Salzburg Festival (3) - The Bassarids, 23 August 2018

Felsenreitschule

 Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Agave / Venus), Károly Szemerédy (Captain / Adonis), Vera-Lotte Böcker (Autonoe / Proserpine), Nikolai Schukoff (Tiresias / Calliope)
Images: © Salzburger Festspiele / Bernd Uhlig

Dionysus – Sean Panikkar

Pentheus – Russell Braun

Cadmus – Willard White
Tiresias, Calliope – Nikolai Schukoff
Captain, Adonis – Károly Szemerédy
Agave, Venus – Tanja Ariane Baumgartner
Autonoe, Proserpine – Vera-Lotte Böcker
Beroe – Anna Maria Dur
Dancers – Rosalba Guerrero Torres, Hector Buenfil Palacio, Flavie Haour, Katharina Platz, Javier Salcedo Hernandez

Krzysztof Warlikowski (director)

Małgorzata Sczczęśniak (designs)
Felice Ross (lighting)
Denis Guéguin (video)
Claude Bardouil (choreography)
Christian Longchamp (dramaturgy)

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Huw Rhys James)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Kent Nagano (conductor)

 

The Bassarids returns to Salzburg, where it was born, now more than half a century ago, in 1966, only this time in Auden and Kallman’s original English. (That premiere had to wait until two years later, in Santa Fe.) What a thrill it proved to hear those opening orchestral cries once again from the Vienna Philharmonic, swiftly followed by its equally fine chorus: ‘Pentheus is now our Lord!’ Kent Nagano succeeded admirably, moreover, in balancing the claims of reason and abandon. How one does that may remain a matter of debate – I should not have minded a little more of the latter, especially during the ‘Hunt of the Menads’ – but, drawing upon his experience of having conducted the work (in German) in Munich ten years ago, Nagano made his own case, revealing oft-hidden, if not quite unsuspected Stravinskian neo-Classical tendencies: very much in the line of the contest – all too often misunderstood as synthesis – between Stravinsky and Schoenberg in Henze’s preceding Prince of Homburg.

 

Russell Braun (Pentheus), Sean Panikkar (Dionysus)

The return was, doubtless aptly, not quite a return: restoration, rather than renewal, should never be the aim. The premiere production, conducted by Christoph Dohnányi, had been seen and heard next door to the Felsenreitschule, in Karajan’s Grosses Festspielhaus. It was near enough, though, to claim lineage – so important a concept for the authority and authoritarianism, as well as attempted, pretended liberation therefrom, in this work, be it ‘dramatic’ or ‘aesthetic’. (Is there, should there, be a distinction?) This was the work, above all, that made Henze’s name in the mainstream – and had him fear what he had become, had him urgently question his ‘world success’. (What did that mean, he asked in an interview many years later? To be a Leonard Bernstein? No, thank goodness. And now the latter’s centenary has peaked, perhaps we can return to considering him a great conductor and a negligible composer.)

Only two years later, Henze would proclaim, with all the natural theatricality that had stood him in such good stead here: ‘Unnecessary are new museums, opera houses, and world premieres. Necessary, to set about the realisation of dreams. Necessary, to abolish the dominion of men over men.’ There was, however, and still is a great deal of revolution in The Bassarids. As with Wagner, as with Stravinsky, as with any number of other artists, we should be wary of taking Henze’s self-assessment on trust. He had his reasons, many of them good, for reacting and indeed for presenting himself as he did. Excessive cynicism is (by definition) unnecessary. Nevertheless, a fine production from Krzysztof Warlikowski – we might well consider it almost a companion piece to recent operatic work of his on Die Gezeichneten (Munich) and From the House of the Dead (London), as well as to his justly celebrated Iphig­­énie en Tauride (Paris) – reminds us not only why many consider this the composer’s single finest stage work, but how in some senses it may be seen pre-emptively to criticise as well as necessitate his most overtly ‘politically engaged’ works of the decade to come.

Dionysus

The opening takes us back to Euripides, to Dionysus before the palace at Thebes, outlining the reasons for his visit. (Some of that material is also present in the introductory ‘Mythological Background’ section to my Schott score, at least implied to be part of the penumbra to the ‘work’.) Dionysus speaks, amplified, very much as a god from beyond. We see a mysterious hooded figure, whom we presume to him – he is subsequently confirmed as such – who may or may not actually be speaking these words. His mission, however, is clear – at least from his side of the family, argument, and palace walls. He will avenge himself and his mother, Semele, upon their remaining earthly family and, as we guess and soon will learn, upon the society, politics, and cultural practices of the city over which it rules. When we see the royal family, its old guard first, Pentheus only later, its classic modern authoritarian-fascism is clear. Warlikowski’s frequent collaborator, Małgorzata Sczczęśniak accomplishes much with male military uniforms and female ‘look’. Cadmus in a wheelchair veers just the right side of cliché, which seems just about right: he is, after all, a retired dictator, and he would wear dark glasses; more to the point, perhaps, our thoughts concerning such matters are more often than not clichés, in need of a little revision – or revolution.

Cadmus (Willard White)

But is it this revolution? Is it indeed possible to revise or to overthrow what needs to be revised or overthrown, whether in or out of the opera house? Dionysus’s conquest is one we all want. None of us wants Pentheus’s authoritarianism: as much, surely, Theodor Adorno’s ‘authoritarian personality’ and Herbert Marcuse’s ‘one-dimensional man’ as previously existing fascism. Indeed, ussell Braun’s performance proved well judged: a tricky and thankless task. That, perhaps, is why we find Cadmus, here in a richly sympathetic performance from Willard White (the best I have heard from him in some time), more sympathetic than perhaps we ought. We are most likely to sympathise, indeed to empathise, with the women – note, as dramaturge Christian Longchamp advises us, ‘couples are absent. Cadmus, Agave, Antonoe and Pentheus live alone, as do the prophet Tiresias and the wet-nurse Beroe’ – who lead us if not on then towards Dionysus’s merry, intoxicating, catastrophic dance, towards Semele, ‘at one free, dominating and castrating’. Nikolai Schukoff, a mesmerising Dionysus in Munich, returned as a Tiresias both manipulator and manipulated, blind and yet seeing, in an equally brilliant, disconcerting performance here.

Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Agave), Vera-Lotte Böcker (Beroe)

 

As the Pasolini-echoing (120 Days of Sodom) narrative unfolds, as bourgeois, patriarchal repression comes under assault, none of us would wish it otherwise – certainly not the figures of the court who sado-masochistically enact the Calliope Intermezzo (here included, although sometimes cut with the composer’s approval), and certainly not Pentheus’s own mother, Agave, whose personal tragedy will be revealed as glorification of the hunt-revolt that has killed her son. Think not only of the price, which is obvious (heart-rendingly so as we observe, share in the recognition of Tanja Ariane Baumgartner), but the gain? Dionysus has moved on. He is as much our unconscious desire, certainly so in so superlative performance as that of Sean Panikkar, as god. Or is that not what a god is anyway? Might not Pentheus have told us that? For whilst we were won over – we were, were we not? – by Panikkar’s mystery, his lyrical yet also heroic tenor, the vulnerability and indeed the mental instability implied by his involuntary shaking, we persuade ourselves that we knew all along there was something unhealthy to the cult of Semele, show tomb we always see before us, venerated by many who should have known better.

 

Beroe and Agave

We always knew better, did we not? We never really backed the Nazis, the fascists, the misogynists, the homophobes, the… And yet, on the other hand, we had already foreseen the objections. We actually rather liked those ‘new museums, opera houses, and world premieres’ all along.  The ‘realisation of dreams’: no, that was someone else, not us. Until Dionysus returns and we, the crowd, the sheep, continue the revolutionary dance we had always wanted. ‘Perché siamo tutti in pericolo.’ Or, to quote Helmut Lachenmann, in his far from conciliatory open letter to Henze (who had, in fairness to Lachenmann, proved far more hostile to him):

… that outbreak of the muzzled subject into a new emotional immediacy will be untrue, and degenerate into self-deception, wherever the fat and comfortable composer, perhaps slightly scarred structurally and therefore the more likely to complain, sets up house once again in the old junk-room of available emotions.

… Those who believe that expressive spontaneity, and innocent drawing from the venerable reservoir of affect, make that struggle of the fractured subject with itself superfluous, and spare it an engagement with the traditional concepts of material, have disabled their own voice. They are gladly allowed to sit in the lap of a society which encourages those who support its repressive game.

Did Henze, or at least his material, know that all along – in their way, just as much as Lachenmann? Wolfgang Rihm, admired by both, might tell us; did he not, after all, write a Nietzschean opera entitled Dionysos, also premiered at Salzburg? Or is that, like other third ways, just to prolong the agony? Are such ready equations between the aesthetic and the political part of the problem, the solution, or both?

Salome, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 17 March 2018

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Annika Schlicht (Herodias's Page), Oscar Wilde (Christian Natter), Salome (Aušrine Stundytė)

Herod – Gerhard Siegel

Herodias – Marina Prudenskaya

Salome – Aušrine Stundytė

Jochanaan – Thomas J. Mayer

Narraboth – Nikolai Schukoff

Herodias’s Page – Annika Schlicht

Jews – Dietmar Kerschbaum, Ziad Nehme, Linard Vrielink, Andrés Moreno García, David Oštrek

Nazarenes – Adam Kutny, Ulf Dirk Mädler

Soldiers – Arttu Kataja, Dominic Barbiere

A Cappadocian – David Oštrek

A Slave – Corinna Scheurle

Oscar Wilde – Christian Natter

Hans Neuenfels (director)

Philipp Lossau (assistant director)

Reinhard von der Thannen (designs)

Kathrin Hauer (assistant stage designer)

Sommer Ulrickson (choreography)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Henry Arnold (dramaturgy)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

‘These Germans: they are obsessed with sex.’ Such were the puzzling words I heard from an irate Frenchman in the queue behind me for the cloakroom at the close of this performance of Salome. Far be it to suggest that ‘the French’ might also have a reputation for an interest in such matters, but I could not help but wonder whether, if he were weary of at least implicit sexual context onstage, Salome were really the opera for him. As it happens, Hans Neuenfels’s excellent new production, provocative in the best sense, is far more concerned with the absence of sex, sexual repression, the ultimate inability to perform, and, following Oscar Wilde in particular here, the aestheticisation of such problems, than with sexual display or fulfilment. Prudishness and aversion take many forms, however, as Neuenfels also suggests.

For Wilde is placed, increasingly literally, centre stage. Not having looked properly at the cast list, let alone the programme, beforehand, I had not realised that this would be so. Instead, as intended, it gradually became clear that the actor, whose role I could not quite place, either in the work or more laterally, was Wilde himself. The neon sign, ‘Wilde is coming’, had announced it clearly enough,’ I realised – just as Jochanaan announced one who would follow him. Not that the accomplished, mesmerisingly versatile Christian Natter, in this entirely mute role, is made up to resemble the playwright: we are, let us give thanks, at a level of drama beyond the caricature of the impressionist. Eventually the green carnation gives the game away: the only instance throughout the entire evening of a colour on stage that is not black, white, or red (typically sharp, meaningfully coloured designs by longtime Neuenfels collaborator, Reinhard von der Thannen). But before that, a world of Victorian sexual repression, that of the society from which Wilde sprang, has been constructed. Its imperialism is nodded to, in very British Empire uniforms for the soldiers: let us play at governing the Middle East, with catastrophic consequences to be seen to the present day and beyond.

Jochanaan (Thomas J. Mayer), Herodes (Gerhard
Siegel), Herodias (Marina Prudenskaya)

More to the point, John the Baptist, foreteller of Christianity – perhaps, in this reading, more so than Christ himself, certainly more of a hypocritical moral fanatic – is encased in what Neuenfels calls ‘a phallus or rocket of indignation, a constant appeal to obdurate, concealed, packed away carnality. This results in a constant ban, a threat.’ The traditional cistern is gone, but as Henry Arnold, Neuenfels’s dramaturge points out, Strauss wrote to Ernst von Schuch, conductor of the first performance, that Jochanaan ‘should be understandable without a voice pipe. Maybe he could sing through a gaze veil (a hole in the wall, invisible to the audience) with his head two feet above the floor so that he sees the conductor and can sing directly to the audience. This is very important.’ Take that, alleged ‘respecters’ of ‘the composer’s intentions’. What is it that our proto-ayatollah objects to? In a sense, it does not really matter, for such things are more matters of opportunism than anything else, as the ‘religious Right’ backers of Donald Trump testify more clearly than ever. What Neuenfels opens up is the possibility of a more thoroughgoing exploration of gender and orientation. Salome herself becomes a significantly gender-bending figure, her absurd, ultra-stylised (which is, crucially, to say aestheticised) Victorian bustle transposed onto others, Wilde and Jochanaan chief amongst them. Who dresses up? Who dresses whom? With what intent?

Wilde, Salome

When Herod commands, or rather requests, ‘Dance for me, Salome’, does he too want as much of an aesthetic as a sexual experience? Do we err to distinguish the two? (Given recent reports of sexual abuse by conductors, the question seems especially relevant now.) He has his own reasons, as such ‘immoral’ rulers tend to, in many ways far less objectionable than those who loudly trumpet their ‘morality’; he is weak more than anything else, as signalled by Herodias’s theft of and refusal to return his ring of kingship. Make of that gesture, so rich in symbolism political and sexual, what you will. Meanwhile Wilde, increasingly confident, perhaps as in his play, in his denunciation of denunciation, allows his homosexuality to become clearer – and, more important still, to acquire greater dramatic agency. When he dances, as angel of death, with Salome, a game of omnisexual sadomasochism unfolds, the poet’s leather harness-corset (which?) and what he does with it speaking a thousand words (back at least as far as Neuenfels’s brilliant Salzburg Così fan tutte, a work Strauss, a true Mozart connoisseur, so adored).

But, in a world of such repression, what does one put in the place of sexual freedom? Aestheticism, of course, in Wilde’s case – and, surely, in Strauss’s too, throughout his career. Ever the student of Nietzsche rather than Wagner, Strauss believed in art above all else: indeed, perhaps only in art. Thus the constructions we place on stage, and the very constructions we make of them in our minds too, play their part in a similar game, perhaps even identical, at the very least related – depending, most likely, upon who we are, even how we feel on the night. Salome – sometimes a girl, sometimes a more progressive, perhaps older, woman with something of the caricatured lesbian to her, sometimes perhaps a surrogate for the young man Wilde, on and off stage, may be seeking – focuses her own aesthetics upon her construction of Jochanaan, who sometimes resembles what she thinks she wants, yet in other respects could hardly be more distant. The pent-up rage in which she smashes one of the multiple, ‘beautiful’ busts arranged on stage for her delectation following the dance is both a genuine act and a ‘work of art’, or at least an aspiration thereto, in itself. Has anyone learned of ‘love’ then? It seems unlikely. We have nevertheless learned a good deal about the lengths to which many of us will go in order to prevent ourselves and others from doing so.

Wilde, Salome

Thomas Guggeis, originally scheduled to conduct but one of these performances as assistant to Christoph von Dohnányi, ended up conducting them all. He did a very good job, the Staatskapelle Berlin seemingly very happy to play under his leadership. The weird musical world in which dances do not dance and non-dances do came across with considerable dramatic power. I have heard more outrageously, or at least phantasmagorically, coloured performances, but no single performance is likely in itself to respond equally to the manifold possibilities of Strauss’s score. There can be little doubt that this young conductor is a musician of great accomplishment, nor that we shall be hearing much more from him. What an opportunity, though, to have fallen to him!

Jochanaan

If tonal beauty were your thing, then Aušrine Stundytė’s Salome would most likely not be for you. Is the problematisation of such priorities, though, not one of the dramatic themes, at least possibly, of work and production? She certainly entered into the role with dramatic gusto and considerable stage presence. One heard, moreover, many more of the words, words moreover imbued with true verbal potency, than will often be the case. Thomas Johannes Mayer’s Jochanaan likewise navigated intriguingly between such polarities, offering a solution, however provisional, suited to his character and his portrayal. Looking at the royal couple from the other side of that (doubtless too) crude opposition, Gerhard Siegel and Marina Prudenskaya offered formidably sung performances, more so than one will often hear, without sacrifice to the drama. Nikolai Schukoff’s astute, enigmatic, vocally ravishing Narraboth was perhaps the single most impressive performance of all.

Narraboth (Nikolai Shukoff), Salome, Jochanan
Images: Monika Rittershaus

Indeed, at the time, one rather resented Narraboth’s being elbowed aside by Wilde – which is surely the point. And yet soon we did not, for criticism of society, his, Salome’s, and ours, becomes all the more necessary. Until the drama, musical rather than scenic, less closes than stops. It could be Wozzeck, almost, except in its aestheticism, it is anything but. Wozzeck does not die of boredom; Salome does, but whose? Patriarchy remains, but do we care - truly care, as opposed to claiming to?

Munich Opera Festival: Henze - The Bassarids, 19 July 2008

(sung in German as Die Bassariden)

Nationaltheater, Munich

Dionysos – Nikolai Schukoff
Pentheus – Michael Volle
Kadmos – Sami Luttinen
Teiresias/ Kalliope – Reiner Goldberg
Hauptmann/Adonis – Christian Rieger
Agaue/Venus – Gabriele Schnaut
Autonoe/Proserpina – Eir Inderhaug
Beroe – Hanna Schwarz

Christof Loy (director)
Johannes Leiacker (designs, costumes)
Olaf Winter (lighting)
Evita Galanou, Üli Nüesch, Thomas Wollenberger (video)
Thomas Wilhelm (choreography)
Peter Heilker (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Andrés Maspéro)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Marc Albrecht (conductor)

This was my second Auden and Kallman opera within a week, except that it was sung in Maria Bosse-Sporleder’s German translation (as generally seems to have been the practice in German-speaking countries, ever since the Salzburg premiere). I thought I should miss the original text but this performance, in the presence of the composer, was such an extraordinary triumph that I soon forgot all about that, my sole reservation.

Christof Loy’s production seemed to me to show a profound understanding of the issues at stake in this seemingly Dionysian opera, which is yet at best ambivalent towards the personal and sexual freedom apparently celebrated therein. There was nothing intrusive about the direction; it was evidently harnessed to the service of the work and its performance, and was therefore all the stronger for it. The state of a society in crisis came across vividly, as did the sense of very real, all-too-seductive danger, tending towards that society’s dissolution. The state of a society in crisis came across vividly, as did the sense of very real, all-too-seductive danger, tending towards that society’s dissolution. Dionysus’s own predicament – human, all too human, despite or perhaps on account of his divinity – was searingly portrayed too. There was even humour, in the nods – beyond Dionysus’s advice to Pentheus – towards cross-dressing, but not so much as to distract from the main thrust of the dramatic argument. It was clear that all on stage were securely directed and thereby liberated to take full control of their own contributions.

The Bavarian State Orchestra was nothing short of magnificent in what must rank as one of Henze’s most complex scores. Precision, tonal warmth, individuality, and blend: all were there, just as they would be in a great performance of Mahler, Strauss, Berg, or any other master of the late- or post-Romantic orchestra. The consoling sweetness of the violins during Pentheus’s final words astonished, coming as it did immediately following the furious Hunt of the Mænads. An excellent production touch was to place the trumpets on stage at the outset, so that one saw as well as heard the fanfares. It by now goes without saying that the musical contribution was flawless. The orchestra deserves a great deal of credit in itself, yet there can be no gainsaying Marc Albrecht’s role at its helm. Albrecht’s command of the score was at least as impressive as that of his father, Gerd, or that of Christoph von Dohnányi, in the two fine recordings this work has received. If anything, Albrecht fils might have had the edge. Dramatic drive and symphonic integrity – is there a more truly symphonic opera? – were never in opposition but, as they should, contributed to and intensified each other dialectically. I was gripped throughout and without exception. The magnificent contribution from the chorus, both dramatically and musically, was a crucial factor in this respect. Given how much its members had to do, one might have expected a little fatigue or routine to set in, but they were equally impressive individually and corporately.

The principal cast was very fine too. Eir Indehaug’s somewhat anonyomous Autonoe was the only slight disappointment but that was probably more a reflection upon the standard of the rest. Michael Volle was outstanding in the title role; such was his identification with Pentheus, musically and dramatically, that one could only believe that he actually was the tormented king of Thebes. Nikolai Schukoff was every bit as good as Dionysos, all too credible in his equally-tormented seduction of a people, born of revenge for his mother, Semele. I do not think I had previously encountered him; the loss is entirely mine, for his sinuous tenor, responsiveness to the text, and utterly convincing stage-presence mark him out as an important artist indeed. Gabriele Schnaut no longer possesses an alluring voice, if ever she did. She remains, however, an extraordinary stage animal, so much so that the wobble is rendered irrelevant. Her despair and anger at discovering that she had wrenched the head from her son’s shoulders was truly tragic. I can imagine her now taking on a second career á la Anja Silja, and doing extremely well. If this Tiresias is anything to go on, Reiner Goldberg is clearly prospering in character roles, although he was perhaps occasionally a little too loud – rarely a fault with such an orchestral battering taking place – as Calliope, during the intermezzo of Pentheus’s dream. (As an aside, I have never understood why ‘Venus’ rather than ‘Aphrodite’ appears here, but never mind.) Other than that, his contribution was both witty and moving. Sami Luttinen was every inch the tragic elder statesman and patriarch as Cadmus. Christian Rieger was another new name to me, but he was deeply impressive as the king’s trusted captain. He navigated with aplomb the potentially tricky transition to his role as Adonis during the dream sequence, before reverting with equal success to the prior role. Rieger is clearly a fine actor too. As for Hanna Schwarz in the wonderful role of Beroe, she threatened to steal the show every time she employed her still magnificently deep voice.

This production must be issued on DVD.