Munich Opera Festival (1) - Così fan tutte, 17 July 2023

Nationaltheater

Fiordiligi – Louise Alder
Dorabella – Avery Amereau
Guglielmo/Gulielmo – Konstantin Krimmel
Ferrando – Sebastian Kohlhepp/Jonas Hacker
Despina – Sandrine Piau
Don Alfonso – Johannes Martin Kränzle

Benedict Andrews (director)
Magda Willi (set designs)
Victoria Behr (costumes)
Mark Van Denesse (lighting)
Katja Leclerc (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus director: Kamila Akhmedjanova)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Vladimir Jurowski (conductor)

 

Images: ©Wilfried Hösl
Don Alfonso (Johannes Martin Kränzle), Despina (Sandrine Piau)

  

It is refreshing to find a Così fan tutte that takes the very greatest of Mozart and Da Ponte’s three masterpieces (for the most part) seriously. The amount of nonsense I have seen and heard said of it at least matches that for Don Giovanni. That the nonsense may be genuinely ‘felt’ is neither here nor there, we are not supposed to say that; uninformed misunderstanding is just that, whether it concern an artwork, politics, or particle physics.

Benedict Andrews’s production takes its lead, as probably must any serious attempt, from the work’s subtitle, La scuola degli amanti (‘The School for Lovers’). It opens with Don Alfonso in a black mask – contemporary fetish rather than classic Venetian (or Neapolitan) – taking candid Polaroid snaps of Despina. His lair has all the anonymity of a hotel room, though it may be some similarly liminal space: an empty office or flat, for instance—empty, that is, save for the mattress. He is no pimp, though, at least not conventionally. It appears to be as much a game, perhaps instruction, as anything else, for he does as he seems to have promised, destroying the evidence. When Gulielmo (the spelling used here) and Ferrando arrive, full of young, male confidence and concomitant naïveté, they fool around with Alfonso’s toys, but it is he who will instruct them. According to a programme interview with Andrews and music director Vladimir Jurowski, the two have their ‘own fantasy concerning him to develop: Don Alfonso therein is Don Giovanni’s elder brother, who however never had the sex appeal and courage of his younger brother.’ I only read Jurowski’s claim afterwards, so it played no role in my understanding of what I saw; nor should it have done, since it does not seem to be presented onstage. It is perhaps, though, worth mentioning out of interest, and to show that, quite rightly, both Andrews and Jurowski understand Così as following on from Don Giovanni. For what it is worth, I do not think Don Alfonso ‘needs’, at least on a tactical level, to be so irresistible as Don Giovanni; he has other strengths, is in some respects subtler, and is a survivor. But it is true: he is more limited, and probably must be, in order that the lovers may grow. 

Andrews and his ingenious Alfonso, Johannes Martin Kränzle, take the lovers through the requisite trials. We are not, after all, so far away from Die Zauberflöte, if heading in the opposite direction, as many might think. (At the very least, we might do well to consider ‘love’ in the latter work through the former’s prism, rather as Wagner tells us we must Die Meistersinger via Tristan’s.) They happen more or less as they should, though sometimes with a degree of viewing that is perhaps important to the framing, though could probably be left aside in the name of clarity and elimination of narrative confusion. That may, of course, not be the priority, but there is a danger, intriguingly if somewhat frustratingly also apparent in the musical direction of pushing the work beyond an ideal minimum of coherence—at least for me.

Some devices arguably work better than others. (The double entendre was not initially intended, yet seems apt enough to welcome to the show.) Sudden appearance of something esembling an underground walkway, replete with direct yet unenlightening graffiti such as ‘TITS’ and ‘My penis is huge’, added little; it quickly disappeared. An inflatable, Disney-like castle, first seen in miniature, then blown up undercutting (unnecessarily?) Ferrando’s ‘Un’aura amoroso’, is subsequently restored to suggest gateway orifices and turret protusions. That sort of works, and has a winning, Alfonso-like cynicism to it, although Andrews’s inability to go beyond Alfonso is perhaps a problem. Indeed, I suggest ‘unnecessarily’ because where Andrews for me unquestionably errs is in insistence that the ‘love’ on offer here must only be erotic, or perhaps better in a delimitation of the ‘erotic’ that the Christianity of both Mozart and Da Ponte – something neither Andrews nor Jurowski seems to accept – would always rightly deny. Across Europe and beyond, even in France, not only religion but the Church stood at the very heart of the Enlightenment. 

Gulielmo (Konstantin Krimmel), Fiordiligi (Louise Alder), Don Alfonso

That Andrews offers a garden – an open goal so often missed by directors – is a definite advantage; for me, it recalled, if without the cruel yet magical fantasy, the sadomasochistic delights of Hans Neunefels’s Salzburg production in 2000 (the first I saw). Pathways, petals, and the liberation of being outside – the ‘Zephyrs’ libretto and score present so eloquently and enticingly included – deserve better than the casual omission they often suffer. 

The crucial thing about teaching, of course, is that good pupils will go beyond their teachers. The violent anger Gulielmo and Ferrando show towards Fiordiligi and Dorabella at the close is shocking for all manner of reasons, starting with the fact that the wager was theirs, not their lovers’. This extremely powerful moment, when one wants to avert one’s eyes yet cannot, indeed should not, will linger long in the mind. But it is, of course, through musical means, through Mozart, that the lovers surpass their instructor. Don Alfonso, who arguably has least musical character of his own – partly a reflection on the singer for whom Mozart wrote, but also an opportunity, not least to go beyond Da Ponte – takes them forward yet could never comprehend what they and we have learned or, at least, been confronted with. That this ultimate truth is lacking in the staging is no bad thing, though the programme interview does not necessarily suggest awareness of it, for it is arguably something to be musically rather than scenically realised. (I see no reason why it should not be both, and indeed every reason given the musical inattentiveness of most audiences why it should, but that is a slightly different matter.) There were some strange textual choices, but no version is forever; it is not as if we shall never have chance to hear another Così.

Don Alfonso, Dorabella (Avery Amereau)

 

What, then, of Jurowski? I heard him conduct relatively little Mozart in London, a little more Haydn, so I had no particular preconceptions. There is, on this evidence, no doubting the thoughtfulness of his approach. Nothing is taken for granted; everything has clearly been considered, perhaps on occasion a little too considered. (Am I asking the impossible? Utter spontaneity, whilst taking the work as seriously as it deserves? Perhaps, but that is part, at least, of the Mozartian riddle.) There were some strange textual choices, but no version is forever; it is not as if we shall never have chance to hear another Così. Tempi were varied: some a little odd to my ears: I have never heard ‘Soave sia il vento’ taken anything like so quickly. Yet, even when in a hurry – and there was a good amount of lingering too – Jurowski did not harry. It was, perhaps, a little like what Nikolaus Harnoncourt might have managed, had he had a better sense of harmonic rhythm. There was fussiness, for instance in some strange tailing off of pieces, but there remained a sense of the greater whole, and also a delight in instrumental colour, especially from the woodwind. The use of period trumpets and drums is something I recall from his LPO Haydn; here, he made a better case for it than there, though it is neither something I like nor understand. 

Far more troubling, I am afraid, was the hopelessly exhibitionist continuo playing. One might have hoped this fad had reached its ne plus ultra with René Jacobs, but it seems alas we still have some way to go. Here the fortepianist – harpsichordists generally seem more sparing – never missed an opportunity to signal his presence. The odd witty or even would-be-witty aside is fine, but taking us into the realm of ‘easy listening’, with frankly inappropriate and anything but ‘period’ harmonies, is rather less so. It has nothing to do with Mozart; this is not where his music ‘leads’. And it is not what continuo playing is for. Matters were not helped through much of the performance by pervasive electronic interference: perhaps from a hearing aid. Doubtless the person concerned had no idea, but it made for very difficult listening at times. Mozart may or may not lead to Stockhausen, but the concept would need to be more fully realised. 

An excellent cast did everything that was asked for it and more. Louise Alder’s Fiordiligi, spun from finest Egyptian cotton, was equally possessed of due heft and spirt. That her second-act aria suffered both from that interference and from something less forgivable, premature applause, did not detract from her achievement. Avery Amereau made for a splendid counterpart as Dorabella, properly different in character and very much an enthusiast once fully enrolled in Don Alfonso’s ‘school’. I doubt anyone has ever had to do quite what she did whilst singing ‘È amore un ladroncello’, but she graduated with flying (orgasmic) colours. Konstantin Krimmel’s Gulielmo was dark, dangerous, even impetuous, yet always fully in vocal control. Sebastian Kohlhepp was unwell, though one would never have known from his excellent first-act performance; after the interval, though, he continued to act, whilst ensemble member Jonas Hacker put on an equally excellent vocal performance, splendidly at ease with Da Ponte as well as Mozart, from the wings. Sandrine Piau’s knowing, fun-loving, easily intelligent Despina will surely have been loved by all. And as master of ceremonies, Kränzle brought a typical match of musical and dramatic intelligence to his role. It was his school, after all: we followed his lead and felt a properly Mozartian twinge of regret when he was no longer required.

Innocence, Royal Opera, 17 April 2023 (UK premiere)

Royal Opera House

Images: Tristram Kenton

The Waitress (Tereza) – Jenny Carlstedt
The Mother-in-law (Patricia) – Sandrine Piau
The Father-in-law (Henrik) – Christopher Purves
The Bride (Stela) – Lilian Farahani
The Bridegroom (Tuomas) – Markus Nykänen
The Priest – Timo Riihonen
The Teacher (Cecilia) – Lucy Shelton
Student One (Markéta) – Vilma Jää
Student Two (Lilly) – Beate Mordal
Student Three (Iris) – Julie Hega
Student Four (Anton) – Simon Kluth
Student Five (Jerónimo) – Camilo Delgado Díaz
Student Six (Alexia) – Marina Dumont

Simon Stone (director)
Chloe Lamford (set designs)
Mel Page (costumes)
James Farncombe (lighting)
Arco Renz (choreography)
Aleksi Barrière (dramaturgy, translation)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Genevieve Ellis)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Susanna Mälkki (conductor)

 

Kaija Saariaho’s latest opera, first seen at the 2021 Festival d’Aix en Provence, has now reached another of its co-commissioners, the Royal Opera House. It would be difficult to overstate the impression it made, not only on me but clearly on the rest of a nearly full house. Moving away—on account, it seems, of Kasper Holten’s initial brief—from various reimaginings of different pasts to the near-present, Innocence, written with librettist Sofia Oksanen and translator (from Finnish into multiple languages) Alekis Barrière, is a concentrated work, ideally judged on an Elektra-like timescale, with neither a spare note nor moment.

 The work ranges between a nearer past and present, as guests and workers at a wedding find themselves confronted still more strongly than they are every day by the trauma of a school shooting that took place ten years previously. The complementary complexity of their memory arcs— musical as much as verbal, linguistic as well as harmonic, all seemingly conceived as one, albeit through collaboration rather than through Wagnerian control—is on the one hand readily apparent, yet on the other, as two scenarios, two times merge, one fancies at least that one can readily take in what is taking place as well as what has, what is sung and spoken as well as what the orchestra says, what unfolds in Simon Stone’s staging (and Chloe Lamford’s Alvar Aalto-inspired sets) as well as in the score. There is no contemporary overload, no video, let alone live film, nothing especially post-dramatic. If this is rather more than a ‘well-made play’, there is something satisfyingly clear and balanced to its route, to its proportions, and indeed to its accessible yet far from simple musical language.

 Collaborations take many forms, some relishing conflict and contradiction; here, we stand dramaturgically closer to recent works by the likes of George Benjamin than, say, Harrison Birtwistle. There is room for both and for more—and there always has been. There seems no reason, however, to doubt that Saariaho’s opera – and that is unquestionably a shorthand for all involved, the composer first among equals – deserves, indeed quietly, subtly demands to be spoken of in the same breath as works such as Lessons in Love and Violence and The Minotaur, to take two exemplary full-scale contemporary operas seen relatively recently here at Covent Garden.

The Father-in-law (Christopher Purves), The Waitress (Jenny Carlstedt)

For more often than not – some might take an essentialist, neo-Aristotelian line, but let us not go there for now – tragedy ultimately takes a straightforward trajectory. Here, two tragedies feed and merge, feeding on one another, indeed finding their being in memory and trauma. Trauma is perhaps the key to the libretto, fragmented and united in translation, the children and parents of an international school each finding their mode of musical and verbal expression, written and performative, through negotiation of complementary ‘nationality’. Some characters speak (for better or worse, amplified); some sing; some do both. One, Markéta, employs Finno-Ugric folksong techniques. Saariaho writes for all in turn, even having made computer analyses of the words she had also heard spoken by natives. ‘It was a crazy, long, complex composition process and one that I will never in my life return to,’ she owns in the programme. 

Some characters flit between languages, just as many Europeans and ‘citizens of the world’ do on a daily basis, translating or not, testing the limits of so much often without realising. (I recalled an extraordinary Don Giovanni at Vienna’s Volksoper, in which Achim Freyer mixed German and Italian, even within numbers, to heightened dramatic, if often inexplicable, effect.) This is not, thank goodness an opera for Mrs May of Maidenhead. And, indeed, to a London audience, thoughts of our own hostage situation with a nationalist far-Right, removing us from our own international school, can never be far away. We, traumatised as we are by the events of not far short of a decade, reliving them as if they were yesterday, whilst confronted by their consequences and, for their perpetrators, apparent lack of them, will make our own connections—even as the rest of our fellow Europeans have moved on, or seem to have done so.

The Mother-in-law (Sandrine Piau), The Waitress, The Bridegroom (Markus Nykänen),
The Bride (Lilian Farahani), The Father-in-law

Yet no one ever really moves on, it seems; and though such reception is doubtless beside the point for many, and will surely seem self-indulgent in the wake of events to the east, it is our lot as heightened familial and interfamilial clashes are to the world created here. Stone’s tendency, in classical works, to ‘reduce’ or at least to ‘translate’ to new contemporary worlds is more or less redundant in this case. He concentrates, with considerable self-effacement, on telling the stories, layered as in words and music, and does so very well. Polyphony – perhaps a nod to Berio and Eco, or at least a similarity or two – is the order of the constructive day. Its web, though, is weaved with that still-strange hyper-immediacy one recognises from the most successful spectralist music (if we should still label it that or indeed anything other than itself). Saariaho’s ear for instrumentation never errs, yet likewise never merely conforms to the expected, however ‘natural’, even necessary, her choices may sound.

The opening, de profundis piano, contrabassoon, and timpani, scrunching seconds necessitating melody, light, and development that yet will always return to the source, contain within itself the seeds of what is to come. Its Fatal quality balances Nature and chance, summoning spectres to a feast as terrible in its way as that of Mahler’s Das klagende Lied. If I heard parallels with, say, the passage of Gérard Grisey’s  Quatre chants pour franchir le seuil, I am not sure that tells us more much than that one might sometimes hear Schumann in Brahms. Perhaps the way of handling development in time, the directed proliferation that seems to create a genuinely new musical dramaturgy, might claim roots there, albeit germinating and spreading in the different setting of an actual theatre. I note it just in case. At any rate, to seek ‘influence’ at this stage of Saariaho’s career may be to turn down a blind alley. There is trauma, though, in the musical shadows as much as the verbal, in Arco Renz’s choreography too.

 

The Teacher (Lucy Shelton), Students

And there are shockingly good performances too, whether from the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, which might have convinced one it played such music all the time; from Susanna Mälkki, who surely had more than a hand in making one think so; or from an excellent cast recreating the work before our eyes and ears. Sandrine Piau and Christopher Purves, parents to the shooter and the bridegroom, turned their mutually uncomprehending argument over whether the new addition to their family, Stela (Lilian Farahani), should learn of ‘the tragedy’ into something musically and dramatically generative. Farahani and her intended, Markus Nykänen’s Tuomas, engaged our sympathies and our frustrations, often at once, as they struggled through an impossible, fatal (re)discovery. Jenny Carlstedt’s Tereza, mother of one of the slaughtered children and now a waitress at the wedding, transformed her inability to forget, let alone to forgive, into the centrepiece of the work. But all contributed sincerely and, in their different ways, exceptionally, be it Julie Hega as the French friend of the boy pushed beyond endurance, Vilma Jää’s haunting Markéta, or Lucy Shelton’s helpless, terrified, yet ultimately strong Teacher, responsible yet not. Such, we learned, was true of all concerned, the bullied, harried boy-shooter included. Without tricks of false empathy or other sleights of hand, the complex polyphony of the piece offered above all a powerful reminder that scapegoating, that easy solutions, are often the truest source of our problems.

Pelléas et Mélisande, Philharmonia/Salonen, 27 November 2014

Royal Festival Hall

Mélisande – Sandrine Piau

Pelléas – Stéphane Degout

Golaud – Laurent Naouri

Geneviève – Dame Felicity Palmer

Physician – David Wilson-Johnson

Arkel – Jérôme Varnier

Yniold – Chloé Briot

Shepherd – Greg Skidmore

Narrator – Sara Kestelman

 

David Edwards (director)

Philharmonia Voices

Philharmonia Orchestra

Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)

 

This was an extraordinary performance of an extraordinary work, one which has rarely been given its due in London and which, bafflingly, our opera houses still shy away from staging. I have only seen Pelléas et Mélisande ‘live’ once before, in a performance at Covent Garden superlatively conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. The best that one could say about the accompanying staging was that the excellence of the performances still shone through. Here, we had a minimal staging from David Edwards, excellently lit (so important in Debussy, both physically and metaphysically!), which let the opera speak for itself, but which, having the characters seated in the Choir watching, walking down slowly to the stage, offered something of a frame to the action. The narration, though well delivered, seemed entirely superfluous and would have been better off cut.

That really is my one and only cavil. Esa-Pekka Salonen led the Philharmonia in a performance as fine as anything I have heard from him and/or the orchestra. Like Debussy’s score itself, it drew one in to listen, rejecting ‘operatic’ gesture for symbolist drama. (Is that, perhaps why we find it so difficult to stage the work, finding ourselves so remote from æsthetic tenets from which it is far from readily sundered?) Debussy’s words from his 1902 ‘Pourquoi j’ai écrit Pelléas,’ might almost have been written as a review of what we heard:  ‘The drama of Pelléas, which, in spite of its dream-like atmosphere, contains far more humanity than so-called “real-life documents”, seemed to suit my intentions admirably. In it there is an evocative language whose sensitivity could be extended into music and into the décor orchestral.’ And so, not only was the performance, aurally still more than visually, ‘lit from behind’, as Debussy so memorably claimed of Parsifal, but it seemed to emerge from Materlinck, or perhaps even from words and a simple yet deep story that somehow had always been there.

That emergence was the musical story offered by Salonen and the orchestra. There is of course no one ‘right way’ to perform Pelléas. But the refusal to play to the gallery, in conjunction with a refusal to highlight any one particular strand or influence and a near-incredible sensitivity to the subtlest of changes, or indeed continuities, in pitch, timbre, and any other parameter you might care to mention made for an absorbing experience. Line was maintained without realising: it was simply ‘there’. The drenching of the score in Tristan and, perhaps still more, Parsifal had, as with Puccini or Elgar (in some senses, at least, closer spirits than one might suspect), no need to be hammered home. Pierre Boulez was accused in 1969 of having ‘Wagnerised’ Debussy at Covent Garden. (What I should have given to hear that!) He quite rightly responded that there was no need, since Debussy’s music was already ‘Wagnerised’. Although no one now would doubt that, it is interesting to reflect that many, especially from a French nationalistic standpoint, did so at the time. It is also a decidedly individual variety of Wagnerism, so close to Wagner and yet so utterly distant from Beethoven. Here, in 2014, the melos, the post-Amfortas pain, the motivic cohesion and propulsion, the turns of orchestral phrase: all reminded us where we had come from, without insisting that we were still there. Climaxes, as in Wagner, though not as in his lesser successors, were sparing and carefully marshalled – but how they registered when they came!

Such was, of course, very much the due also of the soloists. No climax registered more overwhelmingly than in the fourth act, thanks both to the orchestra and to the towering portrayal of Pelléas by Stéphane Degout, every inch the equal (at least!) of Simon Keenlyside in 2007. This Pelléas found himself, Tristan-like, in death; his was a frank yet still subtle sexual awakening perhaps, given its pace, more powerful still. Degout’s way with the French text was second to none; its alchemic union with Debussy’s music was not the least of the wonders we heard. ‘Musical’ and ‘dramatic’ values were utterly as one, a hallmark of the performance as a whole. Sandrine Piau’s pure-voiced Mélisande had her own tale to tell, or perhaps not to tell; one was more enchanted than infuriated, but the circularity that incites, and not always positively, was tangible throughout. There was no need for Piau to raise her voice, no need to play the vulgar game of so much actually-existing ‘opera’. Indeed, her ‘early music’ experience was put to spellbinding use, for, whether it be actual influence or no, there is also affinity in Debussy’s work with the earliest of opera. The ghosts – or prophecy – of the stile rappresentativo made their presence felt, without being forced upon us.

So, naturally, did the ghost of Mussorgsky. One heard it in the bells of the fifth act, but also in the alluring, yet slightly distancing delivery of so many vocal lines. Laurent Naouri’s Golaud was not always vocally ‘beautiful’, but why should he have been? There was something far more valuable here, dramatic truth: again, not in the sense of vulgar display, but in the emergence of a tortured soul from Maeterlinck, the vocal line, and the décor orchestral. The modern cliché of ‘feeling his pain’ was in a better sense entirely justified. Jérome Varnier hinted at a more interesting Arkel than one often feels, managing adroitly the difficult balancing act between young voice and old role. His psychological insights led nowhere, it seemed, and yet one knew at some level their truth. I sensed grave responsibility, even if its nature and grounding remained unspoken. Felicity Palmer’s Geneviève showed that artist’s typically acute response to text as words and music, whilst Chloé Briot offered a perky and, in the best sense, disconcerting Yniold.

 

Riddles were posed, then, yet never answered. The ambiguity that lies at the heart of so much of Debussy’s music, whatever ‘artistic’ label we seek to pin upon it, won out. For this was a musical triumph through and through, reminding us of what opera might be, yet sadly, so rarely is. Fauré was reported by Princess Edmond de Polignac as having remarked after the premiere, ‘If that be music, then I have never understood what music was.’ Quite.