Lohengrin, Bavarian State Opera, 21 November 2019

Nationaltheater

Ortrud (Karita Mattila)
Images: © Wilfried Hösl

King Henry the Fowler – Christof Fischesser

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

Richard Jones (director)

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

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

Bavarian State Orchestra
Lothar Koenigs (conductor)

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

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

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

Ortrud and Elsa (Anja Harteros)

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

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

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

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 27 July 2019

Nationaltheater

Images: Wilfried Hösl
Hans Sachs (Wolfgang Koch)

Hans Sachs – Wolfgang Koch

Veit Pogner – Christof Fischesser
Kunz Vogelgsang – Kevin Conners
Konrad Nachtigall – Christian Rieger
Sixtus Beckmesser – Martin Gantner
Fritz Kothner – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Balthasar Zorn – Ulrich Reß
Ulrich Eißlinger – Dean Power
Augustin Moser – Thorsten Scharnke
Hermann Ortel – Levente Páll
Hans Schwarz – Peter Lobert
Hans Foltz – Roman Astakhov
Walther von Stolzing –  Daniel Kirch
David – Allan Clayton
Eva – Sara Jakubiak
Magdalena – Okka von der Damerau
Night Watchman – Milan Siljanov
 

David Bösch (director)

Patrick Bannwart (set designs)
Meentje Nielsen (costumes)
Falko Herold (video)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)
Theresa Schlichtherle (revival director)
 

Bavarian State Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Beckmesser (Martin Gantner) and Sachs

‘Es klang so neu und war doch ein bißchen alt’? A little more than three years after first seeing David Bösch’s (then new) production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, I looked forward to making its reacquaintance. It struck me then as being, alongside Stefan Herheim’s staging (seen in both Salzburg and Paris), one of the most significant additions to the repertory. There has not, frankly, been much in the way of competition, offerings from Barrie Kosky and Andrea Moses in particular having proved well-nigh disastrous. How did Bösch’s staging measure up now? In some ways, well. It is certainly more coherent than either of the last too named. However, a good deal of what had made it distinctive, and had decided me to include it in this essay, had disappeared, presumably a casualty of the lack of rehearsal for a brief festival revival. Two at least of its most distinguishing characteristics, the violence at the heart of a reconstructed, provincial ‘community’, and a welcome feminist conception of Eva, had respectively been toned down (more likely, perhaps, unknowingly omitted) and jettisoned. A great pity, that, though perhaps not unlikely in the circumstances: a reminder, at least, that what we see in June and July is not always so very close to what was originally envisaged (and seen).

 

Walther (Daniel Kirch) and Eva (Sara Jakubiak)

I shall try, though, not to dwell unduly on what might have been, on what had been: anyone interested in the 2016 first performances, including Jonas Kaufmann, may consult the initial review. The importance of (multi-)media in transmission of music, art more generally, and indeed life, such as it is, more generally, continues to register, for instance in video footage of plans, instructions, flowcharts, and sketches: there is a thin line, perhaps, between the nerd and the pedant. Press coverage of the mastersong competition flicks through, also on video, when the masters first enter, an important point the centenary 1868-1968 (the first year, of course, the work’s premiere, the second year not an unimportant year in the history of the Left), in which Veit Pogner had claimed the prize. That generation has a great deal to answer for, many of us would argue; at least we were spared the sight of Antony Charles Lynton Blair et al. strutting their wares ‘just more one time’. At any rate, this contest for a bartered bride, as much sport as art, and heavily sponsored by ‘Meister Bräu’’, sums things up nicely. Sport, of course, always gets off lightly, entwining nationalism (and/or localism) and toxic masculinity, as it does. No one dare accuse it, though, given the media interests at stake. (Consider British liberals’ obsession with the appalling 2012 Olympics.) Contrast that with the laudable attempts at self-criticism of most important artistic production since the Second World War. That contrast certainly seems implicit here, although the shock violence initially administered by Beckmesser as Marker to Walther now seems ‘mere’ entertainment: a flashing of lights rather than electric shock. Perhaps, though, as everything becomes more mediated, as Trump, Johnson, and other fascists star in their own game show, impervious to political criticism and activity, there is something to be said for such a degeneration too.

 

The moment of revolt – or is it further repression – comes through more fitfully in the second act than previously. Can one make a Marcusian case for the apprentices’ thuggery? Probably. Should one? Difficult to say. (One might say the same for Andreas Baader, after all, or the original, far more lethal, RAF.) But the chemistry between Sachs and Eva, the plausibility of their romance, has struck earlier on a very different note. What often seems dramaturgically unconvincing, even odd, here seems quite natural, for want of a better word. Whether that were the case in 2016, I cannot remember, although the artists, Wolfgang Koch and Sara Jakubiak, were the same. Their performances all round were outstanding. If the extremely powerful moment of Eva’s rejection – of the contest – in the third act now seemed to be missing, Jakubiak offered intelligent, vocally alluring singing, as well as accomplished acting. So too did Koch, of course, with a wisdom born of experience not only as Sachs but in many other roles.

 

Sachs and Beckmesser

Let us return, however, to the production, to the third act. Sachs’s neon-lit van having lost two of its letters, now sighs, in Schopenhauerian style, ‘ACH’. More might have been made of that implication, especially in light of loss of the provincial violence that initially made this act so threatening, so disconcerting. There remain hints, perhaps most notably in the apprentices’ behaviour towards David, homophobic bullying still, I think, implicit. But they are only hints, and would perhaps mostly be noticed by those who had seen the production before. Beckmesser’s return at the very close, to shoot himself, makes far less sense in the absence of such build-up. A pity, as I said, although perhaps there is something to be salvaged in reflection upon continuing degeneration into entertainment.

 

Walther and Beckmesser

Musically, standards remained high: very high indeed in the case of Kirill Petrenko, the orchestra, and chorus. Of Wagner’s works, this seems very much Petrenko’s best, at least in my experience. Formidable technical challenges – simply marshalling those forces, in a far from simple staging – never seemed to register, however great the art in concealing that art (a Meistersinger virtue in itself). Wagner’s score flowed with all the inevitability of a mighty river. That is never, though, at the expense of detail, overt contrapuntal (and other) virtuosity in which the composer sometimes revels portrayed lovingly, comprehendingly, without degenerating into mere virtuosity itself. It was, moreover, not only in the counterpoint and chorales that Wagner’s Bachian debt was repaid. Wagner’s writing for oboes in particular, played as superlatively as it was here, gave pause to all manner of thoughts concerning connection with Bach’s sacred music too. (Now might we hear a St Matthew Passion or B minor Mass from Petrenko? Even some of the cantatas? Too much to hope? If so, it is surely a victimless crime.)

 

Eva, Walther, and Magdalena (Okka von der Damerau)

Kaufmann had withdrawn earlier in the week, replaced at very short notice as Walther by Daniel Kirch. There was considerable promise in his performance, although he tired towards the end. At his best in the second act, Kirch showed himself capable of a detailed, variegated performance, both verbally and musically. Earlier on, perhaps still finding his way around the Nationaltheater, he had a tendency to force his voice somewhat, almost as if a Siegfried. There remained, though, much to admire. Martin Gantner’s Beckmesser was first-rate: a sung Malvolio of the highest quality. Allan Clayton’s David proved equally detailed and finely sung, well matched to Okka von der Damerau’s spirited Magdalena. Christof Fischesser made for an uncommonly youthful, virile Pogner, and Milan Siljanov’s Night Watchman suggested a singer from whom we shall be hearing much more soon. More than enough, then, to be going on with until the full revival Bösch’s production unquestionably merits.