Salzburg Mozartwoche (3) - Die Zauberflöte, 23 January 2026

 

Haus für Mozart

Images: Werner Kmetitsch

Sarastro – Franz-Josef Selig
Queen of the Night – Kathryn Lewek
Tamino – Magnus Dietrich
Pamina – Emily Pogorelc
Papageno – Theodore Platt
Papagena – Tamara Ivaniš
Three Ladies – Alice Rossi, Štěpánka Pučálkova, Noa Beinert
Monostatos – Paul Schweinester
Speaker, First Priest – Rupert Grössinger
Priests and Armoured Men – Maximilian Müller, Maximilian Anger
Three Boys – Frederick Derwein, David Platzer, Laurenz Oberfichtner
Mozart – Vitus Denifl
Constanze – Victoria D’Agostino
Carl Thomas Mozart – Paul Tanzer

Director – Rolando Villazón
Set designs – Harold Thor
Costumes – Tanja Hofmann
Choreography – Ramses Sigl
Lighting – Stefan Bolliger
Video – Roland Horvath/rocafilm
Dramaturgy – Ulrich Leisinger
Assistant director – Bettina Gayer
Theatre manager – Kirsten Kimmig

Philharmonia Chor Wien (chorus director: Walter Zeh)
Salzburg Mozarteum Orchestra
Roberto González-Monjas (conductor)

It has been a while since Salzburg’s Mozartwoche gave a fully staged version of a mature Mozart opera. The choice of The Magic Flute, directed by Intendant Rolando Villazón, was not arbitrary, but rather a centrepiece to the 70^th anniversary festival’s focus on Mozart’s last year. The opera could hardly be more emblematic of 1791; it was the last, barring fragments, to be completed and first performed, although most of the score was composed before La clemenza di Tito. Moreover, Villazón’s staging is set in that year, on the final night of Mozart’s life, presenting on stage the broader concept of his final-year focus and its motto ‘Lux Aeterna’: that on his death, Mozart was for us truly born. 

In that, we saw the production’s most arresting image, shortly after having heard its most arresting, if doubtless controversial, musical surprise. The Queen of the Night and Monostatos (here spelled ‘Manostatos’ after Mozart’s autograph) having threatened to destroy the temple and so on, Mozart finally expires, having been with us all along (on which more anon); the orchestra cuts to the Requiem’s ‘Lacrimosa’. I could have done without a man behind me loudly exclaiming ‘Requiem! Requiem! Requiem!’ (Thank you for your musicological input; we should never have known otherwise.) Nevertheless, the assembled company joining to sing the composer’s final music, beyond the point at which the autograph stops yet not until its close, proved surprisingly moving. The lurch back to Sarastro’s announcement of victory initially jarred, yet such musical difficulties on my part were more or less effaced by the composer’s apotheosis. In a likeable, post-Amadeus portrayal by Vitus Denifl he was transformed into a Kugel-version of Mozart, laughing and somersaulting above. Like the best of those chocolates – hint: buy them only from Fürst – it was an unexpected delight, not least to serious clowning on Denifl’s part and a strong musical account. 

How we got there, scenically, had its moments. The idea of presenting Mozart’s hallucinations from his last days  unable to attend a performance at the Freihaus-Theater an der Wieden, yet imagining it in his head, was a good one, especially in this specific setting, part commemorating and part celebrating Mozart having become ‘Mozart’. It combines two accounts: the first from Stendhal via the 1798 Allgemeine Zeitung (possibly from Constanze herself) following the performances at home, looking at the clock and imagining what must be on stage; the other from an 1840 letter from the composer Ignaz von Seyfried to the theatre director Georg Friedrich Treitschke telling of Mozart on the evening of 4 December 1791 hearing his sister-in-law sing the Queen of the Night’s aria in the theatre. And so, the clock bore a particular role in demarcating certain moments—rather brightly, I could not help but think, although I suppose that was the point. It also offered a place to hide; indeed, Harold Thor’s set designs proved resourceful throughout in use and reuse. 

That, I think, was to be applauded, not least since a notable,  welcome feature of the Mozartwoche as a whole is its grounding in Mozart scholarship: not a Beckmesserish (at best) school of ‘performance practice’, perhaps now at last waning, that loves nothing more than to condemn something as ‘inauthentic’, but rather respect for far broader and more interesting historical grounding that will enable and enrich modern performance of various kinds. Some of that one might like, some one might not, but it enters into dialogue rather than assertion of either fundamentalist domination or lazy solipsism. The problem more was that it did not become much more than a frame for what otherwise was a rather conventional portrayal of the actual dramatic action. Mozart interacted a little with the characters. He also instructed his son a little. More tenuously, Constanze became enraged at the misogyny of the priests, hitting them and her husband, suggesting their remarks were to be taken seriously, Mozart’s own music suggesting otherwise. In terms of a view about what the work ‘itself’ might be, what it might have to offer, and indeed how it might thus have ultimately come to participate in the creation of ‘Mozart’, I struggled to divine anything very much. 

Moreover, further character references seemed to me obscure. Without reading in the programme that Villazón intended the Three Ladies as three female artists – a poet, sculptor, and painter – I am not sure I should have noticed. Even if I had, nothing much was done with the idea. Presenting Tamino as a musician was fair enough; he plays the flute after all. Beyond that, it seemed another missed opportunity, soon more or less forgotten; likewise Monostatos/Manostatos as commercialisation of art, and so on. In encounters between multiple concepts, some fared better than others, though those of Mozart and Emanuel Schikaneder rarely so well.

To return, though, to what made that final scene – and much else – worthwhile, Roberto González-Monjas’s conducting of the Mozarteum Orchestra marked him out as that rarest of things, a musician who could draw from an orchestra a true sense of the breadth and depth of Mozart’s score, without imposing himself on it and subjecting it to strange eccentricities. One will almost always find differences between what one hears in one’s head – watching the clock, like Mozart, or otherwise – but what matters is whether one can make sense of what is put before one, whether it animates the drama, whether it enables the singers and actors to flourish. In all of those respects and more, González-Monjas’s account scored. So too did the warm, sympathetic playing of the orchestra. This ought not to be so rare as it is, but the demands of Mozart and ‘Mozart’ alike are never to be underestimated.

 

There was, moreover, a good sense of a troupe more than the sum of its parts among those singers and actors. Magnus Dietrich’s Tamino and Emily Pogorelc’s an alluring young pair vocally. Their arias touched and ennobled without contrivance. Franz-Josef Selig’s Sarastro is a known quantity to many of us, yet proved no less welcome in reasoned compassion for that. Kathryn Lewek’s Queen of the Night offered accuracy and bite, also reminding us that a flesh-and-blood woman lay behind the costume and coloratura. Hearing more dialogue than often one does – especially outside German lands gave a more proper sense of Papagena, as did a spirited performance by Tamara Ivaniš. Theodore Platt’s Papageno stole the show, as many do, and deservedly so, sheer theatrical presence married to innate musicality, a winning tribute to Schikaneder. Indeed, the thought occurred to me that that might have been an obvious personification for the production. But there will be other Flutes, and this offered magic enough, heightened by the experience of an afternoon visit to an exhibition at the Rupertinum, showing materials from earlier stagings, including that of Oskar Kokoschka, invited by Furtwängler, who alas died before they could collaborate. As Villazón’s concept for the festival as a whole reminds us, birth and death have always stood in a complex relationship, not least in the case of Mozart.

Platée, Semperoper Dresden, 16 April 2019

Semperoper

Images: Semperoper Dresden/Ludwig Olah
Platée (Philippe Talbot), La Folie (Inga Kalna)

Platée – Philippe Talbot

Cithéron, Satyr – Giorgio Caoduro

Jupiter – Andreas Wolf

Junon – Ute Selbig

Mercure, Thespis – Mark Milhofer

Momus – Sebastian Wartig

Thalie, Clarine – Iulia Maria Dan

La Folie – Inga Klana

Amour – Tania Lorenzo

Two Menads – Katharina Flade, Hyunduk Na

Rolando Villazón (director)

Harald Tor (set designs)

Susanne Hubrich (costumes)

Philippe Giraudeau (choreography)

Davy Cunningham (lighting)

Kai Weßler (dramaturgy)

Dancers

Sächsische Staatsopernchor Dresden (chorus director: Cornelius Volke)

Säschsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Paul Agnew (conductor)

I did not ever think I should live to hear the Staatskapelle Dresden play Rameau, let alone with such verve and sensitivity, such vigour and style as here. Outside France, occasions are still relatively rare to see Rameau’s operas staged: far rarer than they should be for the pre-eminent opera composer of his age. In the present climate, to hear them performed on modern instruments – let alone on modern instruments that are not attempting, pointlessly, to sound as if they were ancient ones – is a further, well-nigh insurmountable challenge. Bravo, then, not only to Dresden’s Semperoper for staging Platée, but for presenting it with such conviction, under Paul Agnew, himself by now something of a veteran both in the title role and as conductor. Agnew’s direction proved not the least virtue of this evening, his tempi judicious both in themselves and in relation to one another, a keen ear applied to balances within the orchestra and between orchestra and stage. Rameau’s woodwind solos in particular shone with all the ravishing beauty one might have hoped for from these players. Warm yet incisive strings combined with expert continuo (Gerd Amelung on harpsichord, Simon Kalbhenn on cello) and, just as important, a fine cast and duly provocative production to have one think as well as feel. This was the fourth performance in the run since the premiere earlier this month: it seemed by now to have all the advantages of having ‘bedded in’, without retreat into the over-familiarity (and under-rehearsal) of ‘repertoire’.

Rolando Villazón’s production surprised me. Initially it seemed needlessly over the top, in danger of collapsing into ‘punk Baroque’ cliché, but it soon became apparent that a keen, playful mind was at work, playing with the strange, ornate parodies of this singular ballet bouffon (or should that be comédie lyrique)? The Prologue takes place, with apparent incongruity, in a bar full of characters who either are schoolchildren or, more likely, dressed as such. (Or is it a drunken schoolroom? There may be no difference.) This is, after all, the morning after the night before – something surely not lost on the first audience at the Dauphin’s Versailles marriage festivities in 1745. (The 1749 version was given here.) What ‘should’ be a Greek vineyard is – more or less – but with the additional insight, criticism, call it what you will, that the gang of Thespis, Momus, Amour, and Thalia are themselves acting as obstreperous teenagers. Their creation of the drama to be set before us for their and our amusement has little empathy, will mock gods and mortals alike, yet ultimately will serve the higher, comedic end of reconciling Jupiter and Junon.

And so, the events at the foot of Mount Cithaeron unfold, keenly aware of the highly unusual form this satire is to take. Who are its objects? In a sense, everyone: perhaps including Rameau, the great lyric tragedian, himself. And nothing is off bounds, sexually or otherwise. Some members of the audience seemed more than a little discomfited by Mercure’s use of an obvious bodily orifice for storage purposes, but that was surely the point. Here one should be invited, even compelled, to reconsider what might be taken for granted, not only about this opera, but about opera more generally. Mark Milhofer’s twin assumption of Mercure and Thespis was certainly not the least of the quicksilver joys and thrills of the evening. But it was Philippe Talbot’s Platée, of course, who stood – and sang – centre-stage, gloriously repulsive in what must surely be one of Rameau’s higher haute-contre parts, originally taken by Pierre de Jélyotte. Talbot captured the swamp-nymph en travestie’s absurdity – we feel less uncomfortable, perhaps, given the Italian device of drag, highly unusual for French opera – in a keenly observed performance whose every detail contributed to the greater whole.

Jupiter (Andreas Wolf) and Platée

Another delightful incongruity was provided by Inga Kalna’s Folie, her apparition again very much a star apparition from another world (Italian opera, once again, but something beyond that in the particular scheme at work here). Her coloratura thrilled yet also warned. Why should we listen to her, apart from wanting to do so? Perhaps that was enough. Other highlights included the performances of a darkly menacing, yet not-too-menacing, Giorgio Caoduro (Cithéron), a properly narcissistic Jupiter (Andreas Wolf), and a rich-toned Iulia Maria Dan (Thalie, Clarine). But the company and the controlled riot in performance it wrought were the thing. Opera, of whatever genre, is a curious thing. This Platée not only knew that; it played with that, rejoiced in it, and asked us what we thought of it, and why. Its strangely ‘un-operatic’ interjections, verbal and musical, were both relished and reconciled, its conventions likewise. The more one listened, the more one watched, the more – and the less – one ‘understood’. Dance and song, voice and instruments, even comedy and tragedy: can they, should they, be separated? Such, after all, may be one of the ultimate lessons learned in and after the drunken schoolroom and/or children’s bar of the Prologue.

Berlin Festtage (2): Eugene Onegin - Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 2 April 2010

Staatsoper Unter den Linden, Berlin

Larina – Katharina Kammerloher
Tatiana – Anna Samuil
Olga – Maria Gortsevskaya
Filipievna – Margarita Nekrasova
Eugene Onegin – Artur Rucinski
Lensky – Rolando Villazón
Prince Gremin – René Pape
Triquet – Stephan Rügamer
Saretzki – James Homann
Captain – Rosen Krastev

Achim Freyer (director, designs, lighting)
Tilman Hecker (assistant director)
Lena Lukjanova and Amanda Freyer (costumes)

Freyer Ensemble
Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

I had hoped that I might see the light concerning Achim Freyer’s production of Eugene Onegin, which I first saw a year-and-a-half ago here in Berlin. Alas not, and I did not even have the element of surprise from the first viewing. In terms of the production, I really do not have anything much to add to my earlier review, which may be read here. In brief, Freyer has decided not only to jettison nineteenth-century Russia – on that, I am pretty neutral, and am happy to judge by results – but to turn everyone in the cast, most of whom are ‘extras’, into a joyless clown. Or rather, he has adopted his usual practice of doing this, irrespective of the work in question. Everything is meaningless would seem to be the refrain, which might be a point to make, but no discernible effort – again, I tried… - to connect this with Eugene Onegin. One could do the same thing to any work, with similar results. I felt no Brechtian alienation, merely boredom, the first time around; the same was the case here, allied with an impulse to scream, to hit someone, to do something, anything to break the tedium. Chairs are still twirled in slow motion and are sometimes suspended in mid-air. I am none the wiser why this should be done, but again it provides some desperately needed variation.

It seems to me that if one has no sympathy with a work, one might be better advised to stay away from it. If one finds it unconvincing, as I assume Freyer must do Onegin, then perhaps it might be better to find something that does convince. I can see why some people might not respond to this opera, though it actually seems to me reasonably straightforward if one accepts what Tchaikovsky accomplished in spite of his apparent intention, in making the friendship between Onegin and Lensky the central focus, with Tatiana as a voice for the composer’s frustrated desires. It does not, however, seem to me anything like so bad a work that one would wish to do this to it. (For what it is worth, I do not think it a bad work at all.) One can perversely admire the intricate direction of each clown’s movements, but what on earth have they to do with Eugene Onegin?

On the first occasion, the performance compensated. Indeed, I wrote at the time: ‘Rarely can Eugene Onegin have been conducted better than it was here under Daniel Barenboim. He conceived the work in one span, yet with impeccable attention to the needs of the moment.’ Sadly, this evening did not witness Barenboim on form, especially during the first ‘half’ (the interval came following the fourth scene). That first part seemed interminable. I do not know how long it took in ‘real’ terms but it seemed both extremely slow, for the most part, and generally listless. There were occasions when the music came into focus and there were a few when the conductor simply drove the music too hard, but these were certainly in the minority. The Staatskapelle Berlin played beautifully throughout, not least its gleaming strings. And there was much greater focus to the second, shorter ‘half’, the duel scene especially well judged: flexible but never arbitrary. The Polonaise, however, was once again excessively driven: it might have been Solti in the pit!



Alongside the orchestral playing, the singing was probably the only thing to impress, though, as one might expect, it varied. Smaller roles tended to be taken very well. Margarita Nekrasova truly brought a sense of Mother Russia to proceedings as the nurse, Filiepevna. René Pape was predictably excellent as Prince Gremin: despite his costume, sonorous of tone and noble of bearing. And Stephan Rügamer made the most of the Frenchman, Triquet. Anna Samuil emerged creditably as Tatiana, increasingly moving within the confines of the production, though she could sometimes prove a little anonymous. Artur Rucinski was also a good Onegin. Sometimes he sounded a little stretched, but again, he was hardly assisted by the production, and revealed as time went on a handsome, intelligently inflected baritone. Maria Gortsevskaya made little vocal impression, however, as Olga, though she was called upon to do a great deal of ‘clowning’. Then there was Rolando Villazón’s Lensky. Likewise called upon to be on stage and acting for most of the time, even after his death, he clearly threw everything into his performance. There were unfortunate moments, for instance during the fourth scene, when almost an entire phrase was alarmingly out of tune. But there was a winning sincerity to so much of his performance that one wanted to forget that the sound of his voice is not especially suited to Tchaikovsky. Rather to my surprise, the chorus often sounded out of sorts, and was a little too often out of sync with the orchestra, but its members were required to do so much irrelevant miming on stage that one could forgive a great deal.

Eugene Onegin, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 1 October 2008

(Images copyright: Monika Rittershaus)

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Madame Larina – Katharina Kammerloher
Tatyana – Anna Samuil
Olga – Maria Gortsevskaya
Filipievna – Margarita Nekrasova
Eugene Onegin – Roman Trekel
Lensky – Rolando Villazón
Prince Gremin – Christoph Fischesser

M. Triquet – Stephan Rügamer
Zaretsky – Viktor Rud
Captain – Fernando Javier Radó

Achim Freyer (director and designer)
Tilman Hecker (assistant director)
Lena Lukjanova and Amanda Freyer (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Where to begin? The production or the musical performance? They could hardly have been more different. I shall start with the musical performance, since it is far more cheering to do so. Rarely can Eugene Onegin have been conducted better than it was here under Daniel Barenboim. He conceived the work in one span, yet with impeccable attention to the needs of the moment. There was a flexibility in his account that harked back to Furtwängler – although I am not sure that Furtwängler ever conducted Onegin – with tempo variations often pronounced yet never abrupt. Prince Gremin’s aria, for instance, was taken at a daringly slow tempo but with such masterly control that it worked, and the mood swings of Tatyana’s Letter Scene registered both with almost psychoanalytical clarity and with heartfelt emotion. Rhythmic security was not sacrificed but enhanced by this. (Instructive is the contrast with the inhibited stiffness that sometimes characterised a far from inconsiderable Covent Garden performance under Jiří Bělohlávek earlier this year.) The Staatskapelle Berlin followed his every move, displaying an utterly gorgeous, truly burnished tone. I should chance my arm and say that Onegin can never have been played better than it was by this orchestra. A wonderful old-world depth of tone throughout the string section and magical woodwind were complemented by a brass section by turns soothing and assertive, according to the demands of the score. The way in which solo horn and harp registered during the Letter Scene was not only ravishingly beautiful but also indicative of the Romantic possession with which Tatyana was seized.

Anna Samuil of course contributed to the success of this scene. Hers was not a portrayal with quite the star quality of some of the great singers of the past – perhaps this will be come – but it was intensely musical and often rather more than that. The Letter Scene and her final confrontation with Onegin were the highpoints of her performance. I thought less of Maria Gortevskaya’s Olga; there was nothing especially wrong with her performance but it remained somewhat anonymous. The production did not help, to put it mildly, but there were some singers who miraculously managed to rise above it. Likewise the stiffness that characterised some of Roman Trekel’s assumption of the title role cannot simply be ascribed to Achim Freyer, sorely tempted though one might be. The notes were sung – and sung musically – but there was little charisma here. Gerald Finley had shown how it should be done at Covent Garden; by contrast, Trekel, a fine Doktor Faust here in Berlin last year, seemed miscast. The undoubted star was Rolando Villazón as Lensky. It is a wonderful role but Villazón surpassed any reasonable expectations. He proved as ardent and as attentive to the text – both verbal and musical – as the splendid Piotr Beczala had done in London. Perhaps still more admirable was the way Villazón managed to transform a lifeless production to his advantage, investing his every move with great moment, however misconceived the general premised may have been. I mean it as a compliment when I say that, should, God forbid, Villazón ever lose his voice, he could doubtless pursue a second career as a clown or even a mime artist. Gremins, like King Markes, rarely disappoint. That Christoph Fischesser was no exception does not lessen the achievement of his rich-toned bass aria. Margarita Nekrasova made a wonderful, Babushka-like nurse. Stephan Rügamer and Viktor Rud both shone in their smaller roles. Whilst there was the odd occasion when the chorus was not quite together with the orchestra – and I am not at all sure that this was not Barenboim’s fault – the singing of the Staatsopenchor Berlin was of the high standard we have come to expect. Diction was excellent, as indeed it was with the entire cast.

Then, however, there is the small matter of the production. I cannot – may the Almighty be thanked – imagine how a production of Eugene Onegin could be more wilfully perverse than that presented by Achim Freyer. It was certainly not so atrociously inept as, for instance, Katharina Wagner’s Bayreuth Meistersinger, which, the angel voice of Klaus Florian Vogt notwithstanding, will surely prove to be the theatrical nadir of my operatic year: an unanswerable refutation of the hereditary principle. In terms of a director who knew what he was doing and was able to accomplish it, Freyer’s misconception may rank with that of Peter Sellars’s Zaide, although, clutching at straws somewhat, Freyer’s production was certainly more tightly disciplined. There could be no doubt that singers and actors alike were doing precisely what Freyer desired; the precision of their movements was highly creditable were one to consider it as a thing-in-itself. What this production lacked in terms of the inept, it handsomely made up for with the inapt. Throughout we had a scene of alienated, disengaged circus performers, unable to relate to each other, indeed in no real sense of the word characters at all. That was it: no development, no story even, certainly no connection with the words, let alone with Tchaikovsky’s music. Freyer’s point is clear enough, that the ‘characters’ are mere stereotypes – which they are certainly not, should one bother to engage with the work – and that the love about which they sing is illusory, non-existent. Everything goes round in circles; no one can do anything about it. I do not exclude the possibility that such a point might be made in a production but this was the only point, hammered home with an insensitive insistency that might make a sledgehammer appear to be a tool of woolly-minded consensus. The fact is that one could do precisely the same thing to any work of one’s choice; without even the slightest attempt to connect Konzept and work, let alone to permit the former to grow out of the latter, it is difficult to see how this was a production of Eugene Onegin at all. It was a relief to have chairs appear suspended in mid-air, simply in order to see something different. I could not even say that of the sudden appearance of red ping-pong balls, which merely irritated. Other than that, there was almost no relief from the monochrome all-purpose set and the pointless moving around from the Freyer Ensemble – which seems to appears in all of Freyer’s productions, whether called for or not – and from the other, incredibly patient performers. Yes, we got the point a few hours earlier. For some reason, Lensky appeared to be the focal point, which might well have been the nub of an interesting production, but this was once again merely insisted upon rather than developed, let alone explained. Had he been permitted to become a flesh-and-blood character, then it might well have worked. The contrast with the musical performance could not have been greater. Yet, despite Freyer’s relationship to Brecht, this did not qualify as Brechtian Verfremdungseffekt. It was not even just a betrayal of the work; it was plain boring.