Intermezzo, Deutsche Oper, 1 May 2024

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Robert Storch (Philipp Jekal), Christine (Maria Bengtsoon), Franzl (Elliott Woodruff)

Robert Storch – Philipp Jekal
Christine – Maria Bengtsson
Franzl – Elliott Woodruff
Anna – Anna Schoeck
Baron Lummer – Thomas Blondelle
Kapellmeister Stroh – Clemens Bieber
Notary – Markus Brück
Notary’s wife – Nadine Secunde
Commercial Counsellor – Joel Allison
Judicial Counsellor – Simon Pauly
Chamber Singer – Tobias Kehrer
Resi – Lilit Davtyan

Director – Tobias Kratzer
Designs – Rainer Sellmaier
Lighting – Stefan Woinke
Video – Jonas Dahl, Janic Bebi
Dramaturgy – Jörg Königsdorf

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

Christine, Robert, taxi driver

The second panel of Tobias Kratzer’s Strauss triptych for the Deutsche Oper, following last year’s Arabella, proves a worthy successor. A relative rarity for reasons no one seems able to discern, Intermezzo once again vindicates itself and its composer-librettist, who had learned his lessons well from his longtime collaborator Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Taking an intelligent, but not the most predictable, line from young love – it need not always be Der Rosenkavalier – through Intermezzo’s bourgeois marital comedy, next season heading toward the symbolic yet pronatalist transformations of Der Frau ohne Schatten, Kratzer’s partnership with the house and its outgoing music director Donald Runnicles turns out to have fewer clouds than, yet rest on similarly firm foundations as, that of the barely disguised Richard and Pauline seen and heard onstage as Robert and Christine Storch. Salome or Elektra might be a fitting way to undercut all that at the end, but such, at least for now, does not appear to be the intention. (In any case, the Deutsche Oper already has a splendid production of the former from Claus Guth on its books.)

A Zeitoper, if it is to be updated, needs careful handling in finding equivalents, at least if an abiding aesthetic of realism is to be retained as it is here. (It is not beyond the bounds of possibility to try something different, far from it, but it would be a tricky assignment.) Kratzer proves almost unerring in finding realistic contemporary settings for Strauss’s succession of bourgeois scenes. The Prater becomes an aeroplane (Straussair, with ostrich emblem play-on-words) journey home. The scene in Franzl’s bedroom has him watch online his father’s red-carpet, autograph-signing arrival at the Deutsche Oper (a little much, one might have thought, for either an opera composer or conductor, but perhaps that is the point). Such glamour contrasts poignantly with Pauline’s loneliness and her announcement of a broken marriage to the little boy. The game of skat takes place in a typical green room/Kantine. We see much of the orchestra and Donald Runnicles on film during the interludes, heightening the wonders of metatheatricality—and, quite simply, an excellent chance to see the players at close quarters. 

Baron Lummer (Thomas Blondelle), Christine, others

Earlier on, Robert leaves domestic ‘bliss’ in a taxi absurdly overfull with baggage, driver waiting patiently, cigarette in hand. Subsequent text messaging between the two of them proved a rare instance of adept operatic reference to that world. Ironically, for an opera claimed by some to be ‘embarrassing’ – perhaps accusers should look instead in the mirror – the scene turns out, unlike most such attempts, to be anything but; it strikes a fine balance between irritation and genuine, communicative emotion. The ski-slope collision between Christine and the Baron is transferred to behind the motoring wheel. I could not help but find the transfer of the ensuing scene at the Grundlsee Inn to a hotel bedroom – there can be no doubt what is meant by the ‘dancing’ on which Robert has given up – something of a miscalculation: it made much of what happened later between the characters, especially in their dialogue, very difficult to understand, if not quite incomprehensible. Even that, though, was handled on its own terms with a strong sense of theatrical realism, Personenregie crucially alert throughout. 

Notary (Markus Brück), Christine

Kratzer, moreover, responds to Strauss’s loving (without being too self-loving) self-quotation and allusion with twofold references of his own. Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier on film are further doubled by Christine’s choices from her costume wardrobe, that dressing up being in turn pressed upon the Baron (initially dressed as Kratzer). So much opera is about disguise and the assumption of roles in one way or another. Here we receive a welcome invitation to reflect on that, almost as our own minds will, though with guidance for those who need or wish it. No one, surely, could miss either the craziness or the sincerity of Christine’s metamorphosis into axe-wielding Elektra when she strikes her blows for womankind against the hapless Notary in his office. The ‘natural’ order of things is restored and perhaps lightly mocked by having Christine, conducted by Richard, sing her part of their closing love duet to an assembled audience in front of acted orchestra. I hesitate, no decline, to defend the sexism, though frankly what would one expect in a work so much, so avowedly, of its time? Straussian irony, though, will always be present for those with ears to hear; that certainly includes Kratzer, Runnicles, and a strong cast. For those who do not, there are many other ways to spend three hours of their time. 

Robert, Stroh (Clemens Bieber)

The orchestra for which Strauss calls is small, verging indeed on a chamber orchestra at times. We certainly heard pinpoint precisio, and ‘ensemble’ sonorities that would more readily be classed modernist if penned by Schoenberg or Webern. What nonetheless struck most keenly and certainly most warmly were the swell and glow of the Deutsche Oper orchestra and not only in the interludes: miniature tone poems in their own right, a splendid formal innovation for which Strauss never seems to gain credit. That the orchestra and Runnicles are old Strauss hands, not least in tandem, should not have us take their idiomatic and dramatically meaningful musicianship for granted. It may have been gorgeous, but it was never for ‘mere’ gorgeousness’s sake, the composer’s strong aestheticist tendences notwithstanding. 

Christine, Baron Lummer

At least as much as any Strauss opera and more so than many, an Intermezzo performance will stand and fall not only by the orchestra but also by its soprano heroine. Veterans of great Strauss performances of the past will surely not be disappointed, at least not reasonably so, by Maria Bengtsson’s Christine. It is here, of course, that whatever Strauss’s everyday sexism – misogyny if you will, though it seems a little strong – is routed by his lifelong love for the soprano voice (and Pauline). Bengtsson made the role her own and also very much a creature of our own times, ultimately likeable through that earlier cited genuineness of emotion. How we felt with her at her darkest hour, however silly some of her other behaviour may have been. Kratzer’s direction of Elliott Woodruff as Franzl and indeed the boy-actor’s own performance helped here too. Philipp Jekal’s Robert was finely sung and acted, treading difficult lines of his own without in any sense trying to upstage his partner-in-crime. Thomas Blondelle’s Baron Lummer initially seemed a bit old for the role, but the revelation of him as directorial emanation brought him more clearly into his own; at any rate, this was a similarly good performance. Strong appearances in smaller roles from artists such as Clemens Bieber, Anna Schoeck, and Markus Brück likewise attested to thoughtful casting and direction. Assuming that performances of Intermezzo will, alas, continue to be rarities even in German-speaking lands, catch this if and when you can.

Final scene

Die Zauberflöte, Deutsche Oper, 11 January 2024

Sarastro – Tobias Kehrer
Tamino – Kieran Carrel
Speaker – Padraic Rowan
First Priest – Kyle Miller
Second Priest – Jörg Schörner
Queen of the Night – Hye-Young Moon
Pamina – Elena Tsallagova
First Lady – Flurina Stucki
Second Lady – Arianna Manganello
Third Lady – Davia Bouley
Papagena – Meechot Marrero
Papageno – Philipp Jekal
Monostatos – Burkhard Ulrich
First Armoured Man – Patrick Cook
Second Armoured Man – Youngkwang Oh
Three Boys – Soloists from the Children’s Choir of the Deutsche Oper

Director – Günter Krämer
Revival director – Gerlinde Pelkowski
Designs – Andreas Reinhardt

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (chorus director: Thomas Richter) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Giulio Cilona (conductor)

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Bettina Stöß
Images from 2008, with different cast

Premiered on 24 September 1991, six days short of 200 years from the work’s first performance, Günther Krämer’s Magic Flute has done sterling service for the Deutsche Oper. The company would have had more than a year’s worth, if it performed this single work daily without a break, the performance total having reached 379. The work is no stranger to longstanding productions: Achim Freyer’s truly magical staging (I saw it twice in Salzburg) did the rounds for a good few years; David McVicar’s Covent Garden production has been seen regularly, though not so regularly as that, for more than two decades now. Closer to home, August Everding’s tedious offering for the Berlin Staatsoper has been around since 1994 and clocked up 300 in 2021, though it has now been joined in repertoire by a more innovative staging from Yuval Sharon. I have no idea what holds the record; it would not surprise me if there had been something at some point in Vienna, or indeed at another German theatre, small or large, in repertoire for a few more decades, though that is pure speculation. Krämer must surely, though, be a contender in a work whose particular German circumstances seem to conspire towards endless revival: popular here, there, and everywhere ever since 1791; written in the vernacular; rightly or wrongly (to my mind, at least questionably), considered by many to be suitable for children; thereby presenting something approaching box-office certainty for something that is not La bohème, Carmen, or La traviata.

It was the first time I had seen it, so I cannot claim any of the attachment some veterans will doubtless feel for it. It did its job well enough, I thought, though by now it will surely lie at some remove from either the director’s ‘intention’ or what it might have been today. It does not look tired in the way some productions, desperately needing to put out of their (and our) misery do; Andreas Reinhardt’s designs, clear, colourful, and not without mystery, continue to fulfil their brief. It is difficult at this remove to discern a particular standpoint, let alone concept; perhaps there never was one, though I suspect there may have been elements of that once. In particular, I suspect a degree of social criticism would once have come across stronger, not least with respect to the treatment of Pamina and thus women more broadly. Her uncertainty and something approaching momentary horror in the closing scene, realising an apparent lack of agency and, just perhaps, resolving to restore that in the future were intriguing. Concerning racial politics, I wonder whether the portrayal of Monastatos and other slaves in what appeared to be native American garb once made a point that has now been lost (at least for me). It was deeply uncomfortable to view in 2024, and not in an obviously productive way. I wonder whether something might yet be done about that by a future revival director, should there be one, whilst bearing in mind the lack of rehearsal such revivals are likely to be allocated.

 

Ultimately more detrimental to the dramatic flow were the cuts in dialogue. There is no need to be a purist about that: very few productions use Schikaneder complete, and not only for reasons of sex and gender. But the precise nature of the cuts sometimes made motivation and even straightforward action unclear. Many will have known what to fill in, but many in such an audience also will not. No one need be bored in a largely German-speaking audience by a little more pertinent spoken content. 

The other major problem was Giulio Cilona’s conducting. We all, of course, have different conceptions of the work and how it should ‘go’. Not everyone responds as I do to Klemperer, Böhm, or Furtwängler; nor do I expect everyone to do so. In any case, the question is largely irrelevant since none of them is with us, and no one conducts Mozart quite like any of them any more. (Having heard Colin Davis several times in this and other Mozart operas, I have surely had my share of good fortune for a while, perhaps even for a lifetime.) Disconnection between pit and stage can happen to anyone, though preferably less frequently than here, even on what was probably minimal rehearsal. But the lack of sense that anything might matter, taking too much at an all-purpose allegro and indifferent mezzo piano, ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’ a merciful exception, led to a desultory orchestral performance all round. I initially assumed the string section must have been very small. However, though I could not see the rest of the section, I could see four double basses, so it could not have been that small. The angel of death appeared to be on strike for what should be the terrifying scene with the Two Armoured Men. So did Bach—and even Mozart. An old production needs all the more to be brought to life by comprehending, sympathetic conducting. Such was not the case here.

There was, fortunately, nothing to disappoint in the vocal performances—again bearing in mind the realities of an ultimate repertoire piece in a repertoire house. Kieran Carrel’s Tamino was well sung, personable, very much in recognisable character. Likewise our Papageno, Philipp Jekal’s performance bringing together with skill lightly worn a number of different theatrical and emotional worlds. Tobias Kehrer’s Sarastro made the most of his low notes in particular, alert to deeper meaning without sacrificing essential or at least apparent ‘simplicity’. Hye-Young Moon’s Queen of the Night implored and sought vengeance with impressive accuracy and sparkle. Burkhard Ulrich’s Monastatos was properly sung, no mere caricature: particularly important given the character’s problematical portrayal. Performances from the Three Ladies and Three Boys all deserve favourable mention. For me, though, the stand-out vocal performance was Elena Tsallagova's as Pamina: clean of line, happy of musical and dramatic blend, and with true emotional depth that saw no need to draw attention to itself. Though I cannot help but feel it might be time to draw the final curtain on Krämer’s production, a few more performances such as Tsallagova’s might help delay the inevitable.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Deutsche Oper, 3 December 2023

Hans Sachs – Johan Reuter
Veit Pogner – Albert Pesendorfer
Kunz Vogelgesang – Gideon Poppe
Konrad Nachtigall – Marek Reichert
Sixtus Beckmesser – Philipp Jekal
Fritz Kothner – Thomas Lehman
Balthasar Zorn – Jörg Schörner
Ulrich Eißlinger – Patrick Vogel
Augustin Moser – Paul Kaufmann
Hermann Ortel – Stephen Bronk
Hans Schwarz – Tobias Kehrer
Hans Foltz – Byung Gil Kim
Walther von Stolzing – Magnus Vigilius
David – Ya-Chung Huang
Eva – Elena Tsallagova
Magdalena – Kathrin Göring
Night Watchman – Tobias Kehrer
Apprentices – Agata Kornaga, Freya Müller, Kangyoon Shine Lee, Yehui Jeong, Oleksandra Diachenko, Natalie Jurk, Jongwoo Hong, Thoma Jaron-Wutz, Leon Juurlink, Kyoungloul Kim, Sotiris Charalampous, Simon Grindberg

Jossi Wieler, Anna Viebrock, Sergio Morabito (directors)
Torsten Köpf (co-set designer)
Charlotte Pistorius (co-costume designer)
Olaf Freese (lighting)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (chorus director: Jeremy Bines)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Ulf Schirmer (conductor)

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, premiere am 12.6.2022 in der Deutschen Oper Berlin, copyright: Thomas Aurin. (Some roles were taken by different singers.)

In the depths of the coronavirus Great Silence, I mused that its horror would be over, musically speaking, when I had once again heard live three works: Gurrelieder, a large scale work by Richard Strauss, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Why not, say, Les Troyens, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony or Moses und Aron, I am unsure, though the difficulty of hearing Moses anywhere at any time presents its own challenge. It was not so much about individual as representative works, though, so as to be indicative of some sort of resumption of ‘normal’ musical life, rather than tailoring performances to pandemic circumstances. Strauss’s Alpine Symphony I heard surprisingly early on, though I am tempted to say I should still wait for a Frau ohne Schatten (all being well, next year); Gurrelieder came a little over a year ago. Alas, neither was a very good performance, though I felt relief and gratitude nevertheless. Now, at last, came Die Meistersinger, my first opportunity to see the Deutsche Oper’s current production, new last year, from Jossi Wieler, Anna Viebrock, and Sergio Morabito. 

There are good ideas, here: often, if not always, well achieved. That the most overt and complex instance of cultural nationalism in Wagner’s dramatic œuvre should, in the wake of subsequent German history, be a site of controversy, even of discomfort, should not itself be controversial. It is the least of the debts we must continually settle in the wake of Friedrich Meinecke’s ‘German catastrophe’. That this might yet be controversial in ultra-reactionary circles need not detain us. No, of course, Meister does not mean Herr, and anyone claiming Hans Sachs’s call to honour your German masters is concerned with political domination should be taken no more seriously than the Nazis on this; nonetheless, rightly or wrongly – for me, it would be some of the former, and considerably more of the latter – Die Meistersinger has, like so much else, been tarnished by the ‘catastrophe’ and we cannot simply pretend it has not happened. And so, to frame the action with the wood-panelling of a music school that more than hints at a certain conservatoire on Munich’s Arcisstraße, reminds us, for the most part beneficially, of our historical and cultural duty.

 

The Hochschule für Musik and Theater – if that be what it is – is as prestigious a school of advanced musical instruction as can be found. The building in which it now stands was built between 1933 and 1937 as the Führerbau; if you walk past today, you will see a plaque acknowledging the Munich Agreement, signed there in 1938. What you will not see inside are the Stolpersteine laid down earlier this century; the city of Munich removed them as an alleged fire hazard. The interior may also be familiar – again, I suspect far from coincidentally – to those who have watched Edgar Reitz’s Heimat 2. This is where Hermann and others received their musical instruction and gave many of their performances. Encircling 1968, the hopes it engendered and its bitter aftermath, Reitz’s films inhabit a similar world to that shown here, fashions suggesting (to me) the later 60s or early 70s. Hans Sachs is, of course, in some ways a harbinger of les évènements, though with a healthy does of Schopenhauerian reflection and interpretation that might have given them greater staying power. The hand of historical discomfort is present, then, though it is really up to us, for most of the performance, how much we feel that.

There are shades of Katharina Wagner’s Bayreuth Meistersinger. Not only is this set in a music school and hers an art school; there is some throwing around of shoes, if not so much as at Bayreuth. In this case, that seems, somewhat awkwardly, to be consequent to a realisation that the new setting does not readily permit Sachs to be a cobbler too, yet something at some point must be done with shoes. There are a few other cases where what we see sits awkwardly with what we hear, without proving a productive contradiction. It seems strange, for instance, to have Walther and Eva copulate in two corners of the hall during the chorale, only for him immediately after to apologise, seemingly without irony, ‘Fraulein! Verzeiht der Sitte Bruch!’ Sachs running off with Eva a little while afterwards, having creepily approached her from behind, is at best a bit silly, more Carry On Nuremberg than anything else. The point of gender imbalance and, frankly, violence inherent in the work is better made elsewhere, with female students/apprentices having to resist or endure Magisterial advances, often in full view. Alas, we know only too well now the wrong sort of ‘permissive’ culture that has been nurtured and protected in conservatoire education.

 

The position of the apprentices and chorus deserves further attention. Since there is no town of Nuremberg here – a different sort of Meistersinger ohne Nürnberg from that of Wieland Wagner – some other solution for the latter needs to be presented. At the close, this, reasonably enough, is the audience for what appear to be final recitals of sharply contrasting quality from Beckmesser and Walther. Earlier on, in place of the guilds, we have what seems to be David’s nightmare, in which the clock (a little too crassly) goes back to 19:33, whose horror is inadequately characterised by ghostly dancing. Likewise, the orgy (free love?) in which the apprentices indulge at the beginning of the second act, though to begin with intriguingly balletic, goes on a bit so as to become frankly tedious. No wonder they slope off in dribs and drabs. Perhaps that is the point, though I am not sure I believe that. More disturbingly, Sachs’s final peroration oscillates between one-sided condemnation and further silliness. His transformation into threatening, at least proto- (or post-)fascist mob leader receives little or no adequate preparation, unless that is why the ceiling lights having been moving around for the entire scene. (It suggests sea-sickness, but I do not think we have moved to the Titanic.) A recurrence of still greater ill-matched dancing may suggest the crowd having fallen under his sway, a warning, but it seems more suggestive of an inability to conclude. This, for me, would benefit from rethinking, as would some loose ends elsewhere.

 

For the nationalist underpinning and final turn are only one aspect of a multivalent work, whose humanity – yes, one can hear it, and should be unashamed of saying so – ultimately exceeds however one wishes to characterise the above. The idea that a father should seek to award his daughter as a prize in a song contest, even if she may refuse, is of course monstrous, even when we allow for historical difference. But the point, ultimately, is that he does not, and that is Wagner’s doing. We can dispute many issues of gender here; with which nineteenth-century artwork can we not? Yet the pain Sachs and, to an extent, Eva must suffer, and the joy of requited love between Eva and Walther are real and of dramatic consequence. Both, whatever my misgivings concerning surrounding details, are present here. I am not sure the unmistakable sexual element of the former relationship is especially helpful, since its dramatic import is blurred by warnings of abuse elsewhere, but the chemistry between Magnus Vigilius’s Walther and Elena Tsallagova’s Eva is stronger, more all-enveloping, and in its way victorious. That the two elope and do not take part in the concluding minutes, whatever it might mean, seems to me important. Beckmesser does not return either: a relief, for it has surely become too much of a cliché and would have been out of place here. 

Vigilius and Tsallagova both gave strong performances throughout. The former, new to me, is shaping up to be a fine Heldentenor indeed. Golden yet far from unvarying of tone, he also displayed verbal sensitivity and stage presence in equal measure. Tsallagova, whom I cannot recall hearing in Wagner before, proved similarly spirited and adaptable. If there were, understandably, times when Johan Reuter tired a little as Sachs, he soon recovered, and offered a properly complex reading of the character, both for work and production. Philipp Jekal trod the difficult lines of Beckmesserian performance, neither too absurd, nor too dignified, with aplomb: another reading with acute attention to the alchemy of words, music, and gesture. Albert Pesendorfer rarely, if ever, disappoints, and certainly did not here in a big-hearted (bartering the bride notwithstanding) Pogner of great presence. Ya-Chung Huang’s David made much of the uncomfortable bullying and bashfulness his character suffered in this reading, offering fine musical virtues too. Kathrin Göring’s Magdalena was well sung and characterised, as were all of the smaller roles, this group of Masters no mere collective but rather replete with individual voices and temperaments.

After an underwhelming, oddly balanced Overture, thin and dragging, the orchestra under Ulf Schirmer soon got into its swing, all the more impressive in the second and third acts. Without wishing to make any obvious points, Schirmer directed the players (and, more generally, the singers on stage) with inobtrusive understanding and wisdom. If there were inevitably, in a performance of this length, occasional cases of stage and pit falling apart – one unfortunately so in the Quintet – they were soon remedied. Far more noteworthy were a lack of awkward corners and an abundance of musical continuity, very much in the spirit of the work. The chorus was excellent throughout.

A qualified welcome, then, to the first revival of this Meistersinger. Its predecessor was, I think, the last of Götz Friedrich’s Wagner productions to be replaced here in Charlottenburg. I saw it in 2010 and recognise both loss and gain in its replacement. As the work reminds us, though, nothing is for ever and certainly not in art. There was enough here, not least in fine sung performances, to remind me of my love for Die Meistersinger – I shall admit to having shed the odd tear, in the Quintet and in both the Trial Song and Prize Song – and quite how much I have missed it. Work, production, and performances invited us to reflect that we never simply return; nor can or should we ever shed our past. The myth of a Year Zero is as unwelcome as it is chimerical.

Jenůfa, Deutsche Oper, 17 January 2020

Jenůfa (Rachel Harnisch), Grandmother Burya (Renate Behle); Images © Bettina Stöß

Grandmother Buryja – Renate Behle

Kostelnička Buryja – Evelyn Herlitzius

Jenůfa – Rachel Harnisch

Laca Klemeň – Robert Watson

Števa Buryja – Ladislav Elgr

Foreman – Philipp Jekal

Mayor – Stephan Bronk

Jano – Meechet Marrero

Barena – Karis Tucker

Mayor’s Wife – Nadine Secunde

Karolka – Jacquelyn Stucker

Shepherdess – Fionnuala McCarthy

Christof Loy (director)

Dirk Becker (set designs)

Judith Weihrauch (costumes)
Bernd Purkrabek (lighting)

Eva-Maria Abelein (Spiellleitung)

Thomas Wilhelm (choreographic assistance)

Christian Arseni (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: Jeremy Bines) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

If Jenůfa fails to move, something will have gone terribly wrong. That is not, however, to say that one should take for granted a performance as moving as this. It takes a good deal of musical work to present an opera with this degree of excellence. This, in short, was an evening that heard the Deutsche Oper at something close to its very best.

Grandmother Burya, Laca (Robert Watson), Jenůfa

Guiding that excellent work throughout, whether on stage or in the pit, was the hand – perhaps better, were the hands – of Donald Runnicles. I have heard some distinguished conducting of this opera, from Bernard Haitink at Covent Garden (my first Jenůfa and, indeed, my first Janáček opera) to Jiří Bělohlávek in concert and, most recently, on the fateful night of 23 June 2016, Mark Wigglesworth for ENO. Each of those conductors brought something distinctive and valuable to the opera. Runnicles and his outstanding orchestra had nothing whatsoever to fear from comparisons. If I applaud his gifts of synthesis, that is not to say that the parts coming together to make their sum were insignificant: quite the contrary. An ear for detail, be it for specificity of timbre or rhythm, combination of instrumental and vocal line, the composer’s singular method of motivic writing, and much else besides, was crucial here in capturing and holding not only the musical but also the dramatic attention. That coming together, however, was equally crucial. Not unlike Mozart – or Shakespeare, for that matter – Janáček does not judge. To be sure, we make our own judgements, yet the humanity informing the composer’s mission involves understanding of why people do wrong, why they did not act otherwise. The conductor’s task in communicating that is to balance detail and broader sweep, not unlike the composer himself does in his astonishing art. There was human wisdom here on both counts: aware, perhaps, of something beyond, something divine, yet knowing that the truths in which this drama would partake must also keep their distance. They have their roots in something specific, even folk-like, without ever being reducible to that. Once again, this seemed to be communicated instinctively, however great the preparation and skill in maintaining that fond, even dangerous illusion of the immediate.

Kostelnička Buryja (Evelyn Herlitzius), Jenůfa

In an instructive programme note, Runnicles spoke of Janáček following an aesthetic of Kargheit (which connotes both frugality and bleakness) when it comes to sonority, an aesthetic opposed by well-meaning, Straussian smoothing of the edges and rounding out by the conductor Karel Kovařovic for the first Prague performance. A comparison with Rimskified Mussorgsky is not, as Runnicles, suggests, so far from the mark (though I still think that deserves something, somewhere of a place). We no longer hear either as eccentric, let alone incompetent, and we are surely right to do so. But again, to hear the craft, the meaning, the art in such writing requires work: no music worthy of the name really plays or sings itself; nor, one might add, does it listen to itself. Orchestral musicians as much as the conductor, as much as the listener, need to respond to finely judged balances between fragment and melody, speech rhythm and musical rhythm, individual timbre and blend. They must also do so with a knife-edge appreciation of dramatic timing. That unforgettable xylophone solo there, a solo violin intervention there, the crucial difference between trombone (Janáček) and horn (Kovařovic) sonority, and so on: these were not only presented, but felt, believed in. There is no need to damn Kovařovic any more than there is Rimsky-Korsakov. They did what they did; it spoke to many. One could truly feel, however, that Janáček spoke on this occasion – and that one thereby felt the cruelty, the bleakness, and yet ultimately the humanity and redemption too that this opera requires us to feel.

Jenůfa, Kostelnička

That also requires the small matter of excellent singing and acting – and of excellent collaboration. Here again, I had no reservations. Rachel Harnisch led us surely down a tragic yet sorrowfully redemptive path with a Jenůfa whose initial youthful spirits rendered the inhumanity of her subsequent, consequent tribulations all the more harrowing. I cannot imagine any human being having failed to root for her. Robert Watson and Ladislav Elgr faced off splendidly as Laca and Števa, the former wounded and wounding, increasingly noble of spirit, the latter’s cocky allure – seemingly the whole village, not only its girls, under its spell – undermined by a weakness of spirit that is always difficult to convey through song. (In a sense, it is the Don Ottavio problem, here skilfully surmounted.) Not the whole village, of course, for that would be to reckon without the Kostelnička – and without Evelyn Herlitzius’s Kostelnička. If I say it was a typically astonishing performance, I do not mean to undermine its specificity. Herlitzius is one of those singing actors who somehow both remains quite herself and assumes, even transforms the character of the role she is playing. Initially hard, increasingly wild, always with good in her heart: one could hardly bear to look her in the face, or the aural equivalent, yet equally knew that one must. This was spellbinding artistry, in the truest sense. Yet wherever one looked and listened, there was necessary artistry, as much a crucial part of the musicodramatic synthesis: Renate Behle’s Grandmother, wiser than her carefully prepared surface let on, in knowing that principle may also lie in surviving, in not succumbing to tragedy; Nadine Secunde’s properly ghastly Mayor’s Wife; Philipp Jekal’s Foreman, wanting initially to be Števa, yet perhaps suggesting that all was not quite as it should be: these characters and more made Janáček’s community and thus drama what they were. So too, of course, did the excellent Deutsche Oper Chorus.

Jenůfa, Števa (Ladislav Elgr), Laca

I have left Christof Loy’s production until last because it seemed – and this is not always a claim I should make for that director’s work – more a framework in which the work and its performance could unfold than an interpretation. Aside from the conceit of having the imprisoned Kostelnička look back at the story that had led her to where she now found herself, there was not so much to report. Occasional dramatic pauses made their point too, having us collect our thoughts – and our emotions. I have seen more interventionist and, perhaps, more telling stagings; it is fair to say, for instance, that I learned and was challenged more from David Alden at the Coliseum. But that did not seem to be the point on this occasion. If a staging permitted, even gently led me to be moved by the drama that unfolded, then it may also be accounted successful.

Der Zwerg, Deutsche Oper, 12 April 2019

Deutsche Oper

DER ZWERG von Alexander von Zemlinsky, Deutsche Oper Berlin, Premiere am 24. März 2019, copyright: Monika Ritterhaus
The Dwarf: Mick Morris Mehnert and David Butt Philip

Donna Clara – Elena Tsallagova

Ghita – Emily Magee

The Dwarf – David Butt Philip, Mick Morris Mehnert

Don Estoban – Philipp Jekal

Maids – Flurina Stucki, Amber Fasquelle, Maiju Vaahtoluoto

Companions – Carolina Dawabe Valle, Margarita Greiner

Alma Schindler – Adelle Eslinger

Alexander von Zemlinsky – Evgeny Nikiforov

Tobias Kratzer (director)

Rainer Sellmaier (designs)

Stefan Woinke (lighting)

Sebastian Hanusa (dramaturgy)

Ladies of the Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: Jeremy Bines)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)

Donna Clara (Elena Tsallagova) and her guests

‘I have always thought and still believe that he was a great composer. Maybe his time will come earlier than we think.’ Arnold Schoenberg was not always given to exaggerated enthusiasm for the music of his contemporaries; he could hardly, though, have been more emphatic in the case of his friend, brother-in-law, mentor, advocate, interpreter, and, of course, fellow composer, Alexander Zemlinsky.

I had told myself that I ought not to begin another piece on Zemlinsky with a reference to Schoenberg. In this case, however, the Deutsche Oper more or less made my decision for me, by prefacing this excellent new production of Zemlinsky’s one-act opera, Der Zwerg, with Schoenberg’s Accompaniment to a Film Scene, op.34. Zemlinsky’s one-act opera dates from 1919-21, Schoenberg’s from the close of the 20s. Much separates them: not least, though certainly not only, Schoenberg’s adoption of the dodecaphonic method. Yet they have common roots as well as kinship; the opening, additional scene to Tobias Kratzer’s staging makes that clear, despatching us – and Zemlinsky – back two decades, to a fashionable drawing room, in which the hapless, lovelorn Zemlinsky attempts to teach Mahler at the piano. Alma Mahler, that is, or rather Alma Schindler, whose rejection of Zemlinsky, depicted or rather imagined here, hit Zemlinsky hard. Alex finds Alma irresistible – many did – yet she finds him repellent, ridiculous; she pushes him away, mocks him. Kratzer makes clear that this is a way in, as much for the composer and work as for us: in no sense an explanation or reduction. I had worried that Schoenberg’s music might overshadow what came afterwards – and perhaps it did, ever so slightly – but no harm was done, and there was wit in the over-emphasis on the already prominent piano part as ‘learned’ and ‘performed’ by the figures at the piano. Anticipations of Schoenberg’s actual Piano Concerto, both from the Brahmsian and Wagnerian wings – gross oversimplification, I know – intrigued.

But back to Zemlinsky and Der Zwerg. We then move to the court of the Spanish Infanta: a theatre of cruelty, wonder, superficiality, and, of course, riches. It was difficult not to think a little of Salome here, not only on account of Oscar Wilde (whose short story this is). The dwarf given as the Infanta’s eighteenth-birthday present is not Zemlinsky – although Alma, with typical charity, would refer to him in her memoirs as a ‘horrible dwarf’ – but the trauma of his rejection feeds character and drama, as it had in works such as Eine florentinische Tragödie and Die Seejungfrau. Here, we see him in two different ways: as an actual ‘dwarf’, finely acted by Mick Morris Mehnert, and as he sees – and hears – himself, a musician (which he is, far from coincidentally), sung in parallel concert dress and increasingly acted by David Butt Philip. Singing is the dwarf’s act: without that, he would, as an ‘ugly’ person, be nothing. It enables him to be ‘merely’ ridiculous, in the eyes of the court. It is the crushing realisation that the child – no more than Salome is she capable of empathy, of love – does not, could not love him that has him confront his actual image, the singer at last seeing the dwarf in the mirror. Such is the central tragedy of recognition, of despair, of revulsion, of death.

Yet, as in Salome, we also sense the tragedy of the Infanta, Donna Clara. The ladies of the court egg her on; is there any way, in this stifling, stylish, ‘aestheticised’ atmosphere, that she could have become more human? (What chance, after all, did Alma have in her world of being taken seriously as a musician, as a woman, as a human being?) Images or potential images abound. For the arrival of the gift itself, sorry himself, mobile telephones are taken from the guests. How keen they would have been to relay their amusement to a wider amusement; they doubtless still will, long after the unfortunate object of their derision has been forgotten. So too do ideas of music and musicians, of art and artists. An orchestra is assembled, and quickly dissembled. Busts of artists – of men – surround the stage and even – rightly, we feel – are smashed, like some of those instruments. Is it perhaps too hopeful to install Zemlinsky’s bust centre-stage at the close, as is accomplished here? Yes – and no. That is surely the point. Zemlinsky’s time may or may not have come.

It certainly has done in terms of musical performance. Butt Philip, in surely the finest, most commanding performance I have yet heard from him, enticed and engaged. Elena Tsallagova captured to a tee the difficult balancing act in a direction that was somehow both the same and different, likewise as impressive in song as in demeanour. Emily Magee and Philipp Jekal both impressed as Ghita, the lady-in-waiting who must tell the Dwarf who he is – the Infanta lacks courage or even inclination – and Don Estoban, supposedly master of ceremonies, yet quite out of his depth. They helped us understand why, to appreciate failings that perhaps fell short of tragedy, but which certainly helped prepare the way for it. Smaller roles were all well taken, the chorus well prepared both vocally and on stage.

This was above all, though, an achievement for Donald Runnicles and the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper – pointing us, perhaps, to the truth that it is in the orchestra that Zemlinsky is most at home. It is easy to point to what he and his music are not – Schoenberg, Mahler, Strauss… – and many would doubtless have done so again on this occasion. Here, at least, the score never quite blooms as it might have done with those composers; and, to be fair, as it does in Zemlinsky’s own Lyric Symphony. But one heard the kinship with that score in particular, melodic and harmonic characteristics never to be reduced to ‘influence’, but of a nature that we may well recognise better when the composer’s time truly has come. Runnicles conducted as if this were a repertoire work, its harmonic structure and meaning as clear, its colours as specifically delineated and blended, as if he were conducting Wagner or Strauss (or Schoenberg, etc.) There was more here, one felt, than could possibly be discerned in a single hearing. The opera’s close in the ‘wrong’ key, Mahlerian ‘progressive’ tonality turned regressive, made its own tragic point. Zemlinsky and his opera were given a voice – if, but only if, we listen.

In 1959, another modernist critic, perhaps still more exacting than Schoenberg, Theodor Adorno, wrote of Zemlinsky in surprisingly glowing terms. He had ‘made more of the compromises characteristic of an eclectic than any other first-rate composer of his generation. Yet his eclecticism demonstrated genius in its truly seismographic sensitivity to the stimuli by which he allowed himself to be overwhelmed.’ We often look more warily than Adorno or Schoenberg upon Romantic notions of genius, even as our concert halls, opera houses, and much popular discourse cling to them. Once more: has Zemlinsky’s time come? What of Alma’s too? Will those questions ever be beside the point? Should they ever?