Christian Thielemann’s first new production
as music director at the Staatoper Unter den Linden was always going to be a
special event. A declaration of intent, no doubt: of respect for the house’s
traditions, whilst subtly extending them. For all his superlative strengths,
Daniel Barenboim was not much of a Straussian, at least in the opera house—and I
think that points to a more fundamental difference between Thielemann and his predecessor,
perhaps to be explored more fully another time. In any case, one might say that
that regard for canon and tradition, whilst understanding and indeed aiding its
mutability was tailor-made for the art of both Richard Strauss and Stefan Zweig.
So indeed it proved to be.
Thielemann has been pretty much universally
acclaimed for his Strauss—and rightly so. His ability to ‘play’ the orchestra
as if it were a keyboard instrument is remarkable, yet equally worthy of note –
and of hearing on this occasion – was his Barenboim-like willingness to have
the musicians engage in Kammermusik that could be shaped, if needed,
into something larger but never greater. The Staatskapelle Berlin, always the
jewel in this house’s crown, played not only with perfection but palpable
commitment. It could be a Mozart serenade writ large via Wagnerian polyphony;
it could be a telling arabesque duet with voice; it could be a sly piece of
word painting; it could, just occasionally, be the full orchestra letting its
presence felt, but also felt as necessary. Everything felt ‘natural’, however
much art there might be in that; everything felt both rehearsed and
spontaneous. Most important of all, the orchestra told us what mattered most—to
Strauss and, one hopes, to us, at least during those magical hours spent in the
theatre. Art is not to be equated to life; it is both less and more. Strauss
knew that; so did Thielemann and the orchestra; so, I think, did we.
For Strauss – Zweig too – is here, as ever,
intimately and, yes, beautifully concerned with music and its history, with art
more broadly and its history too. The canon is not an immutable thing He can do
no other, which is part of the wonder of his aestheticism. The craft from both
is astounding, especially when one does not notice it. Everywhere an allusion,
everywhere an illusion—all the more so when one barely notices. Some of that is
doubtless unconscious; one might say the same of performances and staging too.
None of us works, thinks, makes art, or indeed makes society in a vacuum. Is/was
Henry and Aminta’s sheltering in another room whilst Sir Morosus finds rest – low
D-flat for contrabassoon, organ, and his ‘Dank!’ – an echo of Walther and Eva doing
likewise at the close of their second act in Die Meistersinger?
It looked and even sounded like it, but may also be a function of genre, of the
unconscious, even of chance. We make our own connections, though we are led
along the way. Actual quotation is less mistakeable, or is it? How many of us
waver over Rossini-Monteverdi here? Presentiments too: how much of Sir Morosus
is there in Capriccio’s La Roche, or vice versa? Is he Baron Ochs
partly wiser, even transfigured, or is that to partake in the cardinal sin of
sentimentality? Perhaps it is all, as the Marschallin would counsel, a farce,
no more but also no less. Yet what knowing irony there is in that claim, as Straussians
will know all too well.
Let us leave that on one side for the
moment to consider Jan Phillip Gloger’s production. Thielemann and Gloger have collaborated
at Bayreuth and in Dresden, so again this might offer a harbinger of sorts. I
had my doubts at points yet ultimately was won around by Gloger’s concept, not
least since it developed so finely in collaboration with musicians onstage and
in the pit—what opera is or should be, and be about. There is none of Ben
Jonson’s London here, though predicaments that faces Londoners still more than
Berliners – yes, I know the latter will protest, but they should try living
here – come to the fore: initially, the housing crisis, but increasingly that
of loneliness and how society treats the elderly in an age of generational
conflict in which the latter may seem to hold too many of the cards. (They do
not, of course, or not straightforwardly; it is a useful culture-war camouflage
for capital. But enough of that for now.) As the opera begins, we see increasingly
desperate ‘refreshing’ of a screen by someone attempting to find city
accommodation – many of us have been there – followed by the stage revelation
of a wealthy, single, older person living in an expansive apartment to himself,
attended to by housekeeper and barber (here, more general ‘wellness’ consultant).
Yet we are also confronted – I can see, even hear, the raised eyebrows – with
statistics before the second and third acts, that is on the curtain during the
intervals, that challenge our preconceptions, for instance how many older
people who might wish to move to smaller accommodation might end up paying more
in rent if they do so (and they might not be able to).
That, however, becomes ever more a context
than concept. More fundamentally, the tale is one of conflict and
reconciliation, furthered by understanding and willingness to accept the new. A
trick, in many ways quite horrible, is played on Sir Morosus. The characters relish
it in some ways, yet are also not without guilt, faithfully following Zweig and
Strauss. One may or may not like the garish way in which Sir Morosus is married
to his apparently ‘silent’ woman, Timida/Aminta, but it makes its dramatic
point. Perhaps some of the metadramatic interventions are, like the statistics,
a bit crass, but they do no real harm. Holding up a sign saying ‘Regietheater’ both
alerts some, less receptive in the audience, to what might be happening not
only onstage but to the stage that has been enacted onstage, and may even
remind them that all this is not nearly so new as some would have them believe.
No one, after all, was a greater practitioner of the cause they excoriate than
Richard Wagner, whose Hans Sachs, one of Morosus’s many progenitors, reminds us:
‘Es
klangt so alt und war doch so neu!’
Reconciliation is arguably more
problematical in Die Meistersinger than here, the world of what is ‘deutsch
und echt’ notable by its absence (which may, admittedly, prove to some still
more problematic). For the time being, though, we can share in the old man’s
joy in true acquaintance with, perhaps even growing love for his nephew and
adoptive son and his wife, their troupe, and even a little of the music he once
so detested. We can share in theirs for him too, heartwarmingly portrayed – for
once, I mean no irony, and Strauss appears not to do so either – in the closing
display of a Morosus Community, in which none need be silent and, just as
important, none need be alone. One can be, of course, and Morosus is grateful
for time on his own, for peace and quiet, for the music to have stopped, but as
a free choice rather than faute de mieux. Solitude, as any Romantic will
tell you, can be a good or bad thing; it depends very much on context and will.
Stage performances were outstanding. As Sir
Morosus, Peter Rose was everything would have hoped for, placing the character somewhere
justly between Ochs and La Roche – I have been treated to the former, though
not yet to the latter – but above all creating an individual human being of his
own, whose ‘difficulty’ we increasingly understood and sympathised with, coming
to know a somewhat different person than the one we had assumed he was. His way
with Zweig’s German was second to none. Siyabonga Maqungo presented an ardent,
lovelorn, equally human Henry, well matched to Brenda Rae’s Aminta. Rae played
that role in a very different production (Barrie
Kosky’s) the only other time I have seen the opera in the theatre. Here,
her vocal glitter and precision were matched, indeed exceeded only by her humanity.
The animating presence of Samuel Hasselhorn as the barber Schneidebart was a joy
from start to finish, as finely conceived theatrically as it was musically. It was
a similar, if more fleeting joy, to welcome Iris Vermillion back to the Berlin
stage as Morosus’s housekeeper. There was the finest sense of company from all
concerned, not least a chorus superbly trained by Dani Juris, which reciprocated
the ensemble favour in appearing very much as a cast of individuals brought
together.
This proved, then, an excellent and deeply
moving evening. Strauss and Zweig’s Schweigsame Frau sang in and for
itself; but also for music; for opera; for Berlin; and, I like to think, for
this exiled Berliner back in town for all of twenty-two hours, a good few of
them, like those of Sir Morosus, spent asleep before returning to the city in
which the opera ‘should’ be set and in which Jonson’s Volpone not only
is set but was first performed. These three-and-a-half hours, though, proved
more than worth the journey, a reminder less of the horrendous world around us –
though that made its presence softly, touchingly felt – than of what, if we can
make it a little horrendous, we might actually live for. That is, it
reminded us what Strauss and his aestheticism are ultimately concerned with and
why this work from the 1930s, derived from and transforming an English comedy of
more than three centuries earlier, might yet matter to us in 2025.
‘Wie schön ist doch der Musik!’ And just perhaps, as Morosus continues, ‘aber
wie schön ist, wenn sie vorbei ist!‘ The
music was indeed beautiful, and there was unquestionably something poignant,
even painful in the beauty of its fleetingness, of its passing. That it cannot
be grasped is worth our grasping; in that way and in reflection both upon it
and upon its passing, it will often remain with us all the longer. As ever, at least
in a performance worth its salt, one does not want the Straussian epilogue to
end, but it does and it must, and we are better for it. And with that, both my opera
season and that of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden draw to a close. The latter’s
next will open with Dmitri
Tcherniakov’s Ring, conducted by Christian Thielemann.
