Elegy for Young Lovers, English National Opera, 24 April 2010

Young Vic

Hilda Mack – Jennifer Rhys-Davies
Elisabeth Zimmer – Kate Valentine
Carolina von Kirchstetten – Lucy Schaufer
Toni Reischmann – Robert Murray
Gregor Mittenhofer – Steven Page
Dr Wilhelm Reischmann – William Robert Allenby
Josef Mauer – Stephen Kennedy
Servants at Der Schwarze Adler – Joyce Henderson, Stephen O’Toole, Sam Taylor, Emma Vickery

Fiona Shaw (director)
Tom Pye (designer)
Peter Mumford (lighting)
Lynette Wallworth (video)

Orchestra of the English National Opera
Stefan Blunier (conductor)

Three cheers to ENO for staging Henze! It is more than time that one of our major companies did, nine years having passed since the Royal Opera’s superb Boulevard Solitude. (If only that might be revived, though there are of course more pressing concerns, such as hearing x and y in multiple revivals of La Traviata…) This Elegy for Young Lovers is on a smaller scale, but so is the work itself – and smaller is not necessarily lesser. Performances are generally good, and Fiona Shaw’s direction in the intimate space of the Young Vic impresses.

Elegy for Young Lovers is one of those works concerned with the figure of the artist: a subject that not unnaturally tends to delight a good number of artists. The writer, Gregor Mittenhofer exploits all those around him for the sake of artistic inspiration – which seems in his case to be more transcription of events than sublimation into something greater. Poor Hilda Mack, who lost her husband forty years ago, is of value only on account of her visions, which he greedily plagiarises. When Elisabeth forsakes him for his godson, Toni, he gives his blessing, but then, when the Alpine guide calls to warn of a blizzard, claims that he knows of no one out on the mountain, having sent them to gather flowers for him. The point is less revenge than that they can serve as the ‘inspiration’ for his new poem, Elegy for Young Lovers. It is with a public reading in Vienna – here on video – that the opera ends.

Shaw’s setting is essentially when and where it should be: the Austrian Alps in the early twentieth century. She directs the cast well, doubtless drawing upon her own theatrical experience, and even manages to get the singers’ spoken dialogue to sound as if it is delivered by actors: no mean achievement, as veterans of The Magic Flute or Fidelio will tell you. All, quite rightly, is ultimately focused upon Mittenhofer’s ego, but delineation of other characters is not neglected. A true coup de théâtre, for which Tom Pye’s design work should also be credited, comes at the end of the second act, when the ice clock, which has been chiming the hours, is smashed by Mittenhofer in his impotent rage, wishing the lovers dead but surely also an expression of his artistic inadequacy. What makes this especially memorable, is the reappearance of Hilda, who now realises how she has been exploited. She picks up a little ice for her drink, undercutting the melodrama – that is, Mittenhofer’s egocentric melodrama.

Stefan Blunier, whom I recently heard give a fine account of The Love for Three Oranges in Berlin, was equally impressive here – not in the pit, but above the stage. The balance between drive and tenderness was well chosen, and the mélange of styles – Berg and Stravinsky, not for the first time, loom especially large – was given its due, without ever sounding incoherent. Solo instrumentalists from the chamber orchestra were without exception excellent; it would be invidious to single out anyone in particular.

Steven Page commands the stage as Mittenhofer. Vocally, there are a few less than perfect moments, but the portrayal of the role is all: monstrous, self-satisfied, ultimately hollow. Lucy Schaufer brought out both the pride and the sadness in the Gräfin von Kirchstetten: an aristocrat and, more important, a woman who abases herself for the dubious cause of the artist. (In a telling moment, Mittenhofer acknowledges the other characters’ inadequacies, though not directly his own; the dramatic truth is that he is right, at least with respect to them. They are human, all too human, too.) I was not sure why her accent veered towards the transatlantic though. Kate Valentine and Robert Murray were likeable as the young lovers, and their final scene, in which they imagine their old age and the course of their married life, was genuinely moving. It is difficult, however, to consider Murray a success as a romantic, or Romantic, lead; character roles should be more his thing. Jennifer Rhys-Davies’s turns – in more than one sense – as Hilda Mack were appropriately show-stealing. Her increasing lucidity proved both convincing and unnerving. Is she more unhinged than the ‘artist’? It appears not. I found the aggressive Irishness of Stephen Kennedy’s mountain guide (a spoken role) rather out of place, but this was a blemish upon the production rather than a fundamental flaw.

It is interesting to note that Auden and Kallman dubbed the work – their equivalent to Arabella, dedicating it to Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Arabella is far from my favourite Strauss opera; indeed, I have never been able to make much of it at all, despite some wonderful moments. Moreover, apart from the hotel setting, it is not especially clear, at least to me, why they should think of Arabella. But one can see at least why the librettists might have been thinking of Strauss and Hofmannsthal, with their fondness for reflection on art and artists. Could Henze, though? He has often struck me as a Strauss-like figure, despite – or perhaps, on some level, because of? – his antagonism, which goes far beyond comments he might sometimes have made concerning, say, Wagner, Schoenberg, or Webern (though never, so far as I am aware, Stravinsky). ‘Beethoven regarded his whole enterprise as a contribution to human progress. As with Marxism, his goal is not God but Man, whereas there are other artists who have never given a thought to the moral function of their work; for instance Richard Strauss, who is for me – perhaps I’m going too far – something like a court composer to Kaiser Wilhelm II.’ Does the writer of these words, Henze himself, protest a little too much? And which artist is closer to Mittenhofer? A sadness for composer and librettists must be that they are constantly in danger of exploiting human experiences for the sake of something called art. Perhaps the imperative therefore ought to be that the art produced is good, for, as Adrian Mourby writes in a programme note concerning the Yeatsian inspiration for Auden: ‘It was Yeats’s failures as an artist that concerned Auden most. It was from these that he wished to distance himself. Mittenhoffer is not just a monster. He is probably not much of a writer.’ This production helps vindicate Henze and his librettists from at least that charge.

The Love for Three Oranges, Komische Oper Berlin, 20 December 2009

(sung in German as Die Liebe zu drei Orangen)

Fata Morgana – Aurelia Hajek
Celio – Jan Martinik
The King of Clubs – Carsten Sabrowski
The Prince – Christoph Späth
Princess Clarice – Christiane Oertel
Leander – Horst Lamnek
Pantalone – Mirko Janiska
Truffaldino – Thomas Ebenstein
Princess Linetta – Manja Neumann
Princess Nicoletta – Anna Borchers
Princess Ninetta – Nina von Möllendorff
Smeraldine – Karolina Gumos
The Cook – Hans-Peter Scheidegger
Farfarello – David Williams
Herald – Ingo Witzke

Andreas Homoki (director)
Frank Philipp Schlößmann (stage designs)
Mechtild Seipel (costumes)
Werner Hintze (dramaturge)
Franck Evin (lighting)

Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper, Berlin (chorus master: Robert Heimann)
Members of the Ernst Senff Choir
Orchestra of the Komische Oper, Berlin
Stefan Blunier (conductor)

What an enjoyable night in the theatre: a real company achievement. Colourful designs, well-thought-out dramatic progression, and sharp Personenregie combine to award Andreas Homoki’s Love for Three Oranges the status of a classic. It makes sense insofar as commedia dell’arte makes sense, and makes nonsense in a similar fashion. From the Prologue, the stage is set for a framing battle between comedy and tragedy, but what does it mean? Answers are less of the essence here than exploration, still more so a setting for Prokofiev’s score to perform its magic. Richard Taruskin, in his New Grove article on the opera, writes: ‘This was one of the very earliest applications of illusion-destroying “art as art” gimmickry, soon to become such a modernist cliché.’ It is perhaps not surprising that a writer so hostile to modernism should prove unable to resist such a barb; the important thing here, however, is that modernism is shown to be anything but killjoy. This joyfully bizarre production, full of wonders that cannot and need not be explained, ensures that outcome. Indeed, one should remember – and Homoki’s production relishes the fact – that the opera transmutes a host of operatic clichés into gold, all the time quite without false pretension. One can consider, to be sure, but most of all, one can enjoy – and through that one enjoyment, one is brought to consideration.

The direct communicative gifts of the Komische Oper’s cast played a considerable role here. These were not all great vocal performances; indeed, some, such as Aurelia Hajek’s Fata Morgana, left a considerable amount to be desired in purely vocal terms. Nevertheless, dramatic commitment tended to trump any such shortcomings. Christoph Späth’s Prince impressed somewhere on the border, as he should be, between ingénue and madman: Tamino taking a walk on the (slightly) wild side. Carsten Sabrowski’s King exhibited story-book authority in an appropriately kindly fashion. Meanwhile, the plotters, Leander and Princess Clarice, Horst Lamnek and Christiane Oertel, were nasty and a little grotesque – but never too much. Nina von Möllendorff was a lovely Ninetta and Karolina Gumos a wonderfully bizarre – here blue, not black – slave-girl Smereldina. Meanwhile, Hans-Peter Scheidegger’s Cook was a surrealist joy in drag for, as the cliché has it, children of all ages.

Perhaps the truest heroes were the orchestra and chorus. The chorus proved expressively adept, with words, notes, and gesture in happy combination. Ably directed by Stefan Blunier, the orchestra contributed essential bite and direction to the proceedings. Though not quite so declamatory a score as The Gambler, melodic development – and, equally important, discontinuity – is more often than not to be found here in what one might consider the composer’s Greek chorus. The hit-tunes still register, of course, and Prokofiev was so fine a melodist that he could never quite deny himself, but this performance reminded one that there is a great deal more to his gifts than that.