Munich Opera Festival (1) - Die Gezeichneten, 4 July 2017

Foreground (in white): Duke Adorno (Tomasz Konieczny) and Count Tamare (Christopher Maltman); Staatisterie of the Bavarian State Opera
Images: Wilfried Hösl

Nationaltheater, Munich

Duke Antoniotto Adorno/Capitaneo di giustizia – Tomasz Konieczny

Count Andrae Vitelozzo Tamare – Christopher Maltman

Lodovici Nardi – Alastair Miles

Carlotta Nardi – Catherine Nagelstad

Alviano Salvago – John Daszak

Guidobald Usodimare – Matthew Grills

Menaldo Negroni – Kevin Conners

Michelotto Cibo – Sean Michael Plumb

Gonsalvo Fieschi – Andrea Borghini

Julian Pinelli – Peter Lobert

Paolo Calvi – Andreas Wolf

Ginevra Scotti – Paula Iancic

Martuccia – Heike Grötzinger

Pietro – Dean Power

Youth – Galeano Salas

Friend/Servant/Giant Citizen (!) – Milan Siljanov

Girl – Selene Zanetti

Senators – Ulrich Reß, Christian Rieger, Kristof Klorek

Little Boy – Soloist from the Tölz Boys’ Choir

Servant – Niamh O’Sullivan

Father – Yo Chan Ahn

Mother – Eleanor Barnard

Citizens – Harald Thum, Thomas Briesemeister, Klaus Basten, Burkhard Kosche, Tobias Neumann, Sebastian Schmid

Krzysztof Warlikowski (director)

Malgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)

Felice Ross (lighting)

Claude Bardouil (choreography)

Denis Guéguin (video)

Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

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

Bavarian State Orchestra

Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

There is a host of fine operas out there languishing more or less unperformed (in some cases, quite unperformed). A few of them might even qualify as ‘great’. (Feel free to remove inverted commas, should that be your thing.) Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, whatever its proponents might claim, is certainly not one of those: not even close. Nor, however, is it a piece that fails to merit the occasional outing. Whether it merits the torrent of productions seemingly in store is rather less clear. For what it is worth – and this is partly a matter of taste, or lack thereof – there is not a single opera by Mozart, Haydn, or Gluck I should not rather see before sitting through this again. That said, I was immensely grateful not only for the opportunity afforded by the Bavarian State Opera not only to see the opera staged, but to see and hear it performed and staged so well – so much so, indeed, that the whole experience was enjoyable, absorbing, very much more so, I think, than the intrinsic merits of the opera might suggest.

That might sound odd, but it is not really so very odd – at least not necessarily. A peculiarity, indeed a fascination, to the opera is that almost every charge one might lay at its door might conceivably meet with the rejoinder: ‘that is the point’. It depends whose point, really: it is less often the point if we focus narrowly on ‘intention’, but why should we? Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production seems to nod to this thorny question by interpolating, immediately after the interval, before the third of the three acts, Schreker’s own character sketch of 1921, in which he presents – even, to an extent, ‘reclaims’, as we might say – accusations thrown at him and his art. It is, we may be reasonably sure, intended ironically or, perhaps better, with understandably vicious sarcasm, having been constructed from criticisms he had received:

  I am an Impressionist, Expressionist, Internationalist, Futurist, a musical purveyor of verismo; Jewish, and rose through the power of Jewishness; Christian and was ‘made’ by a Catholic clique under the patronage of a Viennese arch-Catholic countess.

 I am a sound artist, sound fantasist, sound magician, sound aesthete, and have no trace of melody (other than so-called short-breathed empty phrases, newly known as Melodielein). I am a melodist of the purest blood, as a harmonist however, anaemic, but perversely in spite of this a full-blooded musician! I am (unfortunately) an erotomaniac and work balefully upon the German public (eroticism is obviously my innermost contrivance, despite Figaro, Don Giovanni, Carmen, Tannhäuser, Tristan, Walküre, Salome, Elektra, Rosenkavalier, and so on). ... 

 

The rest, in which he continues, to explain that he is not of the true modernistic ‘left’ (Schoenberg and Debussy), owes something to Verdi, Puccini, Halévy, Meyerbeer, et al, and so on, may be read here. (It is well worth doing so, if you have the German.) It made for a powerful moment, or rather few moments, in the theatre, not least since Warlikowski has it read by the tragic, ugly hero-artist (the libretto was originally intended for Zemlinsky), who thus becomes at least in part an explicit realisation of Schreker’s plight. The problem, however, remains that, insofar as we may dissociate criticism of Schreker from anti-Semitism – perhaps it is impossible historically, but it need not be so now – many of the criticisms levelled tend actually to be born out; either that or the comparisons (Figaro, Tristan, etc.!) are rather embarrassing, doing neither composer nor opera any favours at all.

Carlotta (Catherine Naglestad) and Salvago (John Daszak)

What we have, then, is an evening in the theatre in which that problem is, if not worked out, at least explored. The slipperiness of artistic creation and agency is embodied in Alviano Salvago. Is he a good artist or a con artist? There are many other possibilities; we do not end up necessarily falling short of Mozart and Wagner because we are not trying. Salvago has created a garden of delights, an island park of Elysium, which he wishes to give to the people of Genoa. Is the suspicion of its establishment justified? In part, perhaps. Dark things clearly go on there. Are they the creator’s doing? Not intentionally, but they can be readily understood, made out to be, especially by other, more attractive noblemen who wish to be able to pursue something far more dastardly, indeed truly shocking – such as to leave our aesthetic-moralistic sniping at Schreker-Salvago look at best misguided. Do we really want to be the ones to say ‘yes, I’m sorry, your music is overblown, verging on the formless, an illustration or at least a piece of evidence, moreover, that Schoenberg was right: once a certain point of chromaticism has been reached, there really is nowhere else to go other than somewhere you would not…’, and so on? Of course we do not, especially when we know with whom we are allying ourselves, especially when we know how the crowd may be swayed – either by Salvago or by his opponents. On the other hand, Goebbels is not the only option: there is Schoenberg too; there is Moses und Aron, where we can see and hear these antinomies, or better dialectics, actually treated with the seriousness they deserve.

Give ourselves a third hand, though, or, Blair forbid, a ‘third way’, and perhaps we may wish to tarry. It is not as bad as Korngold, say. There is genuine fascination in the harmonic and instrumental colour: evidence of the most extraordinary ear. Alas, there is such an utter lack of variety that it all sounds more or less the same. One may like the sound; I might, for a few minutes. But for three acts? Three acts, that is, intruded upon only by a strange vulgarity in the third: dramatically effective, to a certain extent, as a suggestion of crowd dynamics, yet ultimately incongruous and, more to the point, unconvincing. The lack of ‘traditional’ melodic invention is not the end of the world in itself, but let us not convince ourselves that this is replaced by the still well nigh incredible perpetual self-transformation of Erwartung. Nor is the lack of musical characterisation necessarily fatal, although it is clearly a flaw, for this is not Fidelio, in which characterisation is simply not the point. Returns, however magnificent they sound in themselves, diminish all the time, without ever being replaced by something which, in that old Romantic way, we might consider to be true inspiration. Contrivance is all very well; who cares, ultimately, if the result is good. But is it?

Warlikowski proves himself, unsurprisingly, a dab hand at the erotomaniac side of things. The burlesque dance performed before the angry Schreker-Salvago is not the half of it, although it is perhaps the most memorable side. He shows also, quite unsparingly, how evil one side of the accusers is: that is, the party of Vitelozzo Tamare. Rich, unscrupulous, deceiving, plausible, violent: it is they who do the real harm, who have kidnapped and abused Ginevra Scotti, whilst framing the poor Salvago. How many other productions manage to incorporate a boxing training session into proceedings, as if to underscore the lavish obscenity of the violence? The humanity of the genuine artist, Carlotta, is underscored equally well, not least given an exemplary, heartfelt performance from Catherine Naglestad. She looks for the soul and perhaps she finds it: or perhaps, given her fate, she realises there is none at all, and is better off out of the game entirely. In that, encasing herself, she becomes an installation, perhaps an artwork of her own. The raging rodent crowd – more than a nod to Hans Neuenfels’s Lohengrin – would neither understand nor care. Salvago does though – we think.

The Bavarian State Orchestra under Ingo Metzmacher played with such glorious golden tone that it might have been the Vienna Philharmonic in Strauss – other, that is, than the score itself not having Strauss’s sense of drama, of direction, of characterisation, and so on, and so on. There was no sense of hurrying, which may or may not have been an unalloyed advantage. I think it was pretty much an advantage, for one certainly gained the impression of the score being permitted to speak for itself, even if to be hoist by its own petard. John Daszak gave a deeply moving account – like so many of the performances, seemingly moving beyond the limitations of the work ‘itself’ – of the central role. Christopher Maltman proved diabolically irresistible as his wicked opponent in love, art, and so much more; there was more than a hint of an ultra-decadent Don Giovanni here (definitely without the idealism – or Idealism). Tomasz Konieczny gave a magnificently forthright performance as Duke Adorno: duly ambiguous as to whose side he was on, if any, never anything but fully committed, though, in vocal terms. The doubling of his part with that of the Capitaneo di giustizia – gleefully ripping off his mask to confirm what we suspected – only heightened the troubling implications. The huge cast did not, so far as I can recall, have a single weak link to it; this, and the equally fine choral contribution showed just what an opera house and company can achieve. The extraordinarily self-reflexive quality of the evening and its aftermath will, I suspect, continue to intrigue. The Vorspiel zu einer Drama, the concert version of the opening Prelude, says it all - and yet, in another way, says none of that.

Gubisch/BBC SO/Pons - Schreker, Busoni, Ravel, and Schoenberg, 4 December 2013

Barbican Hall

Schreker – Vorspiel zu einen Drama

Busoni – Berceuse élégiaque, op.42
Ravel – Shéhérazade
Pavane pour une infante défunte
Schoenberg – Chamber Symphony no.1, version for full orchestra, op.9b

Nora Gubisch (soprano)

BBC Symphony Orchestra

Josep Pons (conductor)

 

A refreshing programme of early(-ish)-twentieth-century orchestral music from the BBC SO and Catalan conductor, Josep Pons, which, if it did not always possess the last word in refinement, certainly benefited from Pons’s palpable enthusiasm for this repertoire. Indeed, the opening Schreker Vorspiel zu einem Drama – not, as the Barbican website had it, the Overture to Die Gezeichneten, from which this longer concert work derives – can rarely, if ever, have been heard with such liveliness, even bumptiousness. The performance itself made a refreshing change from the over-ripe decadence to which we have become accustomed in such music. Not that there was no hint of such a tendency, but the last thing the music needs is exaggeration in that quarter. Amidst a sea, no an ocean, of coughing and even – I kid you not – widespread eating and drinking, Pons projected a strong sense of line, the BBC SO responding with apparent glee to Schreker’s orchestral phantasmagoria. There was plenty of bite too, rhythmic command being especially impressive. And if there were perhaps times when Pons’s infectious enthusiasm threatened to run away with itself, the performance was one of warmth: just the ticket for a cold December night.

 

Busoni’s Berceuse élégiaque followed. If Schreker is a minor master of whom it would be no bad thing to hear a little more, then Busoni is a scandalously neglected figure, his Doktor Faust one of the great twentieth-century operas, and his other three operatic scores all fully worthy of repertory status. Given his pre-eminence as pianist, Busoni’s orchestral music is often still more overlooked than his operas. (Not that his piano music is performed nearly so often as it should be.) Schreker’s large orchestra contrasted strongly with Busoni’s refined instrumentation, likewise the former’s superior proto-Hollywood harmonies with the latter’s radical ambiguity. Is this the major or minor mode? We may well be asking the wrong question – but not in a Schoenbergian sense (though at times, the orchestration sounds not so different from a Schoenberg ensemble, ‘influence’ being most likely to fall at least as strongly in the opposite direction). There was a properly nauseous and ominous sense of the rocking berceuse to this performance, though there were times when it sounded a little effortful. In general, however, there was admirably clean, classical elegance to be heard, coupled with a dark, troubling undertow. Late Liszt, unsurprisingly, came to mind more than once as prelude to Busoni’s dissolution of ‘form into feeling’, a wondrous tribute to his mother upon her death.

 

Ravel, that towering master of orchestration, was to be heard immediately before and after the interval. Nora Gubisch joined the orchestra for a wonderful account of Shéhérazade, her tone both lustrous and clear: in many ways ideal for the composer. Pons assured a variegated account, matched by his soloists, transitions in ‘Asie’ especially well handled. There was true dramatic urgency where required. The ecstasy upon the word ‘Chinie’, followed by a plethora of orchestral chinoiserie, was just as impressive as the exultant climax upon ‘haine’ and resultant orchestral afterglow. ‘La Flute enchantée,’ with an excellent flute solo from Michael Cox, was expectant than ‘langoroureux,’ the balance between mystery and clarity well judged. ‘L’Indifférent’ emerged with all its sexual ambiguity. What a wonderful hush was to be heard upon the injunction, ‘Entre!’ The Pavane pour une infante défunte was treated to an unsentimental account, which Pons kept moving without rushing. Dance rhythm was apparent, even generative, throughout.

I wish I could feel greater enthusiasm about Schoenberg’s 1935 version for full orchestra of his First Chamber Symphony. Whilst understanding his reasons for providing this alternative, it seems – and continued to seem – inferior in every respect to the original, like a considerably more extreme case of Verklärte Nacht. Timbres and edges are smoothed and blunted; solo moments come as welcome relief, reminding one of just what one is missing. That said, there were in this performance occasions when a stronger still kinship to Mahler and Brahms came through, partly as result of the larger forces. Pons’s tempo shifts were considerable but not unconvincing, save for a sagging of tension during the slow movement. Still, this is Schoenberg, and it is no bad thing to remind ourselves from time to time of a weaker, yet indubitably ‘authentic’, version of what remains a strong candidate for the title of most joyous twentieth-century musical masterpiece.

 

ORF SO/Metzmacher - Schreker, Mahler, Berg, and Pfitzner, 7 December 2012

Großer Musikvereinsaal, Vienna

Schreker – Vorspiel zu einem Drama

Mahler – Rückert-Lieder
Berg – Three Orchestral Pieces, op.6
Pfitzner – Palestrina: Three Preludes

Petra Lang (mezzo-soprano)

ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra

Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

I struggle to recall the last time I heard a piece by Franz Schreker in a concert programme. It is a great pity, since, whilst he might not be a ‘great’ composer, he is often a very good one, and certainly superior to many composers who occupy concert, still more opera, programmes. This performance of his Vorspiel zu einem Drama, an expansion of the opening Prelude to Die Gezeichneten, opened with what one might consider a classic Schreker sound from the ORF SO under Ingo Metzmacher: lush yet variegated, with a finely-judged phantasmagorical quality. Not that it lacked direction; indeed, the onward tread, especially later on, of its progress was a particular quality of this reading. Unsurprisingly Metmzacher sometimes emphasised the more overtly modernistic qualities of Schreker’s writing, for instance for tuned percussion, but never didactically. Performance and work veered between post-Gurrelieder, post-Tristan, post-Salome writing, with a proper sense of nausea at the end. Having walked to the gilded Musikverein from the Belvedere, where I had seen a good number of works by Gustav Klimt, this seemed, as it was, properly golden late-late-Romanticism. If Metzmacher did not wallow unduly, the music remained something of a guilty pleasure.

 

Mahler’s Rückert-Lieder followed, albeit in unusual order. ‘Ich atmet’ einen linden Duft’ offered an immediately sparer sound: contrast with, perhaps even respite from, what had preceded. Petra Lang’s voice was not always ideally focused, although matters improved somewhat during the following ‘Liebst du um Schönheit’. Her delivery, however, continued to tend towards the operatic; one had to listen to the orchestra for a more detailed response. Turbulence aplenty came from that quarter in ‘Blicke mir nicht in die Lieder!’ Nastiness and fear – is this child’s play, or something more, and in any case is not child’s play something fearful? – pervaded Mahler’s orchestral writing, Lang’s performance more animated too. She certainly delivered gravity, a Nietzschean ‘deepness’, in the opening of ‘Um Mitternacht’, though later on became more operatic again. There was, however, a finely etched orchestral performance, the woodwind echoes of the Nietzsche movement of the Third Symphony especially apparent. ‘Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen’ brought Lang’s finest performance, unfortunately disrupted by a mobile telephone. Blowsiness was banished; lines were clearer. I still, however, could only make out about half of the words; that I knew them already should neither have been here nor there.

 

Berg’s Three Orchestral Pieces received a mixed performance. There was much to admire, for instance the truly inchoate opening, out of which germinated all manner of things Mahlerian and post-Mahlerian, though the harmonies could only ever have been Berg’s. Metzmacher’s was not a chilly performance, not even a Boulez-like performance; Romantic contrasts were more his thing than clarity. Sometimes that was problematical, when balances proved less than ideal. However, as time went one, communication of the hierarchy of voices – an extraordinarily difficult task to accomplish in performance – improved, the odd occluded and/or tentative entry notwithstanding. When waltz and march rhythms really got into their stride, the musical narrative was compelling indeed – and there was something undeniably moving to hearing this music in the Musikverein. A stray trumpet note after the final chord was a pity, but did not obliterate memories of the twentieth-century terror we had previously experienced.

 

Berg metamorphosed without a break into Pfitzner. The idea was to present two different past visions of musical futures. Of course, though, we knew whose vision won out, and in this case juxtaposition served principally to underline the justice of the musico-historical verdict. Pfitzner’s unpleasant nationalism aside, his æsthetics led nowhere, and even in the Preludes from what many consider his finest work, Palestrina, the invention sounded a little threadbare in response to the Bergian labyrinth. Metzmacher and the ORF SO certainly did what they could to level the score, their performances more consistent than they had been in Berg; whether this were the case or no, Pfitzner sounded more thoroughly rehearsed. The first prelude was dignified and direct, rhythms taut. Though great contrast was afforded by the performance of the second, I could not help but think that a less hard-driven account might have been to its benefit. Debts to Parsifal are so obvious in the third prelude, less productively (Debussy, Mahler) than just watered-down, that there is not much to be done other than to perform the music with as much conviction as one can muster. Metzmacher certainly did that. However, as I said, we knew only too well whose vision of the future won out, and were grateful for it.

Two CD reviews: Schreker, Der Schmied von Gent, and Lohengrin

These reviews originally appeared (in slightly edited form) in the October and November 2012 issues of OPERA:

Franz Schreker, Der Schmied von Gent

Judith Kuhn: Arstate, Angel; Anna Erxleben: Mary; Christiane Knappe: Squire; Undine Dreißig: Smee’s Wife; André Riemer: Flipke; Edward Randall: Slimbroek; Viktor Sawaley: Second Noble, Henker Jakob Hessels; David Sitka: Angel; Matthias Winter: St Joseph; Oliver Zwarg: Smee; Martin Gäbler: First Noble, Duke of Alba; Thomas Mäthger: Third Noble; Kouta Räsänen: St Peter. Chorus and Children’s Chorus of the Chemnitz Opera/Robert-Schumann-Philharmonie/Frank Beermann (conductor). CPO 777 647-2, 2 CDs, 127:55. Recorded at the Chemnitz Opera House, 28-30 January and 1-2 February 2010.  

  

CPO heralds the first complete recording of Schreker’s 1929-32 three-act opera, Der Schmied von Gent. Smee, a Ghentish smith, falls upon hard times on account of his resistance to Spanish occupation, makes a pact with the Devil and is restored to prosperity. When his seven years are up, he manages the fruits of good works to evade his fate and is thereby, despite St Peter’s initial adamant refusal, admitted to Heaven.

The imposing opening bars, an audible curtain raiser poised somewhere between Neue Sachlichkeit and Hollywood, mark a call to attention. Closed, sometimes neo-Baroque, forms tend to be the rule: more Hindemith than Strauss. Many of the thirty-four scenes have their own generating formal principle, for example a haunting downward scale at the opening of the third act. Alto saxophone weaves its obbligato way on a number of occasions, suggestive of its time, if less strikingly so than, say, in Berg. One may, if one will, play guess the influence. There are, unsurprisingly, Meistersinger-ish echoes in counterpoint and folksiness. Hindemith’s Cardillac seems an obvious precursor. Busoni comes to mind – the sale of Smee’s soul inevitably suggesting Doktor Faust – but he often does in music of this period; much may be correspondence rather than influence.

The subtitle ‘grosse Zauberoper’ courts comparison with The Magic Flute and Die Frau ohne Schatten, kinship most obvious in scenes such as that when Smee meets the Holy Family. There is no gainsaying the compositional craft, whether in terms of orchestration, counterpart, or convincing harmonic progression.  That said, Schreker’s score expresses general situation better than character, for whatever the gentle melancholy of his second-act soliloquy, ‘Schöne Bäum’ draußen am Kai,’ Smee is no Hans Sachs. Yet if not necessarily operatic gold, nor is this corn.

Vocal performances tend to competence rather than inspiration, Oliver Zwarg’s Smee an intelligent, finely-sung cut above the generality. Frank Beermann conducts with formal clarity, though one could imagine a more propulsive account.

Janine Ortiz contributes a thorough, informative booklet note, though the translation is often Google-like. ‘If one considers the note reserves, then it is striking that they involve an eleven-note theme,’ means nothing unless one is in a position to read the original. The libretto would have benefited from better proof-reading: some words appear to be missing completely, for example during the second and twelfth scenes, whereas what I assume to be performance cuts go unacknowledged in the written text.

My appetite was certainly whetted to see the opera in the theatre. Herewith a glimmer of an artist-opera Konzept: portray Smee’s intial destitution in the light of the Great Depression, the Spanish occupying forces in SA uniforms, the diabolical pact as collaboration, and Heaven as a form of inner emigration.

 

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Wagner, Lohengrin

Elsa: Annette Dasch; Four Pages: Christine Bischoff, Isabelle Voßkühler, Judith Löser, Bettina Pieck; Ortrud: Susanne Resmark; Lohengrin: Klaus Florian Vogt; Four Brabantian Nobles: Robert Franke, Holger Marks, Sascha Glintenkamp, Thomas Pfützner; Friedrich von Telramund: Gerd Grochowski; Herald: Markus Brück; King Henry the Fowler: Günther Groissböck. Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich), Berlin Radio Symphony Orchestra, Marek Janowski (conductor). Pentatone, 3 SACD, PTC 5186 403, 200:34. Live recording of a concert performance from the Berlin Philharmonie, 12 November 2011.

 

Lohengrin, the fourth instalment in Marek Janowski’s Wagner series, arrives in a finely detailed recording. A principal glory of this performance is the precision of its chorus: one really hears Wagner’s contrapuntal ingenuity here and in the orchestra, which sounds less monolithic than is often the case. Janowski highlights shifting instrumental timbres as well as harmony to signal presentiments, for instance during the second act’s first scene, of Alberich’s world and plight. Rhythmic exactitude, such as during the build up to first-act combat, also proves a victor. Details of high-lying violin figuration emerge more clearly than I can recall, fascinating from an analytical standpoint, though such hyper-clarity arguably militates against Wagner’s intention, as in those performances of Strauss’s Don Juan in which technical virtuosity tarnishes the wash of sound. The general sonority of the Berlin RSO veers oddly, without obvious reason, between old-German depth, if not quite to the extent one hears from Barenboim’s Staatskapelle, and a lighter, Mendelssohnian approach.

This set’s other principal attraction is the unearthly Lohengrin of Klaus Florian Vogt; the role might have been written for him, possessed of a Heldentenor’s tonal weight but the lyrical beauty of a Tamino. Vogt’s admirers – there are a few nay-sayers – will require this recording for that reason alone. Alas, much other singing pales by comparison, both with Vogt and with artists of the past. Annette Dasch’s Elsa and Gerd Grochowski’s Telramund are at best distinguished by Lieder-like attention to detail, but both can tend to dryness and fail to soar. Susanne Resmark’s Ortrud is often squally and imprecise of intonation and diction.

Oddly, however, the ‘live recording’ evinces little sense of the concert hall, let alone the theatre, drawing attention to the ideological intent of the series, born of Janowski’s dissatisfaction with contemporary Regietheater. A reactionary imperative to rescue Wagner from his and our troublesome politics is betrayed by remarks from the orchestra’s dramaturge, Steffen Georgi: ‘from today’s perspective, Wagner the theatre-reformist pales into near-insignificance ... a very minor revolutionary.’ I can only suggest that he, Janowski, and the speaker of the Bundestag, who offers a printed endorsement, take another look not only at Wagner’s writings, but at the dramas themselves. Whereas the printed libretto has Lohengrin herald Gottfried as ‘Führer’, Janowski opts for the evasive ‘Schützer’. There remains a dialectical irony, however, in that the case of a Wagner recording as CD rather than DVD helps one focus not only upon Wagner’s music but upon his words. Whatever the intention, my experience was thereby to hear as strong a warning as I had seen in Hans Neuenfels’s Bayreuth staging against the perils of popular attraction to charismatic leadership. Vogt, not coincidentally, starred in Bayreuth too. Politics will out.