinsky, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Janáček, Shostakovich, Ligeti, Kurtág, and Jörg Widmann, his Intermezzi being premièred by András Schiff. Other contributors to the series include Valery Afanassiev, the Zehetmair Quartet, the Balthasar Neumann Choir, and Angelika Kirchschlager.

Anniversary composers Schumann and Chopin will also loom large. Philippe Herreweghe will conduct Camerata Salzburg in a cycle of the Schumann symphonies, whilst Ivo Pogorelich will perform both of Chopin’s piano concertos. Evgeny Kissin includes both composers in his pair of recitals. Other pianists, such as Maurizio Pollini and Krystian Zimerman (Chopin) and Grigory Sokolov (Schumann) will opt for one or the other. Piano-lovers are clearly in for as much of a treat as opera-lovers.

Other chamber music includes a brace of concerts from Martha Argerich and friends from Lugano, artists such as Frank-Peter Zimmermann, Gidon Kremer, Afanassiev, and a mouth-watering combination of Zimerman and the Hagen Quartet (Schumann and Grażyna Bacewicz). Matthias Goerne and Christoph Eschenbach once again perform all three Schubert song cycles (their Wigmore Hall Winterreise is reviewed here). Other song recitals will be given by Anja Harteros/Wolfram Rieger, Rolando Villázon/Hélène Grimaud, Kirchschlager/Ian Bostridge/Julius Drake, Philippe Jaroussky/Jérôme Ducros, and – my own pick – Jonas Kaufmann with Helmut Deutsch, in Schubert, Schumann, and Mahler.

The Vienna Philharmonic, hard at work in the pit in so many of the operas, will give its customary series of symphonic concerts, some of which have already been referred to above. Other conductors at the helm will be Muti (Prokofiev’s Ivan the Terrible, with Gérard Dépardieu) and Bernard Haitink (Bruckner’s Fifth Symphony). In addition to the Berliners, visiting orchestras will include the World Orchestra for Peace under Valery Gergiev (Mahler’s Fourth and Fifth Symphonies), the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra under Mariss Jansons (Bartók, Mussorgsky, and Stravinksy), and the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra under Bertrand de Billy (Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, with Fanny Ardant). The Mozarteum Orchestra’s traditional series of Mozart Matinées continues, soloists including Fazil Say and Diana Damrau.

This is but a brief overview. I can only urge you to save your pennies for what promises to be the most memorable festival since the 2006 Mozart anniversary, in which all of the composer’s operas were performed. For further details, click here.