Tristan und Isolde, Deutsche Oper, 3 July 2024

Tristan – Michael Weinius
King Marke – Günther Groissböck
Isolde – Ricarda Merbeth
Kurwenal – Leonardo Lee
Melot – Jörg Schörner
Brangäne – Irene Roberts
Shepherd – Clemens Bieber
Young Sailor – Kieran Carrel
Steersman – Byung Gil Kim

Director – Graham Vick
Designs – Paul Brown
Lighting – Wolfgang Göbbel  

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper (director: Thomas Richter) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Juraj Valčuha (conductor)

Images from the 2011 premiere: © Matthias Horn

And so, the Deutsche Oper’s season, in which it has shown all ten of Wagner’s ‘Bayreuth’ works, begins to draw to a close. I have not managed to see them all; by accident rather than design, I have seen the current productions of trhe seven ‘music dramas’, but missed those of The Flying Dutchman, Tannhäuser, and Lohengrin (all of which I have a seen before). Of those I saw, all but Philipp Stölzl’s Parsifal were new to me. Stefan Herheim’s Ring I greeted enthusiastically, though not without reservations, in May; the Wieler-Viebrock-Morabito Meistersinger less so, though it had its moments. How would the late Graham Vick’s 2011 Tristan, which somehow I had missed until now, fare? 

Disappointingly, I am afraid. Maybe I was not in the right mood, though it was certainly not only that, but I do not think I have ever felt less engaged, or even interested, in a performance of what should always be a work like no other, on the edge of the possible but also of what one can bear. I doubtless quote this letter from Wagner to Mathilde Wesendonck too often, yet however drama-queenish the expression, the principle remains sound, or at least readily comprehensible: ‘I fear the opera will be banned – unless the whole thing is parodied in a bad performance –: only mediocre performances can save me! Perfectly good ones will be bound to drive people mad, – I cannot imagine it otherwise.’ Once again, sanity regrettably endured.

Let us begin with Vick’s production, at which I feel able only to throw my hands into the hair and say (polite version): goodness knows. One can admire his extraordinary work in Birmingham and indeed some or many of his stagings, without having much idea what is going on here and, more sadly, without being able to care very much. Is it perhaps all a drug-induced dream, Dallas meeting Trainspotting? One of the very few (on its own terms) theatrically convincing moments, presaged by a disturbing appearance (one of many, from a cast of irritating extras) by a shaking, wall-hugging addict, is when Tristan and Isolde inject themselves for what seems, even sounds, to be that elusive perfect hit. Who they are, though, and what they are doing in something that may be a house or may be a funeral parlour (Morold’s funeral, I thought to start with, though the coffin surely remains too long) is anyone’s guess. All manner of strange people come and go. A gang of menacing men in the first act suggests an approach founded, oddly, upon gender, when surely the whole point is the irrelevance of the phenomenal world, but it is soon gone anyway. 

So too are the woman who walks around naked and, in the second act, outside in the garden (albeit with an indoor fireplace), a male naked gravedigger. Perhaps it is hot out there, and Tristan’s overcoat is a product of his addiction. He and Isolde sit on the sofa for most of it, as if watching the television; they seem to have little interest in each other. A torch-cum-gigantic-peppermill sometimes comes into view above, though it does not seem aligned to the night/day axis. From time to time, a woman in adjoining room does the ironing. The Steersman makes his appearance bursting out of the bathroom in mid-shave. It all ends, banally enough, with Isolde, spying some more people walking around the garden, opening the door to join them. Quite. That the action in this ‘action’ (Handlung) is entirely metaphysical seems to have eluded Vick, as it does many, but this lacks so much as a hint of coherence on its own terms. I think the point, or at least a point, may be that they have grown old in the meantime; with that, at least, one can sympathise. 

The real drama lies in the orchestra, of course, or should. There were passages of relative fluency among the rest from Juraj Valčuha, but that is about the best one can say. More often than not, we had audible gear changes, surprisingly thin strings, odd balances, faulty ensemble, and a deadly tendency throughout each act to slow down. The second act felt interminable, whilst Tristan’s third-act agonies amounted to little more than a lengthy list of non sequiturs. The Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, normally outstanding in Wagner, sounded as if it had had enough; I cannot blame it. 

Ricarda Merbeth’s Isolde had much to commend it, especially in the first act. She made a great deal of the words, offering a masterclass in scorn, though sustaining a line seemed less of a priority. Hans von Bülow’s claim that this is Wagner’s bel canto opera is as silly as it sounds, but that does not mean there is no melodic interest in the vocal line. Still, she outshone her Tristan, Michael Weinius, who had seemingly endless vocal reserves to call on. Given how shouted and unvariegated they were, it was tempting sometimes to wish that he had not; this was neither bel nor canto, and his acting was at best gestural. Leonardo Lee’s Kurwenal bloomed into what, alongside Günther Groissböck’s beautifully sung, finely detailed Marke, was surely the finest performance of the night. Irene Roberts sang well too, though a little more mezzo-ish depth would not have gone amiss, especially so as to contrast with Isolde. Given what the singers were presented with, though, it would be churlish to complain further. 

Wagner, then, was saved again. Next  stop: Bayreuth, including a new Tristan. Fingers crossed for a little madness.

Götterdämmerung, Deutsche Oper, 20 May 2024

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere, with a considerably different cast)
Hagen (Albert Pesendorfer)

Siegfried - Clay Hilley

Brünnhilde – Ricarda Merbeth
Hagen – Albert Pesendorfer
Gunther – Thomas Lehman
Gutrune, Third Norn – Felicia Moore
Alberich – Jordan Shanahan
Waltraute – Annika Schlicht
First Norn, Floßhilde – Lindsay Ammann
Second Norn, Wellgunde – Karis Tucker
Woglinde – Lee-ann Dunbar

Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival directors – Eva-Maria Abelein, Silke Sense
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Video – Torge Møller
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf

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

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Nicholas Carter (conductor)

All things, good, bad, and indifferent, must come to an end; or must they? The idea that Wagner’s Ring is cyclical is widespread – many routinely refer to attending a ‘cycle’ – but it is at least open to criticism. More on that later, but this Deutsche Oper Ring has certainly come to an end with performances of great distinction, perhaps the most uniformly well cast I have ever seen, and with astonishing conducting from Nicholas Carter, certainly the best I have heard since Daniel Barenboim in 2013. Not, of course, to forget the superlative playing given throughout by the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, showing itself once again to be the match of any (Wagner) orchestra in the world, the Staatskapelle across town included. No Ring would be anything at all without Wagner’s reimagined Greek Chorus, leading, commenting, questioning, seducing, thrilling, and chilling; this one, as translucent as it was darkly malevolent, as weighty as it was agile, did all that and more. Only now, in the final instalment, it was joined by Wagner’s actual chorus, those of the Deutsche Oper as seemingly always excelling not only vocally but as dramatic participants onstage. 

A Ring in the theatre is, of course, its production too; this marked the end of Stefan Herheim’s memorable staging. No Ring is perfect: it is not, should never be, that sort of work. It is too big, too unmanageable, too much a ‘world’ for that. This has contributed much, though, not least from its insistence on Wagner’s ‘three days with preliminary evening’ as a musically driven drama that navigates between the concerns of an ongoing rite and something explicitly contemporary. In that, at its best, it has penetrated to Wagner’s own mythological practice, doing what it has shown and what it has suggested to us. If the final scene of Siegfried proved for me a rare disappointment, it also gained from what happened next—though I still think it would have benefited from heightened attention to the drama of Siegfried and Brünnhilde and less to the crowd of copulating extras around them. Here, though, at the onset of the Prologue to Götterdämmerung, the generational shift (which has already, strictly, been accomplished) is accompanied by a scenic one; or rather, the action passes between two basic settings throughout, the old one of the rehearsal room and piano, and the new one of the Deutsche Oper itself. 

We probably should not make too much of a distinction, or maybe we should, between actors and chorus. Perhaps some have gone on to be audience members, whilst some continue in their movement and ‘extra’ roles. The more important thing, I think, is that two related worlds less collide than interact. There is, after all, little point in telling a story if no one is there to listen. In any case, the actors surround blindfolded Norns (echoing the state at one point of the treble Woodbird), choreographically heightening the drama just as they did to form the Rhine in the first scene of Das Rheingold—and just as they will in the final scene of Götterdämmerung to form the fire, aided by striking red lighting. Again, some of the most powerful effects are the simplest and, as Wagner put it, the most ‘purely human’. Meyerbeer’s ‘effects without cause’ are neither his business nor ours, whatever the (exaggerated) claims that have been made for the elder composer’s influence on this drama. A degree of grand opéra, yes, but other composers in that genre, the creator of Rienzi included, loom larger, which is not to say that a blazing account of the second act trio – courtesy of the orchestra, Carter, Ricarda Merbeth, Albert Pesendorfer, and Thomas Lehman did not thrill – for it very much did. 

Back for now, though, to Herheim. (In a sense, the distinction is false, albeit necessary to say anything at all.) The theatrical ‘business’ of dressing up continues to loom large, enabling characters to become – perhaps even to leave behind – ‘themselves’, as well as actors to become characters. White sheets become improbably large wedding dresses for Brünnhilde and Gutrune, their entanglements, their allure, and their physical dangers offering visual metaphors aplenty. Rhinemaidens, in losing their external trappings, become Norn-like, hieratic, in their warnings to Siegfried, Carter’s quasi-liturgical handling of the score both reflecting and leading that. Hagen assumes Siegfried’s heroic costume, whereas Siegfried fatally loses his. Gunther is likewise transformed from initial silliness (not a criticism, but rather a commendation of Lehman’s alert performance) into something more. The white tie of an ‘artist’ is the key, or at least it seems to be, as it is for Siegfried’s transformation (as well, undoubtedly, as whatever it is Hagen slips into his drink). Their scene on Brünnhilde’s rock is very well handled, both initially equals, sharing the lines, before Gunther fails and Siegfried must take over ‘as’ Gunther—before, of course, returning to the Gibichung Hall, where the sleep into which he keeps falling (Hagen’s doing?) overcomes him. It seems also to overwhelm during his final scene, staggering about, not ‘himself’—until he can finally become himself at his death, fully in keeping with Wagner. 

Gunther (Thomas Lehman), Siegfried (Clay Hilley)

In the meantime, Hagen’s departure into the audience for his watch proves, with further Brechtian use of house lights at critical moments, a telling and striking coup de théâtre. First he finds Waltraute there, his intimidation a prod to the mission she undertakes to her sister. Then he conducts the dialogue with Alberich from there, his father on stage, Siegfried sleeping. Alberich’s presence as clown of death, spying the action, even trying to force the ring from the sleeping Siegfried’s hand, visually informs not only his son’s appearance but that of zombie guests to the abortive weddings. As we hear the Nibelung and his ring musically envelop the action, so does he colour the participants too. Not for nothing does he manically play the piano at the end of the first act and resume his performance at the beginning of the second. His longtime antagonist appears too, actors assembling to show, first during Waltraute’s narration and on occasion thereafter, Valhalla’s throng of gods and heroes, a weary Walvater finally descending to the piano to receive Brünnhilde’s ultimate judgement. 

Before (re-)turning to the close, I should add a little about the vocal performances. Merbeth combined the headstrong virtues of her Walküre Brünnhilde and the lyrical ones of her Siegfried performance into a memorable assumption of her role. Clay Hilley again proved tireless – as tireless as a Siegfried can ever really be – and committed as the doomed hero. Pesendorfer and Jordan Shanahan’s Hagen and Alberich cast spells both dark and magical through voice and stage presence alike. Lehman’s Gunther and Felicia Moore’s warmly sympathetic Gutrune captured the difficult, sometimes thankless essence of their characters, always alert to the particular demands of the staging. Annika Schlicht’s chalumeau-like Waltraute was as much of a vocal and dramatic joy as her Fricka. Norns and Rhinemaidens were uniformly excellent. This was, I am delighted to reiterate, at least the equal of any Ring I have heard in uniform excellence of casting, and perhaps more than that. There may have been starrier casts; there may have been individual performances ‘bettered’ in one way or another, for there always will be. Yet across the board, the Deutsche Oper’s strong sense of company will take some beating. 

Following departure of all from the stage and a splendidly oracular image summoning up memories of Delphi, but also of Patrice Chéreau and Pierre Boulez revelling in Wagner’s own revisiting its prophetic indeterminacy, we return to where we began: rehearsal room with lights, emergency exit, and piano, no sign of suitcases, refugees, or anyone/-thing else we have seen in between. A cleaner (with a hint of Erda to her?) comes to check all is as it should be. All has been washed away, or has it? Others will doubtless come along to stage the work again. The question remains whether they will have learned anything. For Wagner’s ‘watchers’, those ‘men and women moved to the very depths of their being’ were all along intended to imply this was not entirely a return, that consciousness had been created or raised. The Ring ends not in E-flat-major, but in D-flat, the key of Valhalla. Over, then, to those who have made it, us included. Only, given the achievements to date of ‘human consciousness’, who would bet against catastrophic repetition?

Siegfried, Deutsche Oper, 18 May 2024

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere)
The Wanderer (Iain Paterson) and Alberich (Jordan Shanahan)

Siegfried – Clay Hilley
Mime – Ya-Chung Huang
The Wanderer – Iain Paterson
Alberich – Jordan Shanahan
Fafner – Tobias Kehrer
Woodbird – Nicolas Schröer
Erda – Lindsay Ammann
Brünnhilde – Ricarda Merbeth

Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival director – Philine Tiezel
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Video – Torge Møller
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Nicholas Carter (conductor)

Mime (Ya-Chung Huang)

Emblems of the refugees’ arrival but also perhaps of impending departure, suitcases once again form and delimit the set, the rehearsal piano at their centre once again omnipresent. Wagner’s life and work becomes their own, our own. It certainly has mine since I first fell under its spell, and despite occasional attempts to escape – or at least to take a break – it never works. This Deutsche Oper Ring is not helping in that vain attempt, a somewhat disappointing third act notwithstanding. 

A Ring mystery is what its ring actually does, what its powers actually are. They certainly do not tally with what the characters tell us about it. Must one in some sense believe? Is it a form of theology, as Wagner, keen student of Feuerbach, might understand it? Probably. At any rate, it notably does Alberich’s bidding at the start, its yellow light focused at the piano, opening its lid, and thus initiating the Bühnenfestspiel’s ‘second day’. He and Wotan, Schwarz-Alberich and Licht-Alberich, as Wotan-as-Wanderer will call them, watch and wander from the start. They are not always present, yet often they are. Tellingly, the Wanderer watches the whole first scene from above, and Alberich appears, to Mime’s anger, during the second. (Perhaps, again, his brother might actually have been able to help him, like Siegfried, like the Wanderer, but the clever craftsman does not want to know.)  Their final confrontation, at least onstage, in the first scene of the second act attains a tragic magnificence and import such as rarely, if ever, have I encountered. That again, is surely in part Nicholas Carter’s doing, proportions of the act as a whole seemingly reconsidered, so that, like the final act of Die Walküre, thoughts of lopsidedness – the so-called ‘Forest Murmurs’ often overstay their welcome, but not here – never materialise. It is also surely that of Stefan Herheim’s staging; the two, along with vocal-dramatic performances proceed together, more or less indivisible (although for the purposes of writing, one must start somewhere). The two figures are, of course, themselves refugees here: they have stepped forward, assumed roles; yet, like the boys in Lord of the Flies, however changed, they must also remain who they were, albeit within a different, often Brechtian framework of storytelling. 

SIegfried (Clay Hilley), Brünnhilde (here Nina Stemme)

Music continues to play its stage role. Where Alberich, in a sense, founded his enterprise on an instrument he had found, or perhaps brought with him, Mime has expanded his endeavours into a brass workshop, where instruments hang from the ceiling. It is a slightly odd assortment and that, presumably, is the point. Mime is not an ‘artist’, but a ‘craftsman’; Wagner always upheld that Romantic distinction, which directly colours his creation of Mime and Siegfried. An artist would doubtless have brought in some other instruments. Incapable of moving beyond his narrow, technical purview, Mime continues to do the same thing—as, of course, he does in attempts to reforge the sword. Not for nothing in Herheim’s cunning elision of Wagner and Mime (here, for better or worse, in striped top) is the ‘Wagner tuba’ a key exhibit. Dubious tendencies from Wagner reception –much as we might wish, we cannot always simply ignore them – resurface. Mime’s dwarf-like quality and large head surely offer a nod to strange claims made concerning Wagner’s height and (worse still) physiognomy. Nietzsche would have laughed; the Wanderer does. 

The craftsman’s resourcefulness is important, though, at least if it may be harnessed to something more. It is possible, at least for Siegfried, to have bellows created from what is available, in a splendid nod to the original steam technologies of Bayreuth. Fafner also emerges from the suitcases and instruments too, brass teeth fairly gleaming, basic sheet props and colourful lighting again working their wonders for the rest of his maw. For lighting (Ulrich Niepel) can accomplish so much, simply yet starkly, as in Mime’s silhouette of brief power, or its prospect, when he holds the Wanderer’s spear. A vision of the world, which Mime, like Alberich still would ‘win’, is unfurled, again using what has emerged from the refugees’ possessions. 

Siegfried and Mime

It is a pity, perhaps, that Siegfried’s appearance – notably, like that of his father – is so ‘historically’ bound as (to us) to seem ridiculous, but that is surely deliberate, the flaws of ‘heroism’ present from the beginning. A striking innovation, though, is the return of Siegmund and Sieglinde in a Hänsel und Gretel-like ‘Dream Pantomime’. Siegmund may have rejected the immortality of Valhalla, but there are other ways to return, to guide (such as Mime never could). That the Woodbird, an excellent boy treble (Nicolas Schröer) emanates from this world – a very junge Siegfried, if you will – makes a significant contribution to the psychoanalytical framework. So too does the dragon’s blood in which he becomes mired and the pitching of appearance somewhere between clown (picking up from Das Rheingold) and (from Die Walküre) zombie, a disconcerting contrast with fresh youthfulness of voice. 

Carter seemed to offer a presentiment in the first act, which (rather than vice versa) on one occasion seemed very much to approach Humperdinck’s score. Perhaps it was my imagination, but it struck me at the time and before I knew what was to come on stage. His direction of the once-again outstanding Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper remained deeply and consistently impressive, both tied to and leading the action onstage. So too did the cast’s performances. Iain Paterson proved a typically thoughtful Wotan, Jordan Shanahan making a welcome return as an ambiguous clown-Alberich, readable and ‘relatable’ on multiple levels, without forsaking the destructive impulse at his core. 

Siegfried and Mime

Ya-Chung Huang’s Mime was, quite simply, one of the best I have seen and heard, turning the Siegfried-Mime axis into a true battle of very different tenors, for which Clay Hilley’s tireless Siegfried should also receive due credit. Both learn to conduct, as to play the piano, to lead musically and seemingly according to the score, but do they bring it to life? That requires the return of the refugees—and discarding of the old (Walküre) score. Huang’s ability, doubtless enhanced yet only enhanced by make-up and costume, to play his role as if Mime were a puppet-clown, grotesque yet also human, captured so much of the role, its uncomfortable aspects included. Above all, it reminded us of Wagner’s great achievement in showing us, as the late, greatly lamented Michael Tanner pointed out, the sheer misery that it is to be Mime. Tobias Kehrer continued and extended his excellent work as Fafner, that extraordinary last gasp of recognition – ‘Siegfried!’ – given its proper, prophetic, yet chilling worth. I assume his return to ‘life’, or whatever it was, was as much a recognition of the underlying Brechtian ideas as it was of his acquiring zombie-status, though perhaps it was both. The Woodbird’s frustrated waving him away, getting in the way of the story, was a nice touch, but I did wonder whether it might have been better all round not to present the problem in the first place. 

The Woodbird, Siegfried

What, then, of the third act? Musically, again, there was much to admire, though even in that respect – and perhaps more on account of inextricable connection with stage action than any actual flaws – it held my attention less. There was certainly nothing to complain about in Lindsay Ammann’s return as Erda, beautifully sung and enunciated, the character, now more dishevelled, awakened from her sleep and emerging once again from the prompter’s box. Ricarda Merbeth’s surprise return, in place of the previously advertised Elisabeth Teige, as Brünnhilde will have disappointed no one either. Her radiant performance, quite an achievement given its notorious demands so late in the evening, was quite the tonic, insofar as one could avoid distraction, from the events around her. For whilst I can rationalise Herheim’s decisions here, for the first time I felt rather less than convinced. 

The first two scenes go mostly as they ‘should’. No harm in that, quite the contrary, and the third seems nicely set up by the now apparently proficient Siegfried summoning Brünnhilde’s mountain and fire from the piano. Unless, though, I was missing something – it would not be the first time – there is not much more to it then return of the refugees, their ‘identification’, first among straightforward traditional gender lines, with Siegfried and Brünnhilde, then, taught by the score (whose ubiquity becomes more than a little tedious) and, presumably, also by what the two principal characters sing, turning more fluid in orientation and staging an orgy around them. It is all very well done, to the extent of unfortunate distraction from the two singers, ‘parked and barking’. Again, I assume that to be the point, yet it ultimately seemed to me misguided. I doubt this was an attempt to hold up Wagner’s drama as insufficient, or intolerably Romantic. Frank Castorf did so in his Walküre and it proved the weakest part of his Ring. Yet Castorf arguably proved most compelling here in Siegfried, when his conception found itself guided by the weight of Wagner’s drama, even perhaps by a mediated version of its Romanticism. Is a basic Brechtian point about storytelling, ‘enhanced’ by young people in white underwear doing their thing, enough? There are plenty of places one might go in Berlin to see the real thing, if that is what one is after. 

It might be tempting to see this ‘problem’, if problem it be, as mirroring Wagner’s own in completing the Ring. After all, it was at precisely the same place, the end of the second act, that he ceased his compositional work on it for twelve years. Turning instead to Tristan and Die Meistersinger, he wrote to Liszt that he had ‘led my young Siegfried into the beautiful forest solitude; there I have left him beneath a linden tree … he is better there than anywhere else. – If I am ever to take up this work again, it must either be made easier for me, or else I myself must in the meantime make it possible to bestow this work on the world in the fullest sense of the word.’ Yet when Wagner did return to his Siegfried, to the linden tree, or rather to the scene that followed in which all is both changed and resolved, it was still more under the spell of Schopenhauer and his musical aesthetics (as well as his broader philosophy). That, really, should have been right up Herheim’s street. I shall happily eat my words if all becomes clear in Götterdämmerung; for now, however, I register my first note of dissent. 

Die Walküre, Deutsche Oper, 12 May 2024

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2020 premiere, with a different cast)

Siegmund – Daniel Frank
Sieglinde – Elisabeth Teige
Hunding – Tobias Kehrer
Wotan –Derek Welton
Fricka – Annika Schlicht
Brünnhilde – Ricarda Merbeth
Siegrune – Arianna Manganello
Roßweiße – Karis Tucker
Gerhilde – Felicia Moore
Ortlinde – Maria Motolygina
Waltraute – Elissa Pfaender
Helmwige – Flurina Stuckl
Schwertleite – Alexandra Ionis
Grimgerde – Nicole Piccolomini
Schwertleite – Lauren Decker
Hundingling – Eric Naumann

Director – Stefan Herheim
Revival director – Silke Sense
Set designs – Stefan Herheim, Silke Bauer
Costumes – Uta Heiseke
Video – William Duke, Dan Trenchard
Lighting – Ulrich Niepel
Dramaturgy – Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach, Jörg Königsdorf

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper 

Nicholas Carter (conductor)

What if the Volsung twins did not engage our sympathies so fully as they usually do? What if their actions were less positive than we tend to think? Sometimes, recently, those questions have been posed implicitly by what still seems to me a strange desire positively to reassess the Fricka of Die Walküre. Not that Wagner is the only point of reference here, but the Ring’s creator was very clear on this, both in the work ‘itself’ and in other writing. A letter to Theodor Uhlig (12 November 1851, so before he had started work on the music) speaks of Wotan’s ‘struggle with his own inclination and with custom (Fricka)’ and indeed Fricka herself refers to ‘the guiding rope of custom, rent asunder,’ which she would ‘bind anew’. Latterly, some seem to have decided to take the part of Fricka’s family-values morality. Like every character – this is part of Wagner’s greatness – Fricka is given her due, and should be in performance. A caricature, whilst tempting, will get us nowhere. What I took from the first act of Stefan Herheim’s Walküre – thus before her reappearance – was something slightly different: a willingness, refreshing if unsettling, to challenge the dominant narrative concerning Siegmund and Sieglinde, a challenge to which Fricka would assent, albeit for different reasons. Sieglinde has still been deeply wronged, of course: the evening begins with her, traumatised, unable to make the central stage piano sound. Only after several fruitless attempts does the orchestra launch its storm. It is a questionable pursuit in ‘real life’, of course, to cast doubt on how trauma may manifest itself; perhaps the same should be the case here. That said, many of Siegmund and Sieglinde’s acts seem designed to dissipate sympathy, from her insistence on kissing him far too ‘early’ and in front of the mute Hundingling (her child with Hunding, I presume), to her murder of him who, starved of affection from his father seems only to wish to find a new family with his mother and her new lover. That Siegmund too rejoices in that act underlines the predicament. His holding Hunding earlier at knife point also reverses roles somewhat. Ultimately, the strength both of acting and Personenregie (seen also, for instance, in the individual treatment of the Valkyries) made a case for reassessment. So too, arguably, did the doubt –preconceptions properly challenged – I continued to feel. The framing is powerful and provocative; that is what matters most.

 

Likewise or at least related, in the third act, the true horror of what Wotan proposes for Brünnhilde, too readily sentimentalised, comes across more clearly than I can previously recall. Portrayal of male violence, especially sexual violence, against women onstage is a controversial issue now, and rightly so. Nevertheless, Herheim’s portrayal of Valkyries raped by a host of the undead – immortality and mortality a crucial theme for Wagner’s deeply Feuerbachian drama – underlines what the god intends for his ‘favourite daughter’, too often lost in final reconciliation. Hundingling, notably, has taken his place along them; what else, after all, could he have learned from his earthly sojourn? This scene seemed to alter the dramatic, perhaps even the temporal, proportions of the third act. The latter probably were objectively different too, conductor Nicholas Carter working in tandem with the production. Throwing the dramatic weight forward had the first two scenes seem considerably more substantial, the third a logical, still deeply moving outcome to its predecessors. The emotional torrent of Wagner’s – and the once more outstanding Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper’s – strings still registered keenly, yet a shadow rightly hung over what we heard and felt.

All around, refugee suitcases formed the set, reminding us of the external world encountered in Das Rheingold. A war zone is suggested, aptly for all that unfolds, the second as much as the external acts. These people’s reappearance and different reactions to what they saw reminded us we should not take ‘their’ reactions for granted, ‘othering’ them as an undifferentiated mass. These, like the characters of the Ring many are playing, are individual human beings, not some other species known as ‘migrants’. Wagner was a refugee too and expressed pride in having been so; so is Siegmund, always ‘geächtet’, as he puts it. And so too, we should remember, is Sieglinde, returning to her Medea-like act. We always feel sympathy for Medea, so should we not for this Sieglinde too? If not, why not? From where, we might ask, are they refugees? The world around us has all too many possibilities, as does history. So too does reception history: might we not understand them also as heirs to the ‘men and women moved to the very depths of their being’ at the end of previous Ring productions. Celebrated predecessors such as Chéreau and Kupfer spring particularly to mind. For reception, always a Herheim speciality, continues to be so. The brilliant coup de théâtre of turning on the house lights when Wotan wills ‘das Ende’ may be old hat: Brecht, 1924, as a friend commented. But is that not the point here, that theatre and reception history more broadly contribute to what we see and hear, both when it conforms and when it does not? One could not want for alluring yet dangerous contrast in fire from lighting and video here either.

Carter’s direction continued to impress. If I found the opening Prelude hard-driven, then I often do; it could reasonably be replied that this is, after all, a storm. This conductor’s chemistry with the orchestra was not the least of this performance’s virtues; nor was careful shaping, without sounding unduly moulded, of paragraphs and scenes to form not only a satisfying musical whole, but one that interacts tellingly, excitingly with the action onstage. There are so many potential approaches to this music that it is perhaps impossible, even for a Furtwängler, to keep them all in the air. If, though, I sometimes missed the dramatic and dialectical despair conjured from the second act – that extraordinarily difficult yet crucial sequence – by the likes of Bernard Haitink or Daniel Barenboim, the sheer malevolence of the darker music associated not only with Hunding, but also with Wotan, was rendered strikingly immanent. It is a wonder, given the repeated telephone calls taken by someone in the far left of the stalls, that the Annunciation of Death managed to move at all, but it did. (It certainly had me devising my own such annunciation for whomever the culprit may have been.)

 

Herheim’s different conceptual approach to Siegmund and Sieglinde doubtless had consequences for perception of their performances. So too did relatively unappealing – especially so in Siegmund’s case – scenic presentation. That said, whilst Daniel Frank sang the role well enough, it did not seem to me the most keenly dramatic of performances, however considered. Elisabeth Teige engaged attention and sympathy more powerfully as time went on as his sister-bride. Tobias Kehrer’s Hunding seemed to me revisionist in an ultimately more convincing fashion, imparting deeper understanding of how and why even this most unsympathetic of characters might have turned out the way he did, without neglecting that he had. Derek Welton’s Wotan came across as perhaps more tightly, certainly more darkly, focused than that of Iain Paterson in Das Rheingold; that is perhaps in part a matter of material, but surely also pays tribute to the intelligence and musicality of this fine artist. At times, profoundly, disconcertingly other-worldly, the god could also readily turn human, all too human. Annika Schlicht’s Fricka was again not only beautifully sung, but verbally scrupulous, as here she must be all the more. From a fine complement of Valkyries, Ricarda Merbeth captured an excellent balance of waywardness – how could anyone delude himself she could for long be kept in check? – and growing compassion.

If, initially, I felt if not underwhelmed, then less overwhelmed than by the fizzing theatricality of Herheim’s Rheingold, this Walküre grew on me and has continued to do so. Music drama is, after all, not only theatre, as an increasingly Schopenhauerian Wagner would have been first to argue. At the close, Mime-as-Wagner returns, to deliver at the ‘right’ musical moment Siegfried from Sieglinde, collecting the shattered pieces of Notung too. Both Mime and Wagner soon had their doubts as to what sort of monster they had created. That here they have done so from, as it were, the very spirit of music, the ever-present piano, will surely prove significant. Soon we shall discover for ourselves.

Elektra, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 20 October 2023

Images unless otherwise stated: (c) Jakob Tillmann

Klytämnestra – Waltraud Meier
Elektra – Ricarda Merbeth
Chrysothemis – Vida Miknevičiūtė
Orest – Lauri Vasar
Aegisth – Stephan Rügamer
First Maid – Bonita Hyman
Second Maid, Train-bearer – Natalia Skrycka
Third Maid – Katharina Kammerloher
Fourth Maid – Anna Samuil
Fifth Maid – Roberta Alexander
Overseer, Confidante – Cheryl Studer
Young Servant – Siyabonga Maqungo
Old Servant – Olaf Bär
Orest’s Tutor – David Wakeham

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

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Markus Poschner (conductor)  

For many of us, she has always been there. Not only ‘there’, somewhere, but there—at the top. It is difficult not to romanticise a little, though it is certainly not her style. She spoke briefly and with customary professionalism: she had had a wonderful career, done what she wanted to, and now it was time to say goodbye. ‘Tschüss.’ And with that, Waltraud Meier – the reason all of us, however avid Straussians we might be, were there – bade farewell to the stage. I saw her last Kundry and her last Isolde. I even heard her Marcellina last year, reuinted with Siegfried Jerusalem as Don Curzio (!) We had just heard and, crucially, seen her final Klytämnestra. 

Like the queen she portrayed with intelligence, dignity, a fresh eye and ear, and as keen a collaborative instinct as ever, this queen of the stage bewitched us once last time—and let us go. The audience, however, did not seem inclined to let her go, however many times the curtain fell. Bouquets continued to fly on to the stage, or sometimes, not quite reaching their target, into the pit. The ensemble – whatever fans might have felt, this was never a solo show – continued to come forward to receive applause. Then, once again, she briefly stepped forward, this time without microphone, to pay tribute to that constant presence in her career and in the musical lives we (felt we) had spent together: Daniel Barenboim. He had been in her thoughts all evening—and in her heart. Letting go is a difficult thing. Like her career, difficult decisions such as ruling Brünnhilde was not the right role for her included, this was supremely well judged and directed, as joyful as it was poignant. She never played the Marschallin, though she had offers; for some of us, at this moment she did. Life, music, theatre, go on. ‘Tschüss.’

 

The Klytämnestra we saw and heard was not the same as that of 2016 in this same Patrice Chéreau production, nor that (in my case at the cinema) from its incarnation slightly earlier that year in New York, still less that of Salzburg (Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s staging) in 2010. Chéreau’s production remains impressive in its provision of a frame – literally, in the case of Richard Peduzzi’s set – for human interactions. Fate can take care of itself. It may or may not be something more than the sum total of individual characters and their decisions, but here they are given due weight. And that includes the decisions of those playing their roles. Perhaps inevitably, in this performance the relationship between Elektra and Klytämnestra seemed still more central, more crucial than ever. Yet there was absolutely no grandstanding, indeed little even in the way of grandeur to it. The Staatskapelle Berlin may have prepared the way for a grand entrance, or better provided one, for the woman who emerged was a distressed, even disoriented mother, finding her way according to the text (Strauss and Hofmannsthal) and acting according to the precept that she needed her daughter – it was definitely her daughter, not just some other character – more than the other way around. There was a degree of pride: all that said, she remained a queen. But this was a queen in private, insofar as her attendants would ever permit a private sphere to exist, not in public: a woman compelled to transfer her political wiles to the domestic sphere. Sometimes she came as close to speech than to song: not because she could not sing, but rather because she realised she could speak. She held the stage through artistry, not image; through what she did on this occasion, not through what she had done in the past.

 

(c) Monika Rittershaus (2016)

Ricarda Merbeth’s Elektra offered an interesting complement, almost a child who retreated into the womb, or rather who would were it still available. That it was not was a large part of the problem—at least in this scene. Elsewhere, hers was a performance that lacked nothing in power yet likewise never forsook the realm of humanity. Vida Miknevičiūtė’s Chrysothemis brought further characteristics of both, as well as her own, into sharp relief: a portrayal as vividly sung as it was conceived. Lauri Vasar’s dark-toned Orest, brutalised, dangerous, and yet with more than a hint of his own fragility and neurosis, was similarly excellent. Throughout a cast that included singers such as Cheryl Studer, Roberta Alexander, and Olaf Bär, each seemed to bring out something new and interesting in another.

 

If Markus Poschner’s direction of the Staatskapelle Berlin tended often to be fleshing out, even making sense of, a world created by characters on stage rather than creating it – worlds away from, say, Daniele Gatti’s Salzburg cataclysm – that seemed in context at one with this general approach: almost a Kammerspiel. It was certainly not that the orchestra failed to speak, but not only did it owe as much to Mendelssohn as to Wagner, it reacted as much as it delineated. The stars, one our inevitable lodestar, may have been on stage but this proved the most collaborative of dramas. That, surely, was the proper and ultimate tribute. Tschüss.

Musikfest Berlin (2) – RSB/Jurowski: Die Frau ohne Schatten, 1 September 2019

Philharmonie

Images: © Monika Karczmarczyk

Emperor – Torsten Kerl

Empress – Anne Schwanewilms

Nurse – Ildikó Komlósi

Spirit-Messenger – Yasushi Hirano

Barak – Thomas Johannes Mayer

Dyer’s Wife – Ricarda Merbeth

Apparition of Youth – Michael Pflumm
Voice of the Falcon – Nadezhda Gulitskaya

Voice from Above – Karolina Gumos
Guardian of the Temple Threshold – Andrey Nemzer

The One-Eyed – Tom Erik Lie

The One-Armed – Jens Larsen

The Hunchback – Christoph Späth

Night-Watchmen – Christian Oldenburg, Philipp Alexander Behr, Artyom Wasnetkov

Maids, Unborn, Children’s Voices – Sophie Klußmann, Verena Usemann, Jennifer Gleinig, Alice Lackner, Vizma Zvaigzne

Children’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (chorus director: Vinzenz Weissenburger)

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Benjamin Goodson)

Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra

Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

Concert performances of opera are strange things. So too, of course, are stagings of opera, albeit often in different ways; Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal knew that better than most, on which see (and hear) Ariadne auf Naxos. Yet a concert performance will likely ever remain ‘ein sonderbar Ding’, as the Marschallin might have put it. Important also is the way one comes, either individually or as an audience, to such a performance. Does one view – a fraught verb, here, but I shall stick with it – it as closer to an audio recording, in which one follows the libretto, even the score, and perhaps goes so far as to stage it in one’s head? Does one take the more overtly reactionary view of expressing relief that the work is not being messed about by a stage director who may be clueless or may just have ideas other than one’s own? Or does one view the situation in more positive terms, as an opportunity to concentrate on the opera’s musical qualities, not so much undistracted, as heard in superior performing conditions? Symphony orchestras may have the opportunity to fill in harmful gaps in their repertoires: does it make sense for an orchestra to play Beethoven and Mahler, without ever touching more than a Wagner overture or prelude, or to play Strauss tone poems without reference to Strauss’s operas? It may be a matter of cost, too, and the only way some works will gain a hearing at all, especially in countries less blessed operatically than those of the German-speaking world.

Those and other positions are, of course, far from mutually exclusive. Moreover, one’s aesthetic stance may well be called into question: generally a very good thing. Much, for instance, as I know and feel the Ring should be staged; much as I long for a production that begins to do it justice (alas, only one to date in my live theatrical experience); I also know that two of the most powerful Wagnerian experiences of my life have been ‘concert stagings’ and concert performances of the Ring, both in the distinctly unpromising terrain of the Royal Albert Hall. Ultimately, a performance is what it is: a unique event, with affinities to others, yet never quite to be reduced to them. Why such ruminations, then? Partly to try to understand my reaction; I have not, Parsifal-like, come from nowhere. But also, I hope, to try to help readers who may have been more involved than I found myself by this Frau ohne Schatten to understand.

Ultimately, I wonder whether this is an opera that lends itself especially well to concert performance. One may well, with equal justice, wonder from its stage directions whether it lends itself well to staged performance. But most of us by now have, thank God, moved on from any conception of slavish adherence to such directions. Directors as different as Robert Wilson, Claus Guth, and Krzysztof Warlikowski have all brought imaginative and communicative standpoints to bear on the work. There have, of course, been less successful stagings, a nadir surely being Christof Loy’s ‘I cannot be bothered to stage the work at all’ production for Salzburg, but that will always be the case. This is a musical drama, in many ways a complex musical drama and for many a problematic one too. That need not in itself entail staging, but I felt too little dramatic thrust as a whole on this occasion: not so much from the singers, most of whom tried to inject a degree or two of such dynamism, as from Vladimir Jurowski.

As with much other opera I have heard from him, in and out of the opera house, Jurowski’s conducting seemed not only oddly formalist but, within that framework, sectional sometimes to the point of dramatic inertia. It was not so much a lack of longer line, a common problem among lesser conductors, but what came across as a definite aesthetic stance, only undermined by whipping up of highly conventional ‘excitement’ – getting louder, faster – at the ends of many sections: the close of the second act a case in point. I am not sure one can have it both ways; or rather one can, but should one? More conversational passages, moreover, seemed strangely underplayed, as if they were acres of undistinguished recitativo secco (an exaggeration, I know, but never mind), for which tightness of orchestral control might be relinquished not for flexibility as for nonchalance and even slight fuzziness (if nothing on the scale of Zubin Mehta’s recent unhappy way with the work, also in Berlin). There were passages of great interest, to be sure, although more timbral than harmonic. Jurowski seemed happiest when able to apply unusually hard-edged, even brittle, tone to the work, as if to undermine its sumptuousness. Strauss as ’20s Hindemith has a certain fascination: except such a conducting stance seemed sooner rather than latter forgotten, whatever the excellence of playing, whether in solo or ensemble, by the Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra. Such excellence was not quite, however, accompanied by the familiarity that an opera house orchestra would have brought to the score, for how could it be? Likewise, the singing of the Berlin Radio Chorus, very fine in its way, did not and could not speak of the immersion a stage run could. Interestingly, the Staatsoper children’s choir suggested stronger memories of the stage (in that Guth production, as conducted by Mehta).

Ildikó Komlósi as the Nurse

What of the solo singing? In London, Jurowski has made some very odd choices with singers. That was perhaps less the case here, although amongst the principals, it was only really Ildikó Komlósi’s Nurse whose musico-dramatic star shone as brightly as any on stage. The role is a gift, of course, Strauss and Hofmannsthal at their collaborative best, but Komlósi grabbed the gift and made it her own as a singing actress who can, unquestionably, sing. Ricarda Merbeth also gave a good account her role in a sincere, musical, verbally attentive performance as the Dyer’s Wife. If Thomas Johannes Mayer’s Barak sometimes would have benefited from greater heft, he nonetheless brought similar verbal acuity to his performance. Torsten Kerl and Anne Schwanewilms were more awkwardly cast, Kerl’s Emperor often sounding distinctly elderly, sometimes overwhelmed by an orchestra Jurowski did a great deal to keep down. Schwanewilms had some wonderful moments; there was no doubting the dedication of her performance. There were other moments, however, in which the role now sounded sadly beyond her. ‘Supporting’ roles were generally very well taken, though Nadezhda Gulitskaya’s Falcon will not have appealed to all vocal tastes. I have not heard a countertenor sing the Guardian of the Temple Threshold before, but Andrey Nemzer certainly made his presence felt in an intriguingly florid account.

Much to ponder, then, and the audience reacted with enthusiasm less alloyed. This seems to be the beginning of a Strauss opera series for the orchestra, akin to that of Wagner’s ‘canonical’ dramas under Marek Janowski. There was certainly enough of merit here to warrant keeping an eye – and ear – open for future instalments.

(This performance will be broadcast on 7 September 2019, 18.05 CEST, across Europe, including UKW, Kabel, and Digitalradio in Berlin.)

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Die Frau ohne Schatten, 5 July 2017

Images: Wilfried Hösl
Dyer's Wife (Elena Pankratova)
and the Apparition of Youth

Nationaltheater, Munich

Emperor – Burkhard Fritz

Empress – Ricarda Merbeth

Nurse – Michaela Schuster

Spirit-Messenger – Sebastian Heleck

Barak – Wolfgang Koch

Dyer’s Wife – Elena Pankratova

Apparition of Youth, The Hunchback – Dean Power

Voice of the Falcon, Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Elsa Benoit

Voice from Above – Okka von der Damerau
The One-Eyed – Tim Kuypers
The One-Armed – Christian Rieger

The Hunchback – Dean Power

Keikobad – Renate Jett

Servants, Children’s Voices – Elsa Benoit, Paula Iancic, Rachael Wilson

Children’s Voices – Elsa Benoit, Paula Iancic, Alla El-Khashem, Rachael Wilson, Okka von der Damerau

Voices of Nightwatchmen – Johannes Kammler, Sean Michael Plumb, Milan Siljanov

Krzysztof Warlikowsi (director)

Georgine Balk (Abendspielleitung)

Malgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)

Felice Ross (lighting)

Denis Guéguin (video)

Kamil Polak (video animation

Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

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

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Empress (Ricarda Merbeth) and Nurse (Michaela Schuster)

It was fascinating to see – and of course, to hear – Krzysztof Warlikowsi’s productions of Die Gezeichneten and Die Frau ohne Schatten on consecutive nights of this year’s Munich Opera Festival. First, and perhaps most important: both received outstanding performances, fully worthy of any festival in the world, let alone one such as this which offers both new productions and stagings from the repertory. This FroSch may have been the latter, but who would have known? There are clearly advantages to being conducted by the Music Director – not least the identity of this particular music director – but even so…

Both works offered the director considerable challenges. In the Schreker opera, Warlikowski rose admirably to the challenge of drawing out what was of greatest interest in a flawed work and, indeed, even to criticising certain of its more problematical aspects. Die Frau ohne Schatten is not without its problematical aspects either, of course, not least Hofmannsthal’s bizarre pronatalism – perhaps a staging that made more of its wartime context (or near-context) might help, but I have yet to see one – and, more broadly, the mismatch between Strauss and Hofmannsthal here. If Strauss misunderstands Hofmannsthal, though – and we should be wary of awarding priority simply on a chronological basis, especially with so complex a composer-librettist relationship as this – it is, to borrow a term from Webern and the post-war avant garde, a productive misreading.

Emperor (Burkhard Fritz), Nurse, and Empress

How does Warlikowski deal with that, in a production first seen in 2013? I am not entirely sure that he does, but it may well be that I am missing something. What he certainly does accomplish is to present a number of standpoints, which may, to an extent, like those presented in the work ‘itself’, be reconciled, or even set against each other. The world of medicalised hysteria, of the sanatorium is present, just as in Claus Guth’s production (seen at La Scala, Covent Garden, and the Berlin State Opera. Perhaps counter-intuitively, for a work in which, laboriously at times, Hofmannsthal at least seems to offer layer upon layer of symbolism, often highly referential or at least allusive, Warlikowski penetrates to a very human drama at the work’s heart. It might sound banal; perhaps in some ways it is; but why not actually present this as a drama concerning a woman, the Dyer’s Wife rather than the Empress, who wishes to have children, is pressured to renounce her desire, and then achieves what would seem to be genuine fulfilment by doing so? There are various answers to that, of course, or at least to why such a drama might be problematical; but they are not unanswerable answers.

Freud hangs less heavily over the production than he does over Guth’s, but he is there, glimpsed indeed in video projections at the end alongside a motley crew that includes (I think) Gandhi, Christ, the Buddha, King Kong, and Marilyn Monroe. (I have no idea, I am afraid; I suspect I am missing something terribly obvious, but never mind…) More overtly present is Last Year in Marienbad. Pictures from the film lead us in to the opening of the opera and accompany its course, far from obtrusively, yet offering connections should we wish to follow them. A sadness born of lack of fulfilment, perceived or otherwise, hangs over what we see – and interacts, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes less so, with what we hear. Even the Nurse seems a far more human figure than usual. There is, perhaps, loss there too, but to see her a broken woman, trying to deal with an impossible situation that is not of her choosing is fascinating: it certainly made me reconsider the role. 

Empress, Falcon(s), and Emperor

Where Ingo Metzmacher had given a commanding account of Schreker’s score the previous night, Kirill Petrenko went further still in Strauss’s score. It does no harm, of course, that Strauss is by far the greater composer and musical dramatist. But that can come to naught, or at least be severely diminished in the wrong hands. Musical performance is certainly not a matter of league tables, but I can certainly say, hand on heart, that I have never heard the opera better conducted or played. This was at the very least a musical performance to set alongside those by Christoph von Dohnányi and Semyon Bychkov at Covent Garden, and superior to any of the others I have heard. Petrenko’s ear for Strauss’s complex orchestral polyphony is second to none, not only amongst any conductor alive but any I know from recorded performances.

The similarities and differences between Strauss and Schoenberg – you will have to forgive me for having the latter very much on my mind at the moment – are as complex as their music ‘in itself’. There is, though, something here which, ironically, given Strauss’s reported remarks on Schoenberg’s score, brings Strauss closer than one might expect to the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16. Alma Mahler just could not help herself in telling Schoenberg that Strauss had said Schoenberg would be ‘better off shovelling snow’ than ‘scribbling on manuscript paper’. (What is less often reported is that he recommended the younger composer for the Mahler Foundation grant in any case. Schoenberg, unsurprisingly, never forgave him; when asked the following year for a fiftieth-birthday tribute, he responded angrily: ‘He is no longer of the slightest artistic interest to me, and whatever I may once have learned from him, may God be thanked, [I had] misunderstood.’) Petrenko is a very fine Schoenberg conductor; indeed, it was in Erwartung at Covent Garden that I first heard him. The interplay between colour, line, harmony, every changing parameter was such that I could not help but think I was hearing Strauss with somewhat Schoenbergian ears – and that was not entirely to be attributed to my own present preoccupations. The Bavarian State Orchestra was at least equally responsible: in every respect worthy of the most exalted comparisons, past or present. I do not think I have ever heard the solo cello part played with greater tenderness and yet with such a sense of where, motivically and harmonically, it is heading. Nor have I heard the full orchestra sound more thrillingly present and yet more transparent. It was not only seeing the glass harmonica in one of the boxes overlooking the pit that meant I could hear it so well.

Barak (Wolfgang Koch) and the Dyer's Wife

Vocal performances were almost equally magnificent. Burkhard Fritz greatly impressed in Berlin earlier this year, and did so again here: quite tireless and perfectly capable of riding Strauss’s orchestral wave. The Emperor is, perhaps, the best role in which I have heard of him. Ricarda Merbeth was more than his equal as his consort: as tenderly moving as, when required, imperious. She truly drew one into her particular drama, as did the Dyer and his Wife, even, as mentioned above, the Nurse. Elena Pankratova and Wolfgang Koch were also in previous casts I had seen, London and Berlin respectively. Fine though their performances had been then, Petrenko’s conducting seemed to incite them to still greater things in Munich. (The more I consider Zubin Mehta in Berlin, the more uncomprehending his conducting seems by comparison.) Theirs was at root a human, commonplace relationship, exalted by particular musico-dramatic circumstance and by musical performance into something transformative, in a sense that both Strauss and Hofmannsthal might have acknowledged. The sadness both felt could be perceived in their faces, their body language, but still more in the alchemy of stage, words, and music that is opera at its greatest – and which, with the best will in the world, a lesser composer such as Schreker could never have summoned. To her trademark malevolence in the role, Michael Schuster was here fully enabled to offer a poignancy one rarely sees and hears in the Nurse. Sebastian Heleck’s Spirit Messenger was perhaps first among equals – intelligent, deeply musical singing – amongst the ‘smaller’ roles, but there was no weak link here. Choral singing and acting were equally outstanding. Likewise those roles played by non-singing actors: the Apparition of a Youth here our first among equals, sporting an excellent line in gigolo contempt when collecting his earnings for unachieved attempted seduction from the Nurse. As had been the case in the previous night’s performance, the dramatic whole was greater than the sum of its parts – just not quite in the same way. Now how about a Moses und Aron?