Pelléas et Mélisande, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 3 July 2026

Images: Tatjana Dachsel (from an earlier revival, with a different cast)

Golaud – Simon Keenlyside
Mélisande – Magdalena Kožená
Pelléas – Thomas Blondelle
Geneviève – Anne Sofie von Otter
Arkel – Stephen Milling
Yniold – Henrik Brandstetter
Doctor, Shepherd – David Oštrek

Director – Ruth Berghaus
Revival director – Katharina Lang
Designs – Hartmut Meyer

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

François-Xavier Roth (conductor)

When, all too briefly, I lived in Berlin Mitte, I would regularly take a short walk, often mid-afternoon, to the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof. Taking their place in the firmament of great Berliners buried there, from Fichte and Hegel onwards, are Ruth Berghaus and Paul Dessau, director and composer in a properly Brechtian line. (From the house next to the cemetery, Brecht looked down at the graves of his predecessors, later joining them, and being joined by Helene Weigel.) It is little exaggeration to say that Berghaus saved the Berliner Ensemble from the mortmain of Brecht’s heirs, only to be replaced with their connivance and that of the ruling Socialist Unity Party. Berghaus’s most celebrated or at least most concentrated work in opera followed that period, when she worked with Michael Gielen in the 1980s at the Frankfurt Opera. Sadly, almost nothing of her opera work survives on film, but three or four productions remain in the repertoire: this Berlin Pelléas et Mélisande, her delightful Barber of Seville (also Berlin), Tristan und Isolde (Hamburg), and possibly Elektra (Mannheim).

The Pelléas was seen first in 1991, conducted by none other than Gielen; subsequent conductors have included Daniel Barenboim, Simon Rattle, and now François-Xavier Roth. This was its forty-third appearance performance at the Staatsoper: perhaps less than one might expect for so enduring a staging – compare that with over 350 for the Barber – but then the subtlety, depth, and absolute refusal to play to the gallery of Debussy’s opera have never appealed to sections of the operatic masses. (I once heard someone dismiss it as ‘boring’.) So much the worse for them. If they would not have been converted by this, then I suspect it would ever elude them; after all, we all have blind (deaf?) spots. The only sense in which Berghaus’s staging seems a little dated is perhaps in aspects of Hartmut Meyer’s designs: on reflection, not so much ‘dated’ as not quite of our time. Had I looked at them innocently, I might have guessed early twenty-first century rather than 1991. But they still function with great power as part of a musicodramatic whole, as if Roth and his cast had been involved from the outset: an astonishing achievement, when you think about it.

Like her fellow directors Harry Kupfer (now also in the Dorotheenstädtischer Friedhof), Götz Friedrich (across the city in Zehlendorf), and Joachim Herz (in Leipzig, as one might expect), Berghaus was a student of that great adoptive Berliner Walter Felsenstein (miles away at Kloser, on the Baltic island of Hiddensee). They may have departed from Felsenstein in post-Brechtian interpretation, but they all built upon his equal concern for musical and dramatic elements (insofar as they may be separated at all). It is perhaps no coincidence that their stagings, where they survive, have often proved especially enduring. Or perhaps it is, for the sell-by-date of a staging stands in a complex relationship to its initial qualities. Nothing, ultimately, is forever—and some wonderful things can prove ultimately ephemeral.

 

Not this, in any case—and there must surely be something in the production, as well as in the intelligence and craft of those reviving it, that enables such integrated results even now. One certainly notices the stark colours, quasi-abstract yet never cold, from the outset, and one soon becomes emotionally and intellectually involved in the Allemonde they create. The lighting, for whom I can find no one directly credited, is at least as important and, if anything, still more powerful. The shadows it creates are terrifying, and all will attest to the dramatic role, literal and metaphorical, of shadow worlds in this opera. The near-stratospherically vertiginuous staircase, representing Mélisande’s tower far more directly than any more realistic attempt I have seen, provides sceno-dramatic focus for so much and offers terror of its own. Much is invested in every walk up and down, every place and occasion to take a seat, and the rest. Likewise Yniold’s ball: a childish toy, an object of motion, and something to follow Mélisande’s ring into the menacing well. Her deliberate, not careless, tossing of that ring early on into those depths offers a rare, momentary instance of lightness, even humour, albeit set within the ever-ominous, increasingly terrifying workings of Fate. 

Costumes and their apparent meaning, or at least amenability to be read, play intriguing balancing acts: a hint, perhaps of the Brechtian commedia dell’arte we know from Berliner Ensemble and Barber alike, but turned both early-French and symbolist. At times, Pelléas and Golaud appear almost interchangeable; at others, characters and situations win through and make their similar costumes irrelevant. The role of letters, their reading, and their consequences, becomes more concrete when they appear in large form, passed from character to character, and at times pinned on the wall (again, perhaps a Brechtian inheritance, but one transformed by another great artist at work). There is a strong feminist element too: Golaud’s rape of Mélisande horrifying, her pregnancy almost intolerably vivid (without male-gaze exploitation); and at least as disturbing as anything else, Arkel’s pursuit and lying with her, founded in the text but extended with well-nigh perfect directorial judgement.

The Staatskapelle Berlin has long experience of Debussy under Barenboim in particular. Roth’s reading brought similar structural virtues and alertness to colour, the later inevitably of a somewhat different nature, founded in his work with period instruments on this work. Wisely, there was no attempt merely to replicate that; we can all do without ever hearing ‘period style on modern instruments’ ever again. But that does not mean music-making, like theatre, cannot, or should not, be in a more intelligent sense ‘historically informed’. Timbre here played as important a structural role as anything else, pointing the way forward to Boulez, as malevolent harmonies, their progression, dramatic implication, and structural role led back to multiple Wagner dramas. Throughout the playing of the Staatskapelle was at least as outstanding as one could hope to hear anywhere.

 

Simon Keenlyside made the transition from Pelléas to Golaud a while ago, and continues to excel in this music and its drama (or should it be the other way around?) His triangle with Thomas Blondelle and Magdalena Kožená was as credible, revealing, and terrifying as any I can recall. Blondelle may have been indisposed, yet his Pelléas was fresh, alert, vivid and, listening between the lines, doomed. Kožená’s typically intelligent artistry, founded in profound communicative gifts, not least in French, proved almost horrifyingly moving. Anne Sofie von Otter’s Geneviève presided with similar intelligence—and perhaps the occasional hint of her youth and its travails. Stephen Milling’s Arkel was subtly yet powerfully sketched: a fascinating, compelling move from Hunding. No wonder Henrik Brandstetter’s Yniold received such warm and vigorous applause; so excellent was this performance from a soloist of the Tölzer Knabenchor, I confess I thought he must have been an adult singer successfully aping a treble. Even the small roles of Doctor and Shepherd were memorably assumed by David Oštrek.

This, then, was a highly moving and thought-provoking night in the theatre: in itself and for the questions it posed about stagings and their aesthetics, lineage, and longevity. I must try to see that Hamburg Tristan before it is too late.

Wozzeck, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 14 December 2025 (centenary performance)

Production images: Stephan Rabold

Wozzeck – Simon Keenlyside
Marie – Anja Kampe
Drum-major – Andreas Schager
Andres – Florian Hoffmann
Captain – Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke
Doctor – Stephen Milling
Marie’s child – Jacob Tougas Gigling
First apprentice – Friedrich Hamel
Second apprentice – Dionysios Avgerinos
Idiot – Stephan Rügamer
Soldier – Soongoo Lee

Children’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden
Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Christian Thielemann (conductor)

One hundred years ago to the day, Alban Berg’s Wozzeck, the greatest opera of the twentieth century, received its first performance at Berlin’s Staatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted by Erich Kleiber. The composer’s proud teacher, Arnold Schoenberg, sent him a telegram the day before wishing ‘every success for the premiere’ and expressing sadness he and his wife Gertrud could not be present. Inevitable far-Right protests notwithstanding, that premiere proved a great success and the work of course went on to transform the history of twentieth-century music in general and opera in particular. That the twentieth century would overflow with great operas owed more to its example than to that of any other single work, Schoenberg’s included. Earlier that same year, one of its greatest interpreters, whose centenary we have been celebrating all year, was born: Pierre Boulez. It therefore seems doubly fitting that the Staatsoper should offer an excellent revival of Andrea Breth’s production (reviewed first here, in 2011) for the climax and culmination of 2025. 

I hope that I might, on this special occasion, be forgiven a personal excursus. (Please skip the following paragraph if not!) Many years later, this opera changed my life. It was the first I saw in the theatre, as a schoolboy who had not yet heard a note of Berg or Webern, and very little (only tonal) of Schoenberg. Travelling to Sheffield for Opera North’s visit in 1993, the experience opened up more vistas even than a Mahler symphony. Opera had not formed part of my childhood. I had only just begun to explore it, entirely from recordings, as a consequence of having fallen head over heels in love with Mozart (as yet, operatically, only Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute); and had still more recently begun my Wagner voyage (Tristan and possibly Meistersinger, the Ring definitely still to come). I had heard and indeed seen nothing like it, in Deborah Warner’s first production, conducted by Paul Daniel. To say that it made a great impression would be an understatement. It grabbed me by the throat and never let me go: one of the very few works one can unhesitatingly place alongside those twin lodestars of my operatic life that have never left me and indeed only shone brightrer (Mozart and Wagner). Perhaps if I had not attended that performance, invited by my music teacher, I might never have worked on opera at all; I might also never have grown to love the Second Viennese School as I do, and worked on Schoenberg (or Henze, Dallapiccola, Nono, Kurtág, and others, Boulez included). So to celebrate Wozzeck’s centenary could hardly have been an occasion fuller of meaning for me: whether music-historical or biographical. 

Captain (Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke) and Wozzeck (Simon Keenlyside)

Expectations are set up to be dashed; here they were not. I shall not dwell on memories, notoriously persistent yet notoriously unreliable, of Breth’s staging, which I have written about twice before in any case. (I shall not cheat and look, at least not until after posting.) It was in any case revived here by Caroline Staunton and deserves consideration in 2025 incarnation on its own merits. What I can say Staunton and her team of skilled singing actors brought to it – at the very least I took from it, though I think it was more than that – was a stronger sense than ever of these being real people, with real, human connections between one another. It was an internal as well as an external world that sprang forth before our eyes and ears—and that connection between the two seemed, if different under a new heir to Kleiber, as strong as ever too. 

Marie (Anja Kampe), Drum-major (Andreas Schager)

Breth’s aesthetic is realist up to a point, yet not only that—not unlike Berg and, I should argue Georg Büchner too. A sense of poverty – ‘Wir arme Leut’…’ – and wretchedness was present in enclosed sets, the room in which Wozzeck, Marie, and their child must exist as heartbreakingly abject as one could hope for: a sort of Berlin Alexanderplatz-plus (both Döblin and Fassbinder), if not in period then in something still deeper and recurring. Martin Zehetgruber’s set designs then in turn mirroring and even give the impression of helping to create Berg’s closed musical forms, which yet of course extend—both into other scenes and into the desolation of the ‘open’ lake scene (visually and perhaps also, in its D minor expansiveness, musically). These people, the poor ones anyway, are treated worse than animals and that has consequences, as we see in the joyless fornication of the tavern. And yet there is an interior life: not so banal as being mere projections of the protagonists’ torments, yet in different senses a refuge from and a creation of them. That the child in the final scene is on his own, the children’s choir singing (perhaps in his mind) from the pit does not lessen the realism but expands it with a chill still harsher than that felt by the Captain and Doctor by the lake. 

Marie, her child )Jacob Tougas Gigling), Wozzeck

Thielemann’s way with Berg’s score is strikingly different – again, with that caveat on memory – from that of Daniel Barenboim, who conducted the ever-excellent Staatskapelle Berlin on previous occasions. ‘Romantic’ is a word so stretched and overused as to verge on the meaningless, but if anything, confounding lazy expectations, it was Barenboim who proved the more so: certainly, I think, the more overtly Wagnerian. Thielemann’s approach did not neglect the longer line, but seemed more concerned with the inner characterisation and ‘life’ of those closed forms. The febrile growth and transformation of individual lines, perhaps founded ultimately more on counterpoint than harmony, could be traced in neo-Bachian fashion that was more of the time of Neue Sachlichkeit than of Berg’s youth. It is a matter of degree, of course, and neither neglected the ‘other’ side, but I recognised a tendency heard in certain lines of Thielemann’s summer Schweigsame Frau extended: intriguingly and, again a little surprisingly, closer to Boulez than Barenboim. 

Chorus, Drum-major, Wozzeck

The orchestra itself played superlatively from beginning to end, never sounding Straussian yet at the same time excelling in response to the sort of unpredictable yet ultimately coherent Strauss performances Thielemann has been giving for some time. Their stretching of time, virtuosic yet not for mere virtuosity’s sake, was unquestionably apparent here. What I believe was a swift reading overall ‘on the clock’ never felt rushed and indeed included moments of hallucinatory, post-Mahlerian near-stasis – those vistas again, both physical and metaphysical – in which shimmering colour and harmony alike brought magic to the musicodramatic moment and peered deep into the musical future. I hope we shall hear more Berg from Thielemann.

 

Margret (Anna Kissjudit), Wozzeck

In the title role, Simon Keenlyside brought not only a wealth of experience in this role, but something unique to this production. He sounded and even looked the Wozzeck for this moment, more broken than previously, though doubtless building on earlier performances. He seemed stunned, even stunted, by the horrors he endured, yet the flame of humanity never left him, in no small part due to his Lieder-singer’s way with the libretto—which here sounded just as intense as the score. Anja Kampe’s force-of-nature Marie perhaps lacked the last ounce of tenderness in the Bible scene, but there were unquestionable compensations elsewhere. Hers likewise was a human being brutalised yet, until the end, never defeated. Anna Kissjudit’s Margret made for a rich-toned, dramatically layered counterpart, whilst Florian Hoffmann’s Andres complemented and contrasted Wozzeck in somewhat different, yet no less important, ways. Staunton’s keen Personenregie was surely part and parcel of that, as it was in Wolfgang Ablinger-Speerhacke’s Captain, brilliantly quirky yet probably more deeply integrated into the greater company than I have previously heard. So too for Stephen Milling’s disconcerting Doctor, poised between malevolent mystery and mere quack, and Andreas Schager’s vain, frighteningly brutal Drum-major. Stephan Rügamer offered a haunting Fool. The chorus brought the rest of the world indelibly to life.

Here, then, was an opera entering its second century as harrowing, as disturbing, and as ineffably, lyrically magical, even Mozartian, as it began its first. We continue to take our leave from it, not because we have thought of nothing new since, but precisely because we have.

Keenlyside/Martineau - Schubert, 8 May 2023

Wigmore Hall

Winterreise, D 911

Simon Keenlyside (baritone), Malcolm Martineau (piano)

More seasonal than one might expect for early May, Winterreise made for an absorbing close to Wigmore Hall’s coronation weekend (the eve of the anniversary of the Schuman Declaration). Simon Keenlyside and Malcolm Martineau were always likely to prove a box-office draw, and so it turned out to be. As for earlier concerts I attended, a large audience made its enthusiasm clear. The British ‘government’ may continue to spurn the arts as much as it does our common European culture; halls, artists, and audiences know and deserve better. 

If it always takes me time to get used to the sound (and pitch) of a baritone in music written for a tenor, that is my problem. Keenlyside’s experience as a guide doubtless underpinned all he did, but one never had the sense he was repeating himself. This was quite an acted performance: not in the sense of plot, but gesture, expression, pacing across the stage, and so on. It makes no sense, at least to me, to be dogmatic about such things; what works works, and this did, a glance or a stare as telling as an accent or a slur. Martineau’s dependability as a collaborative pianist needs no mention from me. His was a quietly – from time to time, rather less quietly – supportive performance, not the sort of Winterreise one hears from a star solo pianist, but one that both responded to and, occasionally, kept in line Keenlyside’s vision. Much was on the swift side; certainly the opening ‘Gute Nacht’ was. And it was largely, though not entirely, continuous too. This may be off the mark, but I felt Keenlyside’s conception and expression of dramatic trajectory was inspired or at least informed by his experience on stage in opera. If it would be a crude exaggeration to dub this a Wozzeck’s Winterreise, it was difficult – why would one try? – not to find and, in this case, to see as well as hear, parallels and connections. 

That opening song, in many ways quite conventionally lyrical, suggested the protagonist’s fate had yet to be sealed, that possibilities remained. At the same time, the final stanza’s turn to the major, only to be cruelly denied at the end, set up a dualism that would progressively be eroded as the journey proceeded. An angry, even hectoring ‘Die Wetterfahne’ made that clear. Focus, or our reception of it, was split, though always within a greater whole. Keenlyside’s controlled delirium in ‘Erstarrung’ was perfectly judged, the closing line ‘Fliesst auch ihr Bild dahin’, had him reach out both in voice and gesture for the image that would melt, should his heart ever thaw. Hallucinatory questioning in ‘Wasserflut’, born of naïveté rather than cynicism, spilled over into ‘Auf dem Flusse’, set against a spareness of piano writing and performance that brought the drama into relief, erupting in a ‘Rückblick’ whose fury threatened to veer out of control, yet never quite did. If ‘Irrlicht’ summed up the Janus-faced impression so far, by turn fresh and damaged, ‘Frühlingstraum’ extended that further to major-minor-uneasy synthesis.    

‘Die Post’ emerged as a mini-drama of its own from a fine singing-actor, the piano speaking as if chorus commentator or even voice of phenomenon against noumenon. The greying of Keenlyside’s voice on referring to the grave in ‘Der greise Kopf’ was an unmistakeable indicator of where we were heading even before the dreadful scene with the crow (‘Die Krähe’). As the piano depicted its circling, the voice told of something more inward, again noumenal. Through the resignation of illusory returns in ‘Im Dorfe’, ‘Das Wirtshaus’, and finally ‘Die Nebensonnen’, it was clear the die had been cast. ‘Täuschung’ embraced that path, solemnised almost liturgically in a moving, well-nigh Bachian account of ‘Der Wegweiser’ and its sorrow. A Papageno destroyed by experience, yet dignified by it, met the organ-grinder in the final song. All the while, the organ-piano played on, oblivious—or was he?

Pelléas et Mélisande, Vienna State Opera, 18 June 2017

Vienna State Opera

Images: Wiener Staatsoper  / Michael Pöhn
Golaud (Simon Keenlyside)

Arkel – Franz-Josef Selig

Geneviève – Bernarda Fink

Pelléas – Adrian Eröd

Golaud – Simon Keenlyside

Mélisande – Olga Bezsmertna

Yniold – Maria Nazarova

Doctor – Marcus Pelz

Pelléas’s father – Andreas Bettinger

Marco Arturo Marelli (director, set designs, lighting)
Dagmar Niefind (costumes)

Silke Bauer (assistant set designer)

Anna-Sophie Lienbacher (assistant costume designer)

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Martin Schebesta)

Vienna State Opera Orchestra

Alain Altinoglu (conductor)

Debussy is like Gluck. No, of course he is not; he would have been mortally offended had you told him so. Indeed, Debussy regarded Gluck as having been responsible for killing off Ramellian opera, delivering a lethal injection of Teutonic poison to a flourishing genre. What does not kill you makes you stronger, of course, as Debussy himself would, on a good day, have attested concerning Wagner at least – and certainly in Pelléas et Mélisande. But to return to Debussy and Gluck, their operas do, it seems to me, have something very important in common, or at least their reception does. Pelléas and Gluck’s reform operas are esteemed by all those who take opera seriously as drama, and disdained or simply ignored by many for whom opera means something else. Their admittedly very different aesthetics are quite clear, moreover, that playing to the gallery is the last thing in which musical drama should be engaging. True, there are occasional hangovers in Gluck, although they should not be exaggerated, but there is not a single case, not one single case, in Debussy’s sole completed opera.

Golaud and Yniold 

Moreover, what Debussy said, in his article, ‘Pourquoi j’ai écrit Pelléas,’ could be taken, with a little adjustment, for what Gluck in his great reforming works was trying to do (even if, yes, we know the Preface to Alceste was written by his librettist, Calzabigi). Debussy explicitly praised the symbolism of Maeterlinck’s play, which might seem to be – and indeed is – a very different thing, but, ‘despite its dream-like atmosphere’, he was drawn to it because it ‘contains far more humanity than those so-called “real-life documents”. Like Wagner, a mediating influence between the two in certain ways, myth was the thing. And somewhat like Wagner, if not so much like Gluck, Debussy thrived on ‘an evocative language whose sensitivity could be extended into music and into the décor orchestral’. Those of us who love it shake our heads in bafflement at its neglect. Perhaps, though, just perhaps, there is something to be said for every performance remaining a special event – just as with, say, Iphigénie en Tauride. If an opera made it on to the list of works Boulez conducted it is, after all, an unquestionable sign of quality.

 

Mélisande (Olga Bezsmertna) and Pelléas (Adrian Eröd)

Is, then, this new production from the Vienna State Opera able to live up to such expectations? (I shall pass over less quickly than I probably should a tired and emotional British tourist I overheard during the interval, boasting of having fallen asleep in such a ‘boring’ opera. ‘Can’t they just get it on?’) Musically, yes, and the production did not do too badly either; I have certainly seen much worse. (I shudder to recall the most recent, which is not to say very recent at all, production Covent Garden brought in.) Marco Arturo Marelli’s staging makes an effort, is clearly the result of consideration concerning the drama and what is going on, or what we might think is going on. If I am not entirely convinced that everything coheres, if I think that perhaps a stronger single, even if partial, line might have worked better, there is enough to make one think – and, yes, feel.

Arkel (Franz-Josef Selig)
and Geneviève (Bernarda Fink)

In what seems to me a relatively bold move, more unusual than you might think, there is a general sense of Ibsen, of bourgeois drama: not just the costumes, but the internalised, familial – and extra-familial – claustrophobia. It is not, perhaps, how one initially thinks of, or feels, the work, but it is an interesting standpoint that certainly has things to tell us. Pelléas’s father is seen on stage, initially in bed, but actually becoming more of a real dramatic character when his illness lifts. When Arkel has Mélisande kiss him, the other old man joins them, and there is something discomfitingly paedophiliac to the whole, strange episode. Whether it quite fits with the rest of what we see and hear is another matter; the attribution of darker desires to Arkel, at least in that particular case, is becoming a little clichéd by now. An important, indeed the important, focal point to much of the action is a boat. Not only do Pelléas and Mélisande go sailing in it, Mélisande lies in it when she sings her extraordinary song; it becomes the ladder Yniold climbs; Golaud hurls it away in jealous anger; and, in the strange ending, Mélisande sails away in it with womenfolk seemingly transformed from servants into spirits. Again, the almost Lohengrin­-like (although not in gender!) conclusion intrigues, and offers an important contrast with the important stage roles played earlier by Golaud’s henchmen, who clearly threaten Pelléas during their walk. But the bright skied conclusion sits a bit oddly, again, with the rest. Is it just death? If so, would it not, especially in this context, be better just to leave it as death? Marelli’s staging is at least having one ask such questions, although I found the 2015 Munich production from Christiane Pohle – universally and, to my mind, quite bafflingly condemned – a stronger, more coherent treatment, hauntingly provocative in its Beckettian inheritance.

Perhaps, however, I am wrong, for, in an interesting programme interview, conductor Alain Antinoglu, having acknowledged – and how could one not? – the darkness in the piece, describes the story as a ‘path from darkness to light’. Perhaps. I suppose there is something to be said for that musically, and Altinoglu certainly imparted a Lohengrin-without-the-tragedy sense to the conclusion. More importantly, he judged the ebb and flow, the colours and the shadows, very well indeed. Those raw Wagnerian moments made their Tristanesque and Parsifalian points, not only musically, but the phrases, the paragraphs, and indeed the nature of the musical language quite rightly developed differently too. The playing drawn from the Vienna State Opera Orchestra (the Vienna Philharmonic in all but name) was quite outstanding, colours shifting as imperceptibly as the ebb, the non-ebb, the flow and the non-flow, of the drama – and non-drama.

 

Arkel, Geneviève, Golaud, and Pelléas's father
(Andreas Bettinger)

With no disrespect intended to the rest of the cast, a particular cause of interest here lay in Simon Keenlyside’s transition from Pelléas to Golaud. He managed it as expertly as you might imagine – if anything more so. The jealousy, the vulnerability, the flawed masculinity, and the way with both the French language and the specific quality of Debussy’s lines: all were there, as if he had been performing the role all his life. Keenlyside is not one, of course, only to concentrate on his own part, so in a sense one might argue that earlier performances had helped prepare him, but this was a splendid achievement by any standards. Adrian Eröd made for a well-contrasted Pelléas: again, clearly flawed, but more mysteriously so. As with all of the cast, the style of vocal delivery was spot on: doubtless testament both to individual artistry and to Altinoglu’s overall control. As Mélisande, Olga Bezsmertna judged the fine balance between wide-eyed ingénue and the merely annoying with great skill, the competing demands of character development and character stasis equally well balanced. I am not sure that I had heard Franz-Josef Selig in French repertoire before; his wise humanity shone through just as clearly, if, appropriately, with a different touch of ambiguity, as if he had been singing Gurnemanz or Sarastro. I often tend to forget how small the role of Geneviève actually is, so important is she to the drama. Bernarda Fink nevertheless shone, in the most un-showy of ways. My preference for a treble Yniold is not ideological, and in practice, it can go horribly wrong. Nevertheless, I find, on stage, a woman impersonating a child like this a bit odd (especially when I have known it done otherwise). Yniold here had a considerably greater, more peculiar role than usual: hyperactive, damaged, and very interestingly, consoling Golaud at the close and preventing him from taking his life. Maria Nazarova did an excellent job at all of that. This is no criticism of her performance as such, but I wish I had not been made to think of Janette Krankie.

Keenlyside/Ax - Winterreise, 22 October 2014

Wigmore Hall 

Schubert: Winterreise, D 911

Simon Keenlyside (baritone)

Emanuel Ax (piano)

 

I had expected this would be an excellent, thoroughly moving performance, and so it was. Simon Keenlyside is one of our subtlest, most thoughtful, most musical baritones, and so he was here. What took me a little by surprise was the contribution of Emanuel Ax. Perhaps I have been unlucky in my experiences of his playing before, but this impressed me far more than those previous experiences had. Ax brought a strong sense of form to each song, almost as if those forms were musically ‘autonomous’, whilst in no way detracting from, indeed in every way supporting, the ‘poetic’ intent and musico-poetic alchemy. One recognised figures as one might in, say, one of the piano sonatas; one certainly registered the meaning inherent in and, in performance, communicated by every note. There was, in, for instance, ‘Der Lindenbaum’, no ‘mere’ figuration, although the part retained its pictorial element; indeed, the piano playing hinted at the consequences Schubert’s Lieder-writing might hold for the Wagnerian orchestra as Greek chorus.

 

Back to ‘Gute Nacht’. It opened relatively swiftly, with no room for sentimentality. Clean delivery from both artists worked very much to the benefit of the work, not least in Keenlyside’s ever-excellent diction. An occasional catch in his voice made no difference to the greater picture, in a performance of palpable sincerity. Wonderful touches of detail, for instance a diminuendo on ‘Matten’ the second time around, made all the difference. The artists were not hidebound by tradition, though by the same token they made no effort to be ‘new’ for the sake of it. ’Geforne Tränen’ was taken somewhat slower than usual, at least to start with, giving one pause for thought, but gathered pace, and, like a number of the songs, indeed proved admirably flexible in its progress, in this case setting the scene very well for an impassioned ‘Erstarrung’. Agonising dialogue with an unstable self marked the third stanza of ‘Wasserflut’, albeit of a different variety from the outright expressionism of, say, Matthias Goerne. This was perhaps still more of an interior nature. Ax’s bass line, oppressive without being over-emphasised, transformed ‘Auf dem Flusse’ into an ordeal of the soul, culminating in Keenlyside’s furious vocal climax.

‘Frühlingstraum’ again had one listen anew. The first and fourth stanzas were swifter, blither than one usually hears. Again, flexibility was very much to the fore in Keenlyside’s response to the words. Mood-swings, both vocal and pianistic, were perhaps if anything still greater than usual, especially with respect to the narcotic numbing experienced in the third and sixth stanzas. ‘Wann halt’ ich mien Liebchen im Arm?’ The piano was properly, chillingly silvery in ‘Die Krähe’ – even on a Steinway (as opposed to, say, a Bösendorfer). Here again, Ax’s iron-clad communication of form contributed greatly too, in this case to the turn of maddening; so, of course, did Keenlyside’s verbal response. Webern, unsurprisingly, was relished by Ax in ‘Letzte Hoffnung’, leading to the moment when Keenlyside seared the weeping of ‘wein’’ into our consciousness and thereafter our memories. A parallel madness of domesticity was verbally communicated in ‘Im Dorfe’, heightened, indeed in some cases led, by the obsessive nature of the piano figuration.

 

The graceful piano lilt of ‘Täuschung’ seemed born, as it doubtless was, of long immersion in Schubert’s piano music; the Moments musicaux came to mind. But there was no doubt that this was something more menacing, hallucinatory. Again, it was the piano that announced a new depth of sadness in ‘Der Wegweiser,’ showing the way, as it were, for Keenlyside in its final stanza to express, now every inch a Wozzeck, his true anguish. There was no unnecessary ‘extremity’, save for in his suffering. The weariness of ‘Das Wirtshaus’ and the final, deeply moving display of virility in ‘Mut!’ followed on with frightening necessity. For me, the only miscalculation was a too-forthright rendition of ‘Die Nebensonnen’, which seemed out of place with respect to work and performance. ‘Der Leiermann,’ however, mesmerised, its final lines summoning up not only the ghost (to come) of Wozzeck, but also of the most tragic of Papagenos.

 


 

Keenlyside/Martineau - Schoenberg, Eisler, Britten, Wolf, Schubert, and Brahms, 18 December 2013

Barbican Hall

Schoenberg – Erwartung, op.2 no.1

Eisler – Spruch 1939; Unter den grünen Pfefferbäumen, In den Hügeln wird Gold gefunden, Diese Stadt hat mich belehrt, Zwei Lieder nach Worten von Pascal, Erinnerung an Eichendorff und Schumann, Verfehlte Liebe, Spruch
Britten – Songs and Proverbs of William Blake
Wolf – Denk’ es, o Seele!, Um Mitternacht, Wie sollte ich heiter bleiben, Auf eine Christblume II, Blumengruss, Lied eines Verliebten
Schubert – Alinde, D 904, Der Wanderer, D 649, Herbstlied, D 502, Verklärung, D 59
Brahms – Verzogen, op.72 no.4, Über die Heide, op.86 no.4, Nachtigallen schwingen, op.6 no.6

Simon Keenlyside (baritone)

Malcolm Martineau (piano)

 

An excellent recital from Simon Keenlyside and Malcolm Martineau. A few, occasional technical fallibilities aside – fallibilities which, in the greater scheme of things, counted for very little – Keenlyside’s intelligence, musicality, and sincerity offered a wonderful partnership with Martineau’s unfailing mixture of the same. There was no question of the pianist merely ‘supporting’ the singer; this was, as any Lieder-recital must be, a true partnership.

 

Schoenberg’s ‘other’ Erwartung opened the recital. Its heady harmonic fantasy and already sophisticated version of developing variation marked it out unmistakeably as the composer’s work, hints of Zemlinsky notwithstanding. (The Dehmel text is another thing Schoenberg and Zemlinsky have in common.) It was a pity not to hear more from this most woefully neglected of Lieder composers – and composers more generally – but at least it was something. Schoenberg’s presence also offered a little context to Eisler, whose songs emerged as standing somewhere between the music of his teacher and that of Hindemith. That is not to say that they are derivative, for they are certainly not, but it is the sort of connection one’s mind tends to play when ‘placing’ music. The first and last songs were sung in English, the rest in German. Hearing Brecht’s Spruch 1939 in English brought home not only the impending conflict between Britain and Germany, but also the plight of German exiles, be their exile for racial or political reasons – or both. The piano postlude in Martineau’s hands evoked the persistent if now-distant world of Schoenberg’s op.11 Piano Pieces, whilst Unter den grünen Pfefferbäumen sounded more Berg-like. The hell of Hollywood in Diese Stadt hat mich belehrt was vividly conveyed by darker vocal and piano tone: ‘Paradies und Hölle können eine Stadt sein.’ If the two Pascal songs might sound closer to the world of Neue Sachlichkeit, then Eisler’s deep humanity soon seeped through. Erinnerung an Eichendorff und Schumann offered a suitably backward glance to German Romanticism, whilst continuing to look forward; there could be no retreat. The final Brecht proverb, again in English, provided a moving climax, which refused to conflate sentiment and sentimentality.

 

Clever programming led into another proverb, this time the first of Blake’s as set by Britten. Martineau revelled in the piano virtuosity. Throughout – and perhaps especially in ‘The Fly’ – one heard Britten’s delight as a great pianist in his instrument. The pity was that sometimes that display masked, on the composer’s part, a relative lack of formal sophistication; or rather, that it did not entirely mask such shortcomings. The devices to which Britten so easily – too easily? – succumbs, be they explicitly pictorial or more abstract, sounded too obvious following the underrated, understated example of Eisler. Blake’s anger and vision of course remained. And even when Keenlyside ran into a little difficulty, in A Poison Tree, his final stanza more than made up for the lapse with convincing vehemence, the composer’s dissonances sounding especially plangent in the following fourth proverb. Britten and Blake make rather odd bedfellows, but this was a committed performance, with Martineau’s piano wanderings splendidly creepy.

 

With Wolf, following the interval, we stood again on more elevated ground. The care taken with shading in the opening Denk’ es, o Seele! was exemplary, almost akin to a pattern of versicle and response. Um Mitternacht was imbued with the darkness of its titular midnight, but also perhaps with its hope, its opening up of possibilities. The second Auf eine Christblume song reminded us that Wolf’s harmonies are often but a stone’s throw from Schoenberg, whilst Schubertian echoes – impetuosity, forlorn hope, many aspects of harmony and rhythm – haunted the Lied eines Verliebten, providing a telling bridge to Schubert proper.

 

Alinde benefited from perfectly judged rhythm and disarming delivery: a textbook performance, as it were, followed by a rapt account of Der Wanderer. (Yes, I know, ‘rapt’ is overused, perhaps beyond the point of cliché, but it really seems the mot juste here.) Verklärung possessed due gravity – and yet, it moved. An echt-Brahmsian piano sound was immediately conjured up for Verzogen, Martineau offering just the right degree of harmonic and rhythmic turbulence, which carried over, albeit in different fashion, into Über die Heide, its darkness finely observed by both artists, yet never laboured. The ambiguity of Nachtigallen schwingen was just the ticket for what was anything but a crowd-pleasing conclusion. ‘Eine Blume seh ich, die nicht blühen will.’

 

Wozzeck, Royal Opera, 31 October 2013

Gerhard Siegel (Captain), Wozzeck (Simon Keenlyside), Doctor (John Tomlinson)

 

Royal Opera House

Captain – Gerhard Siegel

Wozzeck – Simon Keenlyside
Andres – John Easterlin
Marie – Karita Mattila
Child – Sebastian Wright
Margret – Allison Cook
Doctor – Sir John Tomlinson
Drum Major – Endrik Wottrich
First Apprentice – Jeremy White
Second Apprentice – Grant Doyle
Idiot – Robin Tritschler

Keith Warner (director)

Stefanos Lazaridis (set designs)
Marie-Jeanne Lecca (costumes)
Rick Fisher (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Sir Mark Elder (conductor)

Rankings may well be stupid, pointless, pernicious, yet any performance of Wozzeck which has not reminded one that it is the greatest of all post-Wagnerian operas has failed. This most certainly did not fail; indeed, it triumphantly succeeded. Moreover, this revival of Keith Warner’s Royal Opera production offered a fascinatingly complementary experience to that of ENO’s Carrie Cracknell staging, seen earlier this year. Whereas the latter restored with a vengeance the social protest and condemnation often mystifyingly absent from stagings of Berg’s opera, Warner concentrates upon more expressionistic, existentialist, experimental matters. Part of me was tempted to wish that both had heeded the other a little more, but another voice inside me cautioned that, as Schoenberg observed, only the middle road does not lead to Rome. It is far better to have a focused, committed, if necessarily partial interpretation than one that drops the excess number of balls it would juggle.  (Not that multivalent operatic staging is impossible. We have only to look at the work of Stefan Herheim – imagine a Wozzeck from him! – to appreciate that.)

 

Perhaps the most strongly abiding memory of Warner’s production and the late Stefanos Lazaridis’s designs is that of the Doctor’s experimental laboratory. We are reminded less of social degradation – though that of course is present in the action, by no means slighted – than of Das Cabinet des Dr Cagliari. The Doctor’s weird fascination in experimentation and curiosity takes upon itself the role of that productive, sadistic, deadly perversion inherent in instrumental reason known to us since Adorno and Horkheimer as the dialectic of enlightenment. (It reaches back to Homer in their book, and now inescapably does so in any non-naïve appreciation of the Western tradition.) Wozzeck ends up in the Doctor’s tank rather than in a lake as such, yet he most likely imagines the latter, and it certainly fulfils the exclamation and/or (scientific) observation, ‘Das Wasser ist blut.’ Modern liberals shy away from, perhaps even stand in ignorance of, Nietzsche, but we do well to heed his warnings against the claims of the natural sciences, if only so as more fully to appreciate the real, as opposed to imagined, benefits they have brought us.

Child (Sebastian Wright)

 

 

The unequal division of the stage, most of it devoted to that cabinet of malevolent grotesquerie, a corner sliced off at the front for Marie’s dwelling serves a dramatic as well as practical end. Marie and her child are hemmed in, on the verge of being expelled beyond the stage: there be dragons? They are invaded too, not least by the raucous, post- and sub-Mahlerian music of the local band. What at first seems as though it makes little sense visually comes to do so, but one needs patience and one’s critical faculties to ensure that it does. There is loss: the brutality and brutalisation of war and barracks life, indeed that of late capitalism in a broader, more depraved sense, does not register as it might, as it did in Cracknell’s production. But we do not have to choose. The final scene is, or should be, controversial, Wozzeck’s child freeing himself from the bed where he has witnessed all manner of sordid misery to move towards the tank, haunted by amplified children’s voices, presumably in his head. It is perhaps a step too far away from the societal underpinning of the work, and the amplification is clumsy, whether deliberately so or otherwise. Yet even that has one think.

 

As so often, the conductor, in this case Sir Mark Elder, took a little while fully to get into his stride. The first act, though pristine, precise, pellucid, did not quite cohere as it might have done – and maybe will in subsequent performances. Yet the rest of the performance incorporated those virtues into a reading that drove the action forward as proper music-drama and yet also highlighted to an extent I cannot previously recall the true miracle of Berg’s closed forms. Whatever the composer might have claimed regarding our not needing to hear them in the theatre, to do so in conjunction with the tragic dramatic thrust, the tension between them heightening rather than detracting from, the drama only opens up possibilities, both reflecting and yet also, in Adornian fashion, criticising the dialectic of enlightenment. Occasional orchestral slips notwithstanding, this was a committed performance from the orchestra, at times as ravishingly beautiful as a fine account of Schoenberg’s op.16 Orchestral Pieces, with great, though never exaggerated, dramatic punch where it was required.

Wozzeck and his tormentors, with Karita Mattila (Marie) and Endrik
Wottrick (Drum Major) cavorting in the background

 

 

Simon Keenlyside follows in the footsteps of Matthias Goerne as a great Wozzeck. (It is interesting to note that both baritones are or have been such fine Papagenos too.) Everything is there: intelligence, albeit cruelly circumscribed and tormented, an agony that is almost Christ-like, and, perhaps most painful of all, an empty, dulled numbness at the close. Keenlyside has done many, many wonderful things, but I am not sure that any of them can have been better than this. Karita Mattila brings an undeniable Finnish accent to her German, but it helps one hear the words: no bad thing. Her performance was as committed as one might expect; it drew one in, had one sympathise almost beyond endurance in the Bible-reading scene. Endrik Wottrich’s Drum Major offered a stronger performance than any I can recall from him, his swagger, in both stage and vocal terms, finely judged indeed. The unmistakeable John Tomlinson made for a splendid Doctor; there was no doubting his understanding and communication of the text. Likewise the wonderful Gerhard Siegel as the Captain, putting his experience as Mime to good use in a performance of duly perverted power. For this was a proper team effort, all of the cast deserving of praise, all of their efforts at the service of Berg’s drama. I emerged duly moved, duly bludgeoned.

 

(BBC Radio 3 will broadcast Wozzeck on 2 December at 7.30 p.m.)

Eugene Onegin, Royal Opera, 11 February 2013

Eugene Onegin (Simon Keenlyside)
Images: Bill Cooper

Royal Opera House

 

Tatyana – Krassimira Stoyanova

Eugene Onegin – Simon Keenlyside
Young Tatyana – Vigdis Hentze Olsen
Mme Larina – Diana Montague
Filipyevna – Kathleen Wilkinson
Olga – Elena Maximova
Peasant Singer – Elliot Goldie
Young Onegin – Thom Rackett
Lensky – Pavol Breslik
Monsieur Triquet – Christophe Mortagne
Captain – Michel de Souza
Zaletsky – Jihoon Kim
Guillot – Luke Price
Prince Gremin – Peter Rose

Kasper Holten (director)
Mia Stensgaard (set designs)
Katrina Lindsay (costumes)
Wolfgang Göbbel (lighting)
Leo Warner (video)
Lawrence Watson (animation)
Signe Fabricius (choreography)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Robin Ticciati (conductor)

Kasper Holten’s new production of Eugene Onegin, his first staging for the Royal Opera House, was in many ways excellent, an auspicious debut indeed. Unfortunately, it was truly let down by some of the most lacklustre conducting I have heard at Covent Garden. Whilst an interesting, intriguing evening was still to be pieced together from production and singing, it would be idle to pretend that Robin Ticciati’s jejune performance did not detract significantly from the experience. To start with, it seemed as though Ticciati’s reading might prove interestingly different. The balletic side to Tchaikovsky seemed on the verge of shining through, the woodwind section of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House offering sparkling playing, and what a nice change it made for once to hear the harp! Alas, it soon emerged that those advantages had been achieved largely by default. It became impossible to ignore the thinness of the string sound, despite a sizeable number of strings in the pit. That was not on account of any ineptitude of execution by the players, who remained polished throughout, but because Ticciati seemingly wished to elicit the sound of a middle-ranking chamber orchestra from one of the best opera house bands in the world. Fair enough if you simply have to put up with a small number of strings, or even if you are playing in a small house, but such was not of course the case here. More damagingly still, the performance dragged, at times interminably so. Without any sense of life – not to be confused with alleged ‘airiness’ – and without any sense of Tchaikovsky’s tormented soul, the only signs of anything dramatic being at stake had to be gleaned elsewhere: a great pity. Let me be clear. This was not about ‘intimacy’, about approaching Tchaikovsky’s ‘scenes’ in the manner in which they were first performed at the Moscow Conservatoire – although the perversity did have something in common, albeit significantly magnified, with the attempt by Ticciati’s mentor, Sir Simon  Rattle, to present an ‘intimate’ Carmen upon the vast stage of Salzburg’s Grosses Festspielhaus. Nor was it about actual speed; I genuinely have no idea whether the performance was fast, slow, or middling, by the clock. What I do know is that it dragged, despite sometimes being unduly driven, because Ticciati proved hopelessly incapable of finding a pulse, variable or otherwise. Instead of intimacy and interesting if unusual tempi, we had mere thinness and tedium.

 

Tatyana (Krassimira Stoyanova)

Holten’s production, on the other hand, offered what was often a searching exploration of memory. Inscribed into the score, its visual manifestation was effected by a number of means. Most obvious, but far from the only example, was the use of doubles, a young Tatyana and a young Onegin, to observe, to remind, to haunt. Mirroring the structure – some might say the lopsidedness – of Tchaikovsky’s drama, the young Tatyana is often seen during the first four scenes, whereas her counterpart does not emerge until the older, wiser Onegin appears in St Petersburg. The two young figures meet only in the final scene, offering a glimpse of what might have been, but what is now cruelly denied. Or should that read, 'wisely denied'? For in a fascinating gloss, Prince Gremin appears in that scene too: no longer a mere doddery if noble old fool, he too will have to learn to live with the truth. I can imagine that some might have found the histrionic display of the young Tatyana during the Letter Scene a little much, but by the same token, it seems a valid response to one side at least of the music – and Tchaikovsky’s character. It does not last very long, moreover, and more important seems to be the slippage between the two Tatyanas: who is writing? Who is truly affected? Is this for once an attempt to construct, with all the potential for failure that might entail, a character who is more than Tchaikovsky’s self-projection?

 

Colour is used to great effect: an especially telling moment is the infection through lighting and film of the outside world – or is it again a projection, this time from Tatyana herself? – with Tatyana’s scarlet, following the Letter Scene? Has she been rash, to put it mildly? Is this foreboding? Does her uneasy relationship to the outside world doom her to an unhappy, unsociable life? Is this where it all goes wrong, the moment to which her elder self will perforce return, time and time again? The relationship between books and memory is of course not a new concept in Onegin productions, but it is a good one, and their presence at Mme Larina’s house, not least in Tatyana’s hands, makes its point well. As time went on, above all in St Petersburg, it was as if Tchaikovsky’s and Pushkin’s reminiscences were straining towards Wagnerian leitmotif. They did not and could not reach it; technique and indeed aspiration are quite different. But I could not help but wonder if Holten’s Wagnerian experience played a role here. If only there could have been some counterpart to that in the conducting, which continued signally to fail to join up the dots. Let us hope that the production will be revived with someone else in the pit. A conductor with whom the Royal Opera House has a strong relationship, such as Semyon Bychkov, who has a fine Onegin recording to his name already? That might really be something.

 

Lensky (Pavol Breslik)

The cast was for the most part excellent too. Krassimira Stoyanova’s Tatyana was beautifully sung, no mere cipher, but a strong, flawed character, uncertain of where she was heading and all the more credible for that. I was a little disconcerted by Simon Keenlyside’s Onegin during the first act; it seemed coarser than I recalled from a few years ago. But dramatic truth gained over ‘mere’ beauty, for this Onegin gained in insight as the work progressed, quite in tandem with the production. As ever, Keenlyside’s way with words, just like Stoyanova’s, was pretty much beyond reproach. Beauty there was aplenty in the honeyed tones of Pavol Breslik, every inch the Romantic poet; his verbal acuity was no less impressive. Holten had elected to downplay, even to ignore, the homoeroticism of the relationship between Onegin and Lensky: a pity, since it so permeates the score, but of course the director had other ideas to explore. Instead we witnessed two young, quite immature men as genuine rivals for the affections or at least the attentions of their women. Olga was finely and richly sung by Elena Maximova, whilst Diana Montague and Kathleen Wilkinson almost stole the show with their equally fine portrayals of Mme Larina and Filipyevna. The only disappointments were an unidiomatic Zaretsky from Jihoon Kim and an intonationally-challenged Triquet from Christophe Mortagne. Peter Rose’s Gremin did everything it should – and more. Likewise the Royal Opera Chorus was on splendid form, for which Renato Balsadonna should once again receive considerable credit.