Die Walküre, Royal Opera, 17 May 2025

Royal Opera House

Siegmund – Stanislas de Barbeyrac
Sieglinde – Natalya Romaniw
Hunding – Soloman Howard
Wotan – Christopher Maltman
Brünnhilde – Elisabeth Strid
Fricka – Marina Prudenskaya
Gerhilde – Lee Bisset
Helmwige – Mauda Hundeling
Waltraute – Claire Barnett-Jones
Schwetleite – Rhonda Browne
Ortlinde – Katie Lowe
Siegrune – Catherine Carby
Grimgerde – Monika-Evelin Liiv
Rossweisse – Alison Kettlewell
Erda – Clare Almond
Actors – Illona Linthwaite, Lucy Brenchley, Clea Godsill, Maria Leon, Virginia Poli, Nadia Sadiq, Jay Yule

Director – Barrie Kosky
Set designs – Rufus Didwiszus
Costumes – Victoria Behr
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Antonio Pappano (conductor)

The Royal Opera’s new Walküre proved very good in every respect, often excellent, offering some degree of solace for having come close to taking out a bank loan to buy a ticket. Our ultra-neoliberal, genocidal government will no more fund the arts than its kindred, ever-so-slightly-less genocidal, ever-so-slightly-more-separatist predecessor. As the last remnants of humanity crash down livestreamed before us, an historic half a million-plus citizens protesting but a stone’s throw away to stop the genocide in Gaza, Wagner’s message could hardly be more urgent. Will anyone listen? Doubtless. Will any of the people who need to listen do so? Almost certainly not, as signalled by the unpleasant experience of passing a key architect of Brexit Britain’s malaise, Michael Gove, on the stairs. What do these people think the Ring is about? It is a question as old as the work itself, but then the same question could be asked – doubtless was – in the theatres of Athens. A politically committed artist such as Wagner could not have been less concerned with l’art pour l’art: that was at best the world of actually existing opera houses and their ‘absolute music’. Such is never all we have, though sometimes it may feel like it. As once again, Wagner and his performers sought to ‘make clear to the men of the revolution the meaning of that [non-]revolution,’ it was possible, whatever the catastrophes outside and perhaps even on account of them, once again to be moved and challenged by Wagner’s drama in the theatre. 

I missed Das Rheingold, though if the final Götterdämmerung has not by then subsumed us all, I hope to catch up when the whole Ring is staged. Barrie Kosky’s outward-looking Kammperspiel of a Walküre seemed nevertheless to stand perfectly well on its own merits. Hallmarks not only of Kosky’s direction, indeed not only of the cast onstage, but also of Antonio Pappano’s direction of a splendidly responsive Orchestra of the Royal Opera House were listening and collaboration: qualities in shorter supply than ever as fascism deepens its grip with every day—over Starmer’s ‘island of strangers’. Trump’s politics-as-gameshow, and almost anywhere else one can think of in the benighted ‘West’ (and not only there). 

I have not been a fan of Pappano’s Wagner in the past; here, both his conducting and that orchestral response sounded transformed. (In retrospect, there may have been something of an augury in the unusually Wagnerian Turandot I heard him conduct in 2023, but the Ring is a challenge of quite another order.) Now it seemed to spring directly from the words – perhaps a little too much, rather than asserting itself as an equal partner – but, if one wanted an Opera and Drama Wagner, at least according to many readings, here it was. There was none of the orchestral scrappiness, none of the merely following (‘supporting’) singers that had bedevilled earlier Ring performances I had heard. (I skipped the last outing of Keith Warner’s Ring, or rather could not afford to go.) No Wagner performance, not even Barenboim’s or Furtwängler’s, will cover every base; this is music, as it is drama, that encompasses and suggests more than any one performance can. On its own terms, it convinced, and there was no doubting the strong relationship built with the production.   

Kosky’s production is in many ways straightforward, its overriding concept of the despoliation of Nature (chapter four of my book on the Ring) clear and fatally apparent. A tree and all that has been felled from it, presumably beginning with Wotan’s spear (in the work’s prehistory as recounted to us by the Norns in the Prologue to Götterdämmerung), offer the roots and present of the tragic calamity that has befallen this world. Designs, especially set and lighting, contribute powerfully, a black-grey-white colour scheme occasionally bloodied in red, for instance that on Siegmund as Wotan chillingly watches him expire. Perhaps at some level he cares; perhaps not. Ambiguity renders it all the more chilling. There is perhaps a touch of the actor-politician Zelensky to him: a fascinating figure, with whom the Nietzsche of The Case of Wagner would have had a field day. Continuation and re-emergence of that red, flowing from the tree and seeping into the scene with the Valkyries and their carts of heroes (also tree-like, Nature’s wholeness still just about intact), made its point unmistakeably. So did Wotan’s brutal violence: no Rheingold ‘Nicht durch Gewalt’ here, should we take it seriously. Even Fricka’s glamourous arrival in a vintage car, which could readily have seemed an expensive distraction, took its place against this backdrop, connected to it in clear musicodramatic terms, as did Beckettian emergence of characters, Endgame-like, from holes in the savaged tree in the final scenes of the second act. For all the fuss about Erda, her appearance seemed in many ways of lesser importance, though the painterly provision of her spring fruits at the end of the first act was a nice touch. The tree doubled as Brünnhilde’s rock; in lesser hands, that might have confused, yet here seemed perfectly in order, aided by interventionist surtitling. 

Binding together musical performance and stage direction was of course the cast, which worked together very well indeed—almost as if this were a repertory spoken theatre with singing, in which company members worked together day in, day out. This made for moments of extraordinarily powerful emotional impact: Sieglinde’s ‘Lenz’ jubilation; Brünnhilde’s quandary following Wotan’s monologue, spotlit simply in front of the curtain; her embrace of Sieglinde following her decision to defy Wotan; and above all, Brünnhilde’s sobbing on her separation for the rock. Natalya Romaniw and Elisabeth Strid offered powerful portrayals of our two heroines, if we may call them that, founded, like the performance as a whole, in a word-driven approach that proposed rather than detracted from musical possibilities. Stanislas de Barbeyrac’s subtle Siegmund grasped at vocal steel when required, a fine match for Soloman Howard’s Hunding-as-policeman, as rounded a portrayal as any I can recall, perhaps more so, with unforgettable physical presence. Christopher Maltman’s Wotan occasionally lacked heft, but more than often than not impressed, in another highly text-driven performance. Marina Prudenskaya seems always to offer a class act, and certainly did here as a proud Fricka, marshalling instrumental reason just as her consort has always done. Individual direction (and performance) of the other Valkyries was put to excellent dramatic ends, one daring to tarry, so as to confront Wotan with the heinousness of his deeds, only to be brutally dismissed. 

I look forward to Siegfried. 

Khovanshchina, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 2 June 2024

Prince Ivan Khovansky – Mika Kares
Prince Andrey Khovansky – Najmiddin Mavlyanov
Prince Vasily Golitsin – Stephan Rügamer
Boyar Fyodor Shaklovity – Georre Gagnidze
Dosifey – Taras Shtonda
Marfa – Marina Prudenskaya
Emma – Evelin Novak
Scrivener – Andrei Popov
Susanna – Anna Samuil
Varsonofyev – Roman Trekel
Kuzka – Andrés Moreno García
Streshnev – Johan Krogius
Two Streltsy – Taehan Kim, Friedrich Hamel
Henchman – Dmitri Plotnikov

Director – Claus Guth
Set designs – Christian Schmidt
Costumes – Ursula Kudrna
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Choreography – Sommer Ulrickson
Video – Roland Horvath
Live camera – Jan Speckenbach, Marlene Blumert
Dramaturgy – Yvonne Gebauer, Rebecca Graitl

Staatsoper Children’s Chorus (director: Vinzenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Simone Young (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Who writes? In history, as in its dramatisation, the question is crucial, its answer often complex. It is present, overtly, in Pimen’s chronicle in Boris Godunov, and it takes centre stage, later moving rightward, leftward, and above in Claus Guth’s new production of Mussorgsky’s successor work, Khovanshchina for Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden. There is also the fateful – perhaps more so than Marfa, in fortune-telling guise to Prince Golitsky – figure of the scrivener. How much, if at all, does his writing-for-hire set in course a series of unintended, world-historical consequences? Writing can be considered more broadly and narrowly, in close relation to what we now consider to constitute a ‘text’—and, of course, reading. At any rate, opening in the modern Kremlin, a statue of Peter the Great towering (as, eventually, would the two-metre-tall historical Peter) over an empty desk, with some goings on but the main character – probably wisely – never shown, just as the Romanovs could not be in Mussorgsky’s time. A functionary, seemingly somewhere between secretary and researcher, provides historical information on the characters and drama that will unfold, transcribed for us (in German and in English) on screens above the action. Given the knowledge of Russian history Mussorgsky’s drama more or less assumes (though also elides), the conceit serves both as framing device and more straightforwardly as source of useful background—or should it be commentary? Who writes, how and why? The framing is not overdone, though; part of me actually wished more had been made of it. Guth seems keener to highlight the work’s fragmentary tendencies, if anything drawing attention to the years passed between acts – themselves Rimsky-Korsakov’s grouping, whose reorganisation has not yet been generally accepted – where Mussorgsky, up to a point, brings them together. Someone other than the composer has to write here, in any case, and it will in practice prove to be more than a single person. 

If other Romanovs remain offstage, Peter, both as a young boy and as a co-tsar on the brink of adulthood sometimes watches, striding across the stage and (so I was told) also from a box above it (though sightlines prevented me and, I presume, a large part of the audience from seeing that). Otherwise, the action proceeds on stage pretty much as one might ‘expect’. It is difficult to imagine even the most hardened traditionalist objecting to the costumes – which, along with set designs, is usually all such a person cares about – but they are not fetishised. This forms, after all, some sort of investigation from the present as to how Peter attained and consolidated power, removing those who might have opposed him. Sometimes we see on film images from later Russian history. I can see the point, but I am not sure they add much, especially in the toppling of a statue of Lenin. (It could well be said that the dissolution of the USSR was a catastrophe for Russia, and not necessarily for the reasons Vladimir Putin would say it was, but it was unclear how that fitted in here.) Generic historical crowd scenes were less of a problem, presumably intending to show the Petrine settlement to be less conclusive than some would have claimed, though whether such doubling of the stage action is desirable was less than entirely clear. Likewise, whilst I think I can see the point of having Khovansky kill the Persian slaves, in a stylised representation of the bloodbath of order, restoration, progress (call it what you will), it arguably seems an arbitrary way of doing so.

A firing squad turning brutally on the ‘pardoned’ Streltsy at the end of the fourth act is a fine, properly harrowing touch, serving both to prepare the way for the self-immolation of the Old Believers in the final act but also, I think, to suggest these are different. Presenting their martyrdom as ‘resistance’, though, seems an unfortunate secularism, sadly typical of so many directors’ inability to take religious belief seriously. The idea that the contemporary ‘project’ breaks down is good: an almost Nietzschean view on the alleged ‘uses’ of history, one might say. The act, though, is real, moving, awe-inspiring, yet no more ‘resistance’ as is generally understood than the martyrdom in the final scene of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. It is more political than that, surely a crucial (and often overlooked, perhaps deliberately so, not least by Rimsky and his successor Shostakovich) note of questioning the entire Petrine and post-Petrine project of Westernisation. Peter’s troops initiate the apocalypse for some, a far stranger and more powerful drama than is allowed here. At the end, though, once the Old Believers have burned – use of video effective in conveying the nature of the act, if less so its horror – we return to the modern Kremlin. If the ‘lesson’ has been abandoned as useless or at least unhelpful, what, one might ask, has been the point? It still happened, one might reply; we have still been shown someone’s record, at least. And at least we do not become too entangled in the slightly embarrassing  ‘love story’, which, in the person of Marfa does its bit to bind things together, yet is surely a little too ‘operatic’ for comfort.

There is, also, the question of who compiles, orchestrates, and so on. Listening to the first-act Prelude in Rimsky’s orchestration, immediately before writing this, I remain far from convinced of the superiority of Shostakovich’s version of the opera (save for reversing Rimsky’s cuts and orchestrating those additional sections). It certainly has its merits, but so does Rimsky’s, and I cannot say I find it comes closer on the whole – sometimes it does; sometimes it does not – to my fantasy of how Mussorgsky ‘should’ sound. Perhaps, though, I am guilty of taking Boris Godunov – and increasingly its earliest version, given its recent favour – as a model, when Khovanshchina is a different work, rather as if one were to approach Lulu expecting it to be Wozzeck. There are also, of course, issues of performance, whichever version is used. I should dearly love one day to hear the work of Ravel and Stravinsky in full, but for now at least we had Stravinsky’s extraordinary ending, somehow more Mussorgskian even than Mussorgsky, and infinitely truer to any plausible view of the work’s dramatic message. (Shostakovich, as Richard Taruskin observed, not only ‘ratified Rimsky’s [melioristic] view’ of the Petrine reforms but ‘even managed to strengthen it’. The composer of The Rite of Spring showed himself better able to imagine and communicate the world of the Old Believers. 

Ivan Khovansky (Mika Kares), Persian slaves

Such choices were, I assume, the province of conductor Simone Young, probably in discussion with Guth. Young’s own conducting and the playing of the Staatskapelle Berlin were excellent throughout, the latter sounding as golden as it did transparent, and without loss to precision. All was well placed and well balanced. Changes of metre, the lifeblood of Mussorgsky’s conversational recitative, were throughout so well handled that one barely noticed them as such; they are not, after all, the jolts of Stravinskian neoclassicism, but rather founded in a speech rhythm very different from the German ‘norm’ (and which, of course, proved highly influential upon the younger Stravinsky in particular). This happens vocally, of course, but at least as much in the orchestral ‘accompaniment’ (the Italian accompagnato seems wildly out of place here). 

Mention of things Italian brings me to my principal reservation: one of taste more than anything fundamental. Khovanshchina is considerably more inclined than Boris to more conventional, even Italianate, vocal-melodic writing. This seemed to be the cue to a more generally Verdian approach, especially during the first three acts. Elements of Wagner – more coincidental than anything else, I suspect – surfaced from time to time too, as did slightly disconcerting kinship with Tchaikovsky. Something rawer is certainly possible and, to my ears, more ‘authentically’ Mussorgskian, textual issues notwithstanding. I should not exaggerate, though, and there could be no doubting either the sincerity or, on its own terms, the success of Young’s approach with the orchestra, nor indeed the warmth with which the audience received it.

Dosifey (Taras Shtonda)

The cast was excellent too, headed by a charismatic, characteristically detailed Mika Kares as Ivan Khovansky. Taras Shtonda exuded star quality in what can hardly be other than a charismatic role, that of Dosifey, leader of the Old Believers. Stephan Rügamer imparted his usual intelligence to the part of the thwarted reformer Golitsin. (His could, perhaps even should, have been the better path, but it was not to be.) George Gagnidze’s Shakolvity shone on each of his appearances, not only his moving account of Russia’s troubled history. Marina Prudenskaya gave everything, returned with interest, to an all-encompassing performance as Marfa, finely complemented by Evelin Novak’s characterful, tender Lutheran Emma and a spirited Susanna from Anna Samuil. Andrei Popov offered a well-judged Scrivener: one could sympathise with the predicament his lowborn status presented and appreciate why he might sing in more noble, even florid style, without losing sight of his fundamental opportunism. If I felt Najmiddin Mavlyanov’s Andrey at times a little less sharply drawn, he came more into his own later on and likewise relished the opportunities a more Italianate performance offered. 

Dancers, well choreographed by Sommer Ulrickson, contributed intelligently to the greater drama too. It was, though, the outstanding chorus, expertly trained by Dani Juris, that truly crowned the performance: dramatically, harmonically based, roots in a Russian past that may or may not be invented, but certainly came to life in the here and now. It was, quite simply, outstanding in every way. Surely in this work, as in Boris, there is a fundamental lesson on the people’s suffering to be learned therein.

Der Rosenkavalier, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 2 January 2024

Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg – Julia Kleiter
Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Günther Groissböck
Octavian – Marina Prudenskaya
Herr von Faninal – Roman Trekel
Sophie – Golda Schultz
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Anna Samuil
Valzacchi – Karl-Michael Ebner
Annina – Katharina Kammerloher
Police Officer – Friedrich Hamel
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Florian Hoffmann
Faninal’s Major-domo – Johan Krogius
House Servant – Jens-Eric Schulze
Notary – Dionyios Avgerinos
Landlord – Johan Krogius
Singer – Andrés Moreno Garcia
Milliner – Regina Koncz
Vendor of Pets – Michael Kim
Leopold – Oliver Chwat
Lackeys, Waiters – Sooongoo Lee, Felipe Martin, Insoo Hwoang, Thomas Vogel
Three noble orphans – Olga Vilenskaia, Anna Woldt, Verena Albertz
Lerchenauschen – Peter Krumow, Stefan Livland, Mike Keller, Thomas Vogel, Ben Bloomfeld, Andreas Neher
Paper artist – Tomas Höfer
Mohammed – Joseph Umoh

Director – André Heller
Assistant director – Wolfgang Schilly
Set designs – Xenia Hausner, Nanna Neudeck
Costumes – Arthur Arbesser, Onka Allmayer-Beck
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Günter Jäckle, Philip Hillers

Children’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (chorus director: Vinzenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Joana Mallwitz (conductor)

Image: Stefan Liewehr (from 2020 premiere, with different cast)

First seen in 2020, André Heller’s production of Der Rosenkavalier, ‘in collaboration with’ Wolfgang Schilly, is something of an enigma. Not only does there appear to be no overriding concept, nor even sense of what the work might be about; there also seems to be little, if anything, in the way of direction of the characters. There are striking set designs from Xenia Hausner and similarly striking costumes from Arthur Arbesser, although the latter dart about confusingly when it comes to chronology; insofar as one can discern any idea, it comes from the former—and that really seems to be it. On entering the theatre, we are confronted in lieu of a curtain with a playbill for a 1917 benefit performance for war widows and orphans in Vienna. I assume that has some relevance to what unfolds, though war and its consequences are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the Marschallin is supposed to stand in some relationship to Princess Marie Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, under whose auspices the performance is listed as taking place. The costumes, to this untutored eye, suggest something later, perhaps progressively so, the setting European japonisme. (My heart went out to Michael Kim as Pet Vendor: ‘orientalism’ does not begin…) In the second act, Klimt’s Beethoven frieze and ostentatious vulgarity do a reasonable job in evoking something more up-to-date for Faninal’s palace, although dressing Faninal entirely in gold overeggs the pudding to the point of exploding it. Quite why the third act is set in a giant palm house, I have no idea, but Heller apparently has ‘never understood’ why Hofmannsthal set it where he did. Perhaps he might have tried harder, but no matter. 

There are occasional aperçus and likewise causes for bemusement. As an instance of the former, a full-grown Mohammed’s lingering over the Marschallin’s handkerchief at the close comes as a nice (or even nasty) surprise; he clearly loves her as much as the rest of us. Concerning the latter, I have no idea why a team of opera house crew walk on, in T-shirts saying ‘Staatsoper Unter den Linden’, to mob the Italian singer; such metatheatrical (?) presentism is not evident elsewhere. None of this does any particular harm; by the same token, none of it substitutes for an actual production, its thinking through or its accomplishment, although it might well have offered an attractive if slightly arbitrary mise-en-scene. If I remain some way off declaring ‘Come back Otto Schenk, all is forgiven,’ I could certainly forgive on this occasion someone for saying so. At any rate, it was unclear why it should have been thought necessary to replace Nicolas Brieger’s staging with this lavish Berlin successor. 

Joana Mallwitz unquestionably brought more in the way of ideas, as well as greater familiarity with the work—and with opera more broadly. (One might have thought such qualities sine quibus non, yet in this brave new world in which anyone other than an opera director can be an opera director, seemingly not.) The Preludes to the first act and the opening of the second were attacked with great energy, vividly pictorial or at least amenable to vivid pictorialisation. The Introduction and much of the Pantomime to the third were spellbindingly Mendelssohnian in lightness and balance of textures; I have never heard them quite like that, but should be keen to do so again. Tempi tended to broaden as the acts proceeded, and there were times when I felt the lack of something a little more classical (or indeed closer to Strauss’s own conducting), but there are far worse things than expansiveness in Der Rosenkavalier. At any rate, the Staatskapelle Berlin seemed to respond with enthusiasm to her approach and, if I have heard a greater range of kaleidoscopic colour drawn from the orchestra here, there remained much to admire. 

So too was there in the singing. It seems only yesterday I was making the acquaintance of Julia Kleiter’s artistry as Pamina; now she is the Marschallin, and a distinguished one at that. Her performance showed equal sensitivity to verbal meaning and deeper emotional currents, neither mistaking opera for Lieder nor painting with too broad a brush. Nor did she turn Strauss into Wagner, drawing on considerable Mozartian experience as well as natural, fitting stage presence. Plight, grace, and reassertion of control were moving indeed. Marina Prudenskaya’s Octavian was fruitier of tone than one often hears, though none the worse for that. She captured his ultimate cluelessness to a tee, and likewise offered due bearing for the role. The Faninals were hardly favoured by the production, but Golda Schultz’s unusually headstrong Sophie proved unusually likeable. Roman Trekel made much of his words in particular as her father. Günther Groissböck was audibly ailing, yet nonetheless offered a vigorous and far from off-the-peg performance as Ochs. His command of Bavarian came in handy for baronial rusticity. There were no weak links in this cast; for me, Katharina Kammerloher’s lively Annina, Anna Samuil’s stern yet caring Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin, and Johan Krogius’s double turn as intelligent Major-domo to Herr von Faninal and spirited (and far from unintelligent) third-act Landlord stood out. No one hearing these performances could reasonably have been disappointed; if only there had been more of a production with which to engage.

Médée, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 16 July 2023

Médée – Sonya Yoncheva
Jason – Charles Castronovo
Créon – Peter Schöne
Dircé – Slavá Zámečníková
Néris – Marina Prudenskaya
Dircé’s Handmaidens – Regina Koncz, Maria Hegele
Children of Jason and Médée – Fritz Bachmann, Nathan Kamsu

Andrea Breth (director)
Martin Zehetgruber (set designs)
Carla Teti (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

Images: Bernd Uhlig

Cherubini’s best-known and surely greatest opera, Médée, continues to hover on the edge of the repertory. It had a high-profile outing in Salzburg in 2019, about which production if not performance the less said the better. The previous year, Andrea Breth’s staging came to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. I missed it then, but caught (just) its first revival in February 2020, shortly before theatres closed for longer than any of us ever imagined. Now it receives its second revival and will feature next season too. I caught it just in time, making not only the final performance of this run but of the Staatsoper’s season. It made for an excellent finish, quite the way to go out, and acclaimed as such by an enthusiastic audience. 

Médée continues, in various ways, to seem a strange work, though it may be our categories and reference points that are at fault there rather than the opera itself. Some of its arias seem long for their role, as if transplanted from a pre-Mozartian seria world that yet cannot evade the Salzburger’s influence (and why should anyone wish to?) At the same time, the influence of reformist Gluck – and, I think, Niccolò Jommelli – is felt strongly, accompagnati and increasingly dramatic orchestral writing included. If one can tell, or at least speculate, why Cherubini and Beethoven would have held such mutual respect, it is Berlioz who, perhaps surprisingly, comes to seem closer as the work proceeds. Breth and Sergio Morabito have drastically shortened the dialogue. One can understand why, especially with a non-Francophone cast – Charles Castronovo fared notably better in spoken French than the rest – but, as with Fidelio, to which in some respects it stands quite close, that has mixed implications for its proportions and dramatic flow. At least it is treated (more or less) properly as an opéra-comique – which does not in any sense imply comedy! – rather than receiving the Italian treatment popularised by Maria Callas.

Médée (Sonya Yoncheva)

The production, very much a collaborative effort, designs and lighting making powerful contributions, presents a closed or at least inaccessible world, with more than a little of the underground to it, perhaps even a bunkered existence for Créon’s regime. Médée, clearly not of that world and thereby assuming powers against as well as enmity from it, gains access and must be banished. The people are largely external to these quarters, though they are shown what Créon wishes them to see—and prevented from seeing what he does not wish them to see. I do not want to go on again about the decision to adopt ‘exotic’ skin colouring for Médée. It seems to me at best unnecessary; there are – and were – other ways to connote ‘otherness’. But if one can live with it, the production largely permits the work to play out and introduce us to its particular qualities. There is a fine Götterdämmerung-in-miniature quality to its final act.

In the wake of Callas, the opera has often been treated as a ‘vehicle’. Again, one can understand why, but it is far more than that, and deserves better. That is not to say that Sonya Yoncheva’s performance lacked star quality, quite the contrary: it was sensational. But it was dramatically grounded, just as it might be in, say, Gluck’s Iphigénie en Tauride (which, now I think about it, would be just the piece for her). Yoncheva sang, but also she spat; she wept, but also she exulted. I find it difficult to believe the role can ever have been more mesmerizingly played. Drama arose from the score, out of the extraordinary range of colours and modes of delivery she conjured, whilst she maintained tight yet generous focus on trajectory. In that, she perfectly complemented Oksana Lyniv’s conducting, which I admired in 2020 but which now seemed to acquire greater tragic depth and breadth as the evening progressed, without the slightest loss to precision and clarity, for which of course the Staatskapelle Berlin must share credit.

Médée, Jason (Charles Castronovo)

Castronovo, who sang at the premiere but not at the first revival, was equally impressive—or would have been, had the role permitted. In what may be the finest performance I have seen and heard from him, he fully inhabited Jason’s slithery character and world, treading a tightrope between undeniable allure and the contempt we should feel. In a microcosm, we experienced this on his first appearance: having struck a bargain with Créon, he managed also to have his desultory way with one of Dircé handmaidens, witnessed by Dircé herself (as was his first confrontation with Medée). Slavá Zámečníková thus evoked our sympathy as Dircé, cleanness of line in her first aria approaching a metaphor for an innocence shared by none around her. Wherever fault may lie, it is not with her. Marina Prudenskaya gave a typically excellent performance, alert and considered, as Médée’s slave, Néris. Peter Schöne was properly unsympathetic as Créon, here notably in Médée’s thrall too. The chorus was also on fine form indeed, a crucial contributor to as well as observer of the unfurling tragedy.

There will be other opportunities over the coming years to experience Cherubini’s opera, though perhaps not many. This, when it returns in the autumn, demands and will reward anyone’s attention.

Médée, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 21 February 2020

Images: Bernd Uhlig

Médée – Sonya Yoncheva

Jason – Francesco Demuro

Créon – Iain Paterson

Dircé – Slávka Zámečníková

Néris – Marina Prudenskaya

Médée’s handmaidens – Serena Sáenz, Aytak Shikhalizada

Médée’s children – Malik Bah, Toyi Kramer

Andrea Breth (director)

Martin Zehetgruber (set designs)

Carla Teti (costumes)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Oksana Lyniv (conductor)

Since enduring Simon Stone’s extravagant travesty of Cherubini’s Médée in Salzburg last summer, I have been keen to see an alternative staging. That opportunity came sooner than I had dared hope, with a revival of Andrea Breth’s 2018 production for the Staatsoper Unter den Linden. One major concern notwithstanding, Breth’s production is in another league, an intelligent attempt, in many respects well realised, to respond both to the specificity of the work and to some of its broader ideological concerns.

Set designs (Martin Zehetgruber) are more or less what one would expect from a Breth production. More concerned, at least unless I were missing something, with establishing a stage aesthetic than with specific meaning of their own, they would not have looked entirely out of place in her Wozzeck or Lulu for this same house. I have no problem with that: different directors work in different ways; the point here is to focus on what does matter dramatically to Breth and her collaborators, a mission finely accomplished. Balance is well judged between provision of a space – not just a scenic space, but certainly that too – for the drama, renewed in much of its horror, strangeness, and yet credibility and familiarity, to unfold, and a critical stance upon Médée’s status as an outsider. With respect to the former, Breth clearly knows how to bring out the best from her cast as actors; there is little or no sense of anything extraneous, rather of a musical drama unfolding, gathering pace, enveloping characters and audience – when it can be bothered to remain silent – alike.

This is not a reductive attempt, as with Stone, to make Médée ‘relatable’; in reality, all it did was banish her story and much of her agency. This Médée knows her strengths, is unafraid to use them, and exacts her revenge – just as we should expect. Yet, alongside that, Breth takes care to suggest why this might be so. Créon’s Corinth is not and could never be a friendly place to her, however magnanimously her rival Dirce’s father might have offered ‘sanctuary’ to Médée’s sons. Therein, alas, lies my major concern too. It is an excellent idea, with strong roots in the ‘original’ myth as well as in the opera itself, to stress Médée’s unacceptable otherness to the polis. Carla Teti’s costumes, Olaf Freese’s lighting, and various other aspects of the production, contribute to this admirably, as does Sonya Yoncheva’s performance. The discredited practice of ‘brownface’, however, does little more than distract, at best, as unnecessary as it is offensive. Had there been some element of deconstruction, in a very different, less direct sort of production, perhaps showing a ‘behind the scenes’ transformation or at any rate problematising the practice, perhaps there would have been an argument. Here, I am afraid it steals the show in quite the wrong way: a great pity.

For Yoncheva’s performance was of a stature that it would have moved and explained all simply – or not so simply – through her voice, let alone her stage presence. Clean and focused of tone – no ‘dramatic’ imprecision here – yet at the same all-encompassing in its mystery and magic, hers was a contribution that gripped from beginning to end. Slávka Zámečníková’s Dircé, spirited and alluring, yet a fatally insecure rival, proved equally impressive, as did Marina Prudenskaya’s typically thoughtful, beautifully sung account of Néris, Médées faithful slave. As Jason, Francesco Demuro acted well, taking care not to court our sympathy, yet vocally, this was often an unduly Italianate, extroverted performance, out of kilter not only with the production but with a greater appreciation of French style shown elsewhere. A dry-toned Iain Paterson was strangely out of sorts in his first-act aria, ‘C’est à vous de trembler,’ yet rallied later on. Choral singing was excellent throughout.

If there were times when I wished for something a little larger-scale, more ‘Romantic’ – I could not help but wonder what Daniel Barenboim made of Cherubini’s score in 2018 – Oksana Lyniv’s conducting had its own logic and merits, well placed to win over any scepticism founded in mere taste. I admired her technical control over the Staatskapelle Berlin last autumn in the concert hall. Similarly admirable control and what came across as fine rapport with the orchestra were harnessed to proper understanding of the dramatic implications of Cherubini’s musical structures. In the theatre, structure became form, most strikingly of all in the third act, yet without question throughout. Neo-Gluckian style was harnessed to idea, rather than vice versa.

The ‘version’ of spoken dialogue used, credited to Breth and Sergio Morabito, worked well, an inordinate improvement on the interminable voicemail messages – I kid you not – served up by Stone in Salzburg. Even Médée’s breathy, amplified, final-act interventions stayed the right side of menace and ‘madness’. That strange, sad miscalculation concerning make-up notwithstanding, then, there was more than enough to confirm the stature of Cherubini’s opera and have one experience its musico-dramatic immediacy. This was a serious confrontation with a serious drama.

Salome, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 4 December 2019

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Oscar Wilde (Christian Natter), Salome (Aušrine Stundytė)

Herod – Vincent Wolfsteiner

Herodias – Marina Prudenskaya

Salome – Aušrine Stundytė

Jochanaan – Thomas J. Mayer

Narraboth – Peter Sonn

Herodias’s Page – Annika Schlicht

Jews – Ziad Nehme, Michael Smallwood, Matthew Peña, Andrés Moreno Garcia, David Oštrek

Nazarenes – Adam Kutny, Ulf Dirk Mädler

Soldiers – Arttu Kataja, Erik Rosenius

A Cappadocian – David Oštrek

A Slave – Ireene Ollino

Oscar Wilde – Christian Natter

Guards – Ernesto Amico, Allen Boxer, Nikos Fragkou, Jonathan Heck, Maximilian Reisinger, Tom-Veit Weber

Hans Neuenfels (director)

Philipp Lossau (assistant director)

Reinhard von der Thannen (designs)

Kathrin Hauer (assistant stage designer)

Sommer Ulrickson (choreography)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Henry Arnold (dramaturgy)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Manipulation lies at the heart of Richard Strauss’s art. One might argue that it lies at the heart of all art; there would be a strong case to be made for that. However, there is something particular about Straussian manipulation. In some ways not dissimilar to that of Puccini—both composers are expert at pressing particular emotional buttons and having many listeners enjoy such manipulation in full knowledge that they are being manipulated—it differs in the extraordinary level of technical sophistication and, often if not always, in the nested levels of knowing reflexion-in-contrivance. Artifice is good, then: perhaps, after Nietzsche, more in opposition to ‘bad’ than to ‘evil’. For Strauss, as Salome makes abundantly clear, is no more a Christian, perhaps even less willing to admit of metaphysical transcendence, than Nietzsche, of whom he had been an avid and discerning reader.

Salome and Wilde

Manipulation lies at the heart of Salome too; it lies also at the heart of Hans Neuenfels’s production, which, having seen when new last year, I was keen to see again. What I think came across still more strongly than last time—this may just have been me—was the central character’s awakening to that manipulation and, concomitantly, to her ability to manipulate. Such was a signal achievement for Aušrine Stundytė, showing herself every inch a singing actress, throwing everything into a performance that, rightly, was not always pretty, not always to be kept within bounds, very much a force of nature: trying, testing, both winning and losing. Working with Neuenfels’s staging—for which we should also understand Reinhard von der Thannen’s striking designs, Sommer Ulrickson’s choreography, and Henry Arnold’s thoughtful and provocative dramaturgy—we saw and heard from Stundytė a Salome led to self-discovery and ultimately to tragedy not only by Strauss but verbally and visibly by Oscar Wilde himself.

The latter’s advent, first foretold in neon lights (‘Wilde is coming’) and then portrayed, offered intriguing counterpoint to Jochanaan’s foretelling of another leader (and, if you like, divine manipulator)—and was once more acted and danced in a mesmerising fashion perhaps more readily associated with Salome herself by Christian Natter. And is not the Christ of whom this John the Baptist speaks his and his alone, a product of the imagination and repressed desires of a religious fanatic, incarcerated within—visible, throughout—phallic cistern. Was not Christianity always thus: recall Nietzsche’s ‘there was only one Christian and he died on the Cross’. Other religions are, true enough to the opera, treated no more favourably. Their claims, voiced exclusively by men, seem no more plausible and, perhaps more to the point, no more relevant to the story unfolding and to human flourishing beyond that particular story, than a horoscope. Strauss’s failure to conjure up music of more than empty ‘gravity’ for references to Christ tell their own story. Who manipulates whom, and to what end?

Salome looks elsewhere, to those who might actually know her: first, yes, to Jochanaan, but ultimately, more productively, to Wilde—and thus to art, to a game that is aesthetic as much as it is sado-masochistic. The two can hardly be distinguished, and why would one try? Weimar-expressionist cabaret beckons from Wildean decadence; Wilde learns from Strauss and Salome too, ultimately adopting a leather harness in her/his/their service. Such blurring of pronouns may be read in various ways—and probably should. In art, perhaps, the mightier the plagiarism, the mightier the achievement. When Jochanaan and the eunuch Wilde seem partially liberated by adopting the corset and bustle that had once constricted the now queerer, pant-suited Princess Salome, who manipulates whom? And yet, gender as play, as game, remains a deadly one. Salome dies; Salome is killed. Patriarchy—an imperialist, orientalist patriarchy at that—wins to fight another day, to slay another woman, another queer voice and body too. Does it not always? And yet, her smashing of one—only one, yet nevertheless one—of  the Jochanaan busts, an aesthetic representations with which Wilde has incited her, remains: as powerful a moment onstage as that of her murder at the command of a tyrant-abuser.

Wilde and Jochanaan (Thomas J. Mayer)

Herod’s upholding of patriarchal norms, decadent, hypocritical subversion of them notwithstanding, was expertly conveyed in a wheedling, beyond-Mime performance from Vincent Wolfsteiner. Marina Prudenskaya’s Herodias, haughty, contemptuous, impressively controlled in her channelling of sex and gender alike, proved the perfect foil—or, better, manipulator. Thomas J. Mayer likewise offered, in post-Wagnerian marriage of word, tone, and gesture, a Jochanaan for this production, no hint—costume aside—of the ready-to-wear. Peter Sonn proved a worthy successor to Nikolai Schukoff as Narraboth. At times heart-breakingly beautiful of tone, his longing was as aesthetically exquisite as it was therefore doomed. All smaller roles were very well taken indeed, yet also formed part of a greater whole. If I single out Adam Kutny’s First Nazarene and Annika Schlicht’s Page as having made the greatest impression, that is doubtless little more than a highly merited personal reaction.

Conducting the outstanding Staatskapelle Berlin, then as now, was Thomas Guggeis. Then he made headlines by standing in at short notice for Christoph von Dohnányi. Now the field was his own and it sounded as much. From this bubbling, post-Wagnerian cauldron, anything might spill, unless someone could tame it; the battle was vividly, meaningfully rare, rather than effortlessly aestheticised after, say, Karajan.  This was not a tone-poem with words; or was it? Unleashing the fabled darkness of this orchestra’s tone to ends in keeping with and in relationship to the vision on stage, yet in no sense constricted by them, Guggeis showed, as in his recent Katya Kabanova here, a keen ear for harmony, line, and orchestral musicodramatic eloquence. Crucially, he commanded the authority to have them speak in the theatre, in the dramatic here-and-now. This is not Elektra; it is not so single-minded, so monomaniacal. There are sideways glances; aesthetic contemplation shading into sexual frustration, if rarely fulfilment; hints at alternative futures; and so on. Such were rendered dramatically—often vividly— immanent, without throwing us from Strauss and Wilde’s central trail. Or so it seemed, for in the absence of any greater metaphysical authority, how could we know?  Aesthetically the answer seemed clear, yet how could it not? Who, then, had manipulated whom?

Salome, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 17 March 2018

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Annika Schlicht (Herodias's Page), Oscar Wilde (Christian Natter), Salome (Aušrine Stundytė)

Herod – Gerhard Siegel

Herodias – Marina Prudenskaya

Salome – Aušrine Stundytė

Jochanaan – Thomas J. Mayer

Narraboth – Nikolai Schukoff

Herodias’s Page – Annika Schlicht

Jews – Dietmar Kerschbaum, Ziad Nehme, Linard Vrielink, Andrés Moreno García, David Oštrek

Nazarenes – Adam Kutny, Ulf Dirk Mädler

Soldiers – Arttu Kataja, Dominic Barbiere

A Cappadocian – David Oštrek

A Slave – Corinna Scheurle

Oscar Wilde – Christian Natter

Hans Neuenfels (director)

Philipp Lossau (assistant director)

Reinhard von der Thannen (designs)

Kathrin Hauer (assistant stage designer)

Sommer Ulrickson (choreography)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Henry Arnold (dramaturgy)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

‘These Germans: they are obsessed with sex.’ Such were the puzzling words I heard from an irate Frenchman in the queue behind me for the cloakroom at the close of this performance of Salome. Far be it to suggest that ‘the French’ might also have a reputation for an interest in such matters, but I could not help but wonder whether, if he were weary of at least implicit sexual context onstage, Salome were really the opera for him. As it happens, Hans Neuenfels’s excellent new production, provocative in the best sense, is far more concerned with the absence of sex, sexual repression, the ultimate inability to perform, and, following Oscar Wilde in particular here, the aestheticisation of such problems, than with sexual display or fulfilment. Prudishness and aversion take many forms, however, as Neuenfels also suggests.

For Wilde is placed, increasingly literally, centre stage. Not having looked properly at the cast list, let alone the programme, beforehand, I had not realised that this would be so. Instead, as intended, it gradually became clear that the actor, whose role I could not quite place, either in the work or more laterally, was Wilde himself. The neon sign, ‘Wilde is coming’, had announced it clearly enough,’ I realised – just as Jochanaan announced one who would follow him. Not that the accomplished, mesmerisingly versatile Christian Natter, in this entirely mute role, is made up to resemble the playwright: we are, let us give thanks, at a level of drama beyond the caricature of the impressionist. Eventually the green carnation gives the game away: the only instance throughout the entire evening of a colour on stage that is not black, white, or red (typically sharp, meaningfully coloured designs by longtime Neuenfels collaborator, Reinhard von der Thannen). But before that, a world of Victorian sexual repression, that of the society from which Wilde sprang, has been constructed. Its imperialism is nodded to, in very British Empire uniforms for the soldiers: let us play at governing the Middle East, with catastrophic consequences to be seen to the present day and beyond.

Jochanaan (Thomas J. Mayer), Herodes (Gerhard
Siegel), Herodias (Marina Prudenskaya)

More to the point, John the Baptist, foreteller of Christianity – perhaps, in this reading, more so than Christ himself, certainly more of a hypocritical moral fanatic – is encased in what Neuenfels calls ‘a phallus or rocket of indignation, a constant appeal to obdurate, concealed, packed away carnality. This results in a constant ban, a threat.’ The traditional cistern is gone, but as Henry Arnold, Neuenfels’s dramaturge points out, Strauss wrote to Ernst von Schuch, conductor of the first performance, that Jochanaan ‘should be understandable without a voice pipe. Maybe he could sing through a gaze veil (a hole in the wall, invisible to the audience) with his head two feet above the floor so that he sees the conductor and can sing directly to the audience. This is very important.’ Take that, alleged ‘respecters’ of ‘the composer’s intentions’. What is it that our proto-ayatollah objects to? In a sense, it does not really matter, for such things are more matters of opportunism than anything else, as the ‘religious Right’ backers of Donald Trump testify more clearly than ever. What Neuenfels opens up is the possibility of a more thoroughgoing exploration of gender and orientation. Salome herself becomes a significantly gender-bending figure, her absurd, ultra-stylised (which is, crucially, to say aestheticised) Victorian bustle transposed onto others, Wilde and Jochanaan chief amongst them. Who dresses up? Who dresses whom? With what intent?

Wilde, Salome

When Herod commands, or rather requests, ‘Dance for me, Salome’, does he too want as much of an aesthetic as a sexual experience? Do we err to distinguish the two? (Given recent reports of sexual abuse by conductors, the question seems especially relevant now.) He has his own reasons, as such ‘immoral’ rulers tend to, in many ways far less objectionable than those who loudly trumpet their ‘morality’; he is weak more than anything else, as signalled by Herodias’s theft of and refusal to return his ring of kingship. Make of that gesture, so rich in symbolism political and sexual, what you will. Meanwhile Wilde, increasingly confident, perhaps as in his play, in his denunciation of denunciation, allows his homosexuality to become clearer – and, more important still, to acquire greater dramatic agency. When he dances, as angel of death, with Salome, a game of omnisexual sadomasochism unfolds, the poet’s leather harness-corset (which?) and what he does with it speaking a thousand words (back at least as far as Neuenfels’s brilliant Salzburg Così fan tutte, a work Strauss, a true Mozart connoisseur, so adored).

But, in a world of such repression, what does one put in the place of sexual freedom? Aestheticism, of course, in Wilde’s case – and, surely, in Strauss’s too, throughout his career. Ever the student of Nietzsche rather than Wagner, Strauss believed in art above all else: indeed, perhaps only in art. Thus the constructions we place on stage, and the very constructions we make of them in our minds too, play their part in a similar game, perhaps even identical, at the very least related – depending, most likely, upon who we are, even how we feel on the night. Salome – sometimes a girl, sometimes a more progressive, perhaps older, woman with something of the caricatured lesbian to her, sometimes perhaps a surrogate for the young man Wilde, on and off stage, may be seeking – focuses her own aesthetics upon her construction of Jochanaan, who sometimes resembles what she thinks she wants, yet in other respects could hardly be more distant. The pent-up rage in which she smashes one of the multiple, ‘beautiful’ busts arranged on stage for her delectation following the dance is both a genuine act and a ‘work of art’, or at least an aspiration thereto, in itself. Has anyone learned of ‘love’ then? It seems unlikely. We have nevertheless learned a good deal about the lengths to which many of us will go in order to prevent ourselves and others from doing so.

Wilde, Salome

Thomas Guggeis, originally scheduled to conduct but one of these performances as assistant to Christoph von Dohnányi, ended up conducting them all. He did a very good job, the Staatskapelle Berlin seemingly very happy to play under his leadership. The weird musical world in which dances do not dance and non-dances do came across with considerable dramatic power. I have heard more outrageously, or at least phantasmagorically, coloured performances, but no single performance is likely in itself to respond equally to the manifold possibilities of Strauss’s score. There can be little doubt that this young conductor is a musician of great accomplishment, nor that we shall be hearing much more from him. What an opportunity, though, to have fallen to him!

Jochanaan

If tonal beauty were your thing, then Aušrine Stundytė’s Salome would most likely not be for you. Is the problematisation of such priorities, though, not one of the dramatic themes, at least possibly, of work and production? She certainly entered into the role with dramatic gusto and considerable stage presence. One heard, moreover, many more of the words, words moreover imbued with true verbal potency, than will often be the case. Thomas Johannes Mayer’s Jochanaan likewise navigated intriguingly between such polarities, offering a solution, however provisional, suited to his character and his portrayal. Looking at the royal couple from the other side of that (doubtless too) crude opposition, Gerhard Siegel and Marina Prudenskaya offered formidably sung performances, more so than one will often hear, without sacrifice to the drama. Nikolai Schukoff’s astute, enigmatic, vocally ravishing Narraboth was perhaps the single most impressive performance of all.

Narraboth (Nikolai Shukoff), Salome, Jochanan
Images: Monika Rittershaus

Indeed, at the time, one rather resented Narraboth’s being elbowed aside by Wilde – which is surely the point. And yet soon we did not, for criticism of society, his, Salome’s, and ours, becomes all the more necessary. Until the drama, musical rather than scenic, less closes than stops. It could be Wozzeck, almost, except in its aestheticism, it is anything but. Wozzeck does not die of boredom; Salome does, but whose? Patriarchy remains, but do we care - truly care, as opposed to claiming to?