Leipzig Opera House
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| Samiel (Verena Hierholzer) and Kaspar (Tuomas Pursio) Images: © Ida Zenna |
Agathe – Gal James
Ännchen – Magdalena
HinterdoblerSamiel – Verena Hierholzer
Max – Thomas Mohr
Kaspar – Tuomas Pursio
Kuno – Jürgen Kurth
Kilian – Patrick Vogel
Ottokar – Jonathan Michie
Hermit – Rúni Brattaberg
First Hunter – Andreas David
Second Hunter – Klaus Bernewitz
Bridesmaids – Katrin Braunlich, Estelle Haussner, Eliza Rudnicka, Teresa Maria Winkler
Christian von Göltz (director)
Dieter Richter (set designs)Jessica Karge (costumes)
Heidi Zippel (dramaturgy)
Verena Hierholzer (Samiel’s choreography)
Leipzig Opera Chorus (chorus master: Alexander Stessing)
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra
Christian Gedschold (conductor)
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| Agathe (Gal James) in front of the assembled company |
‘It seems to be the poem of
those Bohemian woods themselves, whose dark and solemn aspect permits us at
once to grasp how the isolated man would believe himself, if not prey to a
dæmonic power of Nature, then at least in eternal submission thereto.’ With
those words, the homesick, indigent Richard Wagner, revolted by what he had experienced
as the base superficiality of Parisian musical culture, reported on an 1841 performance
of Le Freischütz (Berlioz’s version,
with ballet music that was at least Weber’s own). In a piece addressed ‘to the
Paris public’, Wagner ostensibly tried to explain the work to that public, yet
seemed unable to prevent himself from turning his article into an attack upon –
yes, you have guessed correctly – Parisian and, more broadly, French culture.
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| Kaspar, Samiel and her spirits, Max (Thomas Mohr) |
The Freischütz (most certainly Der) we know and love is the quintessential
German Romantic opera, and Wagner’s advocacy has played no little role in that.
Upon returning to Saxony, to Dresden, he assumed a leading role in the longstanding
if hitherto unsuccessful campaign to have Weber’s bones returned from London
and reburied in the city whose German opera (as opposed to its long-flourishing
Italian version) he had done much to build. Wagner eulogised his predecessor
with music and a flowery address, proclaiming that there had never been a more
German musician. Whilst the younger Wagner had stood far more critical, his
first opera, Die Feen
notwithstanding, of Weber and earlier German opera, now he placed his work in
that tradition, as would others theirs. That is far from nonsense, of course,
yet it is also far from unproblematical. For one thing, it is impossible, living
in the face of what Friedrich Meinecke called in 1948 the ‘German catastrophe’,
to assent to such nationalism any more, however differently it may have been
intended. For another, much of Weber’s music, still more than Wagner’s, and
perhaps still more in this than in Weber’s subsequent two ‘German Romantic’
operas, often questions, even resists, such identification.
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| Kaspar and Max |
Why do I mention all that?
Because it was very much in that spirit that, almost whether I wished to or no,
I approached this new production of Weber’s opera in Wagner’s home city (itself
long ambivalent concerning its greatest son, its concert tradition long,
somewhat frustratingly, enjoying a higher profile to the fruits of its still
lengthier operatic history). What struck me upon hearing the Overture from the excellent
Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Christian Gedschold was, first, how fresh,
how vernal (it had been a beautiful, almost spring-day in Leipzig) Weber’s
score sounded from every section: the strings an ideal combination of the
golden and something darker, the woodwind at times heartbreakingly
characterful, almost as if partaking as woodland creatures in Wagner’s fancy,
the brass as euphonious as one could hope for, horns tender to a degree. And
yet, Gedschold’s direction did not, for me, take its place in the tradition I
think of here as ‘German Romantic’: at least not wholeheartedly, or perhaps it
was my mindset that had me hear it differently. Where Furtwängler, in his
outstanding Salzburg life recording, puts us momentarily at peace, and has it,
perhaps, sound more ‘German’ than the music ‘in itself’ always is, where Carlos
Kleiber somehow makes his objectively hard-driven Dresden account sound equally
at ease with itself, breathing where the tempi might suggest otherwise, this
performance sounded more internationalist, perhaps even more at home with the
French models Weber – and Wagner – so eagerly adopted in individual numbers. (I
mean here a number of the arias and ensemble pieces, although even the Huntsmen’s Chorus, soon to become a
staple of German books of allegedly ‘popular song’, actually derives from part
of an eighteenth-century French street song, ‘Malbrouk s’en va t’en guerre’.)
What sometimes, then, I missed in the seemingly unaffected German Romanticism that
would grow into Wagnerian music drama an aural reassessment of the work as the
number opera it undoubtedly is.
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| Opening scene |
It
was with such thoughts that I also set about watching Christian von Götz’s
production, in part, I think, on account of his brilliantly
thought-provoking Capriccio, in
which Strauss’s work engaged with its own time to an extent, and to a fruitful
extent, rarely seen. (Such are the perils, as well as the joys, of reception,
whether of a composer, a director, or anyone else!) Perhaps, then, I was too
preoccupied with understanding what I saw as part commentary on German history,
but this is perhaps one of those works in which such a path is inevitable, and
ultimately requires no apology. What struck me from its later
nineteenth-century setting was how it enables, perhaps even invites, one to
consider the work’s Rezeptionsgeschichte.
Indeed, to begin with, I understood it more as a deliberately sanitised version
of the period of composition, the hunting lodge too spick and span, even too
grand (rather as one might visit such a place touristically today, or indeed in
the later nineteenth century). Be that as it may, such sanitisation,
displacement, alienation, however one might consider it, served to remember the
work such as it never was, even if we have ‘always’ known it as such, something
of a ghost, setting the scene for what became still more of a ghost story than
one often sees.
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| Ännchen (Magdalena Hinterdobler), Agathe, and Samiel |
It is
here, though, a ghost story with a very particular twist, or at least
standpoint. Looking at, if not listening to, Weber from a standpoint not so
distant from Mahler (recall Die drei
Pintos) and his world – the
designs hint as much at Franz Joseph and Bad Ischl as at the Bohemian Woods, at
least until we briefly enter the latter – we begin to understand the centrality
of female experience to the horror tale unfolding. Fear and hysteria reign,
Samiel – here, strikingly, a self-choreographed female dancer, Verena Hierholzer – seemingly a projection
of some evil deed from the past, haunting the present, just as untruths from
our retelling of history continue to haunt us. (Whatever the tribulations of
German history, it is the English who do not have a word for Vergangenheitsbewältigung, resulting
recently in a catastrophe that could hardly seem more likely over here.) Noting
that the opera was originally to be called Die
Jägersbraut, the director plays on Agathe’s fear of marriage, a fear born,
it seems, of living in so unhappy, so haunted, a place. Samiel’s delivery of
the funeral crown in the third act terrifies all the women; is it not, however,
actually the perfect symbol for patriarchal hegemony and the fantasies it
encourages? If the horror-film imagery of Samiel’s other appearances seemed
more silly than anything else, perhaps it is all too easy for a man to say that
in the face of female agency. (I am questioning myself more as Devil’s Advocate
here than because I really think so, but the openness of the staging to such
self-criticism is perhaps not the least of its strengths.)
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| Max and Agathe |
Such would in itself count for
much less, had it not been for an excellent cast, whose performances would have
graced any stage. If Thomas Mohr, I am afraid to say, looked and acted too much
on the old side for Max – however one might have framed the performance – his
vocal delivery more than compensated. A tenor bright and clear, yet sensitive
too, he complemented very well the sopranos of Gal James and Magdalena
Hinterdobler, exhibiting many of the same qualities, and with fine coloratura
to boot, Hinterdobler’s especially expressive as well as merely impressive.
Tuomas Pursio’s darkly dangerous Kaspar stood very much in the line of other
fine performances I have heard him give (from Wagner
to Nono),
yet there was nothing generic about the malady of his pride and delusion. Jürgen
Kurth and Jonathan Michie offered intelligent, verbally acute performances as
Kuno and Ottokar, whilst Patrick Vogel’s lighter, nimbler tenor (by comparison
with Max) offered ample indication of why he might have won the title of king
of the marksmen. Rúni Brattaberg’s dark, sonorous Hermit did what he should,
although why anyone should necessarily take heed of the character’s words
remains something of a dramaturgical mystery. Choral singing throughout spoke of music well known, 'in the blood', if you will, yet never taken for granted: it was as fresh as it was 'traditional'.
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| Final scene |
There was then, plenty, of
opportunity to rethink, to reassess, wherever that impulse may have originated.
And yet, for everything I have said, and for all the outstanding quality of orchestral
instruments’ ‘French’ solo moments (of which there are many), it remained the
dark, undeniably Wagnerian tones of the Wolf’s Glen that made the deepest
impression of all. Here, Saxon tradition spoke of an orchestra, one of the
greatest in the world, that knew where this music led, and which was happy to
guide us. Göltz made a better job of staging frankly impossible scenic
directions than many (‘Gothic’ horror notwithstanding), but Weber’s
extraordinary presentiments of Siegfried
remained an aural experience above all. Wagner’s truths may not always be
empirical; that does not necessarily render them untruths.
