A Tale of Two Overtures: Hasse, Mozart, and the Habsburgs

First comes the Overture to Il Ruggiero, Johann Adolph Hasse’s – and Pietro Metastasio’s – final work from Orlando furioso. Originally commanded by Maria Theresa for the marriage of Maria Antonia/Marie Antoinette and the French Dauphin, the work's libretto was not completed in time, so it served instead for the 1771 marriage of the Empress's son Archduke Ferdinand Charles, Governor of the Duchy of Milan, to Maria Beatrice, daughter of Ercole (Hercules) III d’Este, Duke of Modena, and his estranged wife, Maria Teresa, Duchess of Massa and Princess of Carrara in her own right. As heiress to four further Italian territories, Maria Beatrice offered an advantageous match for the Habsburgs, and had originally been intended for one of Ferdinand's elder brothers, Archduke Peter Leopold (now Duke of Tuscany and later Emperor Leopold II). Ferdinand and Maria Beatrice had been engaged since childhood, the treaty thereby concluded recognising Ferdinand as Ercole's heir. (The French Revolutionary Wars would prevent Ferdinand from ever succeeding to Modena).

 

Notwithstanding the connection afforded by Ariosto’s time at the Este court in Ferrara, Ruggiero was held to show neither composer nor librettist at his best. Now gout-ridden and in his eighth decade, Maria Theresa’s old music-master and longstanding favourite composer was eclipsed by the success the following day of a second commissioned opera, from the sixteen-year-old Mozart and Giuseppe Parini: Ascanio in Alba. The two productions had three singers in common: the soprano Antonia Maria Girelli Aguilar, the castrato Giovanni Manzuoli, and the tenor Giuseppe Tibaldi. All were past the heights of their careers, yet seem to have fared better in Mozart than in Hasse. Set designs for both were provided by a team of three brothers: Bernardino, Fabrizio, and Giovanni Antonio Galliari. Hasse’s alleged remark, ‘Questo ragazzo ci farà dimenticar tutti’ (‘This boy will render us all forgotten’), rings with poetic if not incontrovertibly historical truth.

A new production of Ascanio will open next month in Frankfurt; I should be there to review it. Maybe one day an enterprising company or festival will offer the world a second opportunity for comparison and contrast.

Staatskapelle Dresden/Honeck - Mozart and Haydn, 11 April 2022

Semperoper

Mozart: Overture: La clemenza di Tito, KV 621
Haydn: Symphony no.93 in D major
Mozart: Masonic Funeral Music, KV 477/479a; Vesperae solennes de Confessore, KV 339: ‘Laudate Dominum’; Requiem in D minor, KV 626; Ave verum corpus, KV 618, interspersed with Gregorian chant and readings

Nikola Hillebrand (soprano)

Marie Henriette Reinhold (contralto)

Sebastian Kohlhepp (tenor)

Mikhail Timoshenko (bass)

Ulrich Tukur (reciter)

Dresden Chamber Choir (chorus director: Tobias Mäthger)

Dresden Kreuzchor (chorus director: Karl Pohlandt)

Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Manfred Honeck (conductor)

Whilst much of the Staatskapelle Dresden is in Salzburg for the Easter Festival, those players staying at home are offering a good deal of Mozart: complementing, for those able and willing to take the two-hour rail journey, the current Mozart festivities in Berlin. (Salzburg, ironically, is giving Wagner, Bruckner, and Shostakovich.) Manfred Honeck and the Dresden orchestra here paired Mozart with Haydn, culminating in an imaginative presentation of the Requiem—part of it, anyway—interspersed with plainsong and readings. 

It was difficult not to think of Sir Colin Davis during the Overture to La clemenza di Tito—or indeed elsewhere, given his long association with the Dresden orchestra. Odious though comparisons may be, this was a sound he would have recognised, I think, albeit in a more excitable and, to an extent, more rhetorical reading. The Staatskapelle sounded fresh and transparent, boasting fine string agility and sheen. Habsburg counterpoint told as it should. It was a welcome curtain-raiser that augured well. 

Honeck’s view of Haydn was more severe, worlds away from the ‘genial’ label that characterised the composer, arguably too much, for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Shocks and surprises registered forcefully, suggesting consciously or otherwise an attempt to have one feel something akin to what Haydn’s first, unsuspecting audiences might have done. Indeed, the snarling first chords had one wonder, even when one knew, whatever was coming next. A rigorous introduction followed, the exposition only a little more smiling. One could only marvel at Haydn’s concision, the repeat upon us in no time at all. Honeck showed a keen ear for detail and not a little theatricality in the preparation and instantiation of surprises. Whether one needs the fortissimo bassoon ‘intervention’ in the second movement to be quite so heavily underlined is, I suppose, a matter for debate, but it worked as a climax as well as local colour. Prior sternness had summoned the future spirit of the late Masses; I could not help but think the joke was played less straight than humourless. More importantly, an array of invention was on show throughout Haydn’s variations. 

Idiomatic swing notwithstanding, the Minuet was similarly severe, its Trio’s heightened contrasts offering nothing in the way of relaxation. This was fiercer Haydn than I could readily recall, more Napoleonic than Viennese. And indeed, in the finale, it was the Beethoven of the Fourth Symphony that came to mind, in a reading replete with contrast and meaning conveyed through articulation. (It is surely no coincidence that Honeck is a violinist.) Here, though, severity was not unrelieved, Rafael Sousa’s delightfully ‘sung’ oboe solo a case in point. Returning to the idea of imaginative recreation of a first hearing for that London audience—and the slightly smaller Dresden orchestra aside—this would have been quite the calling card. 

And so, to the second part of the evening’s proceedings. Tubular bells heralded offstage members of the Kreuzchor, bidding us commence our observance: ‘Requiem aeternam…’. Throughout the plainsong, and despite not even being onstage, these young singers’ words were perfectly clear, pitches and phrasing perfectly judged. This and three further invocations, ‘Domine exaudi orationem meam’, ‘In quacumque de inocavero te’, ‘and ‘Christus factus est’, joined readings from one of Mozart’s letters to his father (4 April 1787), the composer at his most Catholic in recognising the comfort of death as the destination of all life; from two poems by Nelly Sachs, ‘Wer weiß, wo die Sterne stehn’, ‘Wenn im Vorsommer’; and from two passages in the Revelation of St John the Divine. Animated, involved, and involving readings by Ulrich Tukur, culminating in Scriptural death and resurrection, contributed greatly to the fuller dramatic and intellectual conception. Like musical themes, certain words, ‘Tod’ unsurprisingly among them, echoed, connected, even developed. 

The Masonic Funeral Music came first among the musical pieces, between Mozart’s letter and the second instance of Gregorian Chant. One of the crucial things that letter tells us—and which many ignore—is that Mozart saw no contradiction between Freemasonry and his Catholic faith, quite the contrary. Once past an immediate puzzling harshness—I am not quite sure what happened, nor whether it were deliberate—wind chords were beautifully voiced. Strings brought tragedy and some degree of consolation. Honeck’s reading proved well paced and articulated, with a strong sense of liturgical intonation; no one could have missed the cantus firmus here. The ‘Laudate dominum’ from the KV 339 Vespers flowed beautifully, soprano Nikola Hillebrand as warm and stylish as the Dresden strings, the Dresden Chamber Choir (Dresdner Kammerchor) similarly clear and warm, holding out what seemed to be real hope of consolation. Honeck shaped the movement well, without rendering it unduly moulded. 

The Requiem ‘Introitus’ followed Sachs’s poems, seemingly rising out of what had precieded it. Again beautifully voiced and paced, it offered choral singing of equal clarity and impact (characteristic throughout of these thirty-six singers). Hillebrand returned almost as if a character, transfigured by what had passed: an angel, perhaps. Honeck moulded the performance dynamically, again without it becoming mannered. Rhetorical shifts in tempo made sense, as did the swiftness and momentum of a ‘Kyrie’ that yet remained unhurried. This meant something, something important. When, following the first of the Revelation readings, the ‘Dies irae’ burst forth, it terrified, souls trembling in torment and embodying that torment. Clean, rich performances from bass Mikhail Timoshenko and trombonist Nicolas Naudot opened the ‘Tuba mirum’, were answered in vividly human fashion by tenor Sebastian Kohlhepp, voicing both fear and consolation, and the splendidly contraltoish mezzo Marie Henriette Reinhold, as well ultimately as our returning angel Hillebrand. They made a fine quartet too, in excellent balance with the orchestra (and choir). 

The ‘Rex tremendae’ bore down with all the weight of the Counter Reformation itself in mourning. One could almost hear the veils of mourning, mediated or rather amplified by the old ‘Spanish’ Habsburg court dress. Mozart transformed it with searing modernity, and yet also preserved it: tradition aufgehoben. Did Honeck slow too much for the cries of ‘Salva me, fons pietatis’? Perhaps for some, even for me in the abstract, but he clearly had his reasons, yielding far more often in Mozart than Haydn. The ‘Recordare’ made for a fine contrast, orchestra and soloists wonderfully transparent, movement forward ignited by counterpoint. Cellos led telling, accompagnato-like rhetorical thrusts. It was all there in the words, or at least could well be discerned to be. In the ‘Confutatis’, operatic Furies became real, which for Mozart is to say Christian. And yet, they were tamed, enabling the noble ‘Lacrimosa’ to conclude its section. 

Chant, the Kreuzchor as excellent as ever, and a final passage from Revelation, telling us of the heavenly Jerusalem, the Lord making all things new, prepared the way for a lithe, urgent ‘Offertorium’. Some aspects of the orchestration I did not recognise; I assume this to have been a matter of the edition used, but perhaps I was just hearing the music differently. The ‘Hostias’, sweetly, even devoutly, imploring, gained meaning from its liturgical context. Here, one felt, was the point at which this prayer, shunned by Protestants, could become possible. At any rate, singing was beautifully sustained, quite different from what had gone before. Both ‘Quam olim Abrahae’ sections were well directed and meaningfully shaded, for this was outstanding choral singing as well as orchestral playing. And then, there came a short pause, followed by a repeat of the ‘Lacrimosa’, only to stop at the end of the eighth bar, where Mozart’s hand falls away. Had I looked properly at the programme, I should have known this was coming, but I am rather pleased I did not, shock to expectations thereby fully registering. Instead of the rest of the Requiem, however understood, we moved to the heavenly funeral motet, ‘Ave verum corpus’, sweet in consolation and truthful. 

Bells tolled briefly again. And then, magical silence, only broken some time later by an idiotic ‘Bravo!’ (Can anyone seriously think that an appropriate response to a setting of a Requiem Mass, save, perhaps Verdi’s?) With this Requiem, though, there will never be peace. It was interesting to hear it done like this, all the more so given my lack of preparation. Yet, as when I have heard similar performances, I ultimately felt it a pity not to hear what ‘should’ have followed. Do we really think Mozartians such as Karl Böhm or Sir Colin had no idea what they were doing? Not that Honeck was making any such claim, of course; he was simply presenting his own, thoughtful, in many ways brilliantly conceived version for the evening. Different occasions present different choices, none of which ever quite adds up: heartbreaking, given the perfection of Mozart’s music. Requiem, but no peace: what could speak better to our current situation?

Moses und Aron, Semperoper Dresden, 29 September 2018

Moses – John Tomlinson

Aron – Lance Ryan

Young Maiden – Tahnee Niboro

Sick Woman – Christa Mayer

Young Man/Naked Youth – Simeon Esper

Another Man, Ephraimite – Matthias Henneberg

Priest – Magnis Piontek

Youth – Beomjin Kim

Six Solo Voices – Katerina von Bennigsen, Stepanka Pucalkova, Michal Doron, Aaron Pegram, Jiři Rajniš, Tillmann Rönnebeck

Solo Soprano – Kira Tabatschnik

Naked Virgins – Tania Lorenzo, Tahnee Niboro, Grace Durham, Constance Heller

Elders – Woo Ran Lim, Andreas Heinze, Norbert Klesse

Calixto Bieito (director)

Rebecca Ringst (set designs)

Ingo Krügler (costumes)

Michael Bauer (lighting)

Sarah Derendinger (video)

Johann Casimir Eule (dramaturgy)

Vocalconsort Berlin, Dresden Symphony Chorus, Dresden State Opera Chorus, Extra Chorus and Children’s Chorus (chorus master: Jörn Hinnerk Andersen)

Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Alan Gilbert (conductor)

Images: Ludwig Olah

There is no more emphatic modernist masterpiece than Schoenberg’s Moses und Aron. It stays so true to its mission that it cannot, irrespective of ‘the composer’s intention’, be completed, the very quintessence of the modernist fragment, of the ‘difficult’ work about ‘difficulty’. Its concern with the hubris of the representation leads it to a series of antinomies unflinchingly confronted, quite without evasion. Yes and no, perhaps more yes than no – and yet, perhaps even in work as well as in performance, with an undeniable element of the two. The balance may be skewed, just as it is between Moses and Aron, between truth and communication, but it is never one or the other; such would not be bad dialectics, but rather no dialectics whatsoever, and what could be less Schoenbergian than that? One can rejoice in the antinomies in the impossibilities; one can take them further. Alternatively, one can try to make something complete out of them. One will probably do both. Here, however, in an extraordinary new production from Calixto Bieito and the Semperoper Dresden, we perhaps come closer than ever to the next dialectical stage by both honouring the two-act fragment – performed, without an interval, almost as if a single, unbroken span – and, as Bieito insists both in speech and, more important, in the art and craft of stagework, by rendering it an apparently ‘complete’ artwork.

Bieito has at heart – he is assuredly a director with a great heart – always been one not only to present but also to necessitate a message of humanism. Just like Schoenberg, one might say, and these are unquestionably a composer and work for whom he has the greatest, most productive respect. He plays Moses pretty straight, but then he has never been much of one for deconstruction. (For that route, take Peter Konwitschny’s staging, which I saw in Hamburg in 2004.) The first act, then, plays itself out much as it tends generally to do, but with such attention to the detail and meaning thereof concerning the interaction between Moses, Aron, and the chorus, the Children of Israel, that even those of us who imagine we know the work reasonably well discover much that is new, not only visually, but verbally, musically too. Likewise, perhaps still more so, with the relationships between individual, group within the chorus, and the chorus as a whole (when indeed it exists as such). Here, as throughout, we see a deeply musical staging – just as, I think, we hear a deeply dramatic and indeed scenic performance. With Bieito, one never doubts that one is seeing what one should be seeing, the craft of his blocking as impressive as the enabling generosity of his vision. These people, all of them, are human beings, not symbols, whatever the complexity of their dramatic roles. Aron’s visible crises of confidence – the man behind the communicative mask – intrigue and perhaps help explain part of his later desperation to please. That and, of course, the fact that his life and the lives of others might be in danger otherwise. He is a politician, to be sure, but we are led to understand the psychology, not just the deeds, of this politician.

Which brings us properly to the second act proper. What is idolatry to us, today? That is a question any conceivable production of this work will have to ask. ‘BE GOD’ announce the video images – images, be it noted – running at the back and sides of the stage, the arena or agon for the unfolding wilderness drama. (We certainly behold, metaphysically as much as physically, a wilderness, Die Israeliten in der Wüste, as CPE Bach’s oratorio has it. JS Bach and, to a lesser extent, Handel are the most obvious eighteenth-century progenitors here, yet there is always room for more at this party, even when attended by so colossal a chorus as here.) It grows in size and then becomes ‘BE GOD YOURSELF’. Again, all the while, different, flawed human beings play their roles individually and en masse. Not unlike notes, although music is never lazily to be considered a ‘language’, the letters become objects of aesthetic contemplation – Kant? – and soon, tellingly, suggest chains rather than deliverance. What is freedom without determinism? What is an orgy without sado-masochism? The participants excitedly don 3-D-style glasses. Will they see, understand better? Who knows? They think they will; they feel that they do.

This is a Blutopfer, of course: a blood sacrifice. Words having become images, images become other images. As human bestiality – we do not need camels to traipse onstage, for the beast is within us all – manifests itself in blood and violence, video turns to hardcore pornography. We see no full bodies, although occasionally we see faces to lure us in: faces that may or may not be attached to the hairless, barely human sexual organs and emotionless, purely mechanical acts performed, ‘performance’ being both the operative word and not. (For where, ultimately, is the form allegedly derived, created?) These are bodies or parts of bodies, not people. This is matter, not spirit. This is certainly not ‘love’; ‘sex’ seems too neutral a word. You can – you do – fill in the verbal, conceptual gaps. And then you ask yourself questions about those antinomies you have just delineated. Are they as much to make you feel better, as much a reassertion of your moral and cultural superiority, as anything approximating to truth content? Schoenberg, whisper it, can be wrong or at least limited in his vision too. Aron, part mastermind, part victim, emerges more than ever as a Pilate-like figure. He has helped provide, perhaps even create – is that not God’s task? – the materials. But are not his images, conjured up from a plastic bag of tricks, a diversion both from the truth, whatever that might be, as well as from what is actually going on before his eyes and ears? He has modelled an idol, but the Children of Israel have made themselves, not that idol, let alone Moses’ unrepresentable, unimaginable, ever-apophatic Idea of ‘One’, their own god(s). The manipulated collective - manipulated by what, by whom? - has fashioned a cybernetic idol. Moses, interestingly, seems less central than is generally the case. His tragic diagnosis of what he thinks has happened, more in sorrow perhaps than in anger, is, as much recent scholarship has acknowledged, quite deliberately wide of the mark itself. So it seems, in a related if not quite identical sense, here.

Such would go for nothing were it not for the many outstanding musical and dramatic performances. Alan Gilbert, leading the Staatskapelle Dresden, gave far and away the finest performance I have heard from him; I suppose you either conduct Moses und Aron or you do not. It was a performance as colourful as the op.16 Five Orchestral Pieces, as ‘dramatic’ as Wagner, as comprehending and communicative of the work’s ebb and flow as an excellent account of Beethoven, and as imbued with the spirit of the dance as Der Rosenkavalier. After all, many of us have often thought of Richard Strauss as Aron to Schoenberg’s Moses. This great orchestra could hardly boast of a greater Strauss pedigree: what a list of premieres, from Feuersnot to Daphne! Nor, of course, should one forget that this was the orchestra of none other than Kapellmeister Wagner. It certainly sounded like it here, but with a kaleidoscopic array of timbre that looked forward far into the twentieth century. As for the assembled choruses, again one might say that one either sings Moses or one does not, but that would be to take for granted a well-nigh incredible achievement. These musicians conveyed and lived the drama through words, notes, modes of sung or speech delivery, and of course stage action. Their contributions proved, quite rightly, still more crucial than those of John Tomlinson and Lance Ryan. If the former proved, at times, a little on the generalised side and the latter, ironically, more able with word and stage deed than with tone – twelve-note bel canto this was not – one could readily adapt such shortcomings into the greater narrative and its frame. Anyone feeling disappointed would have missed the point absurdly in the face of something so very much greater than the sum of its parts. Bieito’s – and, I think, Gilbert’s – uncompromisingly operatic view of the ‘complete’ work would win converts from all of those with eyes to see and ears to listen. ‘What third act?’ one might have asked, had the question so much as occurred.

And yet, in the afterlife of its experience, in the way we continue to think about what we have seen and heard long after that final orchestral tragic unison, the work opened up once again. In that, and not only in that, its serialism won out. In 1975, Dresden played host to the first East German performance of Moses und Aron, directed by none other than Harry Kupfer; in Bieito and his assembled forces, Kupfer has found a more than worthy successor. For ultimately – at least for now – the work has emerged more strongly than ever not only as a contest of ideas at its grandest but as an uncontested musical masterpiece. It is fashionable in certain quarters to denigrate the very idea. Schoenberg, thank God or at least Moses, never had truck with fashion, nor will he.

Doktor Faust, Semperoper Dresden, 19 March 2017

Semperoper

Images: Jochen Quast
Faust (Lester Lynch) in front of an image of Helen of Troy

Doktor Faust – Lester Lynch

Wagner – Michael Eder
Mephistopheles, Night Watchman – Mark Le Brocq
Duke of Parma, Megäros – Michael König
Duchess of Parma – Manuela Uhl
Master of Ceremonies, Gravis – Magnus Piontek
Soldier (Girl’s Brother), Natural Scientist – Sebastian Wartig
Lieutenant, Beelzebuth – Jürgen Müller
Students from Krakow – Eric Stokloßa, Bernhard Hansky, Allen Boxer
Theologian, Levis – Tilmann Rönnebeck
Asmodus, Jurist – Stephan Klemm
Students from Wittenberg – Gerald Hupach, Khanyiso Gwenxane, Alexandros Stavrakakis, Aaron Pegram, Benjamin Glaubitz
Tenor Solo – Aaron Pegram
Shy Person – Friedrich Darge
Women’s Voices – Roxana Incontrera, Angela Liebold, Ewa Zeuner
Dancers – Juliane Bauer, Marianne Heubaum, Nicole Meier, Björn Helget, Dennis Dietrich, Dominik Strobl
 

Keith Warner (director)

Anja Kühnhold (assistant director)
Tilo Steffens (set designs)
Manuel Kolip (video)
Julia Müer (costumes)
John Bishop (lighting)
Karl Alfred Schreiner (choreography)

Juliane Schunke (dramaturgy)

Sächsischer Staatsopernchor Dresden (chorus master: Jörn Hinnerk Andresen)

Säschsische Staatskapelle Dresden

Tomáš Netopil (conductor)

 

Wagner (Michael Eder) and Faust

One of the greatest twentieth-century operas, scandalously neglected, by a great twentieth-century composer at least as scandalously neglected as any other. We knew that already, of course, or many of us did, but no one could have been in any doubt after this excellent Dresden performance. Whatever minor cavils I might have – mostly concerning the edition used – they will not seriously detract from that. Doktor Faust received its premiere here at the Semperoper in 1925; this premiere of a new production by Keith Warner, conducted by Tomáš Netopil, proved a worthy successor.

 

Warner is a serious, thoughtful director: just the thing, one would have thought, for Busoni in general and Doktor Faust in particular, and so it turns out to be. Busoni insisted on a distinction – did not almost all interesting composers of his time? – between his own musical drama, its epic quality perhaps looking forward to that of Brecht and Weill (Busoni’s pupil), and Wagnerian music drama, which he considered incapable of greater intensification. That is clear enough, although on certain occasions, I found myself intrigued by aspects of the performance that brought Busoni closer to Wagner than one might have expected. In his Sketch for a New Aesthetic of Music, Busoni had declared that ‘the greater part of modern theatre music suffers from the mistake of seeking to repeat the scenes passing on the stage’. Its ‘proper mission’, rather, was to interpret ‘the soul-states of the persons represented’, which might actually stand in opposition to the action. Warner respects the particular qualities of Busoni’s work, not least that distinction between the role of words and music (much, perhaps ironically, as many directors would now also do with Wagner) and, quite rightly, has staging interpret them and mediate between thereby. The assembled company thereby offers a rebuke to Schoenberg’s frankly silly (wilful?) misunderstanding, quite some time later, of what Busoni had said:

 

I remember how Busoni was the first to claim that music in opera must not express what is expressed by the action. The opera is principally the product of four factors: the text, the music, the stage, and the singer. If one of these constituents is allowed to disregard what the others do, why should they not also enjoy the same privilege? For instance, the singer? Could not Monastasos ask Sarastro to dance a ‘pas de deux’ with Pamina? Or could not Lohengrin immediately after his arrival sell the swan to a butcher and start auctioning his gondola?

 

Not that such reading against the grain would necessarily be a bad thing, if done intelligently; far from it. However, it is not in play here.

Faust, the Duchess of Parma (Manuela Uhl), and the chorus

 

What is in play is a staging that successfully navigates the interplay between such opposing and/or complementary features of Busoni’s work, to which we might add (again, not unlike Wagner, if with different means) tragedy and comedy, temporal and eternal, continuing and formally delineated, and not least, the ideal and the ‘merely existing’. As lain out in the (here unspoken) Prologue, the opera’s distinctly non-Goethian origins – like Wagner, Goethe is a figure from whom one might well decide to keep one’s distance here – in earlier puppet theatre remind us that there is more than one route to selling one’s soul and indeed to enlightenment. We have been led to think for ourselves, though, before the formal beginning of the performance, when we see a group of students (dancers, as we later discover, offering intelligently choreographed commentary and dramatic incitement) perusing their books, what they are reading or thinking (presumably) projected onto the curtain. And so, when the curtain rises during the ‘Symphonia’, we see hints at earlier historical attempts at solving the eternal riddles of existence, parading ancient philosophers and Christ (I think) amongst them, the twin roots of our (and Faust’s) Western tradition. He, not unreasonably, seems very much weighed down by it all at his desk, the bargain he strikes in some sense a response to a depression that is perhaps both personal and collective.

Mephistopheles (Mark Le Brocq), Faust, and the chorus

 

The fateful journey through which Mephistopheles takes our hero has elements again both of history and eternity. Indeed, even before the appearance of the final spirit, Faust has opened the book, Clavis astartis magica, to find a modern laptop. What might just seem a time-travelling gimmick, however, has a real dramatic point, increasingly so as the evening progresses. We place our faith in new methods of communication, new route to enlightenment, but do we thereby lose our diminish our critical faculties? Of course Faust would choose the sixth spirit, the one who travels as quickly as the thoughts of man (wonderfully double-edged!), just as we sit here writing and reading online. But what trickery is there in the Mephistophelian magic that enables the brutal murder of the girl’s (Gretchen’s) brother, the glittering seduction of the Duchess of Parma, and most glaringly here, the apparition of Helen of Troy? The action has taken us forward, through the age of Einstein to that of Warhol (amongst others featured). In the Wittenberg tavern, transposed to a transatlantic flower-power joint, Mephistopheles provides Faust with the requisite hallucinatory drug to smoke. The apparition then is real, in the quotidian sense, but is it real in the Hegelian, philosophical sense? Perhaps, then, as with Wagner again, the scene is very well set for the (relative, at least) victory of Schopenhauer in the final scene, Busoni at least as explicit here as his great predecessor in the crucial importance of the philosophy of the Will. Too much metaphysics, or not enough? The production is open enough to have us wonder.

Mephistopheles

 

I wondered, though, in that vein, whether we might have been better off with Philipp Jarnach’s edition, as premiered in Dresden all those years earlier, rather than the more recent version by Antony Beaumont. Beaumont’s version, incorporating material not used by Jarnach, is undoubtedly fascinating and closer to Busoni’s intentions. There remains, however, a nagging doubt, and I say this without wishing to posit a philistine distinction between ‘scholar’ and ‘composer’, that Jarnach’s punchier solution actually, in its relative infidelity (or, if you prefer, insufficiency), offers the better theatre. We should lose a good deal of the explicitly Schopenhauerian conclusion, yet the admittedly melodramatic final bars do their work so brilliantly that I missed them greatly. ‘Sollte diese Mann verunglückt sein?’ when spoken, offers an ending that is both teasingly ironic and recognisably tragic. Whether one wants that is, I suppose, largely a matter of taste. I had never heard the Beaumont ending in the theatre, and do not begrudge it. Might there, perhaps, though, be in the future some possibility of combining the best features of both? This is not, after all, Don Giovanni (about which more soon, also from Dresden).

 

The arguments are finely balanced, I accept. Ultimately, it was far more important that Netopil and the Staatskapelle Dresden offered so expert an account of the score. The orchestra’s strengths were just as strongly in evidence as if they had been playing a repertoire work by Wagner or Strauss: perhaps a little darker of hue than they would have been in the latter, again suggesting a greater, despite-himself, kinship between Wagner and Busoni than many of us might have expected, but also harking back to the great (despite the cuts) recording by Rafael Kubelík with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. (Kent Nagano in Lyons offers an account textually preferable and, on that account absolutely necessary, yet by dramatic comparison, a little more bloodless.) There was heft and there was light; there was mahogany and there was gold; and so on and so forth. Everything was well-paced, with excellent momentum. If there were a few occasions on which I thought the demonic sardonicism might have been played up a little more (notably the Flea Song), emphasising the closed nature of the form as well as its integration, then that stands at least on the verge of nitpicking.

The end

 

Lester Lynch gave a fine portrayal of the title role, which went from strength to strength. It is by any standards a big part, and there were a few moments before the interval (during the Parma scene) when he sounded a little tired, if only relatively speaking, but as his anguish, weighed down by his conscience (personal and collective, as mentioned earlier?) came to the fore, there was no faulting the intelligent and ultimately deeply moving quality of his response. Mark Le Brocq’s Mephistopheles was very much in the mould of Kim Begley (for Nagano), a Loge on steroids, with a weird, unearthly tendency to camp that chilled rather than merely amused. I was a little surprised at some of the strange German heard from Manuela Uhl as the Duchess of Parma, but hers is a thankless role, and she generally did what she could with it. Aside from Michael Eder’s somewhat underpowered Wagner (no, not that Wagner), the rest of the cast was thoroughly impressive, not least collaboratively, proving much more than the sum of its parts. So too was the chorus, not just vocally, although it was little short of outstanding in that respect, but in stage business too. Warner, Netopil, and the assembled company presented us, then, with a true company achievement: just what opera should be. Whatever Schoenberg might have said…

 

For Aleppo

It is not enough, not nearly enough, but I do not know what to say. Other than: a world that allows such barbarism is quite beyond redemption. In his particular way, perhaps Strauss, deeply flawed human that he was, knew that too.

Elektra, Semperoper Dresden, 15 December 2014

Semperoper

 

Elektra – Elena Pankratova

Chrysothemis – Manuela Uhl

Klytämnestra – Jane Henschel

Orest – Markus Marquardt

Aegisth – Jürgen Müller

First Maid – Constance Heller

Second Maid – Stephanie Atanasov

Third Maid – Christa Mayer

Fourth Maid – Roxana Incontrera

Fifth Maid – Nadja Mchantaf

Overseer – Sabine Brohm

Young Servant – Simeon Esper

Old Servant – Tilmann Rönnebeck

Orest’s tutor – Matthias Henneberg

Confidante – Andrea Ihle

Trainbearer – Christiane Hossfeld

 

Barbara Frey (director)

Muriel Gerstner (set designs)

Bettina Walter (costumes)

Gérard Cleven (lighting)

Micaela von Marcard (dramaturgy)

 

Chorus  of the Saxon State Opera (chorus master: Wolfram Tetzner)

Staatskapelle Dresden

Peter Schneider (conductor)

 

Almost anything would have been an anti-climax following the Semperoper’s Rosenkavalier the previous day, but, odious comparisons aside, there was still something disappointing to the experience of so routine an Elektra as my final instalment of Strauss Year. Barbara Frey’s production was new earlier this year, but frankly it already looked far more old and tired than Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s staging of the next Strauss-Hofmannsthal collaboration, which had first been seen in 2000. There really did not seem to be very much to it at all. Few set designs for Elektra have in my experience looked radically different. Here there is less granite, whether literal or figurative, than often, but the action still unfolds in what appears to be a royal palace and household that have seen better days. An inscription referring to royal justice hangs pregnantly, ironically, over proceedings, but alas little of what we see lives up to our anticipations. Perhaps there was simply not enough rehearsal for a repertory performance; there was definitely a sense of the performers being left to fend for themselves. Odd touches, such as child actors appearing on stage during the Recognition Scene, so as to remind us that Elektra and Orest last saw each other when children, really add nothing. One would have to have been taking very little notice at all not to have grasped that dramatic point already.

 

Lothar Koenigs was apparently ill, and had been replaced by the veteran replacement-conductor, Peter Schneider. Again, there was a strong sense of lack of rehearsal. Schneider’s vague, listless direction of the score suggested a run-through rather than a performance in any emphatic sense. The Staatskapelle Dresden could doubtless not put on a bad performance of Strauss if it tried, but by its standards, it was hardly on form. There was a distinct lack of focus, too much of Pierre Monteux’s ‘indifference of mezzo forte’; again, the contrast with the Rosenkavalier was glaring. When the full force of the orchestra seemed finally to be unleashed, at the very close, it seemed too little, too late.

 

Elena Pankratova was the best reason to have heard this performance. She probably needed more help in terms of stage direction, but her vocal performance was generally strong, speaking of a strong musico-dramatic commitment throughout. This was indeed a musical performance, not a house of horrors exhibition of screaming. Manuela Uhl’s Chrysothemis offered gleaming sound, though her intonation wavered a little too often. Jane Henschel is a fantastic singing-actress, but here she erred too much for me on the side of caricature. Again, perhaps stronger direction, both stage and musical, would surely have helped create something more.  Markus Marquardt proved a sadly wooden Orest, but Jürgen Müller offered an uncommonly well-sung Aegisth. Not a vintage evening, then, not even close; but I should forgive almost anything for that Rosenkavalier.

 

Der Rosenkavalier, Semperoper Dresden, 14 December 2014

Semperoper

Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg – Anja Harteros

Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Peter Rose
Octavian – Sophie Koch
Herr von Faninal – Adrian Erőd
Sophie – Christiane Karg
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Christiane Kohl
Valzacchi – Thomas Ebenstein
Annina – Christa Mayer
Police Officer – Peter Lobert
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Simeon Esper
Faninal’s Major-domo – Tom Martinsen
A Notary – Matthias Henneberg
A Landlord – Dan Karlström
A Singer – Yosep Kang
A Milliner – Nadja Mchantaf
A Vendor of Pets – Mert Süngü
Leopold – Dirk Wolter
Lackeys – Ingolf Stollberg, Andreas Keinze, Jun-Seok Bang, Matthias Beutlich
Waiters – Rafael Harnisch, Torsten Schäpan Norbert Klesse, Thomas Müller
Three noble orphans – Jennifer Porto, Emily Dorn, Christel Loetzsch
Lerchenauschen – Alexander Födisch, Michael Wettin, Thomas Müller, Mirko Tuma, Werner Harke, Holger Steinert
Mohammed (‘The little Moor’) – Amala Boashie

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Christoph Schubiger (set designs)

Jessica Karge (costumes)

Chorus of the Saxon State Opera (chorus master: Wolfram Tetzner)

Members of the Children’s Chorus of the Saxon State Opera

Staatskapelle Dresden

Christian Thielemann (conductor) 

 

A superlative evening! Above all on the musical side, Christian Thielemann’s conducting having been the initial attraction for me in the first place, but with an intelligent staging too, which quite belied its years. Uwe Eric Laufenberg was announced as director of the new Bayreuth Parsifal after I had arranged to attend this performance, but since I was unfamiliar with his work, this proved a subsequent attraction. What, if anything, this 2000 staging might tell us about a 2015 Parsifal remains to be seen, but, quite in contrast to reports I had heard (‘boring’, ‘conventional’, etc.), this proved, if not the equal of Harry Kupfer’s Salzburg production this summer, then a more than acceptable alternative. When one recalls in horror Munich’s perpetual ‘revival’, if only in name, of an Otto Schenk production long past its sell-by-date, now at long last set to be pensioned off, Laufenberg offers almost the height of radicalism.

 

The staging of the Prelude seems to me a miscalculation, and an embarrassing one at that. Strauss makes it perfectly clear the sort of thing that is going on. We have little need to see the Marschallin and Octavian gingerly undressing each other (though not very far) and disappearing under the sheets. It certainly is not raunchy; instead, we appear stranded in a no-man’s-land – literally, I suppose – between ‘tastefulness’ and The Benny Hill Show. Things improve thereafter, however. Perhaps the most impressive developmental aspect is the way in which the sense of time, or better of times, creeps upon us, becomes more complicated – just as in the work itself. The Marschallin and Octavian might well be where they ‘should’ be, in Maria Theresa’s Vienna, or rather in Hofmannsthal’s intricate construction thereof, which is not to be confused, nor is it intended to be, with the ‘real thing’, or Ranke’s wie es eigentlich gewesen. As the first act progresses, however, it gradually becomes clearer that we are, or have progressed, some time later than we had suspected. Is it the nineteenth century, the period of those Johann Strauss waltzes Richard sublimated? It seems as though it might be, and then, through costumes and actions, we realise that we are actually a little later. The time of composition? Yes, perhaps. Ah no, in the second act, in Faninal’s strenuously ‘beautiful’, up-to-date palace, we realise that we are probably a little later still. The Marschallin, of course, lives in a more well-worn establishment, with truer, or at least more ancient, pedigree, still living, more or less, though perhaps not entirely, the life she imagines, we imagine, her eighteenth-century self having lived. At least when at home; the third act deepens historical understanding further. Octavian seems to understand his life similarly when with her, but proves more likely, aristocratic pride notwithstanding, to be influenced by his surroundings; after all, he is young and easily swayed.

 

The latest – that is, for the interwar years – ‘media’ techniques are employed in Faninal’s Faustian bargain: cameramen record the event, but have to be prevented, with limited success, by his Major-domo, the characterful Tom Martinsen. It is not as if the years have actually passed; this is not Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal. However, we appreciate the construction of past and present, so long as we pay attention both to the general and the specifically scenic. Moreover, we are certainly made aware, without having the point unduly hammered home, that the media attention paid to Sophie is very much an aspect of that heterosexual male gaze which excites itself with the cavorting of three women in the first place. That is not, of course, to say that others cannot find much to interest them too in those relationships, but rather to remind ourselves of the ‘norm’ on which both work and production seem predicated. The special prominence granted Mohammed, listed in the programme as ‘der kleine Mohr’ seems odd, though. He is kept as something akin to the Marschallin’s pet, and the racial overtones – especially when all the other children were so clearly of ‘Germanic’ appearance – unsettle without evident reason.

 

It is an impressive but far from obtrusive frame, then, in which the specific action unfolds. The success of that action is doubtless, especially at this remove from the original production, to be attributed more to the efforts of those on stage than to the production ‘itself’, but the latter does no harm. Anja Harteros proved well-nigh perfect as the Marschallin. Her grace and conviction were married to an alluring tone that yet did not preclude subtle verbal nuance. One believed in her – and felt with her. Sophie Koch’s Octavian is of course a very well-known quantity, but seemed reinvented for the occasion, keenly responsive to others on stage, eminently plausible in his/her various guises. Christiane Karg’s Sophie was a far more interesting character than one generally encounters; normally, my reaction is likely to tend towards irritation at least at her vacuity. Not so in Karg’s case; there was clearly ambition here, on the part of both singer and character. There was also clearly instant attraction – perhaps the production overdoes this? – between her and the rose-bearing count. Adrian Erőd’s Faninal was dry-toned to start with, but gained in vocal lustre thereafter, offering throughout a detailed portrayal, whether musically, verbally, or on stage. Peter Rose’s Ochs was simply wonderful: a buffo portrayal, yes, but a portrayal born of deep musico-dramatic intelligence, evidently gauging and creating the moment as it presented itself. His way with Hofmannsthal’s text lay beyond reproach. His impatience during the resumption of the Italian Singer’s aria offered a masterclass in silent stage presence. No one disappointed and most of the ‘minor’ roles strongly impressed, not least Yosep Kang’s ardent Singer and Thomas Ebenstein and Christa Mayer as the other ‘Italians’, both more obviously characters than caricatures.

 

Thielemann’s conducting was perhaps the finest I have ever heard in this work; so was the playing of that great Strauss ensemble, the Staatskapelle Dresden. The openings to the first two acts were perhaps surprisingly, though far from inappropriately, vigorous, Octavian’s – and Sophie’s – youthful impetuosity to the fore. But the flexibility with which Thielemann held and developed Strauss’s line was something truly to savour. Likewise the colour, depth, and allure of the orchestra, which Thielemann played with virtuosity and understanding that respected the score and yet beyond it into the truest of performative ‘interpretation’. Caesuras that might on paper sound as if they would disrupt instead increased our anticipation, the longer line somehow maintained. There was doubtless an element of theatricality, even of showmanship, but born of a deep knowledge of ‘what works’; to steal from Strauss’s operatic future, La Roche himself might have approved. Strauss’s materialistic development-cum-rejection of Wagner’s orchestral metaphysics was demonstrated, experienced far better than words could ever hope to do. This was a Greek Chorus that answered, perhaps after Goethe as much as Nietzsche, to no gods above. Our life, as the opera and its performance made clear, was here on earth, in the present – and yet it was also somewhere else and in the past that had made that present, even if that past had never actually been present. Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding…

 

Ariadne auf Naxos, Semperoper Dresden, 15 April 2014

Semperoper

Music-Master – Markus Butter
Major-Domo – Friedrich-Wilhelm Junge
Lackey – Peter Lobert
Officer – Michael Auenmüller
Composer – Barbara Senator
Tenor/Bacchus – Burkhard Fritz
Wigmaker – Matthias Henneberg
Zerbinetta – Romy Petrick
Prima Donna, Ariadne – Marjorie Owens
Dancing Master – Timothy Oliver
Naiad – Emily Dorn
Dryad – Julia Mintzer
Echo – Arantza Ezenarro
Harlequin – Sebastian Wartig
Scaramuccio – Gerald Hupach
Truffaldino – Tilmann Rönnebeck
Brighella – Aaron Pegram

Marco Arturo Marelli (director, set designs)

Dagmar Niefind-Marelli (costumes)

Staatskapelle Dresden

Omer Meir Wellber (conductor)

It is difficult for Ariadne auf Naxos to go too wrong, though Katharina Thoma managed to do so in her dreadful staging for Glyndebourne last year. That said, it remains a pleasure and an estimable pleasure at that, when it goes right, which for the most part it did here in the Straussian paradise of Dresden. Marco Arturo Marelli’s production has been around for a while – it appears on DVD, from the loving hands of Sir Colin Davis – but in no sense does it seem tired. Whilst dispensing with undue viennoserie, it is faithful to the spirit and idea of the work, set here in a modern art gallery: in many ways a more apt contemporary milieu than the musical world would be. As a friend remarked, the patron is just the sort of person who would buy a Damien Hirst. Indeed, nowadays, he would be far more likely to do that than to commission an opera. The ‘opera’ proper thus takes place on an island installation, around which the fashionable habitués of an exhibition opening night drift. (There are suitably dreadful paintings surrounding on the walls too.)  Marelli’s staging is not cynical, though; whilst there is plenty of fun to be had concerning the ghastliness of modern patronage, it is not overdone, and one of the joys of the production is also to see how some spectators, not least a lady next to whom Zerbinetta seats herself for part of her big aria, respond to the proceedings, and in some cases partake in Hofmannsthal’s – and Strauss’s – transformation. Personenregie, designs, and concept alike work well, both in theory and in practice. In that respect, it is worth mentioning that the Komparserie does an excellent job throughout. I did not care for the Composer’s running off with Zerbinetta at the end: far better to have that Prologue Augenblick as just that, but by the same token, it is a directorial indulgence that can be lived with.

 

The Staatskapelle Dresden is of course the Strauss orchestra par excellence, at least as much as its cousin in Vienna. Whether one thinks of Böhm, Kempe, Thielemann, or others, it would be difficult not to think of a favourite Strauss recording made here. Here the orchestra was on fine form throughout, variegated of tone, responding to the manner born to Strauss’s quicksilver transformations of colour and harmony. Conductor Omer Meir Wellber proved an estimable Kapellmeister: not necessarily fashioning new insights, but permitting the score’s delights to speak for themselves, and Strauss’s line to develop unimpeded. For something really special here, we may return to Sir Colin – his bust proudly on display here at the Semperoper – on DVD.

 

There was an excellent sense of company: apt in this of all works. Not all of the singing may have matched great assumptions of the past – has it ever matched Karajan’s recording? – but one could hardly expect that. Marjorie Owens proved a graceful, often moving Ariadne: a few falterings here and there, but nothing serious. Burkhard Fritz offered a little too much in the way of Tenor bluster, hectoring at times, but one can readily incorporate that into the work’s metatheatricality. If Barbara Senator’s Composer was less individual of tone than of stage presence, there was nothing too much to complain about either. Romy Petrick’s Zerbinetta was a joy: precise, lovable, and touching at those tender moments too. Equally impressive was a fine female trio of Naiad, Dryad, and Echo: Emily Dorn, Julia Mintzer, and Arantza Ezenarro. Their fabulous costumes were matched by assured singing and acting, offering quite the model of an Ariadne performance.