Leipzig Opera House
Fairy King, Voice of Groma – Sejong
Chang
Ada – Elisabet Strid
Zemina – Magdalena
Hinterdobler
Farzana – Jean Broiekhuizen
Arindal – Arnold Bezuyen
Lora – Eun Yee You
Morald – Mathias Hausmann
Drolla – Paula Rummel
Gernot – Milcho Borovinov
Gunther – Ferdinand van
Bothmer
Harald – Roland Schubert
Messenger – Tae Hee Kwon
Children of Ada and Arindal –
Lukas Gosch, Jacob Scipio
Renaud Doucet (director)
André Barbe (designs)
Guy Simard (lighting)
Marita Müller (dramaturgy)
Perhaps one of the more
surprising yet ultimately most significant revelations of Wagner Year for me
was this Leipzig production of Die Feen and
the conviction it furthered that Wagner’s first opera was not merely ‘interesting’,
not merely ‘promising’, and so on, but a work which had been poorly, extremely
unfairly treated by history – or rather by the lazy judgements of those
claiming, and usually failing, to know the opera. Doubtless there will be
exceptions – there are, after all, people who do not take to Parsifal – but I have yet to speak to
anyone who has actually attended a performance of Die Feen who has not thought highly of it, if not necessarily quite
so highly as I do. Uncannily, it was a
year to the day – 20 April 2013 – when I heard that Leipzig performance as part of the first
outing for Renaud Doucet’s delightful yet not unprobing staging. 20 April 2014
actually brought me to tears as the third act drew to a close, both delighted
at the opportunity and saddened at the condescension or just downright
ignorance with which this wonderful work still meets.
So three cheers once again to
Oper Leipzig. I shall not dwell on the staging, essentially because I have
written about it before, along with some background both to the work and to
other productions (click here),
and the revival serves to confirm rather than to transform its qualities. On
this basis, I should happily see more, metatheatricality worn lightly,
humorously, yet tellingly. The metatheatricality, as I observed previously, is
worn lightly yet wittily frames the performance – and reminds us, again
lightly, that occasions such as this are few and far between. Following a
Saturday evening family meal, a father tunes in to a live broadcast of Die Feen from Oper Leipzig. In something
of a modern fairy-tale, his living room becomes the performance space, blurring
of typical performing boundaries in a sense a counterpart to the blurring – yet
ultimate upholding – of the world of immortality, the world of the fairies, to
which, as Arindal, he, through the workings of his imagination, had
exceptionally been admitted. In both cases, and above all through the medium of
music – tellingly, in a clear echo of Orpheus and his lyre, that is how Wagner
brings the story to reconciliation – this man, perhaps unremarkable and yet receptive
and dedicated, brings different worlds together. It is not a bad model for
artistic endeavour in more general terms: we all have our part to play, but the
question is whether we shall be willing.
Where Ulf Schirmer had tended
more towards the early Romantic tendencies undoubtedly present in Wagner’s
score – Mendelssohn, Marschner, Weber, and so on – Matthias Foremny seemed more
concerned to place Wagner in the line he himself would later stress, if not
necessarily for this work. Beethoven’s example stood more clearly than before: both the symphonic
and the operatic composer. More than once I was put in mind of Wagner's early,
underrated C major Symphony, but also of the advances he had made upon his work
since then. Sometimes this worked better than others; there were occasions, for
instance, when forward thrust was occasioned perhaps at the expense of ebb and
flow. But for the most part, this was a valid, thought-provoking performance,
which brought out something close to the best of the Leipzig Gewandhaus
Orchestra. Its ‘old German’ glow seemed almost as much a welcome resurrection
as that of the work itself, though in reality, of course, the former has never
really gone away; it is more the case that one has to look, or listen, harder
to find it in an age in which orchestral homogenisation is all too often the
rule.
 |
| Morald (Matthias Hausmann) and Lora (Eun Yee You) |
Arnold Bezuyen once again
impressed in the title role, not least in his portrayal of the difficult
compromise between domesticity and the heroism that our paterfamilias imagines.
There was some tiring towards the end of the third act, but Bezuyen recovered
well. I had not encountered Elisabet Strid before, but she certainly impressed
as Ada, a worthy successor to last year’s Christiane Libor. If only a woman in
the centre stalls had not loudly coughed throughout the whole of Ada’s great
second-act aria, so clearly inspired by Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient (the aria,
that is, rather than the coughing). Strid nevertheless rose above such selfish
provocation to give a fine account of that extremely difficult number. Eun Yee
You still seemed stretched as Lora, but had somewhat grown into the role.
Mathias Hausmann offered a strong performance as Morald, whilst Paula Rummel
and Milcho Borovinov delighted in their surprising buffo duet – and not just there. Though perhaps a little too much
of a contrast for consistency to be maintained, it is a lovely piece and so it
sounded here; the pair’s acting skills contributed as much as their musicality.
The Leipzig Opera Chorus also made great contributions in both respects: their
role here is often considerable, and gave no little pleasure on this occasion.
I shall conclude by repeating
my pleas both for this excellent production to be filmed, so that others may
see – and hear – it, and for other houses to follow Leipzig’s suit. This is a
work that has been wronged indeed; it is our responsibility finally to right
that wrong.
