Die Frau ohne Schatten, Deutsche Oper, 13 December 2009

Photo: Marcus Lieberenz im Auftrag der DEUTSCHEN OPER BERLIN
(Kaiserin: Manuela Uhl; Amme Doris Soffel; Geisterbote: Stephen Bronk)

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

The Emperor – Robert Brubaker
The Empress – Manuela Uhl
The Nurse – Jane Henschel
Barak – Johan Reuter
The Dyer’s Wife – Eva Johansson
The Spirit-Messenger – Stephen Bronk
Voice of the Apparition of Youth – Yosep Kang
Voice of the Falcon, Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Hulkar Sabirova
Voice from Above – Katharine Tier
The One-Eyed – Simon Pauly
The One-Armed – Hyung-Wook Lee
The Hunchback – Paul Kaufmann
Maidservants – Hulkar Sabirova, Heidi Stober, Julia Benzinger
Children’s voices and unborn voices – Hulkar Sabirova, Heidi Stober, Julia Benzinger, Stephanie Weiss, Fionnuala McCarthy, Katharine Tier
Guards’ voices – Ben Wager, Lucas Harbour, Krzysztof Szumanski, James J. Kee

Kirsten Harms (director)
Bernd Damovsky (stage and costume designs)
Andreas K.W. Meyer (dramaturge)
Christian Baier (artistic production manager)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: William Spaulding)
Children’s Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: Dagmar Fiebach)
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin
Axel Kober (conductor)

I had previous reason to admire Axel Kober’s conducting in the Leipzig Opera’s marvellous triple-bill of Schoenberg’s one-act operas, Moderne Menschen. Arguably every bit as great a challenge, Die Frau ohne Schatten proved just as successful under Kober’s baton. Well shaped and with a clear sense of the structure, this was a reading which, if it did not quite match the sensational account I heard a good few years ago from Christoph von Donhányi at Covent Garden, had nothing to fear from most recorded competition, and was certainly superior to Gustav Kuhn in Paris. There were a few shaky moments, especially during the first ten minutes or so, when it sounded as though the orchestra was settling down, and occasionally afterwards from the brass. On the whole, however, the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper proved fully equal to Strauss’s demands. The sheen of its strings, sometimes more Viennese, sometimes darker – rather like Strauss’s score, one might say – and the character of its woodwind section were especially worthy of mention. Whatever Strauss’s notorious criticisms of Schoenberg’s Op.16 Orchestral Pieces, they did not sound so very far away. For, poised between the previous sound-worlds of Elektra and Rosenkavalier, with something of the Alpine Symphony about it, and possessed of a magical, fantastical expressionism very much of its own, one of Strauss’s most truly extraordinary scores was truly able to resound. If the grinding dissonances immediately prior to the final resolution were not nailed in quite the way one hears on Christian Thielemann’s Vienna recording of the orchestral fantasy, I have never heard anyone else, even Karl Böhm, achieve that – and a purely orchestral performance is a different matter in any case. This was a distinguished musical account.

The singing, however, was considerably more variable. Robert Brubaker’s Emperor improved as time went on, though his tendency to sharpness and indeed to shouting was never quite surmounted. Strauss wrote a cruel part, but there it is. Brubaker, however, was vastly preferable to Eva Johansson as the Dyer’s Wife. Awkward on stage, she managed the right notes from time to time, the right vowels even less so. She also exhibited a curious tendency – certainly more curious in her part than his – simply to stand and shout. Manuela Uhl occasionally struggled as the Empress, but an announcement had been made concerning her indisposition; in any case, she more often proved perfectly equal to the composer’s demands. Given the circumstances, this was a creditable assumption. Jane Henschel was predictably fine as the Nurse – what a wonderful, ambiguous role this is – but such excellence should not be taken for granted. Strange links with the spirit world were very much in evidence in her portrayal. Johan Reuter’s fine form as Barak might also have been expected, but again, remains equally worthy of praise. Carefully observant of words and music, he penetrated to the lovable heart of the dyer’s character.

Intendant Kirsten Harms’s production did not seem quite to add up. There was nothing especially wrong with it, and Bernd Damovsky’s stage designs were often rather striking, but I am not sure that someone relatively unfamiliar with what can sometimes seem a rather baffling drama would have found a way in here. Robert Wilson in Paris could perhaps be judged to have over-simplified Hofmannsthal’s layers of symbolism, though I rather enjoyed that production. Taking more of a ‘line’, almost any line (within reason), might not have been a bad idea in this case, though. The work benefits from a degree at least of help. Still, there was a great deal to savour from the conductor, orchestra, and much of the singing. Die Frau may have its flaws, but there are sections as great as anything Strauss wrote, music that was here largely heard to considerable advantage.

Jenůfa, English National Opera, 21 March 2009

The Coliseum

Grandmother Buryja – Susan Gorton
Kostelnička Buryja – Michaela Martens
Jenůfa – Amanda Roocroft
Laca Klemen – Robert Brubaker
Števa Buryja – Tom Randle
Foreman – Iain Paterson
Jano – Julia Sporsén
Barena – Claire Mitcher
Mayor – Peter Kestner
Mayor’s wife – Susanna Tudor-Thomas
Karolka – Mairéad Buicke
Neighbour – Morag Boyle
Villager – Lyn Cook

David Alden (director)
Charles Edwards (set designer)
Jean-Marc Puissant (associate set designer)
Jon Morrell (costumes)
Adam Silverman (lighting)
Jon Clark (revival lighting)
Claire Gaskin (choreographer)

Chorus of the English National Opera (chorus master: Martin Merry)
Orchestra of the English National Opera
Eivind Gullberg Jensen (conductor)

Having grown so used to disappointments in the opera house, the recent nadir having been Covent Garden’s Flying Dutchman, what a relief it was to encounter such a triumph, on the last night of its all too short run at the Coliseum. Let me get the odd gripe out of the way first. The English translation was, even of its kind, inadequate. Even with a better version, one would have missed the sound of Czech, its speech rhythms so fundamental to Janáček’s vision. It is testimony to the overall quality of the performance, however, that I soon ceased to care. And there were a few oddities about David Alden’s production. Some aspects of the updating to post-war Eastern Europe work better than others. The tarting up of the girls of the town – this does not seem to be even a modern rural community – is probably overdone. With the exception of the dowdier Jenůfa – she should have been a teacher, as Grandmother Buryja tells her – they all look like prostitutes. Perhaps a point is being made here concerning moral hypocrisy but there ought to have been better ways to do so. Nor did I understand why when, in the second act, Jenůfa prays to the Virgin Mary, she does not face the statue the production has provided for. It is not as if any point seemed to be made about turning away. The mayor and his wife seemed oddly portrayed in the final act, as though they really were part of some rural backwater; their caricatured vulgarity detracted from rather than intensified the drama. Laughter does not seem an appropriate reaction to what is taking place here.

Otherwise, Alden’s production did a great deal to heighten the impact of Janáček’s searing drama. The updating is not strictly necessary, of course, but it was a relief generally to be spared that folksiness which briefly and jarringly intruded upon the third act. The shame of unmarried motherhood persisted long into the second half of the twentieth-century, although I wondered whether Eastern Europe – Czechoslovakia, I presume – was really the best location. The stifling conformism of Western post-war petit bourgeois society, the paradaisical 1950s so beloved of the Daily Mail and ‘conservative social commentators’ – try as I might, I cannot quite bring myself to provide a link to the humourless bigotry of Melanie Phillips – might have been a better target, although perhaps that would have been considered a shift too far. At any rate, the period might have given hypocritical moralisers de nos jours a well-needed jolt.(Feel free to substitute something more appropriate for ‘jolt’.) The morality of the mob was frighteningly conveyed, both visually and chorally, in the final act, all the more so when one knew how ‘fun-loving’ it had previously seemed. Such a gentle age...

Musically, things were better still. I am not sure that I have ever heard the ENO orchestra on better form. This might have been a top-flight international orchestra, boasting considerable depth of tone and dramatic versatility. Special mention should go to leader, Janice Graham, whose crucial solos were well-nigh perfect, reminding us of at least the hope, however distant it might seem, of redemption. Clearly the orchestra was inspired, as it should have been, by the musical direction of Eivind Gullberg Jensen, who would in no sense be embarrassed by comparison with Bernard Haitink or Sir Charles Mackerras. Ever-responsive to the shifting demands of the score, there was true harshness, though never of the easily applied variety, to Jensen’s reading. The more Romantic passages were never unambiguously so, with the possible exception of the conclusion – although here, given what had happened, one could hardly forget. There was not one occasion on which I thought a transition hurried or a tempo-choice questionable. Orchestral balances, the opening brass excepted, were expertly handled too. This was my first encounter with Jensen’s work; I trust that it will not be my last.

Jenůfa really seems to be Amanda Roocroft’s role. Dramatically credible, infinitely touching, almost invariably secure of tone, I could hardly believe this was the same singer I had seen a few years ago as Tatiana at Covent Garden. Where sometimes the Kostelnička might cast her daughter-in-law into the dramatic shadows, one never forgot here that the opera bears the name of its true heroine. Only if it is understood thus does the opera offer any true hope at all. That said, Michaela Martens was simply stunning as the Kostelnička. Less forbidding than one might expect, this was a compassionate woman throughout, driven by appalling circumstances to infanticide. Whatever the horrors of her deed, one never ceased to empathise with her predicament. The guilt it had imposed upon her by the beginning of the third act was almost overwhelming, even when one looked at her, let alone heard her. Susan Gorton offered a nicely observed grandmother, whilst Mairéad Buicke was a splendidly ghastly Karolka. Števa got what he deserved there. In that role, Tom Randle gave an all-encompassing performance. His stage and vocal alcohol-enhanced bravado in the first act prepared the way with utter credibility for the squirming weakling of the third. One could understand why all the girls wanted him – and not just for his money – but equally one could feel relieved that Jenůfa found Laca instead. Robert Brubaker’s portrayal of Laca was equally fine, movingly alert both to his essential simplicity and the somewhat paradoxical attendant complexities of his reactions. His journey from lovestruck petulance to true nobility of spirit was powerfully conveyed.

This performance’s signal achievement was that not a single member of the audience could have been left in any doubt as to Jenůfa’s status as one of the greatest operas of the twentieth century. I do not know whether this were intentional, but I was sometimes moved to think of Janáček as a successor to Mussorgsky in terms of unsparing operatic realism. One cannot say much better than that.