Der Rosenkavalier, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 2 January 2024

Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg – Julia Kleiter
Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Günther Groissböck
Octavian – Marina Prudenskaya
Herr von Faninal – Roman Trekel
Sophie – Golda Schultz
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Anna Samuil
Valzacchi – Karl-Michael Ebner
Annina – Katharina Kammerloher
Police Officer – Friedrich Hamel
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Florian Hoffmann
Faninal’s Major-domo – Johan Krogius
House Servant – Jens-Eric Schulze
Notary – Dionyios Avgerinos
Landlord – Johan Krogius
Singer – Andrés Moreno Garcia
Milliner – Regina Koncz
Vendor of Pets – Michael Kim
Leopold – Oliver Chwat
Lackeys, Waiters – Sooongoo Lee, Felipe Martin, Insoo Hwoang, Thomas Vogel
Three noble orphans – Olga Vilenskaia, Anna Woldt, Verena Albertz
Lerchenauschen – Peter Krumow, Stefan Livland, Mike Keller, Thomas Vogel, Ben Bloomfeld, Andreas Neher
Paper artist – Tomas Höfer
Mohammed – Joseph Umoh

Director – André Heller
Assistant director – Wolfgang Schilly
Set designs – Xenia Hausner, Nanna Neudeck
Costumes – Arthur Arbesser, Onka Allmayer-Beck
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Günter Jäckle, Philip Hillers

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

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Joana Mallwitz (conductor)

Image: Stefan Liewehr (from 2020 premiere, with different cast)

First seen in 2020, André Heller’s production of Der Rosenkavalier, ‘in collaboration with’ Wolfgang Schilly, is something of an enigma. Not only does there appear to be no overriding concept, nor even sense of what the work might be about; there also seems to be little, if anything, in the way of direction of the characters. There are striking set designs from Xenia Hausner and similarly striking costumes from Arthur Arbesser, although the latter dart about confusingly when it comes to chronology; insofar as one can discern any idea, it comes from the former—and that really seems to be it. On entering the theatre, we are confronted in lieu of a curtain with a playbill for a 1917 benefit performance for war widows and orphans in Vienna. I assume that has some relevance to what unfolds, though war and its consequences are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the Marschallin is supposed to stand in some relationship to Princess Marie Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, under whose auspices the performance is listed as taking place. The costumes, to this untutored eye, suggest something later, perhaps progressively so, the setting European japonisme. (My heart went out to Michael Kim as Pet Vendor: ‘orientalism’ does not begin…) In the second act, Klimt’s Beethoven frieze and ostentatious vulgarity do a reasonable job in evoking something more up-to-date for Faninal’s palace, although dressing Faninal entirely in gold overeggs the pudding to the point of exploding it. Quite why the third act is set in a giant palm house, I have no idea, but Heller apparently has ‘never understood’ why Hofmannsthal set it where he did. Perhaps he might have tried harder, but no matter. 

There are occasional aperçus and likewise causes for bemusement. As an instance of the former, a full-grown Mohammed’s lingering over the Marschallin’s handkerchief at the close comes as a nice (or even nasty) surprise; he clearly loves her as much as the rest of us. Concerning the latter, I have no idea why a team of opera house crew walk on, in T-shirts saying ‘Staatsoper Unter den Linden’, to mob the Italian singer; such metatheatrical (?) presentism is not evident elsewhere. None of this does any particular harm; by the same token, none of it substitutes for an actual production, its thinking through or its accomplishment, although it might well have offered an attractive if slightly arbitrary mise-en-scene. If I remain some way off declaring ‘Come back Otto Schenk, all is forgiven,’ I could certainly forgive on this occasion someone for saying so. At any rate, it was unclear why it should have been thought necessary to replace Nicolas Brieger’s staging with this lavish Berlin successor. 

Joana Mallwitz unquestionably brought more in the way of ideas, as well as greater familiarity with the work—and with opera more broadly. (One might have thought such qualities sine quibus non, yet in this brave new world in which anyone other than an opera director can be an opera director, seemingly not.) The Preludes to the first act and the opening of the second were attacked with great energy, vividly pictorial or at least amenable to vivid pictorialisation. The Introduction and much of the Pantomime to the third were spellbindingly Mendelssohnian in lightness and balance of textures; I have never heard them quite like that, but should be keen to do so again. Tempi tended to broaden as the acts proceeded, and there were times when I felt the lack of something a little more classical (or indeed closer to Strauss’s own conducting), but there are far worse things than expansiveness in Der Rosenkavalier. At any rate, the Staatskapelle Berlin seemed to respond with enthusiasm to her approach and, if I have heard a greater range of kaleidoscopic colour drawn from the orchestra here, there remained much to admire. 

So too was there in the singing. It seems only yesterday I was making the acquaintance of Julia Kleiter’s artistry as Pamina; now she is the Marschallin, and a distinguished one at that. Her performance showed equal sensitivity to verbal meaning and deeper emotional currents, neither mistaking opera for Lieder nor painting with too broad a brush. Nor did she turn Strauss into Wagner, drawing on considerable Mozartian experience as well as natural, fitting stage presence. Plight, grace, and reassertion of control were moving indeed. Marina Prudenskaya’s Octavian was fruitier of tone than one often hears, though none the worse for that. She captured his ultimate cluelessness to a tee, and likewise offered due bearing for the role. The Faninals were hardly favoured by the production, but Golda Schultz’s unusually headstrong Sophie proved unusually likeable. Roman Trekel made much of his words in particular as her father. Günther Groissböck was audibly ailing, yet nonetheless offered a vigorous and far from off-the-peg performance as Ochs. His command of Bavarian came in handy for baronial rusticity. There were no weak links in this cast; for me, Katharina Kammerloher’s lively Annina, Anna Samuil’s stern yet caring Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin, and Johan Krogius’s double turn as intelligent Major-domo to Herr von Faninal and spirited (and far from unintelligent) third-act Landlord stood out. No one hearing these performances could reasonably have been disappointed; if only there had been more of a production with which to engage.

Katharina Kammerloher and friends - Wolf, Schoenberg, Brahms, Mahler, Wolf, Reutter, and Falla, 2 October 2019

Apollo Saal, Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Wolf: Auf einer Wanderung; Verschwiegene Liebe; Begegnung; Nimmersatte Liebe; Lied vom Winde

Schoenberg: Brettl-Lieder: ‘Galathea’, ‘Mahnung’, ‘Arie aus dem “Spiegel von Arkadien”’

Brahms: Feinsliebchen, du sollst mir nicht barfuß gehn, WoO 33 no.12; Da unten im Tale, WoO 33 no.6; Vergebliches Ständchen, op.84 no.4

Mahler: Des knaben Wunderhorn: ‘Trost im Unglück’; ‘Verlorne Müh’’; ‘Aus! Aus!’

Brahms: Zigeunerlieder, op.103: ‘Brauner Bursche’, ‘Röslein dreie’

Wolf: In dem Schatten meiner Locken

Brahms: Liebesglut, op.47 no.2

Wolf: Die Zigeunerin

Hermann Reutter: Tanz

Falla, arr. Christian Dominik Dellacher: Siete canciones populares españolas (first performance)

Katharina Kammerloher (mezzo-soprano)

Roman Trekel (baritone)

Klaus Sallmann, (piano)

Ensemble Monbijou: Dana Sturm (piano), Tobias Sturm (violin), Boris Bardenhagen (viola), Hannah Eichberg (cello), Kaspar Loyal (double bass).

With this recital, mezzo-soprano Katharina Kammerloher, joined by colleagues Roman Trekel, Klaus Sallmann, and musicians drawn from the Staatskapelle Berlin under the name of Ensemble Monbijou, celebrated her twenty-five years as a member of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden’s ensemble. From the past couple of years or so, I have heard her as the Ariadne Composer, Marcellina, and Eva (Meistersinger), and in a trio of roles from Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust at the Linden opera’s reopening, a good number of performances before that too. This, however, was the first time I had heard her in recital. This evening in the Staatsoper’s Apollo Saal proved most enjoyable, heightening the sense of a likeable, intelligent, and versatile artist.

The opening set of Wolf songs did not necessarily offer the easiest way to start, yet struck just the right tone. Attention to detail in Auf einer Wanderung was noteworthy: the floating first syllable of ‘Nachitigallenchor’ indicative of a world of song to come. Pianist, Klaus Sallmann’s piano introduction proved skittish and generative, for both parts. A sense of change, of transformation following the song’s Wagnerian interlude was palpable, Richard Strauss and his world no longer distant; ‘Ach hier, wie liegt die Welt so licht!’ A rapt Eichendorff Verschwiegene Liebe, and vividly communicative performances of the two following songs, prepared the way for a dramatic, unmistakeably post-Wagnerian reading of the Mörike Lied vom Winde, Sallmann’s nimble, directed fingerwork rendering him at least an equal partner. Here and elsewhere, Kammerloher’s collegiality shone through: this was clearly as much an occasion to celebrate the company as a whole as her contribution over the past quarter of a century.

Why Schoenberg’s Brettl-Lieder are not performed all the time, I simply cannot understand, although I suppose I would say that. It would doubtless be an exaggeration to say they are as indicative of the composer’s subsequent path as his Gurrelieder, but an excellent performance, albeit here of only three, can persuade one otherwise – as this did. One thinks, perhaps inevitably, of Berlin, but a sense of the composer’s travelling between Vienna and Berlin is, or should be apparent, and was in this case. (The songs were not, as has sometimes been claimed, written for Ernst von Wolzogen’s Buntes Theater, where Schoenberg served as Kapellmeister; Schoenberg had written them in Vienna, before leaving for Berlin.) Whatever Schoenberg may have had to say about style and idea, style is crucial here, and Kammerloher – Sallmann too – captured that Schoenbergian cabaret style, leading to Pierrot and beyond. Driven by words in a different way from Wolf, yet without loss to the melodic line, these witty performances were equally driven or, perhaps better, founded upon a rhythmic lilt it is difficult not to consider Viennese.

Brahms and Mahler concluded the first half, the former in folksong mode, the latter not a million miles therefrom, albeit with a distancing that comes necessarily with the Mahlerian territory. Perhaps there might have been a little more sense of alienation in those Wunderhorn songs, although, by the same token, it might in context have sounded overdone. Joined now by pianist Dana Sturm and baritone Roman Trekel, Kammerloher and her partners again worked with the lilt of dance rhythms, to bring out verbal as well as musical meaning, the lightly worn sadness of Brahms’s Da Unten im Tale a particular highlight for me. I was intrigued, moreover, by how Mahler sounded with reference not only to Brahms but to Schoenberg: interesting programming, which paid off handsomely.

Brahms reappeared after the interval, this time accompanied by Wolf (and Sallmann). A lively Brauner Bursche offered perhaps more refulgent vocal tone than we had heard hitherto, yet not at the cost of precision and verbal communication. Brahms’s Liebesglut offered a welcome instance of the composer in darker mode: turbulent and determined in both parts, in work and performance. Such richness here in a single song, wonderfully revealed! Wolf’s Die Zigeunerin offered an intriguing pendant: much more than a more pendant, of course, but again indicative of intelligent, meaningful programming, as was the inclusion thereafter of Hermann Reutter’s post-war Lorca setting, Tanz. One rarely hears Reutter’s music, doubtless partly on political grounds. This song suggested, however, that we should. Motoric, after Hindemith, it proved quite thrilling, both as song and scena, Kammerloher not afraid to make a rawer sound, yet within the bounds of song.  

An accomplished new arrangement, by Christian Dominik Dellacher, for voice, piano, violin, viola, cello, and double bass, of Manuel de Falla’s Siete canciones populares españolas, received its first performance as the final item on the programme: both well prepared and welcome in its contrast. Dellacher’s work was not overdone, yet helped lift or translate the songs into a new setting, the instrumental ensemble bringing an atmospheric sense, appropriate in context, of somewhere between the coffee house and the cabaret. In the most overtly ‘Spanish’ of the songs, such as ‘Nana’ and the closing ‘Polo’, the latter imbued with nervous energy by all concerned, Kammerloher seemed both possessed by and to possess the local idioms. The intervening ‘Canción’ proved, aptly enough, more conventionally songful, harking back to much of what we had heard before. It was a lovely evening, then, and a fitting tribute to Katharina Kammerloher as first among equals.

Reopening of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden - Szenen aus Goethes Faust, 3 October 2017

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Franziska Krug/Isa Foltin/ GETTY IMAGES FOR STAATSOPER UNTER DEN LINDEN

Faust, Doctor Marianus – Roman Trekel

Gretchen, Una Poentitentium – Elsa Dreisig

Mephistopheles, Böser Geist, Pater Profundus – René Pape

Marthe, Sorge, Mater Gloriosa – Katharina Kammerloher

Not, Magna Peccatrix – Evelin Novak

Mangel, Mulier Samaritana – Adriane Queiroz

Schuld, Maria Aegyptiaca – Natalia Skrycka

Ariel, Pater Ecstaticus – Stephan Rügamer

Pater Seraphicus – Gyula Orendt

Soloists – Narine Yeghiyan, Florian Hoffmann, Jan Martiník

Faust, Herold – André Jung

Mephistopheles, Lieschen – Sven-Eric Bechtolf

Gretchen, Astrolog, Engel, Türmer – Meike Droste

Zueignung – Anna Tomowa-Sintow

Jürgen Flimm (director)

Markus Lüpertz (set designs)

Ursula Kudrna (costumes)

Olaf Freese (lighting)

Gail Skrela (choreography)

Detlef Giese (dramaturgy)

Chorus (chorus master: Martin Wright) and Children’s Chorus (chorus master: Vinzens Weissenburger) of the Staatsoper Unter Den Linden

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

And so, at long last, the Staatsoper Unter den Linden has reopened its doors to the public, its resident company’s long exile – seven years – in Charlottenburg’s Schillertheater over. It will close again at the end of the week, to re-reopen, as it were, in December, some final work to do, but let us not worry too much about that right now; as Daniel Barenboim said, in a speech at the reception following the performance, the Opera has avoided the fate of Berlin’s new airport. Fasolt and Fafner have more or less completed their work, and the gods have more or less entered Valhalla without, it would seem, sealing their fate. We can but hope.

Franziska Krug/Isa Foltin/ GETTY IMAGES FOR STAATSOPER UNTER DEN LINDEN

There was no rainbow bridge, but there was certainly a red carpet – and considerable security too. A host of dignitaries was present: gods, for better or worse, of this world. And hearing some of them speak beforehand, it was difficult, at least for this all-too-temporary exile from the United (sic) Kingdom, that Germany does not have it so bad after all. It made me proud, indeed, to have found sanctuary, if only for a Augenblick (‘moment’), in a country that prides itself upon its status as a Kulturnation. There may be many problems associated with that; there are problems, after all, with anything and everything – this side of Heaven, death, communism, or whatever flavour of realised eschatology one may favour. (Please, please do not say ‘Brexit’.) Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus stands as one of many warnings to us on that; so too does the Bebelplatz, site of perhaps the most notorious, even infamous, book burnings in history, immediately behind the Lindenoper. Germany, however, is the country of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (‘coming to terms with the past’) par excellence; it is never a completed work – Wotan, kindly take note – and yet, compared to anywhere else on earth, or at least in Europe, I can think of, there remains a sense, to quote Angela Merkel, of ‘Wir schaffen das’ (‘we can do it’).

Franziska Krug/Isa Foltin/ GETTY IMAGES FOR STAATSOPER UNTER DEN LINDEN

Merkel was one of those in attendance, although she did not speak. The President, Franz-Walter Steinmeier did, however. And in this country, this city, he could speak meaningfully of the crucial, life-giving importance of art. It is not just a hope, not just a slogan, not just an idea, but a reality – and a ‘reality’ in something approaching the complex notion offered thereof by Hegel, whose Humboldt University bust lies only a few hundred yards away. It is not even a personal matter; it would, of course, be impossible for the British Head of State, let alone her Prime Minister, plausibly to utter such words, and it is impossible to imagine either trying. However, even if one were to find a more personally and politically sympathetic figure to the arts, such as the current Leader of the Opposition, they would sadly, tragically, remain almost absurdly remote from reality, however conceived. I wished then, to return to that idea – I almost wish to capitalise it, but shall refrain – of the Augenblick; or, in the subtitle of this opening performance of Schumann’s Szenen aus Goethes Faust, ‘Zum Augenblicke sagen: Verweile doch!’ (‘Say to the moment: tarry a while!’)

Alas, it was, with the best will in the world – and I should like to think mine was well intended – difficult to say the same about much of what took place on stage. And whilst I do not wish to rain on anyone’s parade, critical honesty entails here a considerable degree of throwing one’s hands up in the air and asking ‘why?’ Rarely if ever have I seen so many people leave the theatre and not return after the interval; that was doubtless partly a matter of ‘celebrity’ guests, and so on, but perhaps a few more would have stayed had this staging of Schumann and Goethe not proved so utterly misconceived and often, sad to say, tedious. Barenboim rightly paid tribute to Jürgen Flimm’s Intendancy, prolonged so as to continue to care for the company during its prolonged exile, for Flimm unquestionably helped enable its return to Unter den Linden. As an opera director, however, Flimm’s record has proved at best mixed here in Berlin. To take but a couple of examples, his Orfeo ed Euridice had a good few things to recommend it, his Nozze di Figaro, shall we say, rather fewer. There is, I think, little point moaning about what might have been, had the company returned to its home earlier; yes, of course it would have opened with another production, but so what? Still less would there be any justification in complaining about the lack of another anticipated premiere, thwarted by its composer’s serious illness. Nor need one rule out in principle staging a work that was never intended to be staged, although it is perhaps a little quixotic in reality, however construed, to reopen an opera house with a work that is not only not an opera but which seems in its very essence to resist most, even all, operatic tendencies.

Production images: Hermann und Clärchen Baus

It might have worked; alas, it did not. What we saw – and heard – was an awkward padding of Schumann’s ‘scenes’ with small pieces of Goethe; except it was not really padding, more two different things going on, with little relationship to one another, not even in any sense approaching the dialectical, let alone in a more conventionally ‘smooth’ sense of drama. I suspect that anyone unfamiliar with Goethe would have wondered – and not in an especially productive way – what was going on. Anyone unfamiliar with Schumann would, I fear, have wondered what the point of this exquisite, heartrending, yet exquisitely and heartrendingly fragile tribute to Goethe’s work was, so diminished did it seem in this context, however well performed (and in many, if not all, respects it certainly was).

Goethe follows his fond imperative, ‘Zum Augenblicke sagen: Verweile doch’, with the exclamation, ‘du bist so schön!’ (You are so beautiful!) Apart from the music – and I am afraid it really felt as if it were quite ‘apart from’ – what then was schön? The work of set designer (and celebrated painter, sculptor, poet, etc.) Markus Lüpertz could certainly lay claim to have been so; I should happily have seen it in its own right. Alas, Flimm seemed not to know what to do with them. Instead, we had an unclear relationship between actors and singers, drama and music, any number of potential dialectical opposites, without either reconciliation (let us say Hegel) or radical negative failure to reconcile (let us say Adorno). Spoken and sung characters sometimes looked the same, sometimes did not, sometimes appeared in stylised ‘period’ (for Goethe) costume, sometimes not, or less so. Words were help up on placards. Indicators of metatheatricality were to be seen: seats from the theatre moved onstage, so that members of the chorus could watch and ‘interact’; music stands appeared, from which presumably some effort was being made to suggest characters learning music from the spirit of drama; the chorus suddenly appeared to sing from within the audience; and so on, and so on. There was an irritating prevalence of silly dancing, quite unconcerned with whatever music was being heard or not. Was there something of autobiography, or at least a summation of a (semi-Faustian) career in the theatre? Perhaps, but frankly, I am on the verge of making it up as I go along. That would seem very much to be in the spirit of what I saw: essentially an expensive version of a university student’s staging, enthused with some big ideas from other plays or productions.

Enough of that! The orchestra often sounded wonderful, recognisably the same band as we hear on Barenboim’s (outstanding) recordings of the Schumann symphonies with them. There were occasional fluffs here and there, and it would be idle to say that Barenboim’s direction was always quite so commanding as on those performances in which he had clearly ‘lived’ with the music for longer. He nevertheless conveyed a strong sense of the music, with ideas very much of his own about how it should go, not least a furiously driven Overture. (I am not sure that I necessarily liked it that way, but it had conviction and, I think, its own justification.) Passages that have much in common with the symphonies seemed – or perhaps this was my imagination – subtly underlined, as if to suggest a commonality of purpose that yet did not disrupt Schumann’s musical forms. (We had Flimm for that.) Choral singing was likewise excellent – what a wonderful Children’s Chorus the company can boast too! – although, towards the close, there were a few passages in which chorus and pit were not entirely in sync. The acoustical work to the theatre certainly seems to have paid off, the sound warmer than ever. (I was up in the Second Circle, so probably in a good position to speak of a lack of ‘distance’ acoustically.)

If Roman Trekel’s performance, thoughtful and intelligent though it may have been, remained rather dry of tone, then René Pape’s rich bass, more sonorous than ever, pretty much stole the vocal show. Anyone would have been persuaded by this Mephistopheles, although Sven-Erik Bechtolf’s spoken version seemed quite at odds: not interestingly opposed, just inconsistent. It was splendidly acted, I think, but belonging somewhere else entirely, whereas André Jung’s shouty Faust (again, perhaps this was Flimm’s intention) slightly baffled in itself too. Quite what Anna Tomowa-Sintow was doing delivering a reading at the beginning is anyone’s guess; I was very happy, for the first and presumably last time, to see her on stage, but was that enough? Perhaps it worked as a metaphor for the project as a whole. To return to the singers, Elsa Dreisig offered a clear, often radiant soprano, with intriguing hints perhaps of a bell-like Tales of Hoffmann Olympia. I think Flimm may have been presenting Gretchen as an all too evident construction by Faust and Mephistopheles, a commentary worth pursuing on ‘Das Ewig-Weibliche’ (the eternal feminine), but that sense at the close was fleeting and seemingly unprepared. That was certainly not Dreisig’s fault, though. Katharina Kammerloher also stood out amongst a cast that was, rightly, drawn entirely from the Staatsoper’s own company.

Franziska Krug/Isa Foltin/ GETTY IMAGES FOR STAATSOPER UNTER DEN LINDEN

This, then, was a surprising Prelude to what we might think of as the ‘real’ reopening. Or rather, to return to more complex conceptions of ‘reality’, the house and company will continue to reopen, to develop; the task will never be completed, for it never can be, even when the builders leave. Much will have been learned, and once the present co-intendant Matthias Schulz has taken over the full reins of the company in the spring, we should begin to gain a stronger impression of the drama ahead. His first fully programmed season will be 2018-19. Wolfgang Rihm’s Saul, the work to which I alluded above, will, it is hoped, still be heard in a later season. The house will re-reopen with a new Hänsel und Gretel and a new Coronation of Poppea. A tour of the splendid new rehearsal facilities augurs well. There is, then, everything to play – and everything to hope – for. We can aim for Wagner’s ‘artwork of the future’, or aim to ‘fail better’, as Beckett would have had it; the two are far from mutually exclusive. One of the very oldest orchestras in the world, arguably the very oldest, founded as it was in 1570, was sounding at least as good as ever. Opera is not solely a musical art, but it remains a musical art nevertheless. The house should and doubtless will build on that – in as many senses as possible, and then some. For crucially important though buildings may be, the real business of building, the real business of Bildung too, is not principally about them at all.

(An edited version of this review appeared first in VAN magazine.)

Berlin Festtage (3) - Die Frau ohne Schatten, Staatsoper Berlin, 9 April 2017

Dyer's Wife (Iréne Theorin), Empress (Camilla Nylund), Barak (Wolfgang Koch)
Images: Hans Jörg Michel

Schiller Theater

Emperor – Burkhard Fritz

Empress – Camilla Nylund

Nurse – Michaela Schuster

Spirit-Messenger – Roman Trekel

Barak – Wolfgang Koch

Dyer’s Wife – Iréne Theorin
Apparition of Youth – Jun-Sang Han
Voice of the Falcon – Narine YeghiyanVoice from Above – Jane Henschel
Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Evelin Novak

Voice from Above – Anja Schlosser

The One-Eyed – Alfredo Daza
The One-Armed – Grigory Shkarupa

The Hunchback – Karl-Michael Ebner

Servants, Children’s Voices – Sónia Grané, Evelin Novak, Natalia Skrycka

Children’s Voices – Anna Charim, Verena Allertz, Konstanze Löwe

Voices of Nightwatchmen – David Oštrek, Gyula Orendt, Dominc Barberi

Claus Guth (director)

Julia Burbach (assistant director)

Christian Schmidt (designs)

Olaf Winter (lighting)

Andi A. Müller (video)

Ronny Dietrich (dramaturgy)

Dancers

Children’s Chorus (chorus master; Vinzenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopern Chor Berlin (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Zubin Mehta (conductor)

Empress and Nurse (Michaela Schuster)

Claus Guth’s staging of Die Frau ohne Schatten, already seen in Milan and in London, now reaches Berlin, the Staatsoper the third of its co-producing partners. Here, I think, its psychoanalytical and, more broadly, dramatic focus is sharper, doubtless the consequence of certain reworking in the light of experience, whether by Guth or his assistants. Narrative clarity is anything but reductionist or lacking in conceptual framework, yet the danger of obscuring Hofmannsthal’s tendency towards the obscure is avoided throughout. We open with a sanatorium dumb show, a woman receiving treatment. In her dreaming, she becomes – or perhaps always has been: it does not really matter – the Empress. Dreaming is not, it should be added, a banal matter of waking up and discovering ‘it was all a dream’, almost as a way of rounding off something that could not otherwise have been rounded off; that was rather the impression gained, at least by me, in London. Here, with some sharpening up of the medical apparatus – a little more presence, perhaps, earlier in the third act would not go amiss – it comes across far more clearly as a mode of treatment. What our heroine – hysterical in more than one way, or perhaps not – undergoes is perhaps what she needs; at any rate, it is what she gets.

 

Emperor (Burkhard Fritz)

Navigation of the boundaries between reality and dream, accepting that sometimes they will remain unclear and that that is no bad thing, gains dynamic impetus through its interaction with Hofmannsthal’s idea of transformation; Ariadne auf Naxos seems to beckon, or perhaps it already has beckoned. The mythological world it continues to receive a relatively full due, echoes, however strained of The Magic Flute, heard (more to the point, seen), without overwhelming. Schmidt’s designs and Olaf Winter’s lighting come into their own here, although I could do without the strangely banal video explication. The shadows cast across the stage say far more than a projection of a pregnant stomach being rubbed. What last time I called ‘the sheer weirdness but also menacing sense of judgement emanating from a courtroom of strange creatures’, close to the end, seems perhaps more menacing in its imagined flights of fantasy than ever. Dreams and their interpretation remain indivisible. ‘Treatment’ is, moreover, not without its perils. Coming hard on the heels of the Freudian themes in Dmitri Tcherniakov’s Parsifal, the staging offers much to ponder.

 

Zubin Mehta’s conducting of the score was less probing. He knew ‘how it went’, although perhaps lingered a little too much at times when the singers – and the drama – might have preferred otherwise. Compared, however, with Semyon Bychkov’s truly outstanding account at Covent Garden, as fine as anything I know on record, let alone have known in the theatre, Mehta’s reading sounded generalised. Where Strauss’s score offers a myriad of opportunities for harmonic and, still more, colouristic fragmentation and reunion, ever transforming before our ears, this was often a little dogged and, if not monochrome, less kaleidoscopic and, more generally, multivalent, than one might have hoped for. The Staatkapelle Berlin nevertheless sounded excellent, solos well taken without exception, although there were times when I wished Mehta might have allowed it more of its head – and sheer heft. I could not help but recall Daniele Gatti’s shattering 2010 Elektra in Salzburg, as well as Bychkov’s FroSch, and finding something missing.

The Nurse

The cast, though, was first-rate, just as had been the case in London. I am not sure I have heard Burkhard Fritz on better form. The physical demands of the Emperor’s part are fearsome, cruel even by Strauss’s usual tenor standards. One can readily forgive a single wayward passage for the otherwise splendid performance heard here. Camilla Nylund’s Empress could hardly have been bettered. As well acted as it was well sung, as variegated in colour and dynamic contrast as it was clean of line, this was above all a performance that had one sympathise, believe in the ‘case’ before us. I likewise do not think I have heard a better Barak than that of Wolfgang Koch. His way with words and music certainly had me sympathise with the character like never before. The dyer’s predicament was ‘real’, not merely symbolic or dreamed. Iréne Theorin’s imperious yet also deeply felt Dyer’s Wife impressed similarly, its vocal roots in the figure of Isolde but also, one felt, once we knew she had not made the diabolical agreement, in the humanity of Mozart. If Roman Trekel’s Spirit-Messenger were somewhat dry of tone, the instrument of his message, Michaela Schuster, fully lived up to the high expectations elicited by her London performance, its ambiguous malevolence heightened by the Freudian setting. With choruses, adult and children’s alike, on splendid form too, blocked as well as they sang, there was much to celebrate here indeed – even if we cannot include that disturbing pro-natalism from which we shall never quite be able to rescue the work.

Fidelio, Staatsoper Berlin, 28 October 2016

Images: Bernd Uhlig
Rocco (Matti Salminen) and Marzelline (Evelin Novak)

Schillertheater

Don Fernando – Roman Trekel

Don Pizarro – Falk Struckmann
Florestan – Andreas Schager

Leonore – Camilla Nylund

Rocco – Matti Salminen
Marzelline – Evelin Novak
Jaquino – Florian Hoffmann

 

Harry Kupfer (director)
Derek Gimpel (assistant director)
Hans Schavernoch (set designs)
Yan Tax (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)

Berlin State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

 

What to do with Fidelio? It seems to be a question exercising everyone staging – and performing – it, which, in one, very obvious sense, is fair enough, even a necessity. On the other hand, the desire to ‘do’ something with it, whether musically, scenically, or both, will sometimes lead us down decidedly peculiar alleys. I have been sent down stranger, far less convincing ways than that of Harry Kupfer. Indeed a signal strength of his new production for the Berlin State Opera is that it seems to suggest – or at least can be understood to do so – that the desire to do things different musically, the jadedness that gave birth to the fashion-victim wing of ‘authenticity’ can be at least as injurious to Beethoven as Mahler’s ‘tradition’ as Schlamperei. Both the comfortable, too-smoothly-connected Beethoven of regular, all-too-regular performances at the Musikverein – seen at beginning and end, in a strangely convincing trompe l’œil backdrop – and a reductive, anti-metaphysical, post-Stravinskian inability to cope with him, his music, and his message, to connect anything, be it phrase or idea, with anything else, stand accused. Or at least they did for me. Kupfer is not always the most open of directors, but here, I think he offers the potential for different readings, according to one’s own needs as well as inclinations. Whether that has come at the expense of the directoral boldness we know from the Kupfer of old, whether there is a tiredness, as well as an accusation of tiredness, remains an awkward, nagging doubt.  

 

Kupfer, aided by Hans Schavernoch’s excellent designs, presents a Beethoven hemmed in by routine. His bust stands on the piano; that is what busts, especially of Beethoven, do. Performance directions, director’s notes, multilingual key words drive us up the walls. The day-to-day routine of an opera house or concert hall, even when well run, well thought through – having studied, for instance, at some of Kupfer’s notes for his Dresden Moses und Aron, I can attest that he thinks, certainly thought, things through – can militate against great artistry. No one, I am sure, would claim otherwise. Such, in a sense, is the world of the first scene of Fidelio, of Jacquino and Marzelline, or Rocco’s ‘gold’ aria. It would be an odd thing if the most memorable thing about a Fidelio were the ironing, but ironing is necessary, as are the non-heroic characters in general. Does it seep through too much, though? Are the prisoners as imprisoned by their Peters scores – which, mysteriously, they rarely if ever open, although I think Jacquino does his – as by something more objectively brutal? Is that an important question to ask, or is it gravely insulting to those who actually are physically imprisoned? Kupfer seems to invite us to ask such questions; I have thought a good deal about them since, and am still doing so.

Don Pizarro (Falk Struckmann), Leonore, and Florestan (Andreas Schager)

 

There are big moments, of course. They still shine through. Is the director perhaps telling us to simplify, to focus upon them? He might be, but I am not entirely sure. Perhaps that is as it should be. At any rate, the events in the dungeon retain a straightforward power of their own, as surely they must. Or must they? I know that many in the audience felt too much left to their own devices, and wonder whether some on stage did too. I am far from unsympathetic to them, yet at the same time, the contrast between the ambiguity of direction (and even, if non-direction it were, of non-direction) and the certainty of the musical performance was not, for me, entirely unproductive.

 

Florestan

For it was ultimately the contribution, unsurprisingly, of the Staatskapelle Berlin and Daniel Barenboim that made this Fidelio – well, Fidelio. That is not intended as any disrespect to the generally excellent singers, but Fidelio begins and ends with its symphonism – even when, perhaps even particularly when, it is aspirant symphonism. The oddity of opening with the second Leonore Overture aside – was even Barenboim joining in the game of ‘difference’? – not a foot was put wrong. That is not enough, of course: not nearly enough. More to the point, everything, even if there were multiple alternatives, felt right, felt necessary. Hearing the work from beginning to end, Barenboim built it intriguingly from Klemperian foundations to a blazing, almost incredibly Furtwänglerian final chorus. (The interplay between those two tendencies, living influences, has recently been a particular theme in his conducting of Beethoven symphonies.) The orchestra, as transparent as it was weighty, as dramatically incisive as it was metaphysically wise, stood quite beyond the realm of the quotidian. It played with greater ‘tradition’ than the unforgettable West-Eastern Divan under Barenboim, but this was a tradition, unlike that of some, that was constantly rethought, recreated. Much the same could, and should, be said of the magnificent choral singing. Barenboim’s Fidelio is not the same as it was, nor should it be. Is it better? Who cares? It is what it is now, and it is something special indeed.

 

Andreas Schager’s Florestan was also special. Too few singers who essay the role can actually sing it. Unsurprisingly, there was no such problem in Schager’s case: he is unquestionably the finest Heldentenor, as conventionally understood, of our time. (Jonas Kaufmann, a superlative exponent of the role, is something quite different again.) There was an appealing, rather straightforward sincerity to his portrayal, which is arguably just what it needs. And in a dialectical situation such as set up by Kupfer, straightforwardness will never ‘just’ be straightforwardness. Camilla Nylund’s Leonore was very similar. The near-impossible things Beethoven asks of her held no (vocal) fear. They were never despatched routinely, though; they mattered. The trajectory traced by Matti Salminen’s Rocco, from (relative) darkness to light, was very much that of the work; it moved immensely, the artistry undeniable, yet worn (in a different sense) lightly. Evelin Novak and Florian Hoffmann shone, in their own ways, as the ‘other’ couple, capable of excellent things indeed vocally, content in their non-heroic station dramatically. If Roman Trekel’s Don Fernando were a little dry, that should not be exaggerated. And if Falk Struckmann’s Don Pizarro could not quite create the malevolence the role seems to require, very few assumptions do. (In fact, do any?)

 

To return to where we began, then: what to do with Fidelio? The answer may seem obvious, but it is not trite, for Beethoven can never be trite. Whilst Guantánamo Bay remains open, whilst Palestine, Tibet, so many other parts of the world remain under brutal occupation, whilst, above all, Aleppo remains under siege, do we not know actually know very well what it is about? Are we not hiding, imprisoning ourselves and others, if we fail to acknowledge that, to let Beethoven’s music inspire us, and to let performances such as these do likewise? We need Beethoven most when he seems furthest from us. A Calixto Bieito will always be able to make us think differently, to reconsider a work such as this – or rather, this work, for there is not really any other work like it. Kupfer does, too, I think, if less clearly. However, a straightforward presentation, performed with burning conviction, may be all it needs. There is no harm, however, in pausing from time to time to question such apparent certainty. Does Fidelio mean Fidelio?

 

Wozzeck, Staatsoper Berlin, 16 April 2011

Schillertheater

Captain (Graham Clark) and Wozzeck (Roman Trekel)
Images: Bernd Uhlig

Wozzeck – Roman Trekel
Drum Major – John Daszak
Andres – Florian Hoffmann
Captain – Graham Clark
Doctor – Pavlo Hunka
Marie – Nadja Michael
Margret – Katharina Kammerloher
First Apprentice – Jürgen Linn
Second Apprentice – James Homann
Idiot – Heinz Zednik
Marie’s Child – Fabian Sturm

Andrea Breth (director)
Martin Zehetgruber (stage designs)
Silke Willrett, Marc Weeger (costumes)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Jens Schroth (dramaturgy)


Staatskapelle Berlin
Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)
Children’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Marie (Nadja Michael) with her child
(Fabian Sturm)

Though it was the first opera I saw in the theatre – bar a reduced Don Giovanni – it had been quite a while since I had seen a staged performance of Wozzeck, most likely the greatest of all twentieth-century operas. Certainly its stature seems somehow to grow with every hearing. Keith Warner’s Covent Garden production had its detractors, but I thought it in many respects impressive. Andrea Breth, in her first production for the Berlin State Opera, presented a more ‘faithful’ reading, but fidelity should not be confused in this instance with lack of commitment. It was indeed in the cases where she presented a different interpretation from that suggested in libretto and score that the production seemed weaker. In what came across – even if it were not intended this way – as a strangely misogynistic reading, Marie’s inner conflict was minimised: she did not appear to struggle at all with her conscience in the context of the Drum-Major’s advances, and indeed submitted a few inches away from her son, in full view of him. (I did wonder, without being prudish, whether this was really something appropriate for a child to witness, though I have no reason to think that Fabian Sturm’s fear was not acted.) Moreover, not having Marie read from the Bible, but simply recall it from memory, eliminated an important point that she has struggled to attain literacy. Margret, meanwhile, seemed merely a tart, and a paralytic one at that. The other odd decision was to have Wozzeck, presumably dead, tell his son that his mother was dead; no other children were on stage, their rhyme being delivered from the pit. Presumably a point about the cyclical nature of the tragedy was being made, but the chilling nature of children’s callous insouciance was lost.

Wozzeck and the Doctor (Pavlo Hunka)

Andres (Florian Hoffmann) and Wozzeck

Otherwise, the oppressive nature of an inhuman society was portrayed starkly. There could be no doubt that the singers had been properly directed, a welcome contrast with the previous night’s Salome at the Komische Oper. Actions and scene changes were well choreographed throughout in a thoroughly professional display. Martin Zehetgruber’s dark stage designs were simple, unfussy, and always apt. Militarism was present, as it should be, but never overplayed. The form it takes is, after all, a product of capitalist society, not its cause. The same could and should be said of the Doctor’s nasty experiments and his lust for bourgeois renown. As for the miserable depravity of proletarian life, whether in the barracks or for Marie, ‘wir arme Leut’ indeed… But never were such broader themes, undoubtedly present in the work itself, trumpeted over and above it: this was Berg’s Wozzeck, not, with the exceptions outlined above, Andrea Breth’s.

In the barracks

Daniel Barenboim was on excellent form in the pit, likewise the Staatskapelle Berlin. I might have expected a more overtly ‘Wagnerian’ reading, but then Barenboim’s Wagner has always been more variegated than many seem to think, and his Berg followed suit. There were power and punch when required, which of course includes the wrenching D minor climax of the final Interlude: tonality aufgehoben in a way Schoenberg may sometimes have attempted but never quite accomplished. (Webern never tried.) Not once was there any doubt as to Barenboim’s command of line, but equally impressive were an ear for colour surely born of his experience in French music, not least Debussy, and his characterisation of the closed forms and genres of which the greater structure is composed.

Tavern scene

Roman Trekel’s was one of the best performances I have heard him give, a great improvement upon his disappointing Eugene Onegin, on a par with his fine Doktor Faust. The dryness that has sometimes affected his voice was not at all in evidence on the present occasion. His was not an overtly emotional Wozzeck, not perhaps as searching nor as terrifying as Matthias Goerne’s, but Trekel’s Lieder-singer attention to detail paid dividends nevertheless. Nadja Michael gave her all as Marie. At her best, she is a fine singing actress; here, her vocal power proved generally as impressive as her stage presence. It would have been good to have had more of the right notes, but she is far from the only singer in this role to stand guilty in that respect. The Captain is a role made for a Mime such as Graham Clark; he did not disappoint, nor did Pavlo Hunka in the dangerous, deranged role of the Doctor. John Daszak, replete with plastic muscles, made a virile thug indeed of the Drum-Major, though never at the expense of musical values. Florian Hoffmann proved fair of voice indeed as Andres, as well as convincing on stage: this is clearly a young singer to watch. And finally, it was a genuinely moving pleasure to welcome back Heinz Zednik to the stage in a typically finely observed performance as the Idiot. But the whole was so much more than the sum of the parts: a description of performance as well as work.

Final scene

Lulu will follow during next year’s Festtage, again conducted by Barenboim and directed by Breth. Barenboim said at a press conference a couple of days later that he hopes to conduct both works over a number of weekends, to allow visitors to experience a Berlin ‘Berg Weekend’, a mouth-watering prospect indeed.