Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Glyndebourne, 25 May 2016

Glyndebourne Opera House

Hans Sachs (Gerald Finley)
Images: Tristram Kenton/Glyndebourne

Walther – Michael Schade

Eva – Amanda Majeski
Magdalene – Hanna Hipp
David – David Portillo
Veit Pogner – Alastair Miles
Sixtus Beckmesser – Jochen Kupfer
Hans Sachs – Gerald Finley
Kunz Vogelgesang – Colin Judson
Konrad Nachtigall – Andrew Slater
Fritz Kothner – Darren Jeffery
Hermann Ortel – Nicholas Folwell
Balthasar Zorn – Alasdair Elliott
Augustin Moser – Daniel Norman
Ulrich Eisslinger – Adrian Thompson
Hans Foltz – Henry Waddington
Hans Schwarz – Sion Goronwy
Night Watchman – Patrick Guetti

David McVicar (director)

Vicki Mortimer (designs)
Andrew George (choreography)
Paule Constable (lighting)

The Glyndebourne Chorus (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)

London Philharmonic Orchestra
Michael Güttler (conductor)

Having been privileged already to see in little over two months two great productions of Die Meistersinger, one in Paris (Stefan Herheim) and one in Munich (David Bösch), I was unable to resist the prospect of a third staging, at Glyndebourne. Alas, David McVicar’s production – for the moment, I am considering solely the staging, for there was much to admire in the musical performance – proved by far the weakest. Alas, we see here the continuation of the sad decline of a once accomplished director – his ENO Turn of the Screw remains the finest I have seen – into the Franco Zeffirelli de nos jours. McVicar’s Glyndebourne Entführung seemed like a caricature of something from an alleged ‘golden age’, which of course never was and never could have been, before the alleged invention of big, bad ‘Regietheater’. As I discuss in my recent book, After Wagner, that would take us back at least before Wagner’s own opera stagings. Indeed, it would take us back, paradoxically, to a time of opera staging prior to the origins of opera.

 

Such an approach, if one may call it that, disdaining, with more than a hint of Teutonophobia, any hint of the directorial Konzept, could hardly find a composer less suited to it than Wagner. And yet, there seems, to start with, as though there might actually be a Konzept: well, an updating, at least. For the action does not take place in sixteenth-century Nuremberg, but rather in the earlier nineteenth century, presumably at around the time Wagner was growing up. There is much to be said for such an idea, looking at the societal influences upon the young Wagner, which certainly helped shape his world-view (from a more hostile standpoint, his ideology). Moreover, the guilds and corporations came under sustained post-Enlightenment attack at this time, the Stein-Hardenberg reforms in Prussia, for instance, offering more or less the only instance in that reforming programme of a policy vehemently opposed by Hegel (as an attack on partial association, on civil society). The guild in Nuremberg, then, might be portrayed as under attack; that, after all, is partly the meaning of Walther’s intrusion, a typical Wagnerian move of introducing a charismatic leader from outside. And so we might go on. There is, unfortunately, no attempt to do anything with the updating. Indeed, as with the aforementioned Entführung, or as with McVicar’s Marriage of Figaro for the Royal Opera, one is left with the nasty suspicion that the principal point, or at least principal result, of the updating is simply to present us with a host of ‘pretty’ designs. Vicki Mortimer’s handsome designs might have done so much more – or even just a little more.

 

Beckmesser (Jochen Kupfer) attempts the Prize Song

Moreover, the typical McVicar trait of reducing drama to mere ‘entertainment’ is much in evidence here. There is nothing wrong with art being entertaining, of course; much of it would be failing if, in at least some sense, it were not. However, here the playing to the gallery – and not in some metatheatrical sense, imitating or leading the relationship between the Masters and the populace – becomes especially wearying. ‘Amusing’ interpolations, which serve little or no purpose other than to make those who have partaken of a few too many erupt into apparently helpless laughter, are too often the order of the day. (Quite what led someone to the verge of hysteria during Sachs’s Wahn monologue, I have no idea; on that occasion, the responsibility does not seem to have lain with the production.) And since every McVicar production now seems to have compulsory choreography by Andrew George, we have silly, irrelevant dances, especially painful at the opening of the second act. Beckmesser, for some reason best known to the director, becomes a preening figure of high camp.

 

Fortunately, the score was in better hands. The London Philharmonic Orchestra was on excellent form throughout. Clearly well rehearsed, the orchestra offered as satisfying a German tone – the strings, to my ears, more typically Brahmsian than one often hears in Wagner, but certainly, in this of all Wagner’s dramas, none the worse for that – as one is likely to hear in this country. There were, moreover, many elements of exquisite wind-playing, doubtless having their roots, at least in part, in the LPO’s long experience of performing Mozart here at Glyndebourne. Michael Güttler’s conducting never drew attention to itself; in the first and second acts, it perhaps lacked the sense of life with which the greatest Wagner conductors will bring the melos into dramatic reality, but there was sure structural understanding. In the third act, which, perhaps not coincidentally, offers a more satisfying, if defiantly conservative, experience in McVicar’s staging too, Güttler seemed relatively liberated. His was never an ‘interventionist’ account, but there was a greater willingness to play, and to let the singers, play with the ebb and flow.

What made this Meistersinger compulsory viewing (and listening) for me, however, was Gerald Finley’s Hans Sachs. Finley had also played the role in Herheim’s Paris production. Perhaps because of the lack of anything here to say from the staging, he sounded, if anything, finer still. At any rate, the distinction of his performance fell into greater relief, for I have never heard a finer rendition, more anguished and yet, ultimately, more imbued with relative hope, of the Wahn monologue than here. In ‘purely’ musical and in verbal terms, this was a Sachs whose role emerged from lengthy experience and understanding of Lieder. The size of the house probably helped too, the Bastille perhaps not the ideal venue for Finley, excellent though his Paris performance undoubtedly was.

 

Michael Schade seemed miscast, I am afraid, as Walther. If he made a better job of the role than I should have suspected, he too often sounded strained. Little of the ‘natural’ – whatever that might mean – ease with which Walther should pour forth his artistry was present. However, his Eva, Amanda Majeski, offered a beautifully sung performance, drawing, as does the character, upon greater reserves of feeling as the work progressed. There was nothing of Bösch’s radical (feminist) reappraisal here, of course, but Sajeski did a good deal with what she had. Jochen Kupfer did a sterling job with McVicar’s jarring understanding of Beckmesser; indeed, he managed almost to convince us that this was an illuminating standpoint. If he could not quite do so, that was not the fault of this fine actor, whose darkly attractive vocal portrayal proved equally impressive; I hope to see him play the role in another staging. David Portillo’s lyric tenor was just the thing for David: his was an eager, diligent, attractively sung performance very much in the traditional mode. Hanna Hipp’s Magdalene complemented him with similar qualities and great warmth of tone. Alastair Miles’s Pogner sounded somewhat elderly at times, but that is hardly inappropriate here. Last but far from least, the singing of the Glyndebourne Chorus, well-prepared indeed by Jeremy Bines, was something to savour from beginning to end. In a house of this size, it sounded just right: words and music in excellent balance, warmth and clarity anything but antithetical. If only the staging had given them something more interesting to do.iHi

 


 

Salzburg Festival (6) - Fierrabras, 16 August 2014

Images: © Salzburger Festspiele / Monika Rittershaus
Florinda (Dorothea Röschmann) and the chorus

 

Haus für Mozart 

Fierrabras – Michael Schade

Emma – Julia Kleiter

Eginhard – Benjamin Bernheim

Florinda – Dorothea Röschmann

Roland – Markus Werba

Charlemagne – Georg Zeppenfeld

Boland – Peter Kálmán

Maragond – Marie-Claude Chappuis

Brutamonte – Manuel Walser

Ogier – Franz Gruber

Two Young Ladies – Secil Ilker, Wilma Maller

Moorish Captain – Helmut Höllriegl

Knight – Michael Wilder

Peter Stein (director)

Ferdinand Wögerbauer (set designs)

Annamaria Heinreich (costumes)

Joachim Barth (lighting)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)
Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra
Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)
 

We owe the Salzburg Festival – and Alexander Pereira – a considerable debt for staging Fierrabras. Dedicated to the memory of Claudio Abbado, whose celebrated Vienna production with Ruth Berghaus, marked a milestone in the fortunes of Schubert’s opera, this new production will surely have opened new ears to the work’s considerable virtues, as well as to its undeniable shortcomings, upon which it is not unreasonable to look with a little indulgence. Schubert, after all, never had the chance to hear Fierrabras performed, despite a commission from the Kärtnertortheater, and despite its staging having been advertised. (The ‘failure’ of Weber’s Euryanthe seems to have been a factor in dissuading the theatre’s director, Domenico Barbaia, from staging another new German Romantic opera, likewise the perennial Viennese problem of Italian singers having supplanted Germans. Look at the Vienna State Opera today, and wonder at the proportion of nineteenth-century Italian opera on the menu!) Indeed, although excerpts were heard in concert in Vienna in 1835 and 1858, the opera would not be staged until 1897, in Karlsruhe – and then in a version in which both words and music were ‘revised’, the latter by Felix Mottl.

 

This production was originally to have been conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. His replacement by Ingo Metzmacher will doubtless have been a matter of sadness for some, though certainly not for me. I can happily do without speed bumps, arbitrary caesuras, and the like. In Metzmacher, Schubert certainly found a committed advocate, both in words – in a fascinating programme note – and in the pit. If there were moments when I felt the lack of something grandeur, perhaps recalling at least subconsciously the wondrous symphonic Schubert of the morning before, from the Vienna Philharmonic and Riccardo Muti, then not only would it be curmudgeonly to cavil; one could also make an argument that something a little more modest was truer to this particular work, whatever its ‘heroic’ trappings. (Not that I necessarily should subscribe to such a claim, but it is not inherently implausible.) At any rate, once past a slightly plodding account of the overture, which sounded more exciting in Metzmacher’s prose description, the conductor’s ear for harmony and its dramatic implications proved invaluable. He seemed most inspired by the passages which, I later read, he considered most inspired of all: for instance, the music for the Moorish princess, Florinda, perhaps above all in the melodrama at the end of the second act, ‘a passage that climaxes in the unfathomable,’ though, one might add, not unusual for Schubert, ‘key of E-flat minor’. For Metzmacher, although ‘much ink has been spilt over the question whether Schubert was ever really able to write an opera,’ this melodrama would leave no one entertaining ‘any doubts on the matter’. It was certainly fortunate in the playing of the VPO, old hands in Schubert, if not necessarily in his operas.

So long, then, as one does not expect the Schubert of his greatest songs, or indeed of the chamber and piano music, one has no real need to be musically disappointed. One of the oddities of much of the music is how, whilst one can believe the composer to be Schubert, it does not sound so very much like much of the rest of his œuvre. Likewise, so long as one does not expect Mozartian characterisation, the drama can be dealt with – at least on that level. Its Orientalism is undoubtedly problematical for a modern audience, but that may prove a spur to interesting stage direction. (I shall leave that matter just for the moment.) We should, moreover, consider this an interesting early work, had Schubert lived longer. Of course, we have what we have, and there is no point in performing something on the basis that we are sure the composer would eventually have written something better, but it is perhaps a particular reason for charitable reception in this case. The work as it stands is in any case a manifestly better work than many from the same period, and indeed from later, which continue to hold the stage. Less than top-drawer Schubert remains infinitely preferable to any Donizetti or Verdi.

 

Florinda (Dorothea Röschmann), Eginhard (Benjamin
Bernheim), Roland (Markus Werba), chorus 

Fierrabras was also fortunate in the cast assembled, albeit with one unfortunate exception. In many operas, such a failure in the title role might have been catastrophic; here, however, the cast is large, and the opera is not so closely focused upon the good and faithful Moorish prince accepted into the ranks of his erstwhile Frankish foes. Salzburg’s enthusiasm for Michael Schade remains a mystery, though. True to form, and even given the most charitable listening, his singing proved a trial: unpleasant of tone and often hectoring. (To think, Zurich had Jonas Kaufmann!) No such complaints, however, concerning the rest of the cast. Georg Zeppenfeld proved a stentorian Karl/Charlemagne, ably surrounded by a throng of excellent knights: Benjamin Bernheim’s touchingly lovelorn Eginhard, Markus Werba’s virile yet thoughtful Roland, and Franz Gruber’s attentively sung Ogier. Peter Kálmán offered a suitably dark-voiced Moorish king, Boland; the problems with the role are not his fault. Perhaps even more impressive were the women, Julia Kleiter’s lyrical Emma presenting winning contrast with Dorothea Röschmann’s brilliantly hochdramatisch Florinda. Choral singing was excellent too.

Fierrabras (Michael Schade), Eginhard, and Emma (Julia Kleiter)

 

Other than Schade, the principal problem lies with Peter Stein’s production. Whatever has happened to him? I have heard tales, all of them rueful, of his recent stagings, but admit to wondering whether they might have been exaggerated, or at least to whether there might be more to salvage. Alas not. The stage business often resembles a well-budgeted school play. There are cod-mediæval costumes and flimsy backdrops, which most would have thought so ludicrous that they must be intended to be sent up, or deconstructed. And that is about it. Of deconstruction there is not a sign. There is certainly no attempt to address the ‘Orientalist’ problem. Does Stein really think it does not matter? One shudders to think how he might approach The Merchant of Venice. It may be an all-too-obvious route, but a setting in the contemporary Middle East would surely have offered more opportunity for reflection than this. Watching Stein’s staging seems less a matter of viewing through a time warp, than of capitulation to those who think that productions of the past were simply a matter of ‘pretty’ stage design and costumes. There is no denying the drawback of the staging, but at least one was free to imagine what might have been, or what might yet be. The music was the thing, and it was well served.

 

Salzburg Festival (6) – Schubert: Schade/Buchbinder, 24 August 2013

Haus für Mozart

Die schöne Müllerin

 

Michael Schade (tenor)

Rudolf Buchbinder (piano)

 

 

Michael Schade’s tenor, especially at this stage in his career, would have to be reckoned something of an acquired taste. His is not a beautiful sound, but the problem goes beyond that; I am not sure that I have heard anyone sing so great a proportion of a recital in his head voice, with a generous helping of quasi-falsetto. That said, he was evidently concerned to recount a narrative, and was dramatically engaged throughout. One probably had to ‘make allowances’, but ultimately there was something moving to his performance as a whole. Likewise Rudolf Buchbinder’s Schubert proved short on charm, even at times on sensitivity. Yet, if one put oneself in the right frame of mind, of receptivity, there were insights to be gleaned.

 

For instance, the muscular, almost Beethovenian playing with which ‘Das Wandern’ opened may or may not have been apposite, but it certainly had me thinking about the text and possible readings. The lack of sentimentality from both performers here was to a certain degree refreshing, and the way in which both moved to a (relative) hush in the final two stanzas was far from unconvincing. Buchbinder’s accents in ‘Halt!’ might have been closer to what one might have expected, once again, in Beethoven, but the creaking of the mill wheel could also be discerned. Moreover, the instrumental inevitability he imparted to the following ‘Danksagung an den Bach’ offered a strong impression of fatalism to the story’s development, even at this early stage. If only Schade had been more restrained there – and elsewhere – in his use of head voice, though his dramatic faltering in ‘Am Feierabend’ certainly grabbed the attention. The ghostliness and defiance of the final two lines, in which the maiden wishes us all good night, looked forward to ‘Der Doppelgänger’. The quasi-operatic delivery of ‘Ungeduld’, however, seemed misconceived; Schubert’s ‘drama’ is not the same as Verdi’s, still less that of Verdi with a distinctly non-Verdian voice

 

The Träumerei  of ‘Morgengruß’ was, if one could pass beyond the flawed vocalism – I could, just about – both rapt and apt. Greater contrast, from both musicians, however, would have benefited the songs that followed, though ‘Pause’ possessed an undeniable dignity. Sanity was already hanging by a thread, if that, in ‘Der Jäger’. Too much? Perhaps, but as I said above, story-telling, and indeed its explication, were priorities for Schade, and laudable ones at that. Moreover, his vocal plangency in ‘Die liebe Farbe’ truly came into its own. Buchbinder’s ‘simple’ voicing of Schubert’s chords in ‘Trockne Blumen’ was, if short on atmosphere, as generally understood, of a starkness that, perhaps even despite itself, had one rethink one’s response. And if ‘Der Müller und der Bach’ seemed too vocally hysterical even for Winterreise, let alone Die schöne Müllerin, the final song, ‘Des Baches Wiegenlied’ proved a beautiful, cruel lullaby; the unexaggerated quality of Buchbinder’s postlude was certainly not without eloquence.

 

I am not sure that encores are ever appropriate following this cycle. Certainly Der Musensohn and a very odd, quite misconceived, performance of Die Forelle felt at best unnecessary. Without dwelling unduly on the latter, I shall simply remark that, in Schade’s performance, it served up what must have been the campest trout to have been fished for a good many years.

Thaïs, Metropolitan Opera, 2 January 2009

Metropolitan Opera, New York

Cenobite monks – Daniel Clark Smith, Roger Andrews, Kurt Phinney, Richard Pearson, Craig Montgomery
Palémon – Alain Vernhes
Athanaël – Thomas Hampson
Guard – Trevor Scheunemann
Crobyle – Alyson Cambridge
Myrtale – Ginger Costa-Jackson
Nicias – Michael Schade
Thaïs – Renée Fleming
La Charmeuse – Leah Partridge
Albine – Maria Zifchak
Solo dancer – Zahra Hashemian
Violin solo – David Chan

John Cox (producer)
Christian Lacroix (costumes for Renée Fleming)
Duane Schuler (lighting)
Sara Jo Slate (choreographer)

Metropolitan Opera Chorus (chorus master: Donald Palumbo)
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Jesús López-Cobos (conductor)

This was unlike any operatic performance I have previously attended: not only the work itself – I can hardly claim to be a Massenet habitué and Thaïs is distinctly odd – but also the production and general experience. First, let us consider Thäis. It has tended to be revived and was arguably created as a ‘vehicle’ for a star soprano. We certainly had that in Renée Fleming and I assume that it was her allure that drew in the crowds to the Metropolitan Opera. It is difficult to imagine that this could justly be attributed to a sizable Massenet constituency in New York – or indeed, one that might have flown in for the occasion. For Thaïs, I am afraid to say, contrives to be both bizarre and for the most part dull. Part of the problem would seem to be the work of the librettist, Louis Gallet, who appears to have extracted the ironic anti-clericalism from Anatole France’s novel – which sounds rather interesting: I should be keen to read it – and left us with a story in which a fanatical fourth-century monk, Athanaël attempts and succeeds to win over to his ascetic faith the courtesan, Thaïs, only to succumb to his suppressed lusts and attempt to win her back for the dark side. However, she dies and in her already-declared sainthood is not far off assumed into heaven, as she experiences a vision of angels. (As the late Anna Russell used to say, 'I’m not making this up, you know!') Thaïs’s conversion is so incredibly abrupt that the phrase ‘suspension of disbelief’ seems risibly inadequate for what one must do to one’s dramatic faculties. Moreover, there is no longer any attack upon clerical hypocrisy, for Athanaël fights temptation rather than dissembles. If anything, Athanaël is more the central character, yet that principal reason we might have for him being so has vanished. There might remain interesting contemporary resonances in his fundamentalism but they would need to be dealt with more forcefully than in this production. What in the world of television used to be called ‘continuity’, and perhaps still is, did not seem to have been closely attended to, for the libretto – yes, this was no quirk of the production – had Athanaël threatened with a rifle as he entered Nicias’s Alexandrian palace. (I am well aware of the clock in Julius Caesar, but that is no excuse.)

Before coming to the production, it is worth commenting upon the score itself. It has odd moments, such as the offstage music at the beginning of the second scene of Act II – very well performed. There is also some slightly more interesting music by the oasis in the third act, although it is hardly ‘superbly effective’, to quote the wildly enthusiastic programme note by Thomas May. For the most part, however, it is insipid, with the odd very watered-down Wagnerism. Pelléas this is not, in any sense. Sometimes, such music can sound better than it is. I imagine that Sir Thomas Beecham might have worked some magic upon it. Jesús López-Cobos did not, seeming content to let it flow, or sometimes drag. The playing of the Met orchestra sounded routine; it is easy to sympathise. More worryingly still, so in thrall did the conductor seem to Fleming that he often appeared to be following her rather than vice versa. And what we might charitably term her tempo fluctuations were more than a little on the arbitrary side.

If ever a work cried out for Regietheater it was this: a new twist just might have granted some dramatic credibility to what is at best kitsch, but more often plain uninteresting. As the reader may have guessed, such was not to be in this production shipped in from the Lyric Opera of Chicago. John Cox had us veer between poster-paint scenes of the Egyptian desert and an Alexandria that more or less resembled modern Las Vegas. The cast seemed more or less left to fend for themselves, for the real point of the production seemed to be to showcase the dress designs of Christian Lacroix. They might have worked wonders for a fundraising operatic gala but they had little connection with anything else that was going on. Fleming’s countless changes of wardrobe – they probably were not that many, yet their focal nature made it seem as if they were – resembled the behaviour of a television hostess for an awards ceremony. The last one was almost – but not quite – surreally inappropriate for someone who had entered a convent and was on her deathbed. All too lengthy scene changes, not only between but even within acts, dissipated what little dramatic tension there might have been. And certain members of the audience seemed unable even to listen, applauding before numbers had finished, perhaps most bizarrely during the celebrated violin Méditation. What happened once the Méditation had oame to an end verged upon the incredible. Not only was there applause, but López-Cobos joined in and summoned the soloist to his feet in the pit. Was this a post-modern take upon performance, reception, and so on? It would have been irritating or worse if it had been, but it just appeared to be part of the same ‘gala experience’. If the performers and production team do not even try to take the work seriously, it is a little much to ask others to do so.

What of the singing? That was better, though hardly outstanding. Fleming at her best sounded at her best but her diction was variable and she exhibited some surprisingly ropy intonation. Thomas Hampson was more dramatically credible as Athanaël. During the first act, his performance sometimes tended towards crudity, but it might be argued that this was not inappropriate for the character. Later on, he became more mellifluous, although his French did not always sound idiomatic. Michael Schade was better in that respect as Nicias, even though he sometimes sounded a little out of vocal sorts. (I am not sure that I can blame him; he would surely have preferred to be singing Tamino.) It was quite a relief to hear the French style – both verbal and musical – of Alain Vernhes’s Palémon. I was not surprised when consulting the programme afterwards to discover that the role had been assumed by a Frenchman. Maria Zifchak’s small contribution as Albine was therefore all the more to be cherished, since she had no such native advantage.

What I cannot understand, though, is why one would choose this work if one were Renée Fleming. It seems difficult to believe that there was any other reason for its revival. And yet, surely there are so many other, more gratifying roles in which she could have excelled. Much as I may deplore it, I can understand the cult of the singer, but it is an odd cult indeed if the music and the drama are so uninvolving. Thaïs or the Marschallin? I should have thought that decision would be, as many Americans like to say, a ‘no-brainer’.