Götterdämmerung, De Nederlandse Opera, 30 November 2013

Het Muziektheater, Amsterdam

Siegfried – Stephen Gould

Gunther – Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester
Alberich – Werner van Mechelen
Hagen – Kurt Rydl
Brünnhilde – Catherine Foster
Gutrune, Third Norn – Astrid Weber
Waltraute – Michaela Schuster
First Norn – Nicole Piccolimini
Second Norn, Wellgunde – Barbara Senator
Woglinde – Machteld Baumans
Flosshilde – Bettina Ranch

Pierre Audi (director)

George Tsypin (set designs)
Eiko Ishioka, Robby Duiveman (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Cor van den Brink (choreography)
Maarten van der Put (video)
Klaus Bertisch (dramaturgy)

Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra

Netherlands Opera Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

 

I shall try to make this relatively short, partly on account of time pressures, but also because I still have to watch the DVD set of this Amsterdam Ring from Hartmut Haenchen and Pierre Audi, and shall therefore be able to say more once I have seen the whole ‘cycle’. (I know the word is misleading in many ways, but it is now so ingrained that its use is sometimes well-nigh inevitable.) That said, a live experience can be very different from a filmed one; indeed, for me at least, the former is nearly always preferable. There is in any case a different cast for this run. Moreover, fellow speakers at the Internationaal Wagner Congres, which took me to Amsterdam in the first place, advised that Audi’s production, in particular George Tsypin’s brilliant set designs, did not really transfer very well to video. I shall see…

 

In many respects, it is Tsypin’s ring-like space – presumably developed in concert with Audi – that dominates proceedings: not in any sense limiting, but as a good production will do, enabling. (Stephen Langridge’s Parsifal, to which I shall come shortly, did quite the opposite: a rude, yet alas not-at-all surprising awakening, upon my return to London.) The ring is, cleverly, not circular but never meets, permitting a lengthy walkway up to the theatrical heights. Not only does that facilitate comings and goings, observations and retreats; it reminds us that Wagner’s Hegelian view of history – Schopenhauer notwithstanding – does not deal in the purely ‘cyclical’. In Götterdämmerung perhaps of all works, that is crucial. The audience is drawn in; indeed people watch – like the Immolation Scene ‘watchers’ themselves – from the extremities of the set. Equally innovative and provocative is the placing of the orchestra within the ‘ring’. It is, of course, quite a different conception from that of Wagner’s invisible orchestra at Bayreuth, which, bizarrely, no one seeks to follow.  Yet, in a sense, it has equally distinguished roots in Wagnerian æsthetics. Wagner’s conception of the orchestra as his Greek chorus does not rely upon an invisibility that was never the case in Athens; indeed, the complexity of the chorus’s engagement with drama is part of the point. We are reminded, moreover, of Patrice Chéreau’s stated Bayreuth wish, explicitly echoing Wagner, that ‘that the orchestra pit be, like Delphi’s smoking pit, a crevice uttering oracles — the Funeral March and the concluding redemption motif. The redemption motif is a message delivered to the entire world, but like all pythonesses, the orchestra is unclear, and there are several ways in which one might interpret its message. … Should one not hear it with mistrust and anxiety?’

 

Audi does not propose an overarching Konzept, at least not insofar as I could discern from this viewing of a single drama. Yet in no sense does his production seem vacuous. This is not Lepage (surely the very nadir: no criticism could be too harsh), Schenk, Braunschweig, or Cassiers. There is, may Wotan be thanked, no aping of a bad nineteenth-century naturalism, as Thomas Mann would have put it and whose utterly failure Wagner himself appreciated. Yet there is a sense both of myth – at some times vaguely eastern, the veils for Gutrune and Brünnhilde reminding one of Wagner’s (proto-)Schopenhauerian flirtations – and of its interaction with history: the very stuff of the Ring. Boundaries are fluid yet the presentation is far from formless. Thus the Gibichungs can sport stylised nineteenth-century fashion at one point, for instance Gutrune’s wedding dress, and Gunther’s hunting green with top hat, both admirably fitted to the attractive figures of Astrid Weber and Alejandro Marco-Buhrmester. At the same time there is a sense of the mists of myth and pre-history descending, the imaginative presentation of Brünnhilde’s final sinking into red oblivion a case in point: superficially similar, in its use of choreography and sheets, to that in the Berlin production of Guy Cassiers, yet so much more theatrical – and meaningful. Elegance is never exchanged for Loge’s anarchistic fire. And there is real fire too – somewhat mystifyingly at the end of the second act, but more meaningfully at the end of the third.  The Tarnhelm is used intelligently at the close of the first act, so that we see both mysterious visitors and their role in Brünnhilde’s fate. Too often - for instance, in Keith Warner's London staging - directors mess this up completely; not here.

 

Hartmut Haenchen’s direction had its moments. It was certainly preferable to the truly abysmal efforts of Antonio Pappano last year at Covent Garden. (I am beginning to think that legislation might be necessary to wrest Wagner from Pappano’s near-monopoly. A good musical director would recognise his strengths and more importantly his weaknesses, and distribute repertoire accordingly.) There was little of that stopping and starting, that driving hard and that grinding to a halt; yet, by the same token, there was some scrappy orchestral playing – the brass nearly inaudible at the end of the first act, when their steel should viscerally reflect the brutality of Brünnhilde’s rape – and Wagner’s melos was sometimes obscured.

 

Stephen Gould’s Siegfried was serviceable: more than one can often say, but it was neither an especially meaningful nor mellifluous performance. Catherine Foster displayed considerable dramatic commitment and, when her tone was properly focused, a fine command of Wagnerian line; intonation, however, was sometimes a problem.  Kurt Rydl, a wonderful Hagen in his time, showed that, whilst he can still act the part with the best of them, he should alas probably have retired a while ago, his voice often threadbare and lacking focus.  Weber, though her voice could sometimes prove attractive, had a tendency towards blowsiness. Marco-Buhrmester, though, was deeply impressive, his vocal delivery of text and music alike as elegant as his stage presence. Michaela Schuster’s Waltraute was the other star performance; as with Marco-Buhrmester, every word was made to tell, yet without exaggeration. Hers was a performance that drew one in as the production suggested. I only noticed afterwards that Eberhard Friedrich had trained the chorus; that made perfect sense, since its excellence put me in mind of Bayreuth at its best. More anon when I have watched the DVDs…

DVD Review: Der fliegende Holländer, Netherlands Opera

Daland - Robert Lloyd
Senta - Catherine Nagelstad
Erik - Marco Jentzsch
Mary - Marina Prudenskaja
Steersman - Oliver Ringelhahn
The Dutchman - Juha Uusitalo

Martin Kušej (director)
Martin Zehetgruber (set designs)
Heide Kastler (costumes)
Reinhard Traub (lighting)
Sebastian Huber (dramaturgy)
Joost Honselaar (television director)

Chorus of the Netherlands Opera (chorus master: Martin Wright)
Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra
Hartmut Haenchen (conductor)

Opus Arte OA 1049 D (166 minutes, recorded live at the Amsterdam Music Theatre, 16 and 25 February 2010).


The performance opens with a monochrome televisual storm, through which we see as well as hear strings, horns, kettledrums, other instruments, and eventually the conductor. Wagner’s opening bars prove furiously driven. Calmer seas greet the very slow, very soft English horn-led response, spots on the camera making clear the ‘framing’ of the filmic experience. The Overture, then, finds its roots in a backward-looking pot pourri conception, as opposed to forward-looking integrated symphonism, though it is perhaps not entirely without attempts to forge such a unity. Brass tend to Solti-like stridency, though the Netherlands Philharmonic woodwind evince winning perkiness and welcome lack of homogeneity. Urgency and stark contrast, then, are the watchwords, suggesting neither performance nor production will prove beholden to ‘tradition’, whatever that might be. When, towards the close of the Overture, we first view the stage, it is unclear whether the curtain has been up all along. A stark – again monochrome – set of steel and glass is immediately revealed, onto which runs a motley multi-coloured crew, one member sporting an unbecoming tropical shirt, equipped with lifejackets and lifebelts, as one registers the (relative) surprise of hearing in such a context Wagner’s 1860 ‘redemptive’ version of the coda. Were one wishing to distinguish oneself from Cosima’s Bayreuth ‘music-drama’ approach, the ‘original’ or at least an earlier version of the score might have provided greater consistency. However, one soon begins to realise that, by default or design, and I cannot believe that there is no design here, the conflict between ‘backward-’ and ‘forward-looking’ Wagner is being dramatised.

Wind ‘noise’ heightens, for better or worse, the orchestral storm throughout this opening scene. Fine choral singing throughout offers both weight and clarity, a credit to the Netherlands Opera Chorus. The Steersman, spotlit, dons a gold-lamé coat to deliver his song, taken very slowly, distended even, vocal strain telling not least through intonational insecurity; contrast is attained by speeding up considerably for the ‘Hoyohe!’ quasi-refrain. Tempo fluctuations mark the Dutchman’s ensuing monologue too, well delivered by the dark Finnish voice of Juha Uusitalo. This Dutchman is clearly tormented, but powerful too, looking forward, as does the orchestra, to the Wotan of the Walküre monologue. For all the modern dress and setting, though, the shadowy arrival of him and his crew has been accomplished in ghostly fashion, his other-worldliness intensified during the exchange with Daland. And it is clear that ‘exchange’ is on the latter’s mind, suave if shallow venality the guiding principle of Daland’s conduct, in an intelligent reading from Robert Lloyd.

Hartmut Haenchen has become increasingly prominent as a Wagner conductor. I first encountered him on disc at the helm of some rather hard-driven CPE Bach performances, then in the theatre leading Salome in Paris, which he also conducted relatively recently at Covent Garden, both solid if hardly unforgettable performances. As conductor for the Netherlands Opera Ring, directed by Pierre Audi (here credited as ‘artistic director’), and for Parsifal both in Paris and at La Monnaie, he has made claims for himself as a quasi-‘authentic’ Wagnerian, dubiously boasting of having led a swifter Parsifal even than Boulez, as if speed equated to tempo – though I believe Clemens Krauss, if not Hermann Levi, came in a few minutes faster still. Whatever the ideological stance, however, Haenchen’s performance is for the most part impressive, poised, like Martin Kušej’s production, between Wagner’s reimagined past and future. ‘Numbers’ have their own character, yet never distractingly so, as tends to happen when conductors become insistent upon Wagner’s debts to predecessors; the seeds of Bayreuth are to be identified too in a greater continuity. Likewise, the ghostly figure of the Dutchman, whose realm appears to be of an almost Schopenhauerian metaphysical realm, contrasts with the fistfuls of fifty euro notes gathered keenly by Daland and the Steersman.

The second act proved at first somewhat puzzling to me. There is just the one girl spinning: Senta. The rest are pampering themselves at a spa, towelling robes and all, with a swimming pool outside the window. A contrast is certainly drawn between Senta’s seriousness and the magazine-reading habits of the others, Mary included, but it seems an odd way to go about presenting it. However, one comes to realise that Kušej is also drawing a contrast between Senta’s present self – Catherine Nagelstad is hardly a girl, but nor does she now need to be – and a past simplicity, imagined or otherwise, hence the determined nature of her spinning amidst a backdrop of tawdry modern entertainment. The Dutchman’s hooded, marauding crew may be seen outside, leaving a dead body by the swimming pool, which turns red with bloody pollution. After a brief visit outside – into the real world? – Senta re-emerges to Erik with blood on her hands. Would-be purity cannot be maintained in such a world, though Nagelstad’s excellent marriage of Lieder-like detail with fine command of vocal line underlines the effort. There is, moreover, more than a hint of Nilsson-like sarcasm – again, this is no mere girl – to her delivery of the words ‘Ich bin ein Kind, und weiß nicht, was ich singe!’ When the Dutchman arrives, the meeting between the two of them is invented by Haenchen with a musical weight, if not always style, such as one might expect of the later Wagner. The stage is relatively empty, thinned out, too, Kušej emphasising the existentialist challenge the lovers offer to Daland’s empty materialism.

Once one has out of the way the embarrassing disco-dancing, neither attentive nor revealingly contradictory to the score, the third act continues to heighten the contrast between the late bourgeois-phenomenal world and a noumenal alternative; we also continue to follow a stronger portrayal of Erik than is generally encountered. He emerges as more dignified, more of a credible character, despite his backward-looking music. Though Erik may be no revolutionary, here and in the preceding act – especially upon the words ‘Satan hat dich umgarnt!’ – he presents us not only with a plausible alternative morality to either of the production’s two principal worlds, but also with true, deeply-felt anger, through Marco Jentzsch’s finely judged, not-quite-heroic portrayal. He may be romantic rather than Romantic, but he is no cipher. However, it is the darkly Romantic image of Senta’s portrait that is revealed as the final backdrop for Martin Zehetgruber’s set designs. Victory for erotic metaphysics over Erik’s more plausible humanity? Perhaps, but not quite, for, in a move that genuinely shocked me, Erik shoots dead first the Dutchman, upon his self-revelation, and, following her final words, Senta too. Then comes the ‘redemptive’ ending, where one might have expected Dresden. Viewing the two lovers upon a now-empty stage, one continues to question, though not necessarily to discount, the claims Wagner makes for redemption. His music may point us to Tristan, but that only begs further questions.

Prom 70: Saint François d'Assise, 7 September 2008, Netherlands Opera/Metzmacher

Royal Albert Hall

St Francis – Rod Gilfry
Angel – Heidi Grant Murphy
Leper – Hubert Delamboye
Brother Leo – Henk Neven
Brother Masseo – Charles Workman
Brother Elias – Donald Kaasch
Brother Bernard – Armand Arapian
Brother Sylvester – Jan Willem Balijet
Brother Rufus – André Morsch

The Netherlands Opera

Chorus of the Netherlands Opera (chorus master: Martin Wright)
The Hague Philharmonic Orchestra
Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

Even a concert performance of Messiaen’s St François d’Assise could hardly fail to be an event. As a centrepiece of the Proms centenary celebrations, this Netherlands Opera performance, more or less shorn of its Amsterdam production, was certainly a memorable occasion. It was disappointing that the audience was so small; in my naïveté, I had assumed that the rarity value alone would have guaranteed a large house, perhaps even a sell-out. The performance nevertheless received rapturous acclaim from true believers at the end of its well-nigh six hours (inclusive of two intervals).

There were many things to praise in this performance. The Hague Philharmonic Orchestra played very well, with especially valued contributions from its woodwind and percussion sections. The opening material, which returns throughout the opera, from awesomely synchronised tuned percussion was arresting, transfixing even, likewise the punchy wind ritornello that runs in parallel throughout the first scene. Messiaen’s huge woodwind – including seven (!) clarinets – and percussion sections – ten players in total – were throughout given their full head, nowhere more so than in the numerous auditions of the Gerygone (piccolos, xylophone, and glockenspiel). The unusual seating, with strings on the left of the conductor and wind to the right underlined visually and audibly the sectional writing. Percussion ran along the back of the stage, whilst the three ondes martenot were positioned one immediately in front of the conductor, with the other two in boxes on either side of the hall, again providing a fine sense of spatial awareness. One case in which this truly paid dividends was in the bizarre scoring for low ondes, double basses and contrabassoon during Lauds. Nor should one forget the strings. The sequence of exultation and ravishing, transformative orchestral beauty (strings and ondes) upon the healing of the Leper was unforgettable, as was the Angel’s musical performance (strings and ondes again): ethereal, divine music. The brass section really came into its own shortly afterwards and for the final scene, depicting St Francis’s death. Here was true majesty.

The ritual basis of the work came across very clearly, never more so than in the opening exchanges between St Francis and Brother Leo, which put me in mind of those between Mime and the Wanderer in Siegfried. On the other hand, there were passages in which the music and drama – such as it is – dragged, most of all in the latter half of the long second act. Whilst Ingo Metzmacher’s direction was for the most part impressive, the length of this act and the preponderance – at least after the rejuvenated fourth scene depicting the Journeying Angel – of contemplative music prepares a trap of somnolence that is very difficult to avoid. Rhythms, especially when it came to birdsong, were commendably tight. However, I did not feel that the score had always been quite so internalised as on, say, Kent Nagano’s superlative live recording from Salzburg. I also felt that Metzmacher might have wrung more sweetness, even sickliness out of the strings, on certain occasions. (Simon Rattle’s Turangalîla still echoed in my mind.) Metzmacher and the other performers were not, of course, helped by the lack of staging. This is no fault of the Proms, but sometimes I missed what might have come from a fully staged performance. In many senses, Messiaen’s work is an oratorio of distinct scenes or frescoes rather than an opera as conventionally or even unconventially understood, yet it nevertheless appears to cry out for staging. We should be grateful to the Proms for its contribution, whilst petitioning our opera companies – above all, the Royal Opera – to carry out their duty.

The solo singing was good, although there was a lack of any truly charismatic ‘star’ performance, which might have elevated the dramatic experience onto another level. In the title role, Rod Gilfry’s performance was of a generally high standard, although he lost the competitive edge with the orchestra on a few occasions. He acted as much as he could, making me want to see him in a full production, in which what seemed to be an impressively detailed characterisation might shine more fully. One could forgive his tiring towards the end of the second act and in parts of the third, but at the same time one could not help but notice it. Messiaen said that he wanted the soprano Angel’s voice to ‘be almost as pure as Pamina’s in The Magic Flute’. Heidi Grant Murphy achieved this to some extent, yet there were times when her voice became quite tremulous. The principal problem with her performance was the diction. I was extremely grateful for the text and translation in the programme, since the proportion of words that were comprehensible was often small indeed. Hubert Delamboye presented a vividly characterised Leper, with notably more idiomatic French than some other members of the cast. Whilst Hank Leven’s Brother Leo was eminently credible in dramatic terms – even without any staging to speak of – his repeated statements of ‘J’ai peur’ suffered from surprisingly strange vowel sounds. His sweet yet vulnerable tenor otherwise seemed just right for the role. Although it is a relatively small role, I was probably most impressed by Charles Workman’s Brother Masseo, which in its combination of thoughtfulness, musicality, and palpable practical piety – if you will forgive the excessive alliteration – seemed to me in every respect beyond reproach.

Overall, it was the third act that left the most powerful impression, not least through the outstanding choral contribution. In a 1992 interview with Jean-Christophe Marti, Messiaen remarked: ‘The stigmata represent the supreme mark if divinity on man, and this mark is painful.’ The composer was certainly convinced of the literal truth in this respect concerning St Francis, and indeed others, pointing to ‘a volume of eyewitness accounts, Considerations on the Stigmata, [which] leaves us in no doubt as to the veracity of the facts concerning Saint Francis’. The burning quality – in more than one sense – of Messiaen’s conviction is unmistakeable in the seventh scene and was unmistakeable in the performance. The chorus truly came into its own, here speaking as Christ: ‘C’est Moi, c’est Moi, c’est Moi, je suis l’Alpha et l’Oméga.’ In one sense, one might think of the opening Burning Bush scene from Moses und Aron. However, the apocalyptic nature of Messiaen’s vision is powerfully conveyed not through contrapuntal means but through solid blocks of homophony. The ecstasy of the chorus at the scene’s close was so strong that the lack of staging was now totally forgotten. In the following scene, the final chorus of the work brimmed with apocalyptic fervour and brought the performance to an overwhelming conclusion.

St François should perhaps be understood a synthetic work, like Busoni’s Doktor Faust, although I am not sure that Messiaen’s opera, despite its confessional advantage, has quite the Aquinas-like sense of summation of Busoni’s, its unfinished state notwithstanding. There is something compendious to St François. As Messiaen himself observed, ‘it contains virtually all the bird calls that I’ve noted down in the course of my life, all the colours of my chords, all my harmonic procedures.’ And yet, there are sections in which variety does appear to be lacking. Messiaen’s assemblage, his trademark juxtaposition in place of development, does not achieve uniformly favourable results, especially when confronted with so vast a time-span. Eternity, so often the composer’s concern, is not at all the same thing as a long time; indeed, if it can be dealt with or even hinted at at all, it is often better treated in the twinkling of an eye. Comparisons with Wagner seem to me quite to miss the point, serving only to draw attention to the lack of plasticity in much of Messiaen’s material and a less than infallible dramatic sense. As I mentioned above, the lack of staging was something of a problem in this respect, although one should doubtless not exaggerate. At its best, however, St François d’Assise stands as a monument to the belief, imagination, and accomplishment of one of the great composers of the twentieth century. It also reminds us that he stood both close to and yet distinct from many of that century’s most central compositional concerns. This distance could sometimes be a weakness yet could equally be a strength; it undoubtedly testifies to the astonishing singularity of Olivier Messiaen and his music.