Stemme/Svensson - Wagner, Liszt, Koch, Mahler, and Weill, 2 March 2023

Wigmore Hall

Wagner: Wesendonck-Lieder
Wagner-Liszt: Am stillen Herd aus Richard Wagner’s ‘Meistersinger’, S 448
Sigurd von Koch: Die geheimnisvolle Flöte
Mahler: Kindertotenlieder
Weill: Happy End: ‘Surabaya Johnny’; Nannas Lied; Youkali

Nina Stemme (soprano)

Magnus Svensson (piano)

What it is to hear a great voice such as Nina Stemme’s at close quarters. Doubtless there will be some – there always are – for whom this was not, according to their own arbitrary definition, ‘true Lieder singing’. (They probably said the same about Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, though would deny it now.) Such silly, anti-operatic snobbery aside, though, anyone actually listening to Stemme’s way with words, here at the Wigmore Hall just as on the stage at Covent Garden or Bayreuth, will have heard that it was precisely that, furthered by a voice that never needed to strain, yet which never sounded too big, and which sounded as if it could have gone on all night. 

The Wesendonck-Lieder are perhaps not the easiest place to begin, cold, but here was the hochdramatisch thing from the start. The size of Stemme’s voice was apparent, of course, but so too were seemingly endless reserves of breath. Hardly surprisingly, echoes – presentiments, really – of Tristan und Isolde were heard. And the leisure of the close to the opening ‘Stehe still!’ was indicative of an approach that could and did take its time, seeing no reason to rush, without even the slightest hint of dragging. Magnus Svensson proved a supportive pianist, but this was really Stemme’s show, ‘Der Engel’ beginning with relative intimacy, blooming at her behest, the piano in tandem. There was a little of Isolde on stage too, Stemme gazing into the distance in the piano introductions to ‘Im Treibhaus’ and ‘Träume’: not stagey, but rather poised. The former’s tessitura permitted a taste of what her Brangäne might have been like too. Ringing top notes in ‘Schmerzen’ and ‘Träume’ alike, the former leading to a truly exultant climax, the latter’s detailed colouring, each reiteration of the word ‘Träume’ subtly different, a joy in itself. If Svensson’s solo rendition of Liszt’s Meistersinger paraphrase proved a little stiff, freer the more it became Liszt proper, then it was a welcome opportunity to hear a true rarity. 

Another rarity was Sigurd von Koch’s 1916 song-cycle, Die geheimnisvolle Flöte, in a well-judged performance that might have been prepared for a repertoire work. Setting poems from Hans Bethge’s collection Die chinesische Flöte, known to many musicians from Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, Koch offers well-crafted responses, firmly rooted in German song tradition, yet with occasional hints of something more Debussyan (in harmony, rather than word-setting). Stemme and Svensson treated each of the five songs individually, with their own moods, yet also as part of a greater whole. The sadness of ‘Traurig Frühlingsnacht’ and the dark defiance of the closing ‘Herbstgefühl’ – no gentle autumnal – were especially captivating, the latter quite something in performance. 

Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder is, of course, absolutely central to the repertoire, more often heard in orchestral guise, yet with such clarity and spareness heard here perhaps sounding both more starkly modernist and closer to Bach. Stemme offered great clarity too, both of line and of purpose, though she was certainly not deaf to Mahler’s irony, a nice link to the Weill songs to come. If it were difficult not to think of this performance in some sense as ‘operatic’, it was certainly not so in a negative way. As in the Wesendonck-Lieder, Stemme was not afraid to colour with tuning, a sign of well-placed confidence as well as artistic judgement. She, as well as Svensson, used harmony – for instance on the words ‘O Augen’ in the second song – to evoke Wagnerian mystery. The intensity of ‘Wenn dein Mütterlein’ gave way to still greater sadness, again not without irony or indeed straightforward delusion, in ‘Oft denk’ ich sie sind nur augegangen’. True Mahlerian horror was unleashed in the closing ‘In diesem Wetter, in diesem Braus’, the hallucinatory final stanza a proper heir to Winterreise. (Now there is an intriguing prospect.) 

Stemme’s use of words was crucial in Weill – with and without Brecht – in which three songs she continued to hold the audience in the palm of her hand. Svensson’s pianism seemed just the thing here too, idiomatic throughout. So vividly communicative was Nannas Lied that surely a listener without texts and without a word of German would have had a strong idea of the ‘Liebesmarkt’ and the challenges of moving beyond ‘siebzehn’. The tango rhythms of Youkali offered still more alluring cabaret, also – perhaps oddly – making me think we need to hear Stemme in Schoenberg, from the cabaret of the Brettl-Lieder to full-throated Erwartung. As an encore we heard the Broadway Weill: ‘My Ship’ from Lady in the Dark, despatched indeed with sails made of silk, Stemme’s English as perfect as her German. Wonderful!

Munich Opera Festival (4) - Parsifal, 31 July 2018

Nationaltheater

 

Parsifal (Jonas Kaufmann) and the Flowermaidens
Images: Ruth Walz

Amfortas – Christian Gerhaher

Titurel – Bálint Szabó

Gurnemanz – René Pape
Parsifal – Jonas Kaufmann
Klingsor – Wolfgang Koch
Kundry – Nina Stemme
First Knight of the Grail – Kevin Conners
Second Knight of the Grail – Callum Thorpe
Squires – Paula Iancic, Annika Schlicht, Manuel Günther, Matthew Grills
Flowermaidens – Golda Schultz, Selene Zanetti, Annika Schlicht, Nolevuyiso Mpofu, Paula Iancic, Rachael Wilson
Voice from Above – Rachael Wilson
 

Pierre Audi (director)

Georg Baselitz, Christof Hetzer (set designs)
Florence von Gerkan, Tristan Sczesny (costumes)
Urs Schönebaum (lighting)
Klaus Bertisch, Benedikt Stampfli (dramaturgy)
 

Children’s Chorus, Chorus and Extra Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus masters: Stellario Fagone and Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

  

And so, this year’s Munich Opera Festival and this year’s Bavarian State Opera season came to a close with everyone’s favourite Bühnenweihfestspiel, Parsifal, in the final outing this time around for Pierre Audi’s new production. With a cast of dreams, an orchestra of distinction conducted by Kirill Petrenko, not to mention a world-class opera chorus, what could be not to like? Nothing for much of the audience, it would seem. Alas, for me it proved a grave disappointment, for which the responsibility must either lie with me, Audi, or both of us.

Amfortas (Christian Gerhaher) and members of the chorus

I am not sure I have ever seen a production of Parsifal so lacking in – well, anything. Goodness knows one can argue about what this work is about, what its problems might be, what its extraordinary virtues might be, even what it might be made to be about, and so on and forth. Goodness knows directors can come up with execrable concepts or execute their concepts, good or bad, less than well. I speak from the bitter experience of having attended a good few, not least the present Uwe Eric Laufenberg farrago at Bayreuth, which somehow manages both to be intensely offensive in its Islamophobia and unbearably boring. Audi, however, seems to have no discernible thoughts about it whatsoever. I almost have nothing beyond that to say, so shall keep the rest of this very short. Its selling point – to some, anyway – seems always to have been designs by the strangely overrated visual artist, Georg Baselitz. They struck me as very much in keeping with what else I have seen from Baselitz; if you like to look at this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you would have liked to look at. The first act, all of it, is set in a forest. For some reason, the knights take off their outer clothes to reveal unflattering fattish naked suits, which suggest a degree of androgyny, although that suggestion seems later – by the Flowermaidens – to be refuted. The second act is barely staged at all, yet without any of the virtues of a concert performance. The third act returns to the forest. The end. To think that this succeeded a production by Peter Konwitschny beggars belief.

Parsifal and members of the chorus

Yet so oppressive are the designs, for that is really all the production can be, so different is the experience from a concert performance, that much very good – although not, I think, quite so good as many seem to have thought – musical work went largely to waste. Petrenko’s conducting was excellent, although it never seemed to me to dig so deep as, say, the work of a Barenboim or indeed, in days not so very distant, a Haitink. Still, there could be no real complaints either with Petrenko or his orchestra. His tempi in the first act, at least earlier on, felt relatively swift; I have no idea whether they actually were. Yet they never felt rushed; his was a fleet, at least slightly Boulezian conception, until it was not. For there was plenty of space, well taken, to manage the work’s ebb and flow – whilst seeming, and doubtless to a certain extent, being managed by the work’s ebb and flow. Interestingly, the opening of the third act, its Prelude in particular, sounded more anguished than anything in the second. If only some of the pain implied for Parsifal’s wayfaring had been otherwise reflected in the staging. This was certainly a reading that developed and, by any standards, marked a fine debut run in the work.

One oddity: I do not think I have heard such feeble Grail bells. According to the programme, however, this was a special instrument modelled by the Bayreuth piano company, Steingraeber, after the instrument used at the 1882 premiere. If so, the Meister was – not for the first time, nor even for the last – surely mistaken. The Bayreuth bells we know from, say, Karl Muck’s 1927 recording, in their 1926 design pack sound to my ears more impressive in every way. Or maybe I am just too wedded to what I think I ‘ought’ to hear.

Kundry (Nina Stemme) and Parsifal

 

Singing was certainly distinguished, although it was really the Amfortas and, perhaps more oddly, the Klingsor who stood out for me. Christian Gerhaher has recently, surprisingly, seemed more at home in opera than in Lieder, and so it was here. His fabled beauty of tone was never an end in itself but put to sweet, agonising dramatic work – alongside the fascinating suggestion, apparent in his eyes if nowhere else on stage, of a crazed, ecstatic religious visionary. Could that not have been the director’s concept, if he had no other? It would certainly have opened up all manner of possibilities. Wolfgang Koch’s way with words, music, and their combination marked him out as an uncommonly excellent Klingsor – even if Klingsors rarely disappoint. Again, one learned much simply from observing his facial expressions. Jonas Kaufmann offered lovely moments, lovely passages, and a great deal of verbal acuity too in his assumption of the title role. However, his voice really did not sound as I recall it from not so long ago; there were times when it sounded not only strained but worn. Let us hope that this was just an off-day (a highly relative off-day). He and Nina Stemme as Kundry were certainly not helped by Audi’s non-production. I am not entirely convinced that this is Stemme’s ideal role, but it is surely not unreasonable for us to adjust our expectations according to a particular artist’s abilities and conception. Something a little wilder either on stage or in voice, or ideally both, would not have gone amiss, but again there were no grounds for true complaint. Likewise with René Pape’s Gurnemanz. His beauty of tone remains, yet there is now far more of a sense of verbal response than once there was in his singing. If Parsifal, then, is for you primarily, even exclusively, about singing and more broadly about musical performance, you would have experienced something undoubtedly special. If, however, it needs to be for you a drama too, I cannot imagine your response would have been so very different from mine.

 

Munich Opera Festival (1) - Götterdammerung, 27 July 2018

Nationaltheater, Munich

Gutrune (Anna Gabler, Brünnhilde (Nina Stemme)
Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Siegfried – Stefan Vinke

Gunther – Markus Eiche

Hagen – Hans-Peter König

Alberich – John Lundgren

Brünnhilde – Nina Stemme

Gutrune, Third Norn – Anna Gabler

Waltraute, First Norn – Okka von der Damerau

Woglinde – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller

Wellgunde – Rachael Wilson

Flosshilde, Second Norn – Jennifer Johnston

Andreas Kriegenburg (director)

Georgine Balk (revival director)

Harald B. Thor (set designs)

Andrea Schraad (costumes)

Stefan Bolliger (lighting)

Zenta Haerter (choreography)

Marton Tiedtke, Olaf A. Schmitt (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus and Extra Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

What I am about to write must be taken with the proviso that I have not seen, this year or any other, the rest of Andreas Kriegenburg’s Munich Ring. Friends tell me that would have made little difference, yet I cannot know for certain. It is also an odd thing, perhaps, to start as well as to end with Götterdämmerung, although that oddness may well be overstated. Wagner’s initial intention was, after all, to write a single drama on the death of Siegfried; after a certain point in the formulation of the Ring project, much of what had been written as Siegfrieds Tod remained as Götterdämmerung. Might one even be able to recapture something of that initial intent, relying on the narrations here as they might originally have been conceived? Perhaps – and it is surely no more absurd intrinsically to watch – and to listen to – one of the Ring dramas than it is to one part of the Oresteia. On the other hand, a Götterdämmerung conceived as a one-off – whether in simple terms or as part of a series such as that presented some time ago by Stuttgart, each by a different director, glorying in rather than apologising for disjuncture and incoherence – will perhaps be a different thing from this. Anyway, we have what we have, and I can only speak of what I have seen and heard.

In that respect, I am afraid, this Götterdämmerung proved sorely disappointing – especially, although not only, as staging. Indeed, the apparent vacuity of the staging combined with what seemed a distinctly repertoire approach – yes, I know there will always be constraints upon what a theatre can manage – combined to leave me resolutely unmoved throughout. This did not seem in any sense to be some sort of post-Brechtian strategy, a parallel to where parts at least of Frank Castorf’s now legendary Bayreuth Ring started out – if not, necessarily, always to where they ended up. I distinctly had the impression that what acting we saw had come from a largely excellent cast. Is that at least an implicit criticism of the revival direction? Not necessarily. I know nothing of how what few rehearsals I suspect there were had been organised. I could not help but think, though, that once again Wagner’s wholesale rejection – theoretical and, crucially, practical too – of the ideology and practices of ‘normal’ theatres had once again been vindicated. This, after all, is the final day of a Bühnenfestspiel. At one point, he even wrote of post-revolutionary performances in a temporary theatre on the banks of the Rhine, after which it and the score would be burnt. Did he mean that? At the time, he probably did, just as we mean all sorts of things at the time we might not actually do in practice. Nevertheless, his rejection of everyday practice points us to an important truth concerning his works. As Pierre Boulez, whilst at work on the Ring at Bayreuth, put it: ‘Opera houses are often rather like cafés where, if you sit near enough to the counter, you can hear waiters calling out their orders: “One Carmen! And one Walküre! And one Rigoletto!”’ What was needed, Boulez noted approvingly, ‘was an entirely new musical and theatrical structure, and it was this that he [Wagner] gradually created’. Bayreuth, quite rightly, remains the model; Bayreuth, quite wrongly, remains ignored by the rest of the world.

Such unhelpfulness out of the way, what did we have? Details of Kriegenburg’s staging seem to borrow heavily – let us say, pay homage to – from other productions. The multi-level, modern-office-look set is not entirely unlike that for Jürgen Flimm’s (justly forgotten) Bayreuth staging. Brünnhilde arrives at the Gibichung Court with a paper bag over her head, although it is sooner shed than in Richard Jones’s old Covent Garden Ring. I shall not list them all, but they come across here, without much in the way of conceptual apparatus, more as clichés than anything else. Are they ironised, then? Not so far as I could tell.  I liked Siegfried’s making his way through a baffling – to him – crowd of consumers, as he entered into the ‘real world’, images from advertising and all. Alas, the idea did not really seem to lead anywhere.


A euro figure (€) is present; perhaps it has been before. First, somewhat bafflingly, it is there as a rocking horse for Gutrune; again, perhaps there is a backstory to that. Then, it seems to do service – not a bad idea, this – as an unclosed ring-like arena for some of the action, although it is not quite clear to me why it does at some times and not at others. Presumably this is the euro as money rather than as emblematic hate-figure for the ‘euroscepticism’ bedevilling Europe in general and my benighted country in particular. (That said, I once had the misfortune to be seated in front of Michael Gove and ‘advisor’, whose job appeared to be to hold Gove’s jacket, at Bayreuth; so who knows?) There also seems to be a sense of Gutrune as particular victim, an intriguing sense, although again it is only intermittently maintained. Doubtless her behaviour earlier on, drunk, hungover, posing for selfies with the vassals, might be ascribed to her exploitation by the male society; here, however, it comes perilously close to being repeated on stage rather than criticised. That she is left on stage at the end, encircled by a group of actors who occasionally come on to ‘represent’ things – the Rhine during Siegfried’s journey, for instance – is clearly supposed to be significant. I could come up with various suggestions why that might be so; I am not at all convinced, however, that any of them would have anything to do with the somewhat confused and confusing action here.

Siegfried (Stefan Vinke), Hagen (Hans-Peter König), Gutrune

Kirill Petrenko led a far from negligible account of the score, which, a few too many orchestral fluffs aside – it nearly always happens in Götterdämmerung, for perfectly obvious reasons – proved alert to the Wagnerian melos. It certainly marked an advance upon the often hesitant work I heard from him in the Ring at Bayreuth. However, ultimately, it often seemed – to me – observed rather than participatory, especially during the Prologue and First Act. The emotional and intellectual involvement I so admired in, for instance, his performances of Tannhäuser and Die Meistersinger here in Munich was not so evident. Perhaps some at least of that dissatisfaction, however, was a matter of the production failing to involve one emotionally at all. The Munich audience certainly seemed more appreciative than I, so perhaps I was just not in the right frame of mind.

Waltraute (Okka von der Damerau), Brünnhilde

Much the same might be said of the singing. Nina Stemme’s Brünnhilde redeemed itself – as well, perhaps, as the world – in the third act, recovering some of that sovereign command we know, admire, even love, although even here I could not help but reflect how surer her performance at the 2013 Proms under Daniel Barenboim had been. There is nothing wrong with using the prompter; that is what (s)he is there for, as Strauss’s Capriccio M. Taupe might remind us. Stemme’s – and not only Stemme’s – persistent resort thereto, however, especially when words were still sometimes confused, was far from ideal during the first and second acts. Stefan Vinke ploughed through the role of Siegfried, often heroically, sometimes with a little too grit in the voice, yet with nothing too much to worry about. It was not a subtle portrayal, but then, what would a subtle Siegfried be?

Hagen and Gunther (Markus Eiche)

Some might have found Hans-Peter König a little too kindly of voice as Hagen; I rather liked the somewhat avuncular persona, with a hint of concealment. Again, there was no doubting his ability to sing the role. Markus Eiche and Anna Gabler were occasionally a little small of voice and, in Eiche’s case, presence as his half-siblings, but there remained much to admire: Gabler’s whole-hearted embrace of that reimagined role, for one thing. Okka von der Damerau made for a wonderfully committed, concerned Waltraute: as so often, the highlight of the first act. John Lundgren’s darkly insidious Alberich left one wanting more, much more. The Rhinemaidens and Norns were, without exception, excellent. I especially loved the contrasting colours – Jennifer Johnson’s contralto-like mezzo in particular – and blend from the latter in the opening scene. If there are downsides to repertory systems, casting from depth as here can prove a distinct advantage. Choral singing was of the highest standard too.

Brünnhilde, Gunther, and the vassals

If only the production, insofar as I could tell, had had more to say and more to bring these disparate elements together. Without the modern look, it might often as well have been Robert Lepage or Otto Schenk.

Elektra, Vienna State Opera, 26 June 2017

Vienna State Opera

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Regine Hangler

Klytämnestra – Waltraud Meier

Orest – Alan Held

Aegisth – Herbert Lippert

First Maid – Monika Bohinec

Second Maid – Ilsyear Khayrullova

Third Maid – Ulrike Helzel

Fourth Maid – Lauren Michelle

Fifth Maid – Ildikó Raimondi

Overseer – Donna Ellen

Young Servant – Benedikt Kobel

Old Servant – Dan Paul Dumitrescu

Orest’s tutor – Wolfgang Bankl

Confidante – Simina Ivan

Trainbearer – Zoryana Kushpler

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Karin Voykowitsch (revival director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)

Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)

Andreas Grüter (lighting)

Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Michael Boder (conductor)

I first saw Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s production of Elektra in 2014; two-and-a-half years on, it still impresses, although much seemed at least a degree less sharp – not in pitch, well not always...! – than first time around. Perhaps that is simply a reflection of available rehearsal time and the travails of a repertory house. It had the consequence, to my mind somewhat regrettable, of throwing the focus more upon the musical performances as such – not, of course, that they are not greatly important – and less upon the sum of the parts, or, if one must, the Gesamtkunstwerk.

As I observed last time, Laufenberg’s production is intelligent throughout and, for the work, intriguingly different, although not for the sake of ‘difference’. It is certainly infinitely preferable to his truly dreadful Bayreuth Parsifal, which manages somehow to be deathly boring and downright offensive at the same time. (Let us hope, against hope, for major revisions this summer!) Rolf Glittenberg’s set designs remain in keeping with the general ‘look’ of Elektra: does any major opera seem to lend itself less to a radical change of scenery? Accentuating the domesticity is in line with the Strauss-Hofmannsthal psychoanalytical approach to the myth. It is not that there is anything small-scale about this, but we are reminded that this is a home, a home of sadness, of ‘perversion’, whatever that might be, and far less a political setting. That said, I thought the interwar – Nazi-ish – overtones of the costumes, of the characters’ look, came across more strongly than last time. This is not simply a place of death, but a place death has visited and will not release for particular reasons. One need not worry too much about that context if one does not wish, but the uniforms and dogs are suggestive.

The lift connecting the palace proper to the courtyard remains a crucial cabinet of movement, of display, a cabinet of curiosities taken to its deadly extreme. Klytämnestra descends, twice (the second time dead) in it, and Aegisth never reaches the top. Behind the glass, the characters, above all Klytämnestra already seems encased, entombed: a taxidermist’s objet d’art, as I thought of it last time. Again, I can imagine that some might be irritated by the cliché of her wheelchair. But it is put to good, if relatively straightforward, use. Once her retinue is out of the way, she can put it to one side, actually engage with Elektra ‘as a mother’ – as Andrea Leadsom might put it. The overtly ‘beautiful’ dancers and dancing at the close, in counterpoint to Elektra’s own plight, continue to make an interesting, not un-Adornian point concerning Strauss’s score. That Adorno was, I think, quite wrong to condemn Strauss as he did is neither here nor there; we can argue about that. There is something, though, to the hollowness of the ending that merits exploration – and it receives that here.

I wrote at length on Nina Stemme’s performance last time. She is a very great singer, of course, one who pays a near ideal blend of attention – attention, moreover, that is fully achieved – between words and vocal line. That said, her performance did not grab me quite as it did in 2014, let alone as it did in the unforgettable Patrice Chéreau production (which I saw on the Met cinema broadcast last year: much better, incidentally, than when it came to Berlin that autumn). Like much else on this occasion, there seemed to be a relative disengagement. Waltraud Meier’s Klytämnestra likewise suffered from that same comparison with New York. I yield to none in my admiration for her as a singing actress, but the ‘singing’ part was unquestionably lesser on this occasion. Regine Hangler was a highly variable Chrysothemis: sometimes wildly out of tune, on other occasions – alas, too few – thrillingly able to ride the orchestral wave. Her acting skills, though, proved rudimentary: a pity. Alan Held’s Orest offered an estimable blend of musical values and subtle dramatic psychopathy. Herbert Lippert’s Aegisth was, sadly, no better than last time. The orchestra did not fail to impress; it would be a sad day indeed if this of all orchestras did not in Strauss. However, it did not impress as it had done under (the surprisingly good) Peter Schneider in 2014. Michael Boder knew how the score went, but there was a touch of fuzziness around the edges by comparison. Certain passages came a little too close to dragging. As for Esa-Pekka Salonen in New York – or indeed, Daniele Gatti in Salzburg a few years ago – that was conducting in a different league altogether.

Elektra, Met Opera Live, 30 April 2016

Metropolitan Opera House, New York

(viewed at Curzon Cinema, Mayfair)

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Adrianne Pieczonka
Klytämnestra – Waltraud Meier
Orest – Eric Owens
Aegisth – Burkhard Ulrich
First Maid – Bonita Hyman
Second Maid – Maya Lahyani
Third Maid – Andrea Hill
Fourth Maid – Claudia Waite
Fifth Maid – Roberta Alexander
Overseer – Susan Neves
Young Servant – Mark Schowalter
Old Servant – Tilmann Rönnebeck
Orest’s tutor – James Courtney 

Patrice Chéreau (director)

Vincent Huguet (stage director)
Richard Peduzzi (set designs)
Caroline de Vivaise (costumes)
Dominique Bruguière (lighting)

Metropolitan Opera Chorus (chorus master: Donald Palumbo)
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

Poor productions – performances are another matter – of Elektra are few and far between. The work itself does so much of the work, quite apart from the striking similarity of so many set designs. This production, Patrice Chéreau’s last, was, however, quite different, not so much in terms of set designs, nor even costumes, although difference – genuinely meaningful difference there certainly was there – as in the directorial Konzept, and the harrowing, once-in-a-lifetime brilliance with which it is brought to dramatic life.

I might be tempted to call it feminist, and in a way it is, but it is above all profoundly human, profoundly Elektra’s story. Her experience has trauamatised her, destroyed her, made her ill, above all mentally, to an extent I have never previously witnessed; it threatens to do likewise to us. Whilst Chéreau is far too subtle a director to suggest, let alone to state, that the drama is all in Elektra’s head, it clearly is in part. How could it not be? Such is the nature of trauma. This is a woman so damaged, a daughter so damaged, a sister so damaged that there is no catharsis. She participates more clearly, more directly, in Orest’s revenge than she normally would, and yet remains at a certain remove from it. She dances, or attempts to, yet cannot, at least she cannot in the way that we, uneasy, terrified voyeurs might like; we violate her by watching her tentative, clumsy steps. At the end, she is not dead, nor is she triumphant; she is even more damaged, looking outward, at or into nothing in particular.

Nina Stemme’s performance in the role was – and this is certainly not a claim to be made lightly – perhaps the single greatest performance I have seen from her, most likely heard from her too. In the case of her and Waltraud Meier as Klytämnestra, these were performances that would have been astonishing had they been actresses in a spoken drama, a spoken filmed dramas. The unsparing nature of HD cinema for once enhanced rather than detracted. Stemme’s performance had everything: precision, line, total command and portrayal of her role. Her facial expressions were just as much part of that as her unerring ability to pitch, to shade, to connect the many, many notes of her part. And, of course, she had to be on stage for all but the very first few minutes. Never did she tire; never was she anything other than outstanding.

Meier’s Klytämnestra – Chéreau’s too, I presume, and Vincent Huguet‘s – was so much more rounded than the norm, indeed so much more rounded than I have ever heard. She was no mere grotesque; no figure of high camp. (Herodes will always win hands down in those stakes.) This was a mother we saw and heard: a flawed mother, but one with a human relationship between her and her daughter. We were led to recall, even though it is never stated her, what loss and agony she too had endured. Agamemnon had been no victim. The tenderness and nobility of this queen were an important part of a far more complex character than reductionism would have us believe. Strauss’s score was both agent and beneficiary in that respect. And yet, we seemed, if anything, to go beyond Strauss and Hofmannsthal – both forward to the concerns of our own time and back to Sophocles, indeed to Æscyhlus. Perhaps more to the point, we were invited to sympathise, to empathise, above all to bring our own experiences, and to find meaning in them and in the work.

 

Adrianne Pieczonka showed herself fully in command of Chrysothemis’s treacherous vocal line. More than that, she drew upon a full array of vocal-dramatic colours. The darkness of Eric Owens’s Orest chilled to the bone: there was humanity there, to be uncovered at the end of the recognition scene, but there was psychopathy too. What a luxury it was to have so fine an Alberich sing the role and perhaps even to bring something of that role to his performance. Burkhard Ulrich’s Aegisth did what it should in the short time allotted. All five maids – this is surely tribute both to Chéreau and to their performances – presented plausible individuals, not mere numbered appendages. If the Fifth Maid touched me most, that is surely in part a reflection of the role, but also of the extraordinary capabilities, apparently undimmed, of Roberta Alexander.

 

The Met Orchestra sounded magnificent. It is probably here that a cinema relay suffers most; even with excellent sound, the experience will always seem lesser than in the house. And so, if I missed a little of what orchestras such as the Staatskapelle Dresden and the Vienna Philharmonic at their greatest might bring, that most likely reflected the lack of ‘liveness’ rather than a shortcoming in performance. Esa-Pekka Salonen’s coldly modernist starting-point brought something quite different to the score from anything I can recall previously having heard. There was no doubting Salonen’s knowledge of, immersion in, ability to communicate the extreme complexity of Strauss’s orchestral writing. By the same token, there was no doubting his command of musico-dramatic pacing. The waltz-writing suffered not a jot, but there was as much steel, or perhaps platinum, as gold here. The question of this score’s relationship, or otherwise, to Schoenbergian expressionism is complex. One can argue the toss either way – except of course that there are multiple ways. It was a great strength of Salonen’s reading that one might have experienced it with equal justice in Schoenbergian or Schenkerian aural-analytical terms; indeed, more so even than in his Philharmonia Tristan, the either/or was refuted.

 

Grumbles about presentation: the Met’s website and the sheet available at the cinema on the way out only give cast details for the ‘major’ five; some Internet scouring found me most of the rest, although neither the Confidante nor the Trainbearer. Artists deserve to be credited. And might we kindly be spared the gushing banalities of Renée Fleming’s ’wonderful’ introductions? They do not improve with age. But the drama, Strauss at his very greatest,a was the thing. Nothing could detract from it; nothing came close.

Elektra, Vienna State Opera, 13 November 2015

Images: Wiener Staatsoper/Michael Pöhn

Vienna State Opera

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Gun-Brit Barkmin
Klytämnestra – Anna Larsson
Orest – Matthias Goerne
Aegisth – Herbert Lippert
First Maid – Monika Bohinec
Second Maid – Ilsyear Khayrullova
Third Maid – Ulrike Helzel
Fourth Maid – Caroline Wenborne
Fifth Maid – Ildikó Raimondi
Overseer – Donna Ellen
Young Servant – Thomas Ebenstein
Old Servant – Hans Peter Kammerer
Orest’s tutor – Il Hong
Confidante – Simina Ivan
Trainbearer – Aura Twarowska

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)
Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)
Andreas Grüter (lighting)

Chorus of the Vienna State Opera

Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Peter Schneider (conductor)

 

It almost seems wrong to be thinking and writing about a visit to the opera in the wake of the Paris attacks last night. Yet, beyond the justified claim that we should not be deterred from going about our business – there are, I think, some exceptions, but let us leave them on one side for now – we should also remember that art speaks of the human condition. It enables us to deal with what goes on around us: not, I hope, as mere escape, but as an exploration of some of the most fundamental issues with which we grapple. Strauss’s æstheticism continues to challenge us – and so it should. It will do so in different ways at different times, and that is all to the good.

 

Whilst Elektra is far too important a work to be simply, or even mostly, ‘about’ one particular character or artist, Nina Stemme was clearly a principal attraction in a very strong cast. She might not be how we all ‘imagine’ Elektra, but such a situation can often present a justified challenge to our preconceptions. Stemme proved tireless, constantly musical and, just as important, constantly communicative with Hofmannsthal’s words, and a fine actress. It was interesting to note, and I do not think this was simply a matter of acclimatisation on my part, that she looked more ‘like’ the Stemme we know from other performances as the evening went on. To start with, Marianne Glittenberg’s costume cunningly doing its work here, I am not sure that I should have recognised her with my eyes alone. A Lieder-like approach to text as music and words, though, marked out her artistry. And the accuracy, volume, and tonal quality of her climaxes – there are many! – would have given Birgit Nilsson a run for her money, although the sound is of course quite different. Indeed, Stemme struck an excellent balance between strength of character and necessary – for survival – ability to adapt, wheedling herself, if only temporarily, back into the affections of her mother and detested stepfather.

 

With the exception of a weakly-sung Aegisth, a part often given to former Siegfrieds – surely Vienna could have done better than this! – the cast was excellent. All of the ‘smaller’ roles were very well taken, attesting to the casting in depth that a great company can offer. For me, Thomas Ebenstein’s lyric tenor, as agile as the singer on stage, and the warm humanity of Ildikó Raimondi’s Fifth Maid – what a gift of a role! – stood out, but this is definitely a case of almost all deserving prizes.

 

Gun-Brit Barkmin grasped what I assume to have been Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s concept – and of course, the work’s concept, at least implicitly – of Chrysothemis as a young woman repressing, somewhat kinkily, her adulthood, Marianne Glittenberg’s over-sized, little-girl costume again making the point strongly in visual terms. Barkmin grasped it and ran with it, helpless, but perhaps – we could never quite tell – knowingly so, again as a survival mechanism in impossible times, domestically and politically, whilst maintaining as impressive control over Strauss’s musical lines as she had Berg’s in Wozzeck last month. Barkmin was impressive in Semyon Bychkov’s magnificent Proms performance of Elektra in 2014; here she was more so still and, crucially, offering a different reading according to context.

 

Anna Larsson’s portrayal of Klyämnestra was also in its way a revelation. I have grown so accustomed to thinking of this wonderful contralto voice ‘simply’ as the earth-voice of sincerity and truth in the Ring and in Mahler, that it came as quite a jolt to hear and indeed to see her in so different a role. Again, visually I should not have recognised her. I am not sure I have heard a true contralto sing the part before; it is, of course, rare nowadays to hear a true contralto at all. Yet, not only was the musical result beautiful, although not too beautiful, Larsson’s stage presence matched her vocal artistry, again in a way that confounded narrow expectations based solely upon narrow, personal experience.

 

Matthias Goerne proved a chilling, psychopathic Orest. When I had heard him previously, his approach had been, for want of a better word, more ‘intellectual’. Here, again apparently grasping the needs of the moment, this undoubtedly intelligent artist sounded splendidly instinctive. (It is not that the two are polar opposites, or in any sense exclusive, but they are often treated as if they are such.) He sounded and looked – the costume initially concealed him more than Elektra’s had her – like a voice from beyond: almost a male Erda, perhaps a Charon or a Pluto. We could not but doubt that he brought death, nor that he was deeply damaged by experience. The culmination of the Recognition Scene, in which brother and sister relied as much upon their sense of touch as their sense of sight – perhaps they have seen far too much truly to be able to see any more – proved both moving and provocative in the expectation of something incestuous, only to be thwarted, not the least intelligent of Laufenberg’s double moves.

Peter Schneider seemed almost a different conductor from when I had heard him conduct the work, disappointingly, in Dresden almost a year ago. Everything was much sharper, and the Vienna orchestra was in far better shape than its Straussian rival. (Perhaps, last December, that was something to do with Christian Thielemann having had the pick of the bunch the previous evening, but such variation remains difficult to account for entirely.) Strauss’s score danced with exuberance and with sickly longing; it lingered only too long early in what seemed almost an interminable Recognition Scene, a rare lapse. The phantasmagorical array of colours, harmonic as well as instrumental, which the composer conjures up was well served by the Vienna orchestra. If it were not quite at the level of inspiration of Daniele Gatti with these players in Salzburg in 2010, it was still a very fine orchestral performance, that golden Vienna string tone unmistakeable. There were, moreover, a good few passages which seemed, tantalisingly, to reach out towards Erwartung.

Laufenberg’s production is intelligent throughout and, for the work, intriguingly different, although not for the sake of ‘difference’. I say ‘for the work’, since most Elektra sets seem to end up looking more or less the same. There is an element of the familiarly granitic and fascistic in Rolf Glittenberg’s designs, but they do not overwhelm as often they do. (Not that I am arguing such designs should not; it is not, however, the only way.) Accentuating the domesticity, as it were, seems very much in line with the Strauss-Hofmannsthal Freudian approach to the myth. And death hangs over the piece with a visual stench that would pack quite a punch, could I bring myself to mix metaphors quite so flagrantly. (If I am shamelessly having my cake and eating it in the preceding sentence, so, in many respects does the work itself.)

 

A lift connects the palace proper to the courtyard, although we do not necessarily notice it to begin with, the action very much taking charge of itself. (I am not sure that I had previously noticed quite so strong a kinship between the opening scene and its sister in Maeterlinck’s, though not Debussy’s, Pelléas.) It is in that that Klytämnestra descends (and Aegisth never manages to ascend). Behind the glass, she already seems encased: almost a taxidermist’s objet d’art. Her entrance – with that music, she simply has to make an entrance – thus proved, if one can have such a thing, a slightly understated coup de théâtre. If I mention her having a wheelchair and Elektra a suitcase, cries of ‘cliché’ will doubtless issue forth – and often, I should sympathise. But Elektra prevaricating over packing her bags is hardly an inappropriate idea here and, more importantly, the specific use of the wheelchair offers an interesting and indeed surprising commentary not only upon Klytämnestra, but also on her relationship with her daughter, which after all lies at the heart of the drama. The queen does not need it at all, or at least she sometimes realises that she does not. She is in many respects keeping up appearances, although for whom? Her retinue? Which way might they turn, if the going gets tough? Their indecision later on subtly underlines the point. Is there an ‘outside’ the palace and its environs? Is the queen’s act for them? We are not sure, and that seems to me quite an interesting reading of Strauss and Hofmannsthal on Sophocles: extending their seeming lack of interest in the political and turning it in – or should that be ‘out’? – upon itself. Her confidant and trainbearer inject her with something. Who is controlling whom? And yet, when they are out of the way, when finally she can settle herself to speak with her daughter as something approaching – at least in House of Atreus terms – her mother, Klytämnestra can walk freely: discuss, perhaps even take some agency for the self-interpretation of, her dreams. Elektra at one point takes her place in the wheelchair. Is that not in a sense right, given all she has suffered? And yet, she cannot of course remain there, or all would fail.

I have dwelled upon that particular scene, since it seemed to me unusually central to interpretation of the work and production on this evening. Its presentation is also typical of Laufenberg’s impressively text-based approach to the work. He is not necessarily a director to set off music against words – often a fruitful approach with Strauss – but not everyone can offer the layered approach, at least all the time, of a Stefan Herheim. (This is yet another work in which I should love to see what he might accomplish.) Laufenberg’s, however, is a thoughtful, faithful, yet far from subservient reading, to which I should readily return. The treatment of Elektra’s Dance is a case in point, and here there was perhaps a deeper engagement with the music too. I still think that, as I wrote when discussing that Proms performance, to speak, as Adorno did, of the discontinuity ‘between the wildness of most of Strauss’s music in Elektra and its blissfully triadic conclusion’ is wilful. However, there is an element of (false?) relapse here; the emergence of strikingly beautiful, untarnished, unreal (?) young waltzers, offering the banal hope of a utopian future amidst Mycenaean devastation, knocked sidewise by the unexpected turn of the music and carrying Elektra off with them, makes a point I thought not un-Adornian, although perhaps more fruitful. What, then, are we to make of the shell-shocked Chrysothemis, who remains?

 

Stemme/Barenboim - Brahms, Wagner, Nadia and Lili Boulanger, Sibelius, 8 November 2015

Großer Saal, Musikverein

Brahms – Liebestreu, op.3 no.1

Botschaft, op.47 no.1
Meine Liebe ist grün, op.63 no.5
Auf dem Kirchhofe, op.105 no.4
Von ewiger Liebe, op.43 no.1

Wagner – Wesendonck-Lieder

Nadia Boulanger – Les Lilas sont en folie
Soir d’hiver
Was will die einsame Träne

Lili Boulanger – Attente
Au pied de mon lit
Si tout ceci n’est qu’un pauvre rêve

Sibelius – Törnet, op.88 no.6
I systrar, I bröder, I äsklande par, op.86 no.6
Den första kyssen, op.37 no.1
Soluppgång, op.37 no.3
Var det en dröm, op.37 no.4
Flickan kom ifrån sin älsklings mote, op.37 no.5

Nina Stemme (soprano)

Daniel Barenboim (piano)

This is one of those occasions when I am essentially entering a personal diary entry rather than a review. The reason is simple enough, and is intended as no disrespect to the artists, quite the contrary: I was not well, and devoted far too much of my attention to stifling a cough to be able to write properly on the performances. It was, as one might have expected, a splendid concert. Stemme was her wonderful self: a little steely, though a good way short of Nilsson, less impeccable with her diction than I might have expected, but more than compensating by the meaning she imparted with the marriage of words and text. We heard more than a little Brünnhilde: not only in the Wesendonck-Lieder, but also on occasion in Brahms. Barenboim was at his best as a collaborative artist: responsive, in no sense domineering, but very much an equal partner. How he must know and feel the kinship with Tristan! I found the Nadia Boulanger songs pleasant, if somewhat generic: a nice reminder of Barenboim’s association with her. Lili Boulanger’s songs, on the other hand, announced the ‘real thing’ from the outset, and the performances sounded all the more committed; there was no doubting the compositional voice, post-Debussyan, to be sure, and with connections one might draw, but never to be reduced to them. (I must hear these songs again, soon!) I am no fan of Sibelius’s symphonies, but am always happy enough to hear his songs, and there was certainly much to be gained in hearing them from Stemme. She sang, I think, another as her first encore; I do not know which. The second, more surprising, was Weill’s ‘My ship has sails’ from Lady in the Dark. More later in the week, when I hope to be recovered! (Alas, a Wien Modern concert tonight had to fall by the wayside this evening.)