Munich Opera Festival (2) - Idomeneo, 5 July 2024

Nationaltheater

Images © Wilfried Hösl

  

Idomeneo – Pavol Breslik
Idamante – Emily D’Angelo
Ilia – Olga Kulchynska
Elettra – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Arbace – Jonas Hacker
High Priest of Neptune – Liam Bonthrone
The Voice (Oracle) – Alexander Köpeczi

Antú Romero Nunes (director)
Dustin Klein (choreography)
Phyllida Barlow, Nina Schöttl (set designs)
Victoria Behr (costumes)
Michael Bauer (lighting)
Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)
Catharina von Bülow (revival director)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (director: Christoph Heil)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Ivor Bolton (conductor)

Take a stroll around central Munich and you may come upon a plaque on Altenhofstrasse indicating the spot where Mozart lived in the winter of 1780-81 whilst at work on Idomeneo. The opera was written for the Residenztheater, now generally known as the Cuvilliés-Theater, although now we saw it at the Nationaltheater, home since its 1818 opening to most of the Bavarian Court – latterly the State – Opera’s activities. Both theatres were eventually rebuilt after Allied bombing, although Mozart’s apartment building was destroyed for good in 1944.  A different staging of Idomeneo would have been required to go ‘home’, for Antú Romero Nunes’s 2021 production certainly makes use of the larger stage and space, but that did not entirely negate a sense of homecoming, not least given memories of a fine concert encircling and presaging the work at last year’s Munich Opera Festival, in the ‘original’ venue. 

Why inverted commas? Perhaps they represent a fussiness too far, given how much any old building will have been rebuilt over the years, although the old theatre did have to be rebuilt from scratch, finally reopening in 1958, not with Idomeneo but with Le nozze di Figaro. Idomeneo was still then a great rarity and remains, to many of us bafflingly so, less popular than any other of Mozart’s seven ‘mature’, full-scale operas. (Many of us may be inclined to soften the distinction drawn there, but it continues to hold for opera companies and their general public.) Given the total break in its performance history – unlike that of, say, Figaro – we might say that any performance becomes more of a reconstruction too, irrespective of intention. The work is often cut and if, at least in a good performance, one feels the loss, it can also work in truncated form within reason. This version – and I think one can go so far as to use that word – had, however, some highly unusual, even unprecedented textual features, some to my mind more justifiable than others. Old and new, fidelity and reimagination, text and performance, music and drama: these do not necessarily stand opposed, but their relationships have also never been without friction. If part of the interest lies in that friction, difficulties may also lie therein. On this occasion, it would be fair to say that we experienced both. 

Action prior to the overture is now a commonly accepted, albeit perhaps now all too common, theatrical strategy. It is more unusual to open with stage music interpolated from elsewhere, a feature throughout the production. What we saw and heard, though, intrigued, largely due, I think, to Phyllida Barlow’s arresting set designs, verging on an installation in themselves. Here, at the beginning, in a dark and dangerous port, musicians and dancers set the scene in several ways, solo- and ensemble-human fragility contrasting with the elemental sea implied scenically and musically, as the Overture proper came upon us. Quite why Nunes felt the need to project ‘titles’ as it unfolded, I am not sure. I suppose it let people know who the characters were and who was singing their parts, but beyond that it achieved little. In retrospect, the lack of dramatic motivation, in spite of a lot ‘going on’, proved too prophetic. Beyond the striking, meaningful ‘look’ – one could read much into Barlow’s structures, above all the sheer mysteriousness of the realm of the gods – Nunes seemed to have little to say. The performance progressed, but that was about it, save for a strange marriage of interpolations and cuts, recitative predictably suffering most. Of politics there was little sign, but nor did the lack of drama and sense of installation seem to be an overt aesthetic, as in the case of Romeo Castellucci. 

Idomeneo (Pavol Breslik) and Arbace (Jonas Hacker)

Perhaps most indefensible – not the first time it has reared its head in a Mozart opera – was a fortepiano rendition of the D minor Fantasia, KV 397/385g, shorn of its turn to the major mode (by whomever), which provided the opportunity for further ballet music, probably suggestive of the relationship between Idamante and Ilia, though I was not always clear whether dance were intended as pantomime or in the older, ‘Italian’ tradition. ‘Perhaps’, because it was run close by the surprise arrival of the aria, ‘Ch’io mi scordi di te … Non temer, amato bene’, KV 505, for Idamante and, you guessed it, obbligato fortepiano. Emily D’Angelo sang it very well, but neither its tenuous connection with the opera nor dramatic momentum was well served. 

The worst decision, though, was to fade out ‘Torna la pace’, musicians onstage imitating Haydn’s Farewell Symphony. What could the director have been thinking of? And what could any conductor – presumably not Ivor Bolton, who did not conduct the premiere – have been thinking of, permitting such a radical step without any discernible motivation? Pity poor Pavol Breslik as Idomeneo, who then had to set though the concluding ballet music eating a sandwich, as dancers, more furries than Furies, did their thing. Martin Kušej’s 2014 production for Covent Garden, much misunderstood at the time and sadly unrevived, showed quite how this extraordinary music can grip as drama (and despite an indifferent musical performance). This, alas, simply became tedious. 

Bolton’s musical direction did not help in that respect. It certainly had its moments over the evening as a whole, but the problem was that they were mostly moments. It cannot have been helped by the ‘version’ with which he was presumably presented, but a greater sense of dramatic pulse could readily have been achieved, as could more generous vibrato for the strings and less ‘period’ rasping from the brass. Trombones, though, sounded splendidly otherworldly for the Oracle. Occasional discrepancies between stage and pit, especially during choruses, were swiftly and tidily resolved. The array of continuo instruments was odd, as well as choices made as when to use them; however well played, the presence of a theorbo made little sense. A wind machine, though, offered a nod both to older stagecraft and to onstage atmosphere. 

The greatest satisfaction for me was to be had from the singing. For me, a highlight was the beginning of the third act, Olga Kulchynska’s ‘Zeffiretti lusinghieri’ and the quartet the other side of KV 505 vocally breathtaking and dramatically very much on point. The four singers’ coming together could not have spelled  fear and fate more clearly. Breslik’s assumption of the title role was beyond reproach, ringing in musical security yet permitting of doubt and nuance in character. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller’s Elettra was very good too, though there was a strange moment in her final aria in which she seemed to pause; it was unclear to me whether this were a demand of the production, an interpretative strategy, or something else. Indeed, throughout, her character seemed strangely minimised by the production. Jonas Hacker’s Arbace made the most of both his arias, as did Liam Bonthrone and Alexander Köpeczi in their smaller roles. The chorus likewise made a fine impression, hinting at a greater meaning that seemingly eluded the director.

Jenůfa, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 7 January 2024

Grandmother Buryja – Hanna Schwarz
Kostelnička Buryja – Rosie Aldridge
Jenůfa – Vida Miknevičiūtė
Laca Klemeń – Stephan Rügamer
Števa Buryja – Pavol Breslik
Foreman – Grigory Shkarupa
Jano – Victoria Randem
Barena – Adriane Queiroz
Mayor – David Oštrek
Mayor’s Wife – Natalia Sckrycka
Karolka – Maria Kokareva
Herdswoman – Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Auntie – Rebecka Wallroth
Voices – Olga Vilenskaia, Ben Bloomfield

Director – Damiano Michieletto
Revival director – Marcin Łakomicki
Set designs – Paolo Fantin
Costumes – Carlo Teti
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti

Choreography – Thomas Wilhelm  

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Axel Kober (conductor)

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere, with different cast)

Damiano Michieletto’s 2021 production of Jenůfa, now receiving its first revival, offers a relatively straightforward retelling of the story without prettifying or sentimentalising. Paolo Fantin’s set designs are stark: semi-transparent, enabling one to see, as in a small rural community, most of what is going on, whilst still maintaining some degree of secrecy. This is a world of violence and poverty, and so it feels, whilst avoiding undue specificity: the level of abstraction is such that the message need not be restricted to any one milieu. That enables a degree of symbolism, perhaps not entirely unlike Olivier Tambosi’s 2001 Covent Garden production (my first, with Bernard Haitink and Karita Mattila no less).

Ice/water is central to Michieletto’s conception. There is something icy to the walls, but more fundamentally, not unlike Tambosi’s giant boulder, although the other way up, an iceberg descends from the ceiling or sky. It hems in the action to varying extents, according (I assume) to the emotional and broader dramatic temperature. Števa hacks a block of ice to pieces, with violence shocking both in itself and in its childishness, when he has been rejected for conscription. Jenůfa’s child is buried and preserved in the ice too, of course, that discovery provoking the final reckoning and thus enabling the advent of some limited hope and here, literally, sunlight for Jenůfa and Laca. And its melting provides a downpour to punish, symbolically at least, the Kostelnička. The community, arguably the true villain here – Števa is too weak to deserve such billing – is represented by a few actors, whose shifting shape and role say most of what needs to be said. We can fill in the gaps, bring something to the table ourselves, or simply watch things ‘straight’. Whether the chorus’s placing, largely offstage, was at least in part a response to pandemic restrictions, I do not know, but it works, perhaps paradoxically, to enhance the onstage claustrophobia.

 

Choral singing was good, although coordination with stage and pit sometimes went awry. Indeed, conductor Axel Kober’s coordination of his different forces often left something to be desired, the opening seriously awry, both in that respect and concerning balance of orchestral lines. By and large, Kober gave a good enough impression of the score without penetrating deeper. The Staatskapelle Berlin responded in kind, often more than that. But where the musical action should erupt, forcing itself into our consciousness as a literal matter of life or death, Kober seemed largely content to offer an accompaniment to scenic action: involving enough, but an accompaniment nonetheless. There was little sense, at least from the orchestral direction, of the composer’s speech rhythms determining line and form (surely a crucial argument for preferring Janáček in the original Czech). 

The cast did a better job in that respect and others. Vida Miknevičiūtė seems very much to be a soprano of the moment, unable to put a foot (or note) wrong. Her assumption of the title role proved no exception: no mere victim, but a somewhat headstrong young woman, who made choices of her own as well as suffering those of others. Here was to be heard a definite command of the composer’s writing and its dramatic implications, as well as stage presence and collegiality. The same could be said of her colleagues, Rosie Aldridge a compassionate yet broken Kostelnička, Hanna Schwarz still an estimable force as Grandmother Buryja. Pavol Breslik skilfully trod a tightrope as Števa, keenly alert to the character’s contemptible weakness, whilst maintaining allure and vocal security. Stephan Rügamer’s Laca grew in stature as Števa receded from our – and Jenůfa’s – consciousness. Sterling work was done in the smaller roles, Maria Kokareva’s Karolka, Natalia Sckrycka’s Mayor’s Wife, and Victoria Randem’s Jano shining examples for me. There was fine ensemble work here, in which it was rightly difficult to distinguish between singing and acting.

Der Rosenkavalier, Semperoper Dresden, 3 April 2023

Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg – Camilla Nylund
Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Peter Rose
Octavian – Sophie Koch
Herr von Faninal – Markus Eiche
Sophie – Nikola Hillebrand
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Daniela Köhler
Valzacchi – Aaron Pegram
Annina – Christa Mayer
Police Officer – Tilmann Rönnebeck
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Florian Hoffmann
Faninal’s Major-domo – Jürgen Müller
House Servant – Holger Steinert
A Notary – Matthias Henneberg
A Landlord – Kevin Conners
A Singer – Pavol Breslik
A Milliner – Katerina von Benningsen
A Vendor of Pets – Andreas Sauerzapf
Leopold – Yevgen Bondarenko
Lackeys – Jun Seok Bang, Norbert Klasse, Ingolf Stollberg-da Silva, Matthias Beutlich
Waiters – Markus Hansel, Max Hebeis, Andreas Heinze, Thomas Müller
Three noble orphans – Ofeliya Pogosyan, Mariya Taniguchi, Justyna Olów
Lerchenauschen – Alexander Födisch, Wooram Lim, Thomas Müller, Mirko Tuma, Werner Harke, Holger Steinert
Hairdresser – Mario Kretschmer
Mohammed – Ricardo Garcia Heine

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)
Christoph Schubiger (designs)
Jessica Karge (costumes)
Torsten Schäfer, Jan Seeger (lighting)
Hella Bartnig (dramaturgy)  

Children’s Choir of the Semperoper Dresden

Dresden State Opera Chorus (chorus director: André Kellinghaus)

Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Cornelius Meister (conductor)

Images: © Semperoper Dresden/Klaus Gigga

One more step back towards operatic ‘normality’, at least in Germany for me: a performance of Der Rosenkavalier with its large cast, no sign of (anti-)social distancing, and as yet no sign of a Covid-themed staging. (We know they are coming: the masks, the ventilators, the Tristan love-duet via Microsoft Teams, the Downing Street ‘Abba parties’; let us enjoy their absence while we can.) My reunion with characters one fancies one knows so well they might be personal acquaintances took place in Dresden, at the Semperoper, in a production by Uwe Eric Laufenberg I saw previously in 2014. It does not seem so long, as the Marschallin would understand all too well. 

First seen in 2000, it is, like most of us after the last few years, somewhat looking its age. In 2014, I thought it had belied its years. Whether that says more about me or the production, I do not know: perhaps a bit of both. Updating a century-and-a-half or so does no harm, though it perhaps makes no particular point either other than visualising the distances and anachronisms in which Strauss and Hofmmansthal deal. There are puzzling details, for instance: why does Octavian wear a black tie with evening tails? And there are, I think, a few changes, with some overlap. The peculiar treatment of Mohammed is no more, though he remains unusually evident, only not to appear at all at the close, Ochs’s ‘children’ taking his place. None of that is of particular importance, though, and issues not only of the male gaze – complicated, of course, in a world of cross-dressing – but also of publicity remain strong. The Marschallin’s relation to the latter world is, appropriately, more old-fashioned, her levée remaining much as it ‘should’, whereas chez Faninal, with its touch of Hollywood new money, the Presentation of the Rose is a choreographed photoshoot. Paparazzi or their equivalent even scale the building to gain an ‘exclusive’ picture of Octavian and Sophie ‘in private’. The Italians straddle both worlds. 

A notable change this time was the conductor. Christian Thielemann was due to have conducted the performance once more, but withdrew, replaced with Cornelius Meister. If the performance were less razor-sharp than last time, I suspect that was more down to rehearsal time and the vagaries of standing in than anything else. The first act seemed at times to drag, but the second two were well proportioned and full of incident. Moreover, the first-act Prelude can rarely, if ever, have made its intentions, here frankly post-Tannhäuser, more immediately apparent. If you did not feel the earth move, you must not have been listening. Indeed, Meister’s somewhat Wagnerian way with much of the score, gently yet tellingly contradicting lazy assumptions of a volte face after Elektra, brought ready human warmth and motivic integrity in equal measure. The Staatskapelle Dresden, effortlessly at home in this music since its premiere, brought a multitude of colours born of, yet never bogged down in, tradition.

 

Camilla Nylund’s warmth as the Marschallin, especially in the first act, sounded similarly inspired, or at least in sympathy. She became steelier in the third act, often thrillingly so, in triumphant, only part-tragic, reassertion of her authority. She, after all, may and probably should be understood to direct her own opera—and certainly did so here. Sophie Koch, also Octavian in 2014, seemed a little more out of sorts. In many ways, it was a very good performance, yet it was one that left one thinking this may be a role she, like Octavian with his recent past, should now leave behind, her voice having changed considerably in the meantime. Nikola Hillebrand made for a highly impressive Sophie: not only less unsympathetic than often, but more multi-dimensional, on the cusp in so many ways. Peter Rose, another 2014 veteran, gave another highly accomplished performance as Ochs. He knows the role inside out and can play with it, the language in particular assimilated as if he were speaking it spontaneously, yet he takes nothing for granted. His boredom with the Italian singer, here in an utterly outstanding cameo by none other than Pavol Breslik, was as much a joy to watch as last time. Casting was throughout from depth, everyone contributing something. Christa Mayer’s Annina was a class act indeed, having one wish for more. Markus Eiche’s Faninal was similarly, if differently, well observed. Yes, something approaching normality was back, though not without regard to the special quality of the operatic moment.

Die lustigen Weiben von Windsor, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 3 October 2019

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Frau Fluth (Mandy Friedrich) and Frau Reich (Michaela Schuster)

Sir John Falstaff – René Pape

Herr Fluth – Michael Volle

Herr Reich – Wilhelm Schwinghammer

Fenton – Pavol Breslik

Junker Spärlich – Linard Vrielink

Dr Cajus – David Oštrek

Frau Fluth – Mandy Friedrich

Frau Reich – Michaela Schuster

Jungfer Anna Reich – Anna Prohaska

First Citizen – Javier Bernando

David Bösch (director)

Patrick Bannwart (set designs)

Falko Herold (costumes)

Michael Bauer (lighting)

Detlef Giese (dramaturgy)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

René Pape (Sir John Falstaff) and Chorus

No one would seriously claim Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor to be a masterpiece; the only question, it seems, is whether one might occasionally bear it. In that sense – and probably a few others – it is riper for conversion into opera than a play that stands in no ‘need’ of it. Verdi’s Falstaff has its devotees; if you like that sort of thing, then that is doubtless the sort of thing you will like. Otto Nicolai’s opera, for better or worse, stands closer to the play, for better, and is rarely seen on stage. All credit, then, to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden for resurrecting it for the first new production of the season, with a cast that can rarely have been matched, let alone bettered, and with Daniel Barenboim, no less, in the pit.

Barenboim’s direction prove sure and loving, the warmth of the Staatskapelle Berlin’s response, both to him and Nicolai’s score, exemplary. I cannot imagine that he or (m)any members of the orchestra had performed it before. (Its last outing on Unter den Linden had been three decades previously, in 1989: an apt anniversary, given that the new premiere took place, as seems now to have become customary, on the Day of German Unity.) There was certainly a sense of fresh discovery, but also, equally important, one of grounding in the fertile musical soil from which it had sprung. From the (relatively) celebrated overture onwards, the strings offered a lighter, more golden tone than one often one hears from this band: more Vienna than Berlin, one might say, and not inappropriately so for a composer formerly based in the Austrian capital and who somewhat reluctantly departed for its Prussian counterpart, at Frederick William IV’s invitation, only in order to have his new Singspiel, Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor performed. As one of Nicolai’s many illustrious successors at the Linden house, Barenboim seemed to relish equally the composer’s debts to Mozart, Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Weber, and Rossini, among others. Indeed, the correspondences with early Wagner – we might, perhaps, think this more convincing than Das Liebesverbot, if unquestionably less so than Die Feen – had me wish Barenboim would at last conduct one of the pre-Dutchman operas. Orchestral detail from the early German Romantics, form from the acknowledged masters of opera buffa – if tending more towards Rossini’s formalism than Mozart’s dynamism – and occasional hints of Fidelio and perhaps even Beethoven’s orchestral writing: there are worse mixes, far worse.

If you were expecting a ‘but’, you were not wrong. Nicolai, following ETA Hoffmann, described his work as a ‘comical, fantastical opera’. I suppose it is, if not of uniform success. Ultimately, it is difficult to say that the score, or indeed the opera as a whole, progresses beyond that. Its dramaturgy is somewhat weak, without much or anything in the way of characterisation. Mozart casts a heavy shadow, of course, but the action and humour, such as it is, remain situational and formalistic. Salomon Hermann’s libretto might profitably have distanced itself further from Shakespeare. Still, there are plenty of operas with unsatisfactory libretti and/or dramaturgy. We are not speaking of catastrophes such as Euryanthe or Oberon; nor, however, are we speaking of such scores. This, perhaps, is where a radical production might save the day – except, alas, it did not.

Junker Spärlich (Lienard Vrielink), Jungfer Anna Reich (Anna Prohaska), Fenton (Pavol Breslik), Dr Cajus (David Oštrek)

Save for updating, David Bösch’s production probably does too little. Some might say it does too much, not least with respect to the dialogue. Whatever the truth of that, this does not seem a happy medium. It is difficult to see what is gained, other than avoidance of folksiness – thank goodness for that – from the transposition of the action to what seems to be social housing with a swimming pool (!) Transformations are effected where required. The final scene, in Windsor Park, offers genuine fairy magic, alongside knowing awareness of that transformation. More of that, read back into the frankly laboured earlier comedy, would have been welcome. Bösch picks up on the verbal motif of Sekt and drunkenness, but surely most directors would. Otherwise, we are left with the ‘jokes’ of René Pape in a fat suit, two of the men, Junker Spärlich and Dr Cajus, donning tutus and falling for each other, and women getting the better of their menfolk. The latter victory is of course, a mainstay of comedy, but something more of a critical stance is surely needed at this stage. Or perhaps not: much of the audience seemed to love it. There are worse outcomes than that, far worse.

Dr Cajus, Frau Fluth, Sir John Falstaff

Given the quality of vocal and stage performances, they could be forgiven for that. Pape’s Sir John Falstaff is not nearly so central a role as some might expect, Nicolai and his librettist remaining true to the opera’s title. That said, he and Michael Volle, as Herr Fluth (Ford), offered a winning combination of vocal excellence and lightness of touch, Volle the more natural comedic actor. (If you want to see Pape draped in a shapeless white dress and bonnet, impersonating the old woman of Brentford, now is nevertheless your opportunity.) The greater interest, though, is surely allotted the womenfolk and Fenton. None of them disappointed; indeed, all excelled. Mandy Friedrich and Michaela Schuster’s fine match of stage presence, coloratura, and vocal security proved just the thing, in every respect. Insofar as one could be moved by the drama of characters, it would surely have been by the delightful duo of Anna Prohaska and Pavol Breslik, the former – speaking, uniquely, in German and English – presenting a performance of typical acuity and musicality, the latter ardent even beyond expectations. In their high-spirited, yet ultimately touching, parody of Romeo and Juliet, work, performances, and production surely reached their high point. All singers, however, deserved thanks for fine performances, so too the chorus.

As for Nicolai, it would be of interest to hear more of his music, not least to gain a broader impression. Reputations resting on a single work can often mislead. Ulrich Konrad’s New Grove article on the composer mentions, for instance, an 1832 ‘Baroque style’ Te Deum, which sounds, on the face of that description, rather different from this opera, a work of no mean historical importance. Its overture is charming, and deserves to be heard more often than is the case nowadays. A production willing to press further, to interrogate the work and its possibilities, indeed to create possibilities beyond those immanent, may yet provide us with a more compelling piece of theatre. It certainly offered opportunities, well taken, for fine singing: well appreciated, it seemed, by the audience and the singers themselves. I cannot help but think, however, that Nicolai’s ultimate legacy will remain his founding of the Vienna Philharmonic concerts a few years earlier. There are worse legacies than that, far worse.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Don Giovanni, 23 July 2016

Nationaltheater, Munich

Don Giovanni – Erwin Schrott

Commendatore – Ain Anger
Donna Anna – Albina Shagimuratova
Don Ottavio – Pavol Breslik
Donna Elvira – Dorothea Röschmann
Leporello – Alex Esposito
Zerlina – Eri Nakamura
Masetto – Brandon Cedel
Old Man – Ekkehard Bartsch

Stephan Kimmig (director)

Katja Haß (set designs)
Anja Rabes (costumes)
Benjamin Krieg (video)
Reinhard Traub (lighting)
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Stellario Fagone)

Bavarian State Orchestra
James Gaffigan (conductor)

All told, this was probably the best Don Giovanni I have seen and heard. Judging opera performances – perhaps we should not be ‘judging’ at all, but let us leave that on one side – is a difficult task: there are so many variables, at least as many as in a play and a concert combined, but then there is the issue of that ‘combination’ too. At any rate, whilst not every aspect might have been the ‘very best ever’ – how could it be? – all was of a very high standard, and much was truly outstanding. I even began to think that the wretched ‘traditional’ Prague-Vienna composite version might for once be welcome; it was not, yet, given the distinction of the performances, the dramatic loss was less grievous than on almost any other occasion I have experienced.

 

If Daniel Barenboim’s Furtwänglerian reading in Berlin in 2007 remains the best conducted of my life, there was nothing whatsoever to complain about in James Gaffigan’s direction of the score. It was certainly a far more impressive performance than a Vienna Figaro last year, which led me to wonder how much was to be ascribed to other factors, not least the truly dreadful production; perhaps, on the other hand, Don Giovanni is just more Gaffigan’s piece. The depth and variegation of the orchestral sound was second, if not quite to none, than only to Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin. This was far and away the best Mozart playing I have heard in Munich. Even if the alla breve opening to the Overture were not taken as I might have preferred, and certain rather rasping brass concerned me at the opening, I find it difficult to recall anything much to complain about after that; nor do I have any reason to wish to try. Tempi were varied, well thought out, and above all considered in relation to one another. Terror and balm were equal partners: on that night in Munich, we certainly needed them to be.

 

This was, I think, Stephan Kimmig’s first opera staging, first seen in 2009. I shall happily be corrected, but I am not aware of anything since. If so, that is a great pity, for the intelligence of which I have heard tell in his ‘straight’ theatre productions – alas, I have yet to see any of them – is certainly manifest here. There are, above all, two things without which an opera staging cannot survive: a strong sense of theatre and a strong sense of intellectual and dramatic coherence. Equally desirable is, of course, at least something of an ear for music, and coordination between pit, voices, and stage action seemed to me splendidly realised too.

 

A perennial lament of mine concerning Don Giovanni productions concerns refusal or inability to understand it as a thoroughly religious work. Here, there is certainly some sense of sin; its relationship to atheistic heroism is, just as it should be, complex. And the reappearance of the Commendatore and (excellent) chorus at the end, some, including the Stone Guest himself, in clerical garb, reminded us, without pushing the matter, that authority is at least partly religious here. There are other forms of authority too – Don Ottavio’s ever-mysterious reference to the authorities perhaps intrigues us more than it should, or perhaps not – and they are also represented: military berets, business suits, and so forth. A libertine offends far more than the Church; and of course, the Church as an institution has always been many things in addition to Christian (to put it politely).

 

Katja Haß’s set designs powerfully, searchingly evoke the liminality of Da Ponte’s, still more Mozart’s Seville. The drama is not merely historical, although it certainly contains important historical elements. But above all, there is a labyrinth – one I am tempted to think of as looking forward to operas by Berg, even Birtwistle, perhaps even the opera that Boulez never wrote – in which all manner of masquerading may take place. Social slippage and dissolution – above all the chameleon-like abilities of the (anti-)hero – need such possibilities, which are present here, in abundance, in a setting that both respects traditional dramatic unities and renders them properly open to development. A warehouse, containers revolving, opening and closing, changing and remaining the same, provides the frame. Yet we are never quite sure what will be revealed, languages of graffiti transforming, never quite cohering, Leporello’s catalogue – and, more to the point, its implications – foreseen, shadowed, recalled. There is butchery – literally – to be seen in the carcasses from which the Commendatore emerges. There is glitzy – too glitzy – glamour in the show Giovanni puts on to dazzle the peasantfolk; but it does its trick, coloured hair and all.

 

And there is an Old Man, observer and participant, sometimes there, sometimes not. Everyman? The nobleman, had he outstayed his welcome, not accepted the invitation? He is clearly disdained, even humiliated (what a contrast, we are made to think, almost despite ourselves, between his naked body and the raunchy coupling – or more – around him). That is, when he is seen at all: and that is, quite rightly, as much an indictment of the audience as of the characters onstage. Part of what we are told, it seems, is that this is a drama of the young, who have no need of the elderly. Not for nothing, or so I thought, did Alex Esposito’s Leporello exaggerate his caricatured sung response to Giovanni’s elderly women.

 

It is, then, an open staging: suggestive rather than overtly didactic. In a drama overflowing with ideas, that is no bad thing at all. Coherence is, whatever I might have implied above, always relative; the truest of consistency will often if not always come close to the dead hand of the Commendatore. For this was a staging that had me question my initial assumptions: again, something close to a necessity for intelligent theatre. (I assume that the bovine reactions from a few in the stalls were indicative of a desire for anything but.)

 

If religion lies at the heart of the opera, too little acknowledged, perhaps at least a little too little here too, then so does sex. Sorry, ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’, but there you have it; this really is not an opera for you, but then what is? Don Giovanni and Don Giovanni ooze – well, almost anything and everything you want and do not want them to. They certainly did here, which is in good part testament to this superlative cast. Erwin Schrott’s Giovanni may be a known quantity – I have certainly raved about it before, more than once – but it was no less welcome and no less impressive for that. ‘Acting’ and singing were as one. He held the stage as strongly as I have ever seen – which means very strongly indeed – and his powers of seduction were as strong as I have ever seen – which means, as I said… His partnership with Esposito’s Leporello was both unique and yet typical of the dynamically drawn relationships between so many of the characters on stage. Leporello was clearly admiring, even envious of his master; their changing, yet not quite, of clothes and identities was almost endlessly absorbing its erotic, yet disconcerting charge. Esposito brought as wide a range of expressive means to his delivery of the text as any Leporello, Schrott included, I remember. Their farewell was truly shocking, Giovanni picking up his quivering servant from the floor, kissing him for several spellbinding seconds, then wiping his mouth clean on his sleeve and spitting contemptuously on the floor. It was time finally to accept the Commendatore’s invitation, issued with grave, deep musicality by the flawless Ain Anger.

 

I had seen Pavol Breslik as Don Ottavio before. There could have been no doubting the distinction of his performance in Berlin, under Barenboim, although neither artist was helped by the non-production of Peter Mussbach. Here, however, Breslik presented, in collaboration with the production, perhaps the most fascinating Ottavio I have seen – and no, that is not intended as faint praise. This was a smouldering counterpart to Giovanni, unable to keep his hands off Donna Anna, and frankly all over her during her second-act aria. Their pill-popping – he supplied the pills – opened up all manner of possibilities, not least given the frank sexuality of their, and particularly his, reactions. The beauty of Breslik’s tone, silken-smooth in his arias, added an almost Così fan tutte-like agony to the violent proceedings. In Albina Shagimuratova, we heard a Donna Anna of the old school: big-boned, yet infinitely subtle, her coloratura a thing of wonder. Combined with the uncertainty of her character’s development – again, most intriguingly so – this was again a performance both physically to savour and intellectually to relish.

 

So too was that the case with Dorothea Röschmann’s Donna Elvira. Her portrayal – Kimmig’s portrayal – would certainly not have pleased, at least initially, those for whom this is in large part a misogynistic work. (It seems to me that they misunderstand some, at least, of what is going on, but that is an argument for another time, and I am only too well aware that it is not necessarily a claim that I, as a man, should be advancing anything other than tentatively.) Downtrodden, yet beautifully sung, in the first act, she nevertheless came into her defiant own in the second, above all through the most traditionally operatic of means: sheer vocal splendour. What a ‘Mi tradì’ that was!

 

Eri Nakamura gave the finest performance I have heard from her as Zerlina, seemingly far more at home in Mozart than when I heard her at Covent Garden. This was a Zerlina who both knew and did not know what she was doing – as a character, of course, not as a performance. And finally, Brandon Cedel’s portrait in wounded, affronted, unconscious yet responsive masculinity proved quite a revelation: I do not think any Masetto has made me think so much about his role in the drama. Nor can I think, offhand, of any Masetto so dangerously attractive – again, like Ottavio, in some sense an aspirant Giovanni, but one still more incapable of being so. Morally, of course, that is to the character’s credit – but in this most ambiguous of operas, and in this most fruitfully ambiguous of productions, one was never quite sure.  

Die Zauberflöte, Opéra national de Paris, 25 March 2014

Opéra Bastille

Tamino – Pavol Breslik

First Lady – Eleonore Marguerre
Second Lady – Louise Callinan
Third Lady – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Papageno – Daniel Schmutzhard
Papagena – Regula Mühlemann
Sarastro – Franz-Josef Selig
Monostatos – François Piolino
Pamina – Julia Kleiter
Queen of the Night – Sabine Devieilhe
Speaker – Terje Stensvold
First Priest – Michael Havlicek
Second Priest – Dietmar Kerschbaum
First Armoured Man – Eric Huchet
Second Armoured Man – Wenwei Zhang
Three Boys – Soloists from the Aurelius Sängerknaben Calw

Robert Carsen (director)

Michael Devine (set designs)
Petra Reinhardt (costumes)
Martin Eidenberger (video)
Peter van Praet and Robert Carsen (lighting)

Chorus of the Opéra national de Paris (chorus master: Patrick Marie Aubert)

Orchestra of the Opéra national de Paris

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

This, the 408^th performance of The Magic Flute (or La Flûte enchantée) at the Opéra national de Paris, had a good number of virtues, the greatest of which was the quality of the soloists. Pavol Breslik was an ardent, honey-toned Pamino, as impressively ‘natural’ – however that much may be a case of art concealing art – an actor as a singer. He sounded and looked every inch a prince, however keen Sarastro may have been to remind us that he is more than that, ‘ein Mensch’. Julia Kleiter seemed made for him as a Pamina. She did not put a foot wrong, again as convincing dramatically as musically. And the acid test: ‘Ach ich fühl’s’ moved as it should, Mozart’s ambiguous, ambivalent chromaticism both agonising and reconciliatory. (How Beethoven and Wagner must have wished they could accomplish that, yet of course their greatness lay in good part in dealing with their coming too late to be able to do so.) There is surely no better Sarastro treading the world’s stages today than Franz-Josef Selig. It is tempting to take for granted the ‘fit’ of his voice, his way with words, his command of musical line, and most crucially, his alchemical blend of words and music, yet one should not. All were on fine display on this occasion, though ‘display’ is quite the wrong word really, given a performance of winning humility, goodness even. Sabine Devieilhe impressed as the Queen of the Night. There is often something that trips up performers of this role; here there was a phrase toward the end of her first aria, in which intonation suffered. It is a well-nigh impossible role, though, and elsewhere Devieilhe acquitted herself very well, the brightness as well as the accuracy of the principal notes in her second aria especially noteworthy. Daniel Schmutzhard’s Papageno had no need to fear comparisons with the most accomplished portrayals. His was a touching assumption, in which once again a great deal of solid musicianship lightly underpinned dramatic conviction. Moreover, his delivery of the dialogue – in this performance, a major strength across the board – may have been the strongest I have heard, an aspect which can sometimes let down the very greatest of singers. Regula Mühlemann made for a spirited Papagena, François Piolino a quicksilver, unusually un-caricatured Monostatos, and Terje Stensvold a winningly sincere Speaker. The Three Ladies and Three Boys were all excellent too, the latter being called upon, prior to singing, to display what seemed to me to be creditable footballing as well as vocal skills. What a joy it was, though, to have so secure a reading from boy trebles.

 

Philippe Jordan’s conducting certainly had its moments, though the hard-driven yet sleek Overture was not one of them. (It sounded a bit like second-rate Karajan, albeit with too small an orchestra.) Tempi in general had clearly been well considered, though some seemed a little too studied in their ‘difference’; likewise the welcome flexibility afforded some numbers. ‘Bei Männern’ was taken daringly slowly, yet worked, a true feeling of wonder engendered. There were other occasions, however, when there was more than an impression of listlessness, the music floating away into the ether rather than being founded upon its bass line. Jordan’s evident desire for intimacy may or may not have been misplaced – there is a great deal of Beethoven here, as great conductors such as Böhm and Klemperer knew – but it certainly sounded misplaced in the vast Bastille theatre, where larger forces and a less precious approach would have assisted. Arguably, some of the voices, however, well sung, were on the small side too; it was difficult to resist the conclusion that this was a work, or at least an approach, better suited to the Palais Garnier. Orchestral playing considered on its own terms was generally of a high standard. Choral singing was decent rather than inspired, but there was nothing to complain about in that respect.

 

What of Robert Carsen’s production, first seen last year at Baden-Baden? I wish I could speak with greater enthusiasm, but cannot help but wonder whether this is now a case of a director who is doing too much. Too often a general ‘stylishness’ pervades the stage, and whatever this work, with its array of social, religious, ethical reference, may be, it has nothing to do with mere fashion. Video accomplishes little beyond its mere presence. Indeed, the forest scene, with occasional waving of branches in the wind, proves alienating in a non-productive way; what is wrong with an old-fashioned backdrop? The only occasion on which it adds something was in the huge projection of Pamina’s face, constantly changing, as Pamino sings the Portrait Aria, but even then, one is tempted to ask: so what? Fire and water are far more convincing, some of the most convincing – and indeed straightly portrayed – I have seen, likewise the lighting in general. There is a degree of messing around with the dialogue, and indeed the ordering, but nothing too grievous, and there are sections – for instance, that pertaining to Monostatos’s blackness, here certainly not a matter of skin colour – to be heard that nowadays one generally finds cut.

 

Then there is Carsen’s big idea, of which I had initially given up hope. The Queen of the Night and Sarastro are on the same side; indeed, the members of Sarastro’s order turn out already to be nicely paired up with women. Initially, I thought the idea merely silly, and was certainly irritated by the two ‘leaders’ kissing each other at the beginning of the second act. But it has some mileage, not least in dealing with the alleged ‘problem’ – actually it is no such thing, if one understands the narrative as progressing according to Tamino’s, and our, consciousness – of the changing portrayal of the ‘dark side’. Here there is none, and everyone – even Monostatos, somewhat wearisomely comforted and converted by Pamina in the final chorus – joins in the final rejoicing in the light. A more critical approach, though, to the implications of such unity would have been welcome. Is it not, perhaps, a dangerously totalitarian prospect? Alas, politics and, more broadly, ethical considerations are more or less entirely absent. Rather than take the easy road of redressing alleged misogyny – for the most part, it is a matter of mistaking the views of characters for those of creators – why not look critically at the work’s heteronormativity, here actually bolstered? A desire for inclusion, in itself neither objectionable nor incomprehensible, remains generalised and disturbingly free of context: liberalism in a nutshell. Ultimately, chez Carsen, style occludes rather than instantiates idea.

Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera, 11 February 2013

Eugene Onegin (Simon Keenlyside)
Images: Bill Cooper

Royal Opera House

 

Tatyana – Krassimira Stoyanova

Eugene Onegin – Simon Keenlyside
Young Tatyana – Vigdis Hentze Olsen
Mme Larina – Diana Montague
Filipyevna – Kathleen Wilkinson
Olga – Elena Maximova
Peasant Singer – Elliot Goldie
Young Onegin – Thom Rackett
Lensky – Pavol Breslik
Monsieur Triquet – Christophe Mortagne
Captain – Michel de Souza
Zaletsky – Jihoon Kim
Guillot – Luke Price
Prince Gremin – Peter Rose

Kasper Holten (director)
Mia Stensgaard (set designs)
Katrina Lindsay (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Leo Warner (video)
Lawrence Watson (animation)
Signe Fabricius (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Robin Ticciati (conductor)

Kasper Holten’s new production of Eugene Onegin, his first staging for the Royal Opera House, was in many ways excellent, an auspicious debut indeed. Unfortunately, it was truly let down by some of the most lacklustre conducting I have heard at Covent Garden. Whilst an interesting, intriguing evening was still to be pieced together from production and singing, it would be idle to pretend that Robin Ticciati’s jejune performance did not detract significantly from the experience. To start with, it seemed as though Ticciati’s reading might prove interestingly different. The balletic side to Tchaikovsky seemed on the verge of shining through, the woodwind section of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House offering sparkling playing, and what a nice change it made for once to hear the harp! Alas, it soon emerged that those advantages had been achieved largely by default. It became impossible to ignore the thinness of the string sound, despite a sizeable number of strings in the pit. That was not on account of any ineptitude of execution by the players, who remained polished throughout, but because Ticciati seemingly wished to elicit the sound of a middle-ranking chamber orchestra from one of the best opera house bands in the world. Fair enough if you simply have to put up with a small number of strings, or even if you are playing in a small house, but such was not of course the case here. More damagingly still, the performance dragged, at times interminably so. Without any sense of life – not to be confused with alleged ‘airiness’ – and without any sense of Tchaikovsky’s tormented soul, the only signs of anything dramatic being at stake had to be gleaned elsewhere: a great pity. Let me be clear. This was not about ‘intimacy’, about approaching Tchaikovsky’s ‘scenes’ in the manner in which they were first performed at the Moscow Conservatoire – although the perversity did have something in common, albeit significantly magnified, with the attempt by Ticciati’s mentor, Sir Simon  Rattle, to present an ‘intimate’ Carmen upon the vast stage of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus. Nor was it about actual speed; I genuinely have no idea whether the performance was fast, slow, or middling, by the clock. What I do know is that it dragged, despite sometimes being unduly driven, because Ticciati proved hopelessly incapable of finding a pulse, variable or otherwise. Instead of intimacy and interesting if unusual tempi, we had mere thinness and tedium.

 

Tatyana (Krassimira Stoyanova)

Holten’s production, on the other hand, offered what was often a searching exploration of memory. Inscribed into the score, its visual manifestation was effected by a number of means. Most obvious, but far from the only example, was the use of doubles, a young Tatyana and a young Onegin, to observe, to remind, to haunt. Mirroring the structure – some might say the lopsidedness – of Tchaikovsky’s drama, the young Tatyana is often seen during the first four scenes, whereas her counterpart does not emerge until the older, wiser Onegin appears in St Petersburg. The two young figures meet only in the final scene, offering a glimpse of what might have been, but what is now cruelly denied. Or should that read, 'wisely denied'? For in a fascinating gloss, Prince Gremin appears in that scene too: no longer a mere doddery if noble old fool, he too will have to learn to live with the truth. I can imagine that some might have found the histrionic display of the young Tatyana during the Letter Scene a little much, but by the same token, it seems a valid response to one side at least of the music – and Tchaikovsky’s character. It does not last very long, moreover, and more important seems to be the slippage between the two Tatyanas: who is writing? Who is truly affected? Is this for once an attempt to construct, with all the potential for failure that might entail, a character who is more than Tchaikovsky’s self-projection?

 

Colour is used to great effect: an especially telling moment is the infection through lighting and film of the outside world – or is it again a projection, this time from Tatyana herself? – with Tatyana’s scarlet, following the Letter Scene? Has she been rash, to put it mildly? Is this foreboding? Does her uneasy relationship to the outside world doom her to an unhappy, unsociable life? Is this where it all goes wrong, the moment to which her elder self will perforce return, time and time again? The relationship between books and memory is of course not a new concept in Onegin productions, but it is a good one, and their presence at Mme Larina’s house, not least in Tatyana’s hands, makes its point well. As time went on, above all in St Petersburg, it was as if Tchaikovsky’s and Pushkin’s reminiscences were straining towards Wagnerian leitmotif. They did not and could not reach it; technique and indeed aspiration are quite different. But I could not help but wonder if Holten’s Wagnerian experience played a role here. If only there could have been some counterpart to that in the conducting, which continued signally to fail to join up the dots. Let us hope that the production will be revived with someone else in the pit. A conductor with whom the Royal Opera House has a strong relationship, such as Semyon Bychkov, who has a fine Onegin recording to his name already? That might really be something.

 

Lensky (Pavol Breslik)

The cast was for the most part excellent too. Krassimira Stoyanova’s Tatyana was beautifully sung, no mere cipher, but a strong, flawed character, uncertain of where she was heading and all the more credible for that. I was a little disconcerted by Simon Keenlyside’s Onegin during the first act; it seemed coarser than I recalled from a few years ago. But dramatic truth gained over ‘mere’ beauty, for this Onegin gained in insight as the work progressed, quite in tandem with the production. As ever, Keenlyside’s way with words, just like Stoyanova’s, was pretty much beyond reproach. Beauty there was aplenty in the honeyed tones of Pavol Breslik, every inch the Romantic poet; his verbal acuity was no less impressive. Holten had elected to downplay, even to ignore, the homoeroticism of the relationship between Onegin and Lensky: a pity, since it so permeates the score, but of course the director had other ideas to explore. Instead we witnessed two young, quite immature men as genuine rivals for the affections or at least the attentions of their women. Olga was finely and richly sung by Elena Maximova, whilst Diana Montague and Kathleen Wilkinson almost stole the show with their equally fine portrayals of Mme Larina and Filipyevna. The only disappointments were an unidiomatic Zaretsky from Jihoon Kim and an intonationally-challenged Triquet from Christophe Mortagne. Peter Rose’s Gremin did everything it should – and more. Likewise the Royal Opera Chorus was on splendid form, for which Renato Balsadonna should once again receive considerable credit.

 

Don Giovanni, Royal Opera, 16 February 2012

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

Don Giovanni – Erwin Schrott
Leporello – Alex Esposito
Donna Anna – Carmela Remigio
Donna Elvira – Ruxandra Donose
Don Ottavio – Pavol Breslik
Zerlina – Kate Lindsey
Masetto – Matthew Rose
Commendatore – Reinhard Hagen

Francesca Zambello (director)
Bárbara Lluch (revival director)
Maria Bjørnson (designs)
Paul Pyant (lighting)
William Hobbs (fight director)
Stephen Mear (movement)

Images: Royal Opera/Mike Hoban
(except where otherwise stated)
Don Giovanni (Erwin Schrott) and Donna Anna
(Carmela Remigio)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Constantinos Carydis (conductor)


For those whose operatic priorities lie firmly and indeed exclusively in the realm of singing, there would have been enough here to satisfy: not necessarily something to be taken entirely for granted, given the compromised vocalism one sometimes endures. But, even assuming that one could somehow disregard one of the noisiest, most ill-behaved audiences I have had the misfortune to experience at Covent Garden, a person with even the slightest interest in opera as drama would have been sorely disappointed. It frankly beggars belief that, especially for so popular a work, Francesca Zambello’s production was not retired after a single outing, for rarely in my experience has there been such critical unanimity about any staging of any opera. Doubtless revival director Bárbara Lluch did what she could, and there were even signs in the first act that the deep-frozen corpse might occasionally be twitching in the direction of the merely comatose. Nevetheless, Zambello’s production remained as vacuous as any opera production I can recall. Its one glimmer of an idea turns out to be nothing of the sort: religious imagery remains nothing more than religious tat. And that, despite ludicrous hairstyles and the bizarre pointing hand, is it. Faced with a re-dramatisation of the Fall, pre-emption of Mephistopheles, one of the greatest scores ever written, etc., etc., there comes nothing in response. Don Giovanni, for reasons that are not entirely clear to me, seems to present almost insuperable difficulties to contemporary directors; the only two I can recall emerging with relative honour in the theatre are Graham Vick at Glyndebourne and Calixto Bieito at ENO. Yet even the most perverse concept, even the most unclear, such as that Roland Schwab recently served up for Berlin’s Deutsche Oper, would be preferable to nothing at all. Has Zambello ever read Da Ponte, let alone Mozart? If so, that only serves to render her ‘response’ the more pitiful. Her similarly ideas-free Carmen just about works on as straightforward level of response as one can muster, but this, like Giovanni himself, lies utterly beyond redemption.

It would be vain to claim that the directorial context held no implications for the vocal performances, but the singers almost all emerged with considerable credit, the sole disappointment being a woolly Masetto from Matthew Rose. Erwin Schrott’s Giovanni was beautifully sung and as well acted as one had any right to expect, yet even the darkness of his tone at its best sounded less dangerous than it had when he took the role in the same production in 2007. He could be readily forgiven for simply having had enough, though he would doubtless have been delighted by the support of Anna Netrebko from the audience. Alex Esposito is a fine Leporello, as he managed to show even in the aforementioned Berlin staging, but here too often he was forced to play the clown: a wasted opportunity, though he nevertheless managed to shine in the Catalogue Aria. Carmela Remigio proved an intelligent Donna Anna: no mean feat in context. What she achieved vocally, with fine command of line and ever-welcome ease in her native tongue, fully vindicated the faith placed in her by no less a conductor than Claudio Abbado. Ruxandra Donose actually seemed more at ease than she had in Berlin; again she did vocally what she could. Kate Lindsey was a spirited Zerlina, if perhaps sometimes too saucy for Mozartian style (though one could hardly blame her for attempting something, indeed anything, to alleviate the directorial tedium). Bar an unfortunate and highly-exposed scooping up to the note in ‘Il mio tesoro’ – the much- and justly-maligned ‘traditional’ conflation of Vienna and Prague was employed – Pavol Breslik made an attractive-toned Don Ottavio. Reinhard Hagen, despite a truly absurd tempo forced upon him, managed to make the Commendatore’s words during the Stone Guest scene at least count for something.

Don Ottavio (Pavol Breslik)

To begin with, I wondered whether the well-nigh uniformly negative criticism – from the first of the two casts – of Constantinos Carydis’s conducting had been unfair. The Overture was far too fast, in both sections; indeed, there was no discernible change of tempo between them. But thereafter for a while there was greater variation than I had been led to expect. If hardly Colin Davis or Daniel Barenboim, let alone Busch, Giulini, or Furtwängler, I had heard considerably worse. There was even some sensitively shaped handling of orchestral recitative, something not to be taken entirely for granted in an age with a dearth of Mozart conductors. But early relative promise dissipated, the end of the first act finale falling flatter than I have ever heard. It was not a matter of the climax running away with itself, as one might expect; there simply was no climax. The music stopped, and that was the end of that. What one might politely call eccentrically fast tempi became, if not quite the norm, than depressingly frequent in the second act, yet the effect was not hyperactive but inert. The appearance of the Stone Guest was somehow – and not just on account of the production – utterly inconsequential, Mozart’s chords skated over as if they were nothing, or worse than nothing: something out of Philip Glass, perhaps. The epilogue was as ruinously hard-driven as any Mozart performance I have encountered. Carydis’s singers and even some in the audience deserved far, far better.