Don Giovanni, Deutsche Oper, 26 June 2024

Don Giovanni – Andrzej Filończyk
Donna Anna – Flurina Stucki

Don Ottavio – Kieran Carrel

Commendatore – Patrick Guetti
Donna Elvira – Maria Motolygina
Leporello – Joel Allison
Masetto – Artur Garbas
Zerlina – Arianna Manganello
Artist – Ellen Urban

Director – Roland Schwab
Set designs – Piero Vinciguerra
Costumes – Renée Listerdal
Assistant choreographer and revival director – Silke Sense

Movement Choir 

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (chorus director: Thomas Richter)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Daniel Cohen (conductor)

Image: Bettina Stöss (from 2023 revival)

We now find ourselves in the twilight zone in which house and hall seasons are drawing to a close, but festivals have already begun. I shall flit back and forth for the next few weeks, albeit with greater emphasis on the latter, but here returned to the former, to Roland Schwab’s production of Don Giovanni for the Deutsche Oper Berlin. I saw it when it new in 2010 and have deliberately not looked back, though I have a sense that my reaction was somewhat similar: some good ideas, but lacking in coherence. That, at any rate, offers a snapshot of my reaction last night. (I shall look back after posting.) 

The opening impression is of some sort of crime boss in the title role. His tightly drilled (well choreographed, though to what end?) entourage features throughout, though I cannot say I found that added much, especially in the strange (drug-induced?) shaking to which many of them often fall prey. A sense of menace is imparted, though perhaps at the cost not only of distraction from the real action, but also and more seriously underlining a sense that, for the most part, especially earlier on, both production and performances seem a little lost on a stage and in a house of this size. Other goings on, whether the dark-suited mob, or an admittedly arresting carnival of death that accompanies rather than drives the first act’s final scene, have a tendency to come across as being put there to fill the space. The well-worn Dantean ‘Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate’ is inscribed on a portable door through which the guests arrive (which haphazardly returns briefly, and not when one might expect, in the second act) in a welcome recognition, not the only one, of the work’s religious nature, but ultimately goes for little. 

Throughout, much is done with golf clubs, again I suppose intended to underline the masculinity of one side (and yes, I know women play golf too, though it is not clear the production does). Other business, such as constant wielding of whips and a good deal of other noise-making activities, show a tin ear for the reality that this is an opera, in which not only music but some of Mozart’s very greatest music plays a hallowed role. Clearing up mess, literally with bin bags, seems to be Leporello’s business: fair enough, I suppose. At one point, though, the men are in dustbins, which may sound intriguingly Beckettian, yet ends up being another short phase in a production that never seems to know where it is heading. What Don Giovanni’s score card system denotes, I was never quite sure: is a high score good or bad? I presumed the former, but then his final ‘1’ for the Stone Guest scene would make little sense at all. 

The audience certainly did not help, laughing, chattering, and so on, seemingly in utter disconnection from what was seen, let alone heard. What should have been a truly powerful moment and marked one of Schwab’s most imaginative ideas, Don Giovanni seating his ‘disciples’ for his last supper, the moment frozen in the painterly manner one might expect, for him to break bread, elicited widespread vigorous laughter. The Eucharist and/or dark inversion thereof are now apparently merely amusing. To be fair, I suppose it would explain a good deal, and if that is the reaction an attempt to address the profoundly religious nature of the work elicits, then, God or Nietzsche help us, perhaps it is more understandable why directors generally and, in most cases, disastrously avoid it. 

Why such strange decisions continue to be made concerning the ‘version’ I do not know. It is all very well to blame singers’ desires to give ‘their’ arias, but it is not their decision and they often find themselves oddly deprived too; one cannot imagine them having reached this settlement in any case. However difficult it may be to stand the loss, the Prague version is almost always preferable. If you must, and if you have a performance of such calibre that it and the production can override the problems, the most familiar of the Prague-Vienna conflations, justly maligned, can work. (He said through gritted teeth, thinking what would otherwise always be lost.) ‘Vienna’, insofar as we know what it was, has latterly, unaccountably had a weird renaissance; it is time for that fad to be put to bed. Goodness knows what the reasoning for the combination heard on this occasion was. We heard Mi tradì and Dalla sua pace, though neither Il mio tesoro (odd, given such a fine performance of Don Ottavio’s first aria) nor the Zerlina-Leporello duet. Recitatives were cut and sometimes paused, whilst other things, rarely if ever worth the wait, happened. It made little intrinsic sense, though then given the dramatic looseness of both staging and conducting, it was not particularly a problem either. Ironically, I think production and performance would both have needed to be better or worse for it to matter more. 

For Daniel Cohen’s conducting of a Deutsche Oper orchestra that often sounded out of sorts – what a change from its recent magnificent Wagner and Strauss – seemed oddly to mirror the non-committal confusion of Schwab’s staging. It began poorly, balances in a mercilessly hard-driven, tales-of-rasping-brass Overture so awry that one could barely hear the strings. Not so much the conductor’s fault, though still dispiriting, the duet between Donna Anna and Don Ottavio in the first scene pretty much fell apart. Cohen was excellent here in picking this up and moving things on, and whilst there were quite a few subsequent discrepancies between pit and stage, they would be on a smaller scale. When he and the orchestra really clicked, there was some fine playing. The problem was more that rarely, if ever, in the first act and only sporadically in the second was a fundamental pulse established. At best, we heard a string of disconnected arias, recitative often too ‘edited’ to be of much use, the impression being given of ‘accompanying’ a varied recital rather than musically leading the action. 

Vocally, there was a good deal to admire. The occasional mishap such as that mentioned above, there was nothing truly to disappoint, although the standard of singing was not always so consistent as it might have been. The moment Maria Motolygina stepped on stage as Donna Elvira, performing voltage shot up; hers was an outstanding performance by any standards, boasting cleanness of line, finely modulated tone, and dramatic commitment: one I was delighted to hear. In the title role, Andrzej Filończyk was excellent, growing in stature and defiance, to boast an enthralling performance in his final scene, helped by new-found proximity to the audience but ultimately founded on charisma and artistry. Joel Allison’s livewire Leporello followed eagerly in his footsteps, at least until then. Patrick Guetti’s Commendatore made a strong impression too. Flurina Stucki’s Donna Anna sometimes seemed underpowered, but she recovered and made a good job of her second-act aria. Kieran Carrel’s ‘Dalla sua pace’ was as sweet-toned and mellifluous as one could wish, though I never sensed that he was quite inside the role (a difficult task, admittedly). I am not sure either of these was really her or his role. Likewise in the case of Zerlina and Masetto. Arianna Manganello and Artur Garbas sang well enough, though  might have made more of what they had to do; in that, they were not necessarily helped by the production. 

The worst, I am afraid, came at the end, in the total excision of the final scene. Everything in the work and tonal expectations, specific and general, pull it forward; so too, still more bafflingly, did the production seem to do so. There was, however, nowhere for it to go; it simply stopped and those who, much to my chagrin, were wildly applauding were in a sense right. Yes, Mahler did it; yes, perhaps, given that he was Gustav Mahler, he managed to make it work; no, by any reasonable standards, he was still misguided, partial in his view of the work, surprisingly uncomprehending of its dramaturgy, to have done so. That such an ultra-Romantic route should be taken made no sense whatsoever in context. If the aim were to provoke dissatisfaction, that was certainly achieved; I almost hope it was, since the alternative, sheer cluelessness, is more depressing. Perhaps it was a metaphor, after all, for our age’s strange inability even to attempt to understand this towering opera.

The Queen of Spades, Deutsche Oper, 20 March 2024

PIQUE DAME von Pjotr I. Tschaikowskij, Premiere am 9. März 2024 in der Deutschen Oper Berlin,
copyright: Marcus Lieberenz
Countess (Doris Soffel) and Hermann (Martin Muehle)

Hermann – Martin Muehle
Tomsky – Lucio Gallo
Prince Yeletsky – Thomas Lehman
Chekalinsky – Chance Jonas-O’Toole
Surin – Kyle Miller
Chaplitsky – Andrew Dickinson
Narumov – Artur Garbas
Master of Ceremonies – Jörg Schörner
The Countess – Doris Soffel
Lisa – Maria Motolygina
Pauline – Karia Tucker
Governess – Nicole Piccolomini
Masha – Arianna Manganello
Children’s commander – Sofia Kaspruk
Little Hermann – Aleksandr Sher
Little Lisa – Alma Kraushaar
Stage piano – Jisu Park
Old servant – Wolfgang Siebner

Director – Sam Brown
Designer – Stuart Nunn
Choreography – Ron Howell
Video – Martin Eidenberger
Lighting – Linus Fellborn
Assistant directors – Constanze Weidknecht, Silke Sense
Dramaturgy – Konstantin Parnian

Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (director: Christian Lindhorst)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (director: Jeremy Bines)

Statisterie, and Opernballet of the Deutsche Oper

Sebastian Weigle (conductor)  

The late Graham Vick was to have directed this new production of The Queen of Spades for the Deutsche Oper. According to the cast list, Vick laid down the principles for the production, but his successor Sam Brown, charged with bringing the project to completion, alongside designer Stuart Nunn and choreographer (and Vick’s widower) Ron Howell, will necessarily have brought much that his own to the piece. As he says in an interview, ‘I knew that the framework that he’d created provides a lot of room for conceptual freedom. … It may sound dramatic, but Graham’s ideas for PIQUE DAME outside of the equipment died with him. As a director, I have to walk my own path.’ Tempting though it may be to speculate what comes from whom, that is hardly the point. Having noted the situation, it is better to move on to discuss what it is we see and hear.

Chekalinsky (Chance Jonas-O'Toole), Tomsky (Lucio Gallo), Surin (Kyle Miller)

Layering of memory is a particular strength. Tchaikovsky – and his brother and librettist, Modest, as well of course as Pushkin – play with memories of the eighteenth century. That is doubled by the Countess’s memories of her ‘own’, earlier eighteenth century, Mme de Pompadour and all. The Grétry air is another case in point. In this production, without being merely indeterminate or arbitrary, which would defeat the point, further nesting occurs, for instance in the silent film excerpts (from a Russian adaptation of 1916), but also in the dressing and undressing of particular characters at different points, as well as in broader designs. Spanning three centuries – the nineteenth may not be overtly depicted on stage, but it is always present – is not an easy trick to bring off, but it is meaningfully accomplished here. Moreover, it is with us from the start, the opening scene with children’s chorus pointing to much of what is to come. A maltreated child, a social outsider even then, is abused by children and adults alike, only to have a little girl briefly come to him and show a little kindness. It prefigures what is to come, but perhaps it is also a memory. In this opera, though, it is always too late. The cards dealt by fate can never be changed, despite – or because of – their entirely random nature in what is no game of skill. 

Hermann, Countess

The cast acts out this game and propels it with great skill, heightening and extending its outlines in much the same way the production does. Martin Muehle’s Hermann is tireless, anguish-ridden, obsessive, perhaps a little on the Verdian side of Tchaikovsky, but I am not sure it behoves me, as one who speaks no Russian, to be too fussy here. It was above all his journey of catastrophe, and no one could doubt that Muehle grasped his fate and followed it. But it is not only his journey; part of the problem is surely that the characters are heading in different, mutually opposed and uncomprehending directions. Maria Motolygina’s Lisa, unable to escape from her childhood and clearly presented as such, was by the same token beautifully, often heartrendingly sung, her final scene powerful indeed. As expected, Doris Soffel’s Countess stole the show: not only a sterling performance, that ‘ancient’ air included, but one showing her sexual drives to be as strong as ever, perhaps even more so. Perhaps if she too had questioned her obsessions, she might have been happier—but is there any meaning in that ‘perhaps’? Thomas Lehman’s Yeletsky was finely sung indeed, as, in smaller roles, were Karia Tucker’s Pauline, Andrew Dickinson’s Chaplitsky, Chance Jonas-O’Toole’s Chekalinsky, Kyle Miller’s Surin, and many more, up to and including the chorus. Lucio Gallo’s virile, contemptuously masculine Tomsky showed how this singer can still absolutely hold the stage. Raunchy masked-ball choreography from Howell and excellent performances from the dancers not only returned to several questions already posed, but also asked a good number of their own.

Sebastian Weigle’s conducting had its moments, especially during the third act. (The opera was essentially given in scenes rather than acts, the interval given, as is often the case, following the arrival of Catherine the Great in the middle of the second act.) Then it became more idiomatic, conjuring up from the excellent Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper more of a Tchaikovskian sound than had previously been the case. We should not be too essentialist about such matters, but much previously had sounded rather on the Germanic side, albeit with distinctly odd balances, strings in particular notably subdued. A lack of dramatic sweep, without anything obvious put in its place, proved frustrating. 

Catherine the Great (Doris Soffel)

Singing and production continued, though, to offer considerable compensation. Soffel’s reappearance as Catherine the Great suggested she and the Countess were one and the same, her mocking laughter at the end of that third scene echoing the Countess’s ghostly reappearance (dressed as Lisa) to name the three cards. Was this all, then, just Hermann’s fevered imagination? And if so, to put it bluntly, what is the point? What we saw was not so cut and dried as that. Indeed, one of the projector quotations between scenes, from Dostoevsky, considering the nature of fantasy, how it must come close to reality, made that clear. 

If the scales here are tilted towards fantasy rather than reality, more so than any other production I can recall and than I have tended to think of it, then this remains a single production, concentrating fruitfully on a particular standpoint; another will be free to do something else. And it is only limited by it to the extent that almost any standpoint will limit: it enabled and heighted a strong sense of fate, from which not only Hermann, but also Lisa and indeed the Countess wish to escape, yet ultimately knew they cannot—and do not. 

There is, I think, something psychoanalytical to the approach. Certainly everything appears to be built on misunderstandings or downright lies: untruths, at any rate. What Hermann wants does not really exists; what Lisa wants does not really exist; what the Countess has wanted all her life has probably never existed at all. That holds for others too, not least Yeletsky. For all his apparent good fortune, he loses Lisa, and there is no sense of triumph in his final victory over Hermann. That it ends with a third and final death, all three ultimate protagonists departed, seems fitting in a sense that goes beyond Romantic death wish. Perhaps it is here, then, that the fantastic twist properly resumes, bidding us continue to question what we have seen and heard.

Le nozze di Figaro, Deutsche Oper, 20 February 2024

Count Almaviva – Thomas Lehman

Countess Almaviva – Maria Motolygina
Susanna – Lilit Daviyan
Figaro – Artur Garbas
Cherubino – Meechot Marrero
Marcellina – Michaela Kaune
Don Basilio – Burkhard Ulrich
Don Curzio – Chance Jonas-O’Toole
Bartolo – Padraic Rowan
Antonio – Patrick Guetti
Barbarina – Ketevan Chuntishvili
Two Bridesmaids – Yuuki Tamai, Asaha Wada

Director – Götz Friedrich
Set designs – Herbert Wernicke
Costumes – Herbert Wernicke, Ogün Wernicke
Revival director – Gerlinde Pelkowski

Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Richter) of the Deutsche Oper
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Giulio Cilona (conductor)

DIE HOCHZEIT DES FIGARO von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart,
Deutsche Oper Berlin,copyright: Bettina Stöß
Count Almaviva (Thomas Lehman), Susanna (Lilit Dayivan), Don Basilio (Burkhard Ulrich)

Next stop on my tour of Berlin’s ‘vintage’ opera productions: Götz Friedrich’s Deutsche Oper Marriage of Figaro, a joy to encounter in itself and a nice sequel to Ruth Berghaus’s Barber of Seville across town at the Staatsoper. Friedrich’s productions are gradually making their way to the great opera house in the sky. When I first came to Berlin, a number of his Wagner stagings, for instance, were still in the repertoire; now there are none. This, from 1978, with designs by Herbert Wernicke – like Berghaus’s designer, Achim Freyer, going on to become a notable director in his own right – is certainly worth catching whilst it is still around. 

For once, I admit it was a relief to see an eighteenth-century society of orders portrayed as it ‘should be’. It is not the case that the drama cannot be reimagined in different settings, nor even that the complexity and hierarchy of such a society need in every case be reproduced (though one loses something if it is not). Yet too often, one gains the impression that a director has simply not bothered; or worse, has not even realised what is at stake. Such is the pathway to vulgar farce. Here, instead, almost everything seemed to fall into place. Not that that necessarily ‘happens’ without a good deal of thought and work, but the impression is important; the world created on stage worked, helped by being in accordance with that created by its librettist and composer, but also enabled to work by them. Even at this remove, there seemed to me no doubt that Friedrich had been involved at every level of this production, had made decisions founded upon musical and historical as well as stage understanding, and that characters and their relationships had been properly considered.

Costumes and their changes were never arbitrary or simply on account of a ‘look’, or even a concept. They had historical meaning and often looked handsome – Cheubino’s uniform, for instance – without being a fetishistic recreation, in which similarly the ‘look’ rather than the drama was the thing. Cherubino’s hiding from the Count actually worked for once; the number of times directors simply mess that up is, alas, all too numerous for comfort. I liked the touch of having the Count assert his manorial authority in front of the house’s customary picture of his ancestors. Likewise the audience room in which the last two scenes of that third act were set. Such attention to detail would chime with many people’s experience of visiting such houses and their estates and would therefore help bring to life the historical record, as well more straightforwardly as making sense of what was said, sung, and done. 

Perhaps more important, the choreography made sense, listening to the music rather than simply disregarding it in the usual ‘modern silly dance’ routines unmusical directors or their associates foist upon opera. (By all means offer something in counterpoint to it, however that may be understood, but at least do the score and its historical context the decency of listening to them first rather than simply skim-reading a libretto.) Scene changes were more frequent than will often be the case now: not only between but sometimes within acts. Current directors would do it differently, no doubt, but different is sometimes just different, not necessarily better or worse. 

Cherubino (Meechot Marrero), Countess Almaviva (Maria Motolygina), Count Almaviva

To questions concerning the opera are to what extent knowledge of the play and indeed of its sequel are expected. At one level, none: many of us saw and loved it before proceeding to Beaumarchais in either incarnation. Did Da Ponte and/or Mozart, though, expect any such knowledge, in the first instance by not having to show something that might have caused trouble with the censor; or, milder still, does one gain further insight from having done so? Here, rightly, the question was left open. No one was compelled to have extra knowledge, but we had both a sense of difference from the corresponding play that suggested purpose rather than mere accident, and one could certainly read aspects of the characters to suggest their lives had developed from the first instalment (even from Rossini after the fact; Paisiello too, I think). Thus when confrontations between Figaro and the Count were less studies in contemporary masculinity than will often, quite reasonably the case, one was led to think of their history together—and, as Friedrich noted in a fascinating programme interview, the fact that the Count is not an idiot, indeed most likely he is a man of the Enlightenment himself, entrusted as he will shortly be to represent his country as the ambassador in London. This, one might say, is him regretting the passing of certain aspects of something he knows to be wrong and attempting to recover them through guile, not through neofeudal reaction pushed to the level of absurdist tyranny. That, after all, is the story being told in the opera, though often one would not know it. The director may or may not have good reason for taking a slightly different line, just as (s)he might for failing to recognise what once had passed between the Count and Rosina, as once we knew here, but it is good to know, and to have suggested to us, that such matters have at least been considered.

And so, if I have been more thrilled by portrayals of Figaro and the Count, I came to appreciate a subtle more placing of them and the rest of the household within a greater social whole. Thomas Lehman and Artur Garbas did not seem to be presenting a modern portrayal and falling short; they were doing something different, as was Friedrich. Lilit Daviyan’s Susanna was not so different from what one might expect, though that is not to say she took anything for granted. Maria Motolygina’s Countess truly came into her own in ‘Dove sono’, a finely yet not fussily coloured account, in which musical means conveyed dramatic ends. Meechot Marrero’s Cherubino was not only dramatically alert but perhaps uncommonly beautifully sung. Michaela Kaune’s Marcellina offered a surprising star drunken turn in her fourth-act aria, for once retained. It was a pity still to be missing Don Basilio’s, but Burkhard Ulrich made a fine impression elsewhere: for once, a reading (Friedrich’s too, of course) that presented him as music master rather than a bizarrely camp caricature as has been recently fashionable. Everyone made a mark as required without overshadowing the rest of the company, down to Chance Jonas-O’Toole’s Don Curzio, whom one actually noticed in the sextet as well as before it, simply (or so it seemed) by virtue of Friedrich having given matters due consideration, as well as excellent singing. 

I cannot be so enthusiastic about Giulio Cilona’s conducting, though on the whole it seemed preferable to what I had heard last month in The Magic Flute. The Overture, hard-driven and with little audible at times other than rasping brass, brought us close in the wrong way to Rossini, as did too much of the first act. If there was little depth to what followed and a few too many disjunctions between pit and stage, especially during ensembles, at least it showed greater flexibility. And it certainly improved, the third and fourth acts more all-purpose ‘light’ rather than motoric. That Friedrich’s production survived and shone is all the more testament to its virtues—and to the cast that brought them back to life.

Carmen, Deutsche Oper, 26 October 2023

Carmen – Aigul Akhmetshina
Don José – David Butt Philip
Micaëla – Maria Motolygina
Escamillo – Byung Gil Kim
Zuniga – Christian Simmons
Moralès – Dean Murphy
Frasquita – Meechot Marrero
Mercédès – Arianna Manganello
Dancaïro – Artur Garbas
Remendado – Kieran Carrel
Lillas Pastia – Dean Street
Mercédès’s daughter – Fatima Hammad

Ole Anders Tandberg (directo)
Erlend Birkeland (set designs)
Maria Geber (costumes)
Ellen Ruge (lighting)
Silke Sense (choreography)

Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (chorus director: Christian Lindhorst)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (chorus director: Jeremy Bines) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Ben Glassberg (conductor)

Images from 2018 original production with different cast: © Marcus Lieberenz

Hmmm. I think I could see, some of the time, what Ole Anders Tandberg was trying to do in his 2018 Deutsche Oper production of Carmen. There were some reasonable ideas, some less so, and some that were frankly terrible. Next to Dmitri Tcherniakov’s brilliant reimagining of the work for Aix the previous year, though, this did not really pass muster. If you like gruesome imagery with unfortunate (I assume they were accidental) racist overtones, this may be for you. If not, even something more ’traditional’ is likely to prove a better bet than this. 

The curtain confronting us on entrance to the theatre, sets the tone: a bloody scene, involving what must have been the gouged eye of a bull. Once the curtain rises, the bullring (Iberia, not Birmingham) is centre stage, and proves to be the only setting for the entire thing: either inside, the arena suggestive of an amphitheatre, or outside (as one would expect for the fourth act). Fair enough, except nothing really is done with this. The metatheatrical suggestion turns out to have nothing to it. And whilst we know Carmen involves bullfighting, is it really ‘about’ it? It could be, I suppose, but there is little sign of that here, other than a strange obsession with internal organs (and even that is pushing an association). 

Violence, one might say, is a central theme, though nowadays we tend to tread a little more carefully when it comes to that perpetrated by men on women. Micaëla is sexually assaulted by the soldiers when she arrives, which makes her embarrassing octopus-like approach to Don José at best unfortunate. (I might suggest she was traumatised, but I do not think we go that deep.) More fundamentally, the ‘symbolic’ association of Carmen with a bull is, on a charitable reading, extremely unfortunate. Portraying the Roma community as body snatchers dealing in human organs: well, I shall leave it at that. Don José’s enthusiastic induction at the end of the second act, harvesting Zuniga’s innards I shall let speak for itself; likewise the cardless card scene in which entrails, gingerly approached with white rubber gloves, are not so much consulted as haplessly dangled. 

If anything worse still, the idea of Carmen as an opéra comique is abandoned for what seems to think itself a knowing send-up of grand opéra – why, when the work is not that in the first place? – yet ends up capitulating to Meyerbeerian ‘effect without cause’ far more than it realises. Strange people, presumably symbolic of something or other, march around the stage to no particular effect. Some are in drag, others are children, others are soldiers who excitedly attempt, without success, to have sex with the stadium walls (and are promptly carried off by the bodysnatchers). Choreography, here as elsewhere, is worse than unfortunate. Tandberg’s production, then, is less ‘about’ vulgarity, ‘knowing’ trajes de gitana notwithstanding, and more plain vulgar.   

Given the setting, Aigul Akhmetshina and David Butt Philip emerged with considerable dignity, the musicality and dramatic commitment of their performances impressive throughout. Akhmetshina did what she could to present a proper mixture of pride and vulnerability, in a readily communicative performance Butt Philip seems unable to put a foot wrong right now, readily conquering swathes of the tenor repertoire. I am happy to report that his French is excellent too. Would that I could say the same for Byung Gil Kim’s Escamillo, for which I was lucky to decipher one word in twenty. It was a pity, since his dark tone and stage presence showed promise; but if all one is left for the words is to read the surtitles, then much is lost. Maria Motolygina’s Micaëla was beautifully sung, despite Tandberg’s peculiar conception of the role. Indeed, so was everything else, the well-trained chorus included. My heart went out to its singers for some of the am-dram movement they were required to do: again, presumably ‘ironic’, yet hardly seeming so. 

The faults of the evening lay neither in the singing nor in the pit, where Ben Glassberg conducted an incisive, colourful account of the orchestral score, considerate to singers without bowing to them, aided immensely by keen, responsive playing from the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper. He was not helped by having to stop for all-too-numerous incidents of mid-act applause in what appeared to verge on built-in pauses onstage. I may be too Wagnerian, may Nietzsche forgive me, about this, but such monotonous regularity of indiscriminate applause does no one any good. Nor, I fear, will a barrage of coughing from all quarters, suggestive of an advanced-stage tuberculosis clinic. Surely part of a director’s job would be at least to encourage continuity of action; but then a good part of that job seemed on this occasion to have been missed. Rarely has Andalusia seemed less inviting or less interesting.