Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 21 April 2019

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from the first performances, in 2015)

Hans Sachs – Wolfgang Koch

Veit Pogner – Matti Salminen

Eva – Julia Kleiter

Walther von Stolzing – Burkhard Fritz

David – Siyabonga Maqungo

Magdalene – Katharina Kammerloher

Kunz Vogelgesang – Graham Clark

Konrad Nachtigall – Adam Kutny

Sixtus Beckmesser – Martin Gantner

Fritz Kothner – Jürgen Limm

Balthasar Zorn – Siegfried Jerusalem

Ulrich Eisslinger – Reiner Goldberg

Augustin Moser – Florian Hoffmann

Hermann Ortel – Arttu Kataja

Hans Schwarz – Franz Mazura

Hans Foltz – Olaf Bär

Night Watchman – Erik Rosenius

Andrea Moses (director)

Jan Pappelbaum (set designs)

Adriana Braga Peretski (costumes)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

‘Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding,’ sings Strauss’s Marschallin: a truth that seems to grow truer with our – at least with my – every advancing year. More prosaically, and more specifically, we might also say that openings and re-openings, constructions and reconstructions, creations and recreations, unifications and reunifications are strange things: rarely what they seem, and rarely what the fashionable, the non-critical presume them to be. Such ideas lie at the heart of Die Meistersinger: at its heart, concerned with the ongoing creation and performance of a song, within a society that has both placed such endeavour at its heart and also done its utmost to thwart the same. Perhaps all societies, at least all bourgeois societies – what could be more bürgerlich than this early modernity created and recreated by the nineteenth century? – are like that. As Schiller and Marx, Wagner too, insisted, left to his own devices, man – woman too? – will create as an artist; as all three lamented, that ‘natural’ state of affairs rarely, if ever, pertains. At best, a higher, mediated state of unity might be achieved; but how?

Such thoughts came very much to mind watching, for the first time, Andrea Moses’ 2015 production of the work. Not because it really engages with them: alas, this is a sorry piece of theatre, considered as staging. Nonetheless, the work and its traditions enabled, at least in retrospect, some manner of critique. The gravest charge against the production is its tedium, the second its hapless incoherence. (The two are not unrelated.) It seems to suggest ideas, yet they never seem grounded, never connected; its amateurism, in the worst sense, suggests what the Masters might think of Walther before he sings a note (and many of them do once he has). For the action plays out mostly as if this were the most hidebound of traditionalist stagings, albeit without either that sixteenth-century (or even nineteenth-century) ‘original’ context or a new one to put in its place. The first act takes place in something resembling a concert hall – there are apprentice ushers, or something like that, in black tie – or perhaps a corporate event, Masters’ names displayed as if sponsors. Nothing, however, makes much sense, since there is no apparent effort to explain, to criticise, to create, to recreate, and so forth. Or is it a sportsground sponsors’ lounge, competition here being the thing? Perhaps, for the second act takes place in what seems to be the backstage of a stadium. For some reason – or none – the inhabitants of Nuremberg are now in punk garb. That seems implicitly to be the reason, though surely not the intention, for their descending into a riot, in which football flags are waved. Beckmesser has meanwhile, bafflingly, squeezed himself into sixteenth-century costume. Everyone else has otherwise wandered around aimlessly, save for Walther and Eva who wrap themselves in an ever-present German flag. An Orthodox Jew walks across stage during the turmoil, untouched by and seemingly oblivious to it. I have no idea either…

The first part of the third act moves to a library: fair enough in itself, as setting for Sachs’s world chronicle, although there is no sense of how it relates to anything that has gone before, still less of who these people might be and why they might act as they do. The Festwiese scene attempts, I think, to tie things together, but not only is it too late, the message it appears to project is glib and disturbing, as well as ultimately incoherent. For the production’s origins now come more clearly to the fore. It had originally been intended that this Meistersinger should reopen the renovated eighteenth-century house on Unter den Linden. Work having fallen behind – or new work having been necessitated – that was delayed until 2017, Daniel Barenboim and the outgoing Intendant, Jürgen Flimm, then presenting a staged version of Schumann’s Scenes from Goethe’s ‘Faust’. Both ‘reopenings’, anticipated and actual – even the latter was a little false, the theatre soon closing again until December – were scheduled for Germany’s new national day, the Tag der Deutschen Einheit, which explicitly celebrates the anniversary of reunification in 1990. The first performance, it seems, took place in two parts: the first two acts on the day itself, the third the following day (the equivalent to Wagner’s Johannistag morning-after to Polterabend, I suppose).

With that in mind, one can perhaps see the celebrations by the Spree, our Pegnitz substitute, as trying, Sachs-like, to bring peace, even unity, to the revelry and violence of the night before. Alas, it is all terribly confused. Is the ‘night before’ the troubled German, past and the ‘morning after’ the here and now? If so, that makes little sense in terms of the premiere chronology; it also makes no sense of the settings, all ‘present’, if little related. The backdrop of the absurdly ‘restored’ old Berliner Schloss – ironically, a mere Potemkin façade, – suggests, however, that we are intended to reflect in such a way. Those who might have preferred a restored GDR Palast der Republik or something new will have had very different thoughts, uneasy at this banal, Disneyfied celebration of capital’s victory over socialism. (I saw the ‘new-old’ façade for the first time fully risen, whilst walking to the performance: a dispiriting sight indeed.) Seemingly as an afterthought, a few Kaiserreich flags are flown and, captured by Sachs, cast into the river. Given that the palace was the Hohenzollerns’, ‘modern’ rejection of that flag seems disingenuous. Most bewildering, though, is the appearance of two Arab ‘sheikhs’ with bodyguard. Our Master ‘sponsors’, their logos again proudly displayed, act with great solicitude to them, explaining events – would that they had to us – and caring for their needs. Have they funded the ‘event’? And if so, what might that mean? They notably leave the stage before the close, excluded or excluding themselves from the final celebration, replete with German flag. A celebration of corporate, ‘moderate’ nationalism, then, from which financially enabling non-Germans must absent themselves? Try as I might, I cannot come up with an inoffensive explanation – even should that prove to be mere cluelessness.

Faced with such irritating nonsense, I found it difficult to concentrate on the musical performances in themselves, though much was clearly admirable. Barenboim’s command of the outstanding Staatskapelle Berlin continues greatly to impress, flexibility, clarity, delight in the score’s Mozartian, conversational qualities, and a thorough grounding in Wagner’s harmonic plan unquestionably apparent. His idea of presenting an array of old Masters – some may recall a similar concept at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival to mark Brian McMaster’s farewell – was engaging. It was a delightful thing indeed to encounter and re-encounter so many great names from the past, such as Siegfried Jerusalem, Graham Clark, and Olaf Bär, all the way to Franz Mazura, due to celebrate his ninety-fifth birthday the following day. Matti Salminen’s Pogner fell into that category too, occasional instability a price well-worth paying for sheer likeability. Wolfgang Koch gave a typically thoughtful, musicianly performance as Sachs, interacting nicely with Martin Gantner’s Beckmesser, Julia Kleiter’s sprightly, sometimes radiant Eva understandably torn. Burkhard Fritz’s Walther had his moments – though they were not always happy; he kept going, though, which is something. Siyabonga Maqungo’s David and Katharina Kammerloher’s Magdalene both impressed in lively, detailed assumptions, making as much as could reasonably be expected from a difficult situation.

If, ultimately, many of these performances seemed more observed than felt, that may well have been the fault of the production – and my inability to rise above it. There will be other creations and recreations, though, other attempts to construct and reconstruct the past, present, and future. This production’s predecessor from Harry Kupfer still lingers in the mind; let us hope the next in line will prove worthier.

Fidelio, Staatsoper Berlin, 28 October 2016

Images: Bernd Uhlig
Rocco (Matti Salminen) and Marzelline (Evelin Novak)

Schillertheater

Don Fernando – Roman Trekel

Don Pizarro – Falk Struckmann
Florestan – Andreas Schager

Leonore – Camilla Nylund

Rocco – Matti Salminen
Marzelline – Evelin Novak
Jaquino – Florian Hoffmann

 

Harry Kupfer (director)
Derek Gimpel (assistant director)
Hans Schavernoch (set designs)
Yan Tax (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)

Berlin State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

What to do with Fidelio? It seems to be a question exercising everyone staging – and performing – it, which, in one, very obvious sense, is fair enough, even a necessity. On the other hand, the desire to ‘do’ something with it, whether musically, scenically, or both, will sometimes lead us down decidedly peculiar alleys. I have been sent down stranger, far less convincing ways than that of Harry Kupfer. Indeed a signal strength of his new production for the Berlin State Opera is that it seems to suggest – or at least can be understood to do so – that the desire to do things different musically, the jadedness that gave birth to the fashion-victim wing of ‘authenticity’ can be at least as injurious to Beethoven as Mahler’s ‘tradition’ as Schlamperei. Both the comfortable, too-smoothly-connected Beethoven of regular, all-too-regular performances at the Musikverein – seen at beginning and end, in a strangely convincing trompe l’œil backdrop – and a reductive, anti-metaphysical, post-Stravinskian inability to cope with him, his music, and his message, to connect anything, be it phrase or idea, with anything else, stand accused. Or at least they did for me. Kupfer is not always the most open of directors, but here, I think he offers the potential for different readings, according to one’s own needs as well as inclinations. Whether that has come at the expense of the directoral boldness we know from the Kupfer of old, whether there is a tiredness, as well as an accusation of tiredness, remains an awkward, nagging doubt.  

 

Kupfer, aided by Hans Schavernoch’s excellent designs, presents a Beethoven hemmed in by routine. His bust stands on the piano; that is what busts, especially of Beethoven, do. Performance directions, director’s notes, multilingual key words drive us up the walls. The day-to-day routine of an opera house or concert hall, even when well run, well thought through – having studied, for instance, at some of Kupfer’s notes for his Dresden Moses und Aron, I can attest that he thinks, certainly thought, things through – can militate against great artistry. No one, I am sure, would claim otherwise. Such, in a sense, is the world of the first scene of Fidelio, of Jacquino and Marzelline, or Rocco’s ‘gold’ aria. It would be an odd thing if the most memorable thing about a Fidelio were the ironing, but ironing is necessary, as are the non-heroic characters in general. Does it seep through too much, though? Are the prisoners as imprisoned by their Peters scores – which, mysteriously, they rarely if ever open, although I think Jacquino does his – as by something more objectively brutal? Is that an important question to ask, or is it gravely insulting to those who actually are physically imprisoned? Kupfer seems to invite us to ask such questions; I have thought a good deal about them since, and am still doing so.

Don Pizarro (Falk Struckmann), Leonore, and Florestan (Andreas Schager)

 

There are big moments, of course. They still shine through. Is the director perhaps telling us to simplify, to focus upon them? He might be, but I am not entirely sure. Perhaps that is as it should be. At any rate, the events in the dungeon retain a straightforward power of their own, as surely they must. Or must they? I know that many in the audience felt too much left to their own devices, and wonder whether some on stage did too. I am far from unsympathetic to them, yet at the same time, the contrast between the ambiguity of direction (and even, if non-direction it were, of non-direction) and the certainty of the musical performance was not, for me, entirely unproductive.

 

Florestan

For it was ultimately the contribution, unsurprisingly, of the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim that made this Fidelio – well, Fidelio. That is not intended as any disrespect to the generally excellent singers, but Fidelio begins and ends with its symphonism – even when, perhaps even particularly when, it is aspirant symphonism. The oddity of opening with the second Leonore Overture aside – was even Barenboim joining in the game of ‘difference’? – not a foot was put wrong. That is not enough, of course: not nearly enough. More to the point, everything, even if there were multiple alternatives, felt right, felt necessary. Hearing the work from beginning to end, Barenboim built it intriguingly from Klemperian foundations to a blazing, almost incredibly Furtwänglerian final chorus. (The interplay between those two tendencies, living influences, has recently been a particular theme in his conducting of Beethoven symphonies.) The orchestra, as transparent as it was weighty, as dramatically incisive as it was metaphysically wise, stood quite beyond the realm of the quotidian. It played with greater ‘tradition’ than the unforgettable West-Eastern Divan under Barenboim, but this was a tradition, unlike that of some, that was constantly rethought, recreated. Much the same could, and should, be said of the magnificent choral singing. Barenboim’s Fidelio is not the same as it was, nor should it be. Is it better? Who cares? It is what it is now, and it is something special indeed.

 

Andreas Schager’s Florestan was also special. Too few singers who essay the role can actually sing it. Unsurprisingly, there was no such problem in Schager’s case: he is unquestionably the finest Heldentenor, as conventionally understood, of our time. (Jonas Kaufmann, a superlative exponent of the role, is something quite different again.) There was an appealing, rather straightforward sincerity to his portrayal, which is arguably just what it needs. And in a dialectical situation such as set up by Kupfer, straightforwardness will never ‘just’ be straightforwardness. Camilla Nylund’s Leonore was very similar. The near-impossible things Beethoven asks of her held no (vocal) fear. They were never despatched routinely, though; they mattered. The trajectory traced by Matti Salminen’s Rocco, from (relative) darkness to light, was very much that of the work; it moved immensely, the artistry undeniable, yet worn (in a different sense) lightly. Evelin Novak and Florian Hoffmann shone, in their own ways, as the ‘other’ couple, capable of excellent things indeed vocally, content in their non-heroic station dramatically. If Roman Trekel’s Don Fernando were a little dry, that should not be exaggerated. And if Falk Struckmann’s Don Pizarro could not quite create the malevolence the role seems to require, very few assumptions do. (In fact, do any?)

 

To return to where we began, then: what to do with Fidelio? The answer may seem obvious, but it is not trite, for Beethoven can never be trite. Whilst Guantánamo Bay remains open, whilst Palestine, Tibet, so many other parts of the world remain under brutal occupation, whilst, above all, Aleppo remains under siege, do we not know actually know very well what it is about? Are we not hiding, imprisoning ourselves and others, if we fail to acknowledge that, to let Beethoven’s music inspire us, and to let performances such as these do likewise? We need Beethoven most when he seems furthest from us. A Calixto Bieito will always be able to make us think differently, to reconsider a work such as this – or rather, this work, for there is not really any other work like it. Kupfer does, too, I think, if less clearly. However, a straightforward presentation, performed with burning conviction, may be all it needs. There is no harm, however, in pausing from time to time to question such apparent certainty. Does Fidelio mean Fidelio?

 

Terror in Munich: Munich Opera Festival (1) - Der fliegende Holländer, Bavarian State Opera, 22 July 2016

Nationaltheater, Munich

Daland – Matti Salminen

Senta – Catherine Nagelstad
Erik – Wookyung Kim
Mary – Okka von der Damerau
Steersman – Dean Power
Dutchman – Johan Reuter

Peter Konwitschny (director)

Johannes Leiacker (designs)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Werner Hintze (dramaturgy)

Chorus and Extra Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Søren Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Asher Fisch (conductor)

Nationaltheater, Munich. Image: Felix Löchner

 

‘This is the way the world ends. Not with a bang but a whimper.’ It is, perhaps, a line quoted too often; yet, even though it may not have been entirely accurate on this occasion, it came to my mind. Its accuracy might be questioned in several respects. Although the Bavarian State Opera eschewed Wagner’s Tristan-esque revision – rightly, in my view, that working better for Tannhäuser than The Flying Dutchman – this was not Götterdämmerung. Moreover, the end, as we experienced it, came more as silence and alienation than a whimper; close, then, but probably not quite the same. More important still, in retrospect – hindsight was inescapable on this particular occasion – the real catastrophe, or rather news of it, came after the end of the performance, the ‘real world’, as is far too often the case at the moment, offering the keenest of tragedy. So perhaps I should start again; I shall not, however, since I should like to start at the end, indeed feel compelled to do so, lest tales of Mrs Lincoln and her critique of the evening’s dramatic proceedings hover too close for comfort. For this was an evening – thank God – never to be repeated, one that even the most ambitious of stage directors would have struggled to envisage, let alone to create. Without in any sense wishing to minimise Peter Konwitschny’s achievement in this typically arresting, provocative, yet ultimately deeply, if not unrelievedly, sympathetic production, only Karlheinz Stockhausen, and before him Richard Wagner himself, might have come anywhere near this – and even then, not so very near.

 

The music stopped, then, just before the final bars; the lights fell. Silence fell too, the singers looking uneasily at each other: splendidly acted, I remember thinking. Then, following that caesura – inevitable memories of Konwitschny’s celebrated Meistersinger, even for those of us who only heard tell – we heard the final bars, albeit from what sounded like a distant, wind-up gramphone. I even wondered whether it might have been Konwitschny père’s recording, rendered more ancient, not that that matters. Redemption, then, was undercut not only by Wagner’s Tristan-less ending. (I am skating over the more complex issues of earlier versions, but that is not really the point here.) It was ironised – few directors manage to ironise Wagner successfully; Konwitschny does – by hearing it as something we all knew, all expected, were more or less hearing in our heads anyway, and yet then did not hear as we should. It was a little like King Marke’s appearance in Die Meistersinger: meaningful, consequential, a modernist rather than a post-modernist quotation.

 

Then we spilled out onto the Max-Joseph-Platz, quite unaware of Munich’s terrorist lockdown. My telephone had no reception; I could not contact a friend, to see whether he had been there or not. (It later transpired that he had not.) Many of my fellow opera-leavers seemed puzzled. We could not, for instance, enter a restaurant on the other side of the square; although a few people in there were eating, the doors were locked. Whilst trying to find out what was going on, I eventually received a call from my father, to check that I was safe; he began to explain, and armed police came into view. I learned after that those who were less quick on their feet than I had been were unable to leave the Nationaltheater for quite some time. I, however, had little choice but to try to walk back to where I was staying, armed police and other advisors pointing me and others first in one direction, then in another, often seeming to disagree with each other. Meanwhile, so far as I was aware – this was not the case, but it was what everyone seemed to think at the time – the U-Bahn was closed, since one of several gunmen (there was, of course, only one) had gone down there, armed. Walking past Odeonsplatz station was a little frightening, then; but it was the eeriness of the evacuated beer festival in the square – when I had walked to the opera, it had been full of beer, music, Dirndls, Lederhosen – that, if anything, chilled more. Having spoken to my brother too, I made it back to my host’s, who filled me in on events unfolded and unfolding – and immediately poured me a much-needed drink.

 

I learned much later that what I ‘should’ have seen and heard – Barry Millington had sent me his review of the production, but I had not read it at the time – was Senta, clearly furious with the Dutchman for not having trusted enough, setting one of the quayside barrels ablaze and mount her own act of terror. The explosion I ‘should’ have heard – unlike Wagner’s music, I did not know it – never came; darkness and alienation, nevertheless curiously, chillingly effective, did. No wonder so many onstage ‘acted’ confused; they had not, it seems, been acting at all. Presumably many had suspected a technical problem. The Bavarian State Opera had, it seems, decided to pull the explosion. For those in the know, was this perhaps a bit like ‘hearing’ Mahler’s missing third hammer-blow in the Sixth Symphony? (Thank goodness this was not a Mahler evening: that really would have been too much.) And so, the business of interpreting, reinterpreting, a particularised version of Konwitschny’s staging – never, let us hope, to be repeated – truly got under way; or at least it did in the odd couple of seconds between replying to anxious Facebook and Twitter messages from friends. (Why, they wondered, had I not replied? Most of them had no idea, of course, that I had been in the theatre for nearly two-and-a-half hours, without an interval.) I shall never forget the non-bang and the gramophone whimper, nor the further step our wretched world made towards Götterdämmerung.

 

Let me turn, though, to what I had seen and heard before. My memory and my experience are doubtless coloured by the ‘other’ events of that night. Nevertheless, what I saw and heard was impressive indeed, on its own terms. Our friends at Against Modern Opera Productions – how chilling it was to see, that very night, them railing, as if Hitler had never fallen, against ‘degenerate’ artists – might even have liked, had they not seen the word ‘Konwitschny’, the realistic designs from Johannes Leiacker, with which the mise-en-scène opens. For it is a (German) Romantic, even Gothic landscape that provides the backdrop. Apart from anything else, this is a ghost story: every one of us, every society, is overwhelmed by ghosts from our pasts. So too, of course, is opera. Nevertheless, ships are definitely ships; the sea and sky are definitely the sea and sky. The Dutchman’s crew, moreover, are most definitely Golden Age Dutchmen. The painterliness is, in one sense at least, ironic. AMOP would not have ‘got’ that; representations and their deconstruction would have gone unnoticed, uncomprehended. They would surely, though, have noticed the heightened venality not only of Daland, but his crew too (modern Norwegians, but as yet, not with an overwhelming Wagnerian clash between ghostly visitors and the ‘present’). Daland’s pockets of a few golden chains; the Steersman crowns himself with a golden crown; the other lads eagerly join in the bonanza: there is much jewellery to be had from the new ship’s Cardillac-like cargo, unless, as one of Wagner’s less-eagerly acknowledged forebears might have advised him, ‘L’or est une chimère’. A chimera of another variety haunts the Dutchman: the Angel in white who visits the stage. This Dutchman is a man, with sexual fantasies of his own; they distract him, pave the way for tragedy; they lead us to the second act.

 

Our opera-as-Pegida acquaintances would certainly have started screaming degeneracy, at the deliberate scenic contrast when the curtain rose upon that act. This is a swish health club, in which the wheels that spin are those on the exercise bicycles. Mary leads the class, the girls engaged in the uneasy camaraderie and rivalry of the mindless heteronormative pursuit for an ‘ideal’ physical form to please ‘the’ men they have either hooked or would like to hook. (Or is it the other way round?) Spinning, one might say, takes more than one guise: old visiting new, new visiting old; connections abound. Senta does not fit in; she arrives late for the class, and is far more interested in her Romantic painting. Erik is a creepy yet impatient voyeur: no mere innocent he. Yet it is Senta’s disruptive presence, encouraged by the reappearing Angel, that ultimately, prophetically, proves the turning point. It sets in process the Brechtian – house lights on – lecture to the audience she and the Dutchman give at the close of the act. ‘Romantic love? Yeah, right…’ Everything, then, is set up to fail, as it increasingly does during the third act, modernity and caricatured Old Dutchmen engaging in violent combat, the past, as it so often is, victorious – not least because the present refuses to learn from it. And then – well, you have heard the rest. Explosion there comes – on this occasion, came there not.

 

The cast was distinguished. Catherine Naglestad trod to powerful, even searing effect the line between, on the one hand, twin incitement to Verfremdung and terror, and on the other, heartfelt, Romantic or neo-Romantic ‘feminine’ suffering. Her top notes – and not just her top notes – thrilled; we were reminded that the female redemption problematized by Konwitschny, by us more generally, is, not only in Wagner but in so much opera, often effected through vocal presence. Johan Reuter traced this complex Dutchman’s mood swings with great skill; we sympathised with, even followed, his distractions and his demons. Matti Salminen’s final Daland – so, at any rate, I was informed – was a bluff yet knowing performance, a fine tribute to a great artist. Wookyung Kim came close to stealing the show with his sensitively sung, far-from-pushover Erik. Okka von der Damerau imparted dramatic as well as ‘merely’ musical meaning to the role of Mary, and Dean Power proved as appealing and as intriguing a Steersman as I can recall having heard. Choral singing was wonderfully full-blooded too. All, then, engaged with Wagner’s work as living drama.

 

The Bavarian State Orchestra was, unsurprisingly, in its element here. Its playing encompassed all manner of shades from darkest, grimmest of musical tragedy to echoes of Mendelssohn and Weber, apparently – if only apparently – more blithe, even fairy-like. This was orchestral Wagner as outstanding as one might hear from Daniel Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin. Asher Fisch might have benefited from a more Barenboim-like sense of the work’s melos; or at least he would have done for me, my preference being very much for a more ‘musico-dramatic’, less ‘number-opera’ approach to the work. The latter is, of course, perfectly justifiable in theory, but it tends, unless more strongly incorporated into a sense of an unbroken whole, to make parts of the work drag – especially when, as here, numbers such as Senta’s Ballad, are taken so slowly. Fisch undoubtedly knew what he was doing, though; he had me, on more than one occasion, rethink, rehear. The waltzing at the end of the first act – perfectly in keeping with fantasies venal and sexual, visually as well as musically realised – pointed far into the musico-dramatic future, to Strauss as well as to the integrative tendencies of later Wagner. The Flying Dutchman is in some ways the most difficult Wagner drama of all to bring off musically; no one would have been seriously disappointed, if at all, by this performance.

The rest was silence; until, that is, it became the noise of chaos.

Das Rheingold, Staatsoper, Berlin, 31 October 2010

Schillertheater, Berlin

Images: (c) Monika Rittershaus (as usual, click to enlarge)

Wotan – Hanno Müller-Brachmann

Donner – Jan Buchwald
Froh – Marco Jentzsch
Loge – Stephan Rügamer
Fricka – Ekaterina Gubanova
Freia – Anna Samuil
Erda – Anna Larsson
Alberich – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Mime – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
Fasolt – Matti Salminen
Fafner – Timo Riihonen
Woglinde – Aga Mikolaj
Wellgunde – Maria Gortsevskaya
Flosshilde – Marina Prudenskaja




Guy Cassiers (director, stage designs)
Enrico Bagnoli (stage designs)
Tim Van Steenbergen (costumes)
Enrico Bagnoli (lighting)
Arjen Klerkx, Kurt D’Haeseleer (video)
Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (choreography)
Michael P Steinberg, Detlef Giese (dramaturgy)

Dancers from the Eastman Company
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Not at all what I was expecting: Berlin’s new Ring opened with a puzzling whimper – visually, at least. Already staged at La Scala, Guy Cassiers’s production seems to have little to say, hence the puzzlement, given that this is a work positively overflowing with ideas. Cassiers doubtless has a point concerning Chéreau-epigones: so many productions from the last thirty years or so have taken as read the insights afforded by Patrice Chéreau’s ‘Centenary’ Ring for Bayreuth and, consciously or otherwise, that of the late Joachim Herz for Leipzig. Günter Krämer’s Paris Ring, due to be concluded with Siegfried and Götterdämmerung this season, stands very much in this line, though I think it benefits greatly from doing so. Nevertheless, I can appreciate that someone might want to try something different, even in Das Rheingold, the ‘reddest’ of all Wagner’s dramas. It is difficult, however, to discern anything much to Cassiers’s production beyond ‘taking the politics out’, and not just the nineteenth-century politics, of a deeply political work. What has been put in place of Wagner’s revolutionary socialism? And why was there a programme article with the subtitle, ‘Reflexions über politische Aspekte von Wagners “Ring”’? Answers on a postcard, please.

The most striking aspect of the production is the inclusion of dancers. Members of the Eastman Company did very well what they were asked to do. That seemed more relevant when they actually interacted with members of the singing cast; their coming together to represent the Tarnhelm was a genuinely effective stroke, mirroring the rootless menace and mystery of Wagner’s harmony and orchestration. For the most part, however, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s choreography simply had them attempting to turn the work into a ballet manqué. It is a point of view, I suppose, though not one I can understand, let alone endorse. Nevertheless, it was boorish and misplaced for a minority of the audience to boo the dancers, who impressed upon their own terms. They certainly contributed a litheness absent from the concept. Stage designs (Cassiers and Enrico Bagnoli) make little impression either way, with a few exceptions, such as the ‘real’ water for the Rhine: initially noteworthy in a positive sense, less so when it degenerates into a juvenile paddling pool. Video projections are inoffensive, but the shots of what seems to be a generic ‘ancient’ civilisation do little to contribute to a greater idea. Costumes veer slightly between dampened down ‘operatic’ and hints of science fiction. The giants became giants by virtue of large shadows cast upon the backdrop: fair enough, but hardly a coup de théâtre.

The singing was generally of a standard one would expect from the Staatsoper, though I have heard more inspired evenings from the company. René Pape had played Wotan in Milan but was already booked to sing Boris Godunov in New York; he was therefore replaced, apparently for Das Rheingold alone, by Hanno Müller-Brachmann. Müller-Brachmann, it was announced, was suffering from cold and a fever. At the beginning, one could certainly hear intimations of that in his voice, but the adrenalin must have begun to flow, for his performance rallied and, as one might have expected, proved attentive to words and music. His mesmerised reaction to the ring, despite its shiny vulgarity, was a powerful moment on stage. I doubt that Müller-Brachmann would flourish as a Walküre Wotan, still less as the Wanderer, but that is not at issue here. Johannes Martin Kränzle was an impressive Alberich, less black of tone than some, but as attentive as his dialectical antithesis to Wagner’s poem. If anything, his reading of the text tended to take priority over musical line, and there was arguably too much hissing exaggeration, but one certainly gained a feel for the character. Perhaps the best stage assumption, as so often in Rheingold, was that of the Loge, Stephan Rügamer. He was the sole singer to dance too: presumably attributable to his status as demi-god, but then why not the giants, say? At any rate, he handled well the handicap of his bizarre sci-fi costume – if only we could have had the Paris production here, with Kim Begley in drag as cabaret artiste – to insinuate and to criticise.

Matti Salminen (his predecessor, not him, pictured to the left), sang the role of Fasolt for one night only, making the most of his plangent bass to evoke sympathy for the sole character who feels something akin to true love. Timo Riihonen did his job as Fafner, though true malevolence only really came to the fore at the very end. It was difficult to imagine Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke’s Mime as a master craftsman, creator of the Tarnhelm, but he was hardly responsible for the production’s ‘idea’ of him essentially as a big baby. Ekaterina Gubanova and Anna Samuil sang with considerable beauty of tone as Fricka and Freia, but again seemed hamstrung by the production, which appeared to have little interest in them at all. Jan Buchwald blustered as Donner, whilst Marco Jentzsch, the odd slip aside, displayed an appropriately attractive lyric tenor as Froh. The Rhinemaidens sang well enough for the most part, though there were occasional peculiarities of pronunciation – and not just when it came to vowels. Last but not least, Anna Larsson’s Erda was a brief joy to encounter: a true Nordic goddess on stage and in voice: perhaps not quite so deep of tone as many, but that is a matter of taste as much as anything else.

What truly surprised in the musical performance, however, was Daniel Barenboim’s conducting. I wonder how much of this was due to the acoustic of the Schillertheater, the Staatsoper’s temporary home, but I do not think it can have been the only factor at work. Barenboim seemed to have rethought his approach from earlier Ring performances. Now we heard a more chamber-like reading, more so even than Karajan. There was also a slight distancing of tone – perhaps the acoustic – which led to an alienating impression not entirely dissimilar to interwar Neue Sachlichkeit. Barenboim retained sense of line from his erstwhile hero, Furtwängler, but otherwise he seemed to be in rebellion. There were moments of greater, deeper orchestral sonority, but these were reserved for climaxes. Whether this, or indeed the temper of the production, will be pursued into Die Walküre remains to be seen – and heard.

Tristan und Isolde, Zurich Opera, 17 October 2010

Zurich Opera House

Isolde – Barbara Schneider-Hofstetter
Brangäne – Michelle Breedt
Tristan – Stig Andersen
King Marke – Matti Salminen
Kurwenal – Martin Gantner
Melot – Volker Vogel
Shepherd – Martin Zysset
Steersman – Joa Helgesson
Sailor – Peter Sonn

Claus Guth (director)
Christian Schmidt (designs)
Jürgen Hoffmann (lighting)
Volker Michl (choreography)

Chorus of the Zurich Opera (chorus master: Jürg Hämmerli)
Orchestra of the Zurich Opera
Bernard Haitink (conductor)

(Images: copyright Suzanne Schwiertz)

It is not often with a work such as Tristan und Isolde that I read the synopsis. I flatter myself that I know the plot inside out and it is anyway hardly the thing. Wagner acknowledged this when providing his own summary in 1859. He did not even mention King Mark’s forgiveness: the action, he seems to claim, is not really of this phenomenal world at all, but metaphysical. Even Tristan’s agonies go unmentioned on the way to ‘redemption: death, dying, destruction, never more to waken!’. I happened, however, to glance at the programme synopsis afterwards. The production made more sense, at least on its own terms, for the recounting was of Claus Guth’s Tristan, not Richard Wagner’s. It begins:

Isolde is about to marry Marke, who is much older than she is. Powerless, she has to accept the match, which his nephew Tristan has arranged for social reasons. Brangäne, who is aware of Isolde’s desperation, argues with the voice of reason that, in her eyes, Isolde’s union with Marke, a high-ranking personage, can only be advantageous.

Wagner, it is true, points in his summary, to the ‘custom of the time’ leading to the sin of marriage for politics’ sake. Yet that comes very much as background and remains in any case quite different from this banal, updated foregrounding. Isolde, we learn, ‘refuses to go to the altar with Marke before she and Tristan have spoken openly with each other’. Kareol is merely referred to as the ‘house’ of Tristan’s father. Metaphysics are banished, just as in Christof Loy’s Royal Opera production, which in retrospect now seems to echo, wittingly or otherwise, Guth’s adaptation, first staged in 2008.

Tristan is rendered as a bourgeois drama, somewhat in the manner of Ibsen. The coup de théâtre is Christian Schmidt’s stage design for the first act, clearly the Villa Wesendonck, Isolde/Mathilde gazing from her bedroom window. Local references seem a current preoccupation for Guth; (his recent Ariadne auf Naxos was set in a celebrated Zurich coffee house). Yet the Wagner–Wesendonck soap opera is neither maintained, nor discarded en route to universal significance. For the first two acts, we remain within this ‘house’ and its garden, its Treibhaus hothouse plants evocative, but the Konzept is arrived at and only half-heartedly pursued. Even had the idea been more clearly developed, I doubt it would have worked, for it appears – and this is not an absolute statement, merely an observation based upon experience – that productions which try to make this particular work ‘about’ something other than its inner drama simply do not work. (Harry Kupfer recognises this in his 2000 production for the Berlin Staatsoper. He incorporates but does not fetishise nineteenth-century references, which remain at the service of Wagner’s drama. Kupfer’s centrepiece for each act, a fallen angel, with a Victorian touch of ‘bad nineteenth century’ such as Thomas Mann would surely have appreciated, is more importantly a revolving space for the true, inner action, and an ever-present reminder of the fallen human condition.) Leaving aside the unfortunate failure of the revolving stage equipment on one occasion, Guth’s setting is both unduly prominent and apparently lacking in further or deeper meaning. Touches such as Tristan turning an electric light switch on and off at the end of the first act – how technologically advanced was the Wesendonck household? – merely add irritating distraction; if a metaphor for Day and Night were intended, one could do better. I could not fathom why Isolde and Brangäne should be portrayed as near-identical, nor why they acted reciprocally as maid.

Regarding the general idea, one might claim that Hans Jürgen Syberberg does something similar in his Parsifal film, introducing imagery from the writing of the drama and more generally from Wagner’s life, for instance the window from the room of the Venetian Palazzo Vendramin in which Wagner died. Yet Syberberg offers a multiplicity of settings and ideas – a problem for some, but a different problem – and is anything but reductive. Moreover, Parsifal is not Tristan. Guth is a director I have admired, his Salzburg Festival Figaro being far and away the best production I have seen of the work. More recently, though, not least in the remaining instalments of his Salzburg Da Ponte trilogy, his ideas have confused rather than illuminated. Bizarrely, he reverts to the discredited notion of omitting the final scene of Don Giovanni, yet in a production with little of the Romantic to it. That anti-Figaro is certainly not faithful to the spirit, let alone the letter, of the work, yet somehow its Ibsen-reworking works. This Tristan does not.

There had been plenty of musical drama during rehearsals. Waltraud Meier departed after ‘artistic differences’ with Bernard Haitink, to be replaced by Barbara Schneider-Hofstetter. Her voice did not sound especially appropriate as Isolde, possessing a distinctly mezzo-like tinta, vocally indistinct from that of Michelle Breedt’s Brangäne. One might, given the mysterious mirroring of the characters onstage, have thought that the point; yet, given the late substitution, that seems unlikely. Martin Gantner’s Kurwenal also sounded oddly cast initially; yet, despite a voice of tenor-like hue, he convinced with properly moving fidelity. Peter Seiffert fell ill and was replaced by Stig Andersen, whose Tristan would have impressed even had he initially been cast. Vocally and textually accurate throughout, he not only possessed the stamina to get through the third act, but vividly portrayed agonies, both physical and metaphysical, lacking in the staging. Matti Salminen’s King Mark wavered a little during the second act, but his forgiveness – Wagner was wrong after all – was truly, almost unbearably moving:; the voice of experience told and intensified. Bar an unnervingly out-of-tune Sailor, the smaller parts were well enough taken, Joa Helgesson imparting a winningly forthright quality to the tiny role of the Steersman.

What made this Tristan unforgettable, however, was Haitink. The contrast between his and even the better renditions I have heard in between his final Covent Garden performance and now was stark, the unfolding of Wagner’s music drama paced to perfection. Whereas, following Esa-Pekka Salonen’s recent performance with the Philharmonia, I was intrigued to find the score sounding less tonal, more proto-Schoenbergian, in conception than usual, here Wagner’s motivic web and vast tonal plan were invested with conviction and meaning at every turn. This was not, as Haitink’s detractors have sometimes claimed, a reading of ‘absolute music.’ Terror instilled during the first scene of the third act was clearly derived from words and music, or rather from their indissoluble union; especially telling was the rhythmic drive, not excitable but clearly grounded in harmonic rhythm. Wagnerian melos, without which any performance will be in vain, emerged unchallenged as the guiding thread through the chromatic labyrinth. There were occasions when the Zurich Opera Orchestra sounded tired, likewise when strings gained an edge to their tone. If Haitink was better served vocally in Zurich than in London, the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House’s contribution had been significantly superior. There was, moreover, something odd about the second-act offstage horns, sounding almost as if relayed electronically. Nevertheless, the orchestra was generally able to execute Haitink’s vision; the rest could be readily forgotten. Truly, one would have to go back to Furtwängler to hear Wagner conducting so exalted. Let us hope yet to hear more Wagner from Haitink.

Tristan und Isolde (II), Royal Opera, 18 October 2009

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Tristan – Lars Cleveman
King Marke – Matti Salminen
Isolde – Nina Stemme
Kurwenal – Michael Volle
Brangäne – Sophie Koch
Melot – Richard Berkeley Steele
Sailor – Ji-Min Park
Steersman – Dawid Kimberg
Shepherd – Ryland Davies

Christof Loy (director)
Johannes Leiacker (designs)
Olaf Winter (lighting)
Marion Tiedtke (dramaturge)

Chorus of the Royal Opera House (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Antonio Pappano (conductor)

This review was written for and first published on Per-Erik Skramstad's excellent site, Wagneropera.net, which I urge anyone and everyone to consult. It may be found, with images from the production, by clicking here.

I saw the first night of this Tristan und Isolde (click here for review) and have now seen the last. I hoped against hope that I might see the error of my ways and be converted to Christof Loy’s production. Sadly not. Mine, I must admit, seems to remain a minority view, at least amongst other reviewers, though perhaps not amongst the audience at large. (For a cross-section of wildly enthusiastic reviews, click here and here and here and here, etc. I draw solace from the relative coolness of that eminent Wagnerite, the opera critic of the Spectator, and a few others.) What I should take issue with is the claim that, if one does not appreciate this production, one is ‘literal-minded’. I could not care less whether one sees a ship, Tristan’s castle, and so on; indeed, I am all for abstraction, which is why I admired Covent Garden’s previous production, by Herbert Wernicke. (Many of those cheering Loy hated Wernicke’s wonderful, colour-coded, Schopenhauerian interpretation.) This is anything but abstract, though; it is domesticated and strangely specific, but specific in a sense that makes no sense. Once one starts seeing a wedding breakfast, a strange tea for two setting, an irritating curtain forever being drawn, one misses the ship, Kareol, and so forth, in a way that simply draws attention to their absence, rather than puts them to one side as inessential. Loy’s production. At the front of the stage, we see, in Johannes Leiacker’s designs that operatically ubiquitous, dreary minimalist chic which is anything but cost-cutting; the ‘world of existentialism,’ according to a programme interview with Loy. At the back is the real world of the wedding breakfast. Loy claims that ‘the two spaces’ are, during the action, ‘almost completely redefined’; once again, I was at a loss to discern anything but the most trivial difference.

If anything, I was more annoyed the second time around than the first. What I had charitably assumed to be an accident, the edging forward of a wall at the end of the second act, was not. Yet again, it appeared that something was about to be revealed; as I wrote previously, ‘perhaps it was a metaphor for the production as a whole’. Isolde’s aimless emerging from behind the curtain during the opening Prelude once again – how could it not? – completely undermined the progress of the music, what should have been its great climax coming to nothing. Is it not more than time that directors were assumed to read a score and exceptions to this were just that? (I should hardly have the nerve to direct Chekhov in Russian without understanding the language.) Perhaps Loy can read Wagner’s score, in which case he simply disregarded it. The end of the second act would have been incomprehensible to anyone who did not know the work well already. Tristan, according to what he did on stage, appeared to be addressing Melot, when he should have been addressing (a bewilderingly departed) Isolde. Words and stage direction were at odds, not with ‘interesting’ antagonism, but with straightforward confusion.

There is, of course, something more at work here. Loy freely admits that he doesn’t like heroism; nor does he care for Schopenhauer, certainly not in any sense that might inform Tristan. Loy cannot ‘really equate the couple’s position as outsiders with a Schopenhauerian denial of the world’. Some observers might think that more his problem than Wagner’s and suggest that Loy direct something with which he feels more at home. Of course, it is perfectly possible to reinterpret a work; I have no problem with that at all. My problem is that I find this production both inappropriate and incoherent, most of all far less interesting than Wagner’s opus metaphysicum. The realism of what we see is becoming almost de rigueur in modern Wagner production, but this realism seems especially at odds with what is such an overwhelmingly metaphysical work – the ‘passion of passion’ in Michael Tanner’s memorable phase. The carrying on behind the curtain between Kurwenal and Brangäne is simply demeaning: utterly unerotic and belittling characters whose love for their master and mistress is in many respects the truest love of all in the work as conceived by that minor nineteenth-century dramatist, Richard Wagner. I actually overheard someone during the second interval praising the production for the ‘masterstroke’ of having Tristan bring about his own death; the speaker, revelling in what she trumpeted as her ‘receptiveness’ to new ideas, was unaware that this was one of the few cases in which Wagner was respected. Of course Tristan should throw himself upon Melot; the only surprise was that he actually did.

Matters were not helped by Antonio Pappano’s musical direction. Pappano is an extraordinarily frustrating Wagner conductor; his performances vary enormously, sometimes getting things right, with the good work undone the next time, and vice versa. The love duet on this occasion was much better handled; its metaphysical import was ironed out, as if this were something from Italian opera, but there was structural sense of a kind. And the third act worked better than before, again hardly idiomatically – it was as if ‘plot’ were the focus of this of all works – but it built to a glorious climax in Nina Stemme’s extraordinary Liebestod. However, the first act was simply all over the place, arbitrarily pulled about, stopping and starting, with no sense of an overall line. The first act Prelude started almost unbelievably slowly. That can work, but there needs to be harmonic momentum; here, phrase followed phrase, with no connection between them. To imitate Furtwängler would be to fail, but it might be to fail better than this. The orchestra itself often sounded splendid, if rarely scaling the heights that it did under Bernard Haitink. Yet there were a few problems, which seemingly attested to a lack of security in direction. For instance, there were repeated difficulties in that unconvincing first act Prelude from woodwind upbeat entries; had this happened once, it might well have been a player’s individual mistake, but to happen repeatedly suggested otherwise. There was also an unfortunate missed entry from the trombones during the second act love duet, though they redeemed themselves with a truly sepulchral sound during Marke’s soliloquy.

However, and this is a big however, there was good news. I said on the first occasion that the ‘best reason to see this Tristan would be the singing’. On the showing of this final performance, it would be almost mandatory to endure the production on account of the singing. Everything was at least as good as before and some things were much better. Stemme rose to even greater heights, her detailed characterisation allied to astonishing radiance of tone. Schubert Lieder met Strauss opera – and I suppose Wagner is indeed somewhere in between. She also seemed to have developed a slight Nilsson-like irony, which I did not detect the first time around. Sophie Koch was a wonderful Brangäne, whilst Michael Volle was simply the best Kurwenal I have heard, charismatic and attentive to every nuance of the musico-poetic text. The supporting cast was without a weak link.

And then there were the two casting changes. Lars Cleveman was a far superior Tristan to Ben Heppner. To begin with, his tone seemed a little all-purpose heroic, refreshing though some heroism was in this production. But he sailed through – forgive the pun for an absent friend – the love duet, where Heppner had broken down and where so many others come utterly unstuck. Following the intervention of Matti Salminen’s superlative Marke, this Tristan seemed utterly changed. Whether this were increasing ease on stage or a dramatic decision, I do not know, but it certainly had a dramatic effect. Cleveman’s progress through the treacherous monologue was clearly plotted: wan and despairing at first, building up to a profoundly moving climax in tearing off his bandages. Moreover, Salminen showed that, whereas Sir John Tomlinson had moved by virtue of his great presence and understanding, a voice that was in fine fettle could take one still further.

Parsifal, Semperoper Dresden, 13 April 2009

Images: © Matthias Creutziger

Amfortas – Hans-Joachim Ketelsen
Titurel – Jacques-Grel Belobo
Gurnemanz – Matti Salminen
Parsifal – Stig Andersen
Klinsgor – Thomas Jesatko
Kundry – Lioba Braun
Flowemaidens – Christiane Hossfeld, Birgit Fandrey, Annette Jahns, Roxana Incontrera, Sabine Brohm, Elisabeth Wilke
Knights of the Grail – Gerald Hupach, Jürgen Commichau
Squires – Angela Liebold, Sofi Lorentzen, Tom Martinsen, Matthias Henneberg
Voice from Above – Sofi Lorentzen

Theo Adam (original director)
Heide Stock (revival director)
Rolf Langenfass (designs and costumes)

Chor der Sächsichen Staatsoper Dresden
Gentlemen’s voices from the Sinfoniechor Dresden
Kinderchor der Sächsischen Staatsoper Dresden
Matthias Brauer and Ulrich Paetzholdt (chorus masters)
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
Lothar Zagrosek (conductor)

This was much better than the previous night’s Flying Dutchman. The performance made me realise that I should probably have been harsher concerning Christof Prick’s hapless conducting. Lothar Zagrosek’s direction was certainly the real thing, clearly born of a sophisticated understanding of the score and an ability to communicate that to his players. In general, this was a swift reading, which is not necessarily to say unprobing, but quite different from the broader conceptions of, say, Knappertsbusch or Goodall. To a certain extent Boulez sprang to mind, although the latter’s modernistic concerns were less to the fore than what sometimes sounded like an attempt to point to connections with Romantic symphonism. In any case, the focus was upon dramatic drive rather than the quasi-liturgical understanding that often informs the outer acts. Zagrosek’s conducting was certainly not inflexible; fluctuations in tempo were handled soundly. However, this was Wagner often sounding closer to Mendelssohn, Schumann, perhaps even Brahms, than to Bruckner, Mahler, or Schoenberg.

Greater weight was placed upon the Transformation Music and upon the choral sections, here superbly rendered by the assorted choruses, of whom the excellent children’s choir merits special mention. The work of Matthias Brauer and Ulrich Paetzholdt had clearly paid off. Likewise, the Staatskapelle Dresden was once again on splendid form. There may be no one ‘right’ sound for Wagner, but this orchestra is certainly one of the best equipped tonally for his music. The strings truly glowed, whilst the woodwind added piquant colour. At climactic moments, the brass made its presence felt without the slightest sense of Solti-like crudeness. The excellent timpanist’s role in dramatic punctuation was of the highest importance. There were a few instances of insecurity, such as a wrong entry from the woodwind immediately prior to Parsifal’s baptism of Kundry. For a worrying moment, it sounded as though the orchestra might have lost its way, but Zagrosek pulled his forces together.

1988 must have been a good year for Wagner in Dresden, since the Staatsoper premiered not only Wolfgang Wagner’s Dutchman but also Theo Adam’s Parsifal. In truth, neither production has a great deal to say to a contemporary audience, if indeed either did at the time. The prospect of an East German Parsifal was intriguing but there are no political statements here. What we have is a straightforward, uncontroversial telling of the story. Scenery and costumes are more or less as one would expect, with the partial exception of a peculiarly unattractive magic garden for Klingsor, likewise the strange, butterfly-like costumes for the Flowermaidens. As with Wolfgang Wagner’s Dutchman, we see pretty much everything we should. In this case, the Grail looks like the Grail and is elevated by Parsifal in the final scene. The spear looks like a spear and does what it should. The most fanatical adherent to Wagner’s stage directions might lament the lack of a dove at the end, but otherwise would have little with which to find fault. Parsifal does not himself make the sign of the Cross at the end of the second act but a Cross is revealed in the sky, thereby avoiding the nonsense that many productions suffer when he speaks of something that is merely disregarded. However, it was not at all clear what its presence meant, given the lack of any overt Christian or indeed anti-Christian reading of the work: probably better than disregard, but not preferable to dramatically underlined absence, as in Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s Waste Land ‘heap of broken images’ production for the English National Opera. Stefan Herheim’s Bayreuth Parsifal remains utterly in a class of its own. One thing, however, that distinguished this production from the previous night’s Dutchman was the role of Heidi Stock as acknowledged revival director. Her material might not have been the most inspiring but she ensured that the cast, including the chorus, knew what it should be doing rather than being left to fend for itself. A nice touch, whether hers or Adam’s, was to have the brothers all turn away from Amfortas upon his first act pleas for mercy.

This brings me to the singers. Parsifal is a less fiendish role than Tristan or Siegfried, for which one might read that it is not simply impossible. Nevertheless, it is hardly an easy ride. Stig Andersen did a highly creditable job, even managing to seem vaguely plausible as the foolish boy of the first act, if without the success in this respect of Stefan Vinke in Leipzig a week earlier. Lioba Braun was an excellent Kundry. She was perhaps less impressive as the seductress of the earlier part of the second act but gave a memorable portrayal of unhinged reaction to Parsifal’s rejection of her kiss. Like her character, she hurled everything into her efforts to change him. Matti Salminen was slightly disappointing earlier on, most uncharacteristically subdued; however, his tone garnered richness and authority a little way in to his third act scenes. Thomas Jesatko was thrillingly malevolent as Klingsor, perhaps more so than he had been at Bayreuth, although there the production had more than made up for it. Hans-Joachim Ketelsen was a more than acceptable Amfortas; I had probably been spoiled by the astounding portrayal offered by Tumoas Pursio for Oper Leipzig. The Flowermaidens were a mixed bunch, as it were. Sadly, those who looked unusually ‘mature’ sounded somewhat past their best too, although there were clearly some good voices amongst the group. Mention should also go to a splendid Voice from Above in the guise of Sori Lorentzen. All in all, then, this was a rather successful Parsifal, at least in musical terms.