Munich Opera Festival (2) - Orlando Paladino, 29 July 2018

Prinzregententheater

Angelica – Adela Zaharia

Rodomonte – Edwin Crossley-Mercer

Orlando – Mathias Vidal

Medoro – Dovlet Nurgeldiyev

Licone – Guy de Mey

Eurilla – Elena Sancho Pereg

Pasquale – David Portillo

Alcina – Tara Erraught

Caronte – François Lis

Gabi and Heiko Herz – Heiko Pinkowski, Gabi Herz

Axel Ranisch (director)

Falko Herold (designs)
Magdalena Padros Celada (choreography)

Michael Bauer (lighting)

Rainer Karlitschek (dramaturgy)

Munich Chamber Orchestra

Statisterie and Opera Ballet of the Bavarian State Opera

Ivor Bolton (conductor)

Gabi and Heiko Herz (Heiko Pinkowski, Gabi Herz), Angelica (Adela Zaharia)
Images: © Wilfried Hösl

Should you not like eighteenth-century opera very much, if at all, and should you have no or little interest in Haydn either, this may have been the production for you. The fundamental premise of Axel Ranisch’s staging of Orlando Paladino seems to have been that this was a work of little fundamental merit, or at least a work in a genre of little such merit, and that it needed the help of a modern medium – perhaps, it might even be claimed, an equivalent medium – to speak to a contemporary audience. Speak to the audience in Munich’s Prinzregententheater it certainly seemed to – rightly or wrongly. I could only wish that both the work and those of us in the audience who thought otherwise had not been treated with such condescension. That may sound reactionary. Perhaps indeed it is; perhaps all that matters is that those many people who enjoyed such an ‘entertainment’, to use a properly eighteenth-century word, did indeed enjoy it. Perhaps. Let me, however, try to explain why I found this, much fine singing notwithstanding, a somewhat dispiriting experience.

Alcina (Tara Erraught) and Pasquale (David Portillo)

No one, I think, would claim Nunziata Porta to be one of opera’s greatest librettists; this is not a Da Ponte, a Wagner, or a Hofmannsthal. Nor indeed a Metastasio. However, his libretto here is, by the same token, likely to be underestimated, precisely because of where his talents lay. His principal occupation at Esterháza was to adapt texts, including provision of insertion arias. (If you do not know any of Haydn’s, for obvious reasons far less widely known than Mozart’s, then they are well worth discovering.) And that is what he did here, on a larger scale, with Orlando Paladino, helping Haydn create a rather extraordinary work, a dramma eroicomico after Ariosto. Its skill lies not just in parodying Ariosto, indeed not primarily in that at all, but in permitting Haydn to do so and indeed to parody much else besides: often wryly, subtly, sometimes more overtly – here, at least in one particular instance, in Pasquale’s ‘Ecco spanio’, Ranisch worked highly successfully with libretto and music. Otherwise, I am afraid, far too little of that came through – which was surely something a skilled production might have seen as its purpose or at least a good part of it.

Alcina and Angelica

Yes, one might respond, but what if an audience does not understand the conventions of late-ish eighteenth-century opera seria? Do we not need to find a way of leading many listeners in? We probably do, or at least in certain circumstances it might be a good idea. (Heaven forfend we might actually expect some work from an audience; nevertheless, if I do not read Russian, I do not claim the problem to lie in Pushkin.) A similar problem, after all, seems often to be experienced with Così fan tutte, which very few seem to understand – or, more to the point, take the trouble to try to understand. (Sometimes it is not ‘all about you’.) By all means, though, lead us in, show us what the opera is or might be about. Ranisch, however, seemed to have no interest whatsoever in doing so. Not unlike Christof Loy in his unforgivable Salzburg Frau ohne Schatten, albeit less aggressively, the message seemed to be: ‘forget about this; I do not like this story very much, so here is another one’.

Alas, Ranisch’s new story seems to me only slightly less banal than Loy’s. For all the filmic creativity – undeniable in its way, if hardly groundbreaking – what we have ultimately is a new, less than captivating, tale of a married couple who own a cinema. One of them is at least partly gay and fantasises about the handsome Rodomonte (or perhaps the actor/singer who plays him). When technical problems cause an explosion in the cinema, he takes the opportunity to wander into the scenes on screen to learn a bit more about himself. A huge amount of silly running around, pulling faces, and so on, detracts entirely from the opera and at best has one wonder what on earth is going on. Now there may well have been a way, even within this particular metatheatrical framework, to engage with the work, to do more of what I have suggested it might. It really does not seem, though, to happen here. A pair of actors, ‘Gabi and Heiko Herz’, seem the most honoured here. Ironically, however, the banality of their story, the striking Cinema Paradiso homage in Falko Herold’s designs notwithstanding, throws one’s attention back towards the singing, if only out of desperation. We end up with another tired old cliché, that eighteenth-century opera other than Mozart’s is ‘really’ only about singing. Orlando Paladino and Haydn thus found themselves doubly damned.

Medoro (Dovlet Nurgeldiyev) and Angelica

Such might have been less the case, had it not been for Ivor Bolton’s rigid, often hard-driven conducting, which paid little attention, if any, to Haydn’s harmonic rhythm, living if indeed it lived at all only in the moment – perhaps not so ill-suited a complement to the production. The playing of the Munich Chamber Orchestra was in itself excellent, however. One longed for it to be let off its leash, though, not least for the strings to be permitted greater vibrato. There seemed little doubt that they longed for that too. Nevertheless theirs was fine playing, woodwind solos especially joyous. For the real thing, though, turn on record to Antal Doráti – or even, should this be your real thing and you can somehow stand the weird perversities, to Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Those perversities may eclipse formal understanding, or at least the communication thereof, but at least they seem less generated on auto-pilot.

Rodomonte (Edwin Crossley-Mercer)
and Heiko Herz

It was, then, to recapitulate – more of such formal understanding from the conductor, please! – from the singers that considerable pleasure and insight was to be gleaned. Mathias Vidal as Orlando trod a fine line, sensitively and stylishly, between bravado and acknowledged weakness. So indeed did all the male singers; such, not without a pinch of what we might anachronistically think feminism, is indeed the point. Edwin Crossley-Mercer’s diction was not always clear as it might have been, especially in so small a theatre; however, his dark tone proved full of allure – increasingly compromised allure. Dovlet Nurgeldiyev, for me one of the true discoveries of the evening, offered almost heartbreaking tonal beauty, whilst also making as much of the words as the production permitted. Likewise his intended, Adela Zaharia. David Portillo, a supremely versatile singer, finely attuned both to line and style, impressed greatly as Pasquale; his aforementioned aria was probably the highpoint of the entire evening. Elena Sancho Pereg, as Eurilla, proved very much his equal: a fine foil, but also a spirited character in her own right. Tara Erraught’s rich mezzo Alcina left one longing for more. It was she, above all, who brought moments of true drama to proceedings. Perhaps she, instead, should have been directing and/or conducting.

Munich Opera Festival (1) - Die schweigsame Frau, Bavarian State Opera, 5 July 2015

Nationaltheater, Munich

Sir Morosus – Franz Hawlata

Housekeeper – Okka von der Damerau
Barber – Nikolay Borchev
Henry Morosus – Peter Sonn
Aminta – Brenda Rae
Isotta – Elsa Benoit
Carlotta – Tara Erraught
Morbio – Christian Rieger
Vanuzzi – Christoph Stephinger
Farfallo – Tareq Nazmi
Papagei – Airton Feuchter-Dantas

Barrie Kosky (director)

Esther Bialas (designs)
Benedikt Zehm (lighting)
Olaf A. Schmitt (dramaturgy)

Bavarian State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)
Bavarian State Orchestra
Pedro Halffter (conductor)

If Strauss’s operas of the 1920s receive far too little performing attention, especially in the Anglosphere, those of the 1930s seem to fare worse still. Quite why is anyone’s guess; no one, I assume, would declare Die schweigsame Frau a greater work than Elektra, but it is clearly a better work than so many that continue to hold the stage. German theatres are different, of course, not least those associated with Strauss personally, so to see Strauss’s collaboration with Stefan Zweig and, at one remove, Ben Jonson, a visit to the Munich Opera Festival seemed like a good idea.

And so it was. One could not reasonably have hoped to hear Strauss in better hands. Not only could I find no grounds to fault Bavarian State Orchestra – not that, in imitation of the third act’s divorce proceedings, I was attempting to find such grounds – the orchestra reaffirmed its credentials as a Strauss orchestra to be spoken of in the same breath as Dresden and Vienna, and arguably more reliable than either, certainly more so than the latter. Precision and warmth – though not too much – were very much the hallmark of this performance, wisely guided by Pedro Halffter, who seemed keen to impart to his account a sense of, if not quite Neue Sachlichkeit, then at least of something that made Strauss’s writing here particular rather than generalised. Pacing was impeccable, quasi-autonomous musical structures coming fruitfully into contact with verbal demands: the sort of thing one longs for, generally in vain, in Rossini. The Straussian orchestral phantasmagoria is never far away, of course, but there is perhaps less overt dazzle in much of the score than in, say, Rosenkavalier or Elektra; Halffter and the orchestra appreciated its subtleties and responded to them in equally subtle yet undoubtedly sure fashion.  

I doubt that Brenda Rae’s Aminta could be bettered in any theatre today (although how would one know?) Just as sure of note and line as the orchestra and with greater, contrasting warmth, especially at those wonderful revelations, through the disguise of Timidia, of the fundamental humanity of Aminta, this was a performance to savour. Much the same could be said of her partner in crime – and love – Peter Sonn’s splendidly lyrical, often imploring Henry. Franz Hawlata’s Morosus was very much a character portrayal: too many notes, as it were, lacked a little when it came to the demands of intonation. But such was Hawlata’s identification with and communication of the role, it would be churlish to complain unduly; the audience responded warmly, and it was right to have done so. The quicksilver vocal and dramatic qualities of Nikolay Borchev’s Barber – despite the hideous green tracksuit he initially had to wear – were rightly appreciated by the Munich audience too. Okka von der Damerau captured to near-perfection the disapproving, ultimately amusing qualities of the Housekeeper. There was depth in the casting too: splendid rivalry to Timidia came from Tara Erraught (with, insofar as I could tell, a fine line in Bavarian dialect) and Elsa Benoit. There was indeed an excellent sense of company: no one disappointed and almost everyone shone.

Barrie Kosky’s production: well, it was considerably better than his Berlin Figaro. But I cannot help but think that his matching of high camp – the tasteless pink designs of the first part of the third act, splendidly realised on their own terms by Esther Bialas – and custard-pie slapstick is not really a match for Strauss, or for Zweig. The subtle, even sometimes not-so-subtle, æstheticism of both artists may well benefit from deconstruction. But might not a production that takes to heart the circumstances of the opera’s composition – this, after all, was the opera occasioning Strauss’s fateful letter to Zweig, intercepted by the Gestapo, which led to Goebbels having the composer resign from Presidency of the Reichsmusikkammer – offer a more fruitful, deeper (yes, I know, how Teutonic of me!) mode of questioning?  There is no doubting the skill with which Kosky and his production team accomplish their vision; I wish, though, that I could discern more in the vision itself. According to Kosky, quoted in the programme, ‘We have placed our protagonist in a world which swings [schwankt] uncertainly between Mel Brooks, the Muppets, and Vienna’s Josefstadt [Theatre].’ Make of that what you will.

Even for those of us who remained sceptical about the production, however, there was much to enjoy, for which many thanks should go to the Bavarian State Opera. This would surely make an interesting prospect for ENO, whose Strauss record has recently been anything but conspicuous, to bring to London. Now, how about an enterprising company offering us Salieri’s Angiolene, also based (loosely) on Jonson’s Epiocene? Or even a hearing for Mark Lothar’s 1930 Lord Spleen, written for Dresden? (Does anyone know the music of Lothar, a Schreker pupil whom Max Reinhardt enlisted as Music Director for Berlin’s Deutsches Theater in 1933, whether for this or for anything else? I freely admit that I do not.) George Antheil’s Volpone, which apparently owes a good deal to Zweig’s German adaptation of Jonson’s play, also awaits revival. And yes, more Strauss would be much appreciated too: Feuersnot, Friedenstag, Die Liebe der Danae, etc., etc. Opera houses of the world, unite: you have nothing to lose but Timidia’s timidity!

Munich Opera Festival (2) - La clemenza di Tito, 19 July 2014

Images: © Wilfried Hösl
Sesto (Tara Erraught) and
Vitellia (Kristine Opolais)

Nationaltheater, Munich

Tito – Toby Spence

Vitellia – Kristïne Opolais
Sesto – Tara Erraught
Servilia – Hanna-Elisabeth Müller
Annio – Anna Stéphany
Publio – Tareq Nazmi

Jan Bosse (director)

Victoria Behr (costumes)
Ingo Bracke (lighting)
Bibi Abel (video)
Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Ádám Fischer (conductor)

 

 

 

It had been a while since I had seen La clemenza di Tito in the theatre, though I spend a good deal of time on it when teaching. Alas, there was little to cheer about here, save for some of the singing. Ádám Fischer’s listless conducting only had me long for Sir Colin Davis, in the pit for the sole convincing musical performance I have heard ‘live’; Jan Bosse’s stage direction had me longing for just about anything else.

Fischer, first: his role was puzzling. If anything, I’d have expected someone from at least the quasi-authenticist wing to harry the score. And that is what the Overture sounded like: grand neo-Classicism reduced to something impatiently knocking on the door of small-scale Rossini (without the gloss or the bubbles). Thereafter, however, Fischer tended to maul the score, rarely letting it settle at one tempo or another. Not that there is anything wrong with tempo variations; far from it. But Fischer seemed unable to find a general pulse for an aria, let alone for any greater structural unit. The great public scenes were scaled down: surely this calls for a reasonable-size chorus.  Perhaps worst of all was the lugubrious pacing of many of the secco recitatives: in this of all Mozart’s works, we really do not need to dwell on them, since they are many, they are not his work, and they are sometimes frankly unsatisfactory in terms of where they tonally lead us. For some reason I could never establish, they were mostly given with harpsichord, but a few with fortepiano. The Bavarian State Orchestra played well enough, considering, but as with Dan Ettinger’s dreadful Figaro two nights earlier, it was difficult to shy away from the conclusion that the orchestra would have been better off without a conductor. Certainly in this case, it would have been better off without the more interventionist aspects of Fischer’s decidedly peculiar interpretation.

Tito (Toby Spence) and chorus members

Bosse’s staging? Ultimately, as a friend wearily remarked to me during the interval, it reflects the seeming inability of a large number of opera directors to take opera seria seriously, as it were, let alone to take this extraordinary late example of the form for what it is. Caterina Mazzolà’s often drastic revision of Metastasio was acknowledged neither for what it had become, nor for what it had been, and certainly not for what Mozart transformed it into. It is difficult to discern any understanding of the classical conception of opera seria as spoken theatre with additional music having come into conflict, whether in work and reception, with later-eighteenth-century æsthetics, which had ascribed greater importance to music – unless, that is, it be nodded to by having the excellent solo clarinettist sit on the edge of the pit to be looked at by Sesto and then later by Vitellia. It is equally difficult to discern any sense of the political, of this coronation opera as, in words I have used for an article elsewhere, ‘a compulsory class in a school for ruler and ruled’.  It is just all a bit silly, with various people wandering around in ludicrously exaggerated visions of eighteenth-century dress, the size of Vitellia’s dress especially ridiculous. Wigs look as though I have been taken from an LSD-user’s vision of Amadeus. The trouser roles offer a bit of gender confusion, in that the characters’ dress seems as much female as male. And that is it: none of those ‘ideas’ is really developed, let alone related to the work. The only other feature I can recall worthy of comment is the general change from black to white between acts and the banal apparent conclusion that the characters find themselves through the burning of the Capitol. Of revolution, of counter-revolution, of Enlightened absolutism, of aristocratic revanchism: there is nothing. What on earth the dramaturge was offering for his fee I cannot imagine. And of Mozart: well, there is, if anything, still less.

Toby Spence had his good moments, more in the second act than the first, but had some strikingly unsteady moments too. He certainly was not helped by the direction, which seemed limited to having him wander around uncertainly in a sheet. I felt rather conflicted about Kristïne Opolais. There was no doubting the committed nature of her performance as Vitellia, but the nature of the application was not always necessarily appropriate. In the first act, she sometimes sounded as though she would have been happier singing Puccini, forsaking Mozart’s line for generalised ‘operatic’ sounds and gestures that have little or no place in his world. The second act was much better, though, ‘Non più di fiori’ an undoubted highlight, in which even Fischer got his act together to lead a strikingly successful transition into the finale. (It was a rare, much appreciated example of an ill-behaved audience not being permitted indiscriminately to applaud.) Tara Erraught and Anna Stéphany were more or less beyond reproach as Sesto and Annio, clean of line and clear of dramatic purpose – at least insofar as the production permitted. Both would grace the Mozart ensembles of any house. Hanna-Elisabeth Müller, the Susanna in that earlier Figaro, impressed once again as Servilia; if anything, the role – and form – seemed to suit her better still. Tareq Nazmi’s Publio, again not helped by a production which seemed to have the character down as simply a bit of a weirdo, could have been more cleanly sung. And there we have it: an opera seria performance as if from the bad old days, when the drama was seen as secondary to the singers, when the music was barely understood for what it is. Not for the first time, I longed for Gérard Mortier and the Herrmanns.