Salzburg Festival (9) - The Gambler, 25 August 2024

Felsenreitschule

General – Peixin Chen
Polina – Asmik Grigorian
Alexey Ivanovitch – Sean Panikkar
Babulenka – Violeta Urmana
Marquis – Juan Francisco Gatell
Blanche – Nicole Chirka
Mr Astley – Michael Arivony
Prince Nilski – Zhengi Bai
Baron Würmerhelm – Ilia Kazakov
Potapytch – Joseph Parrish
Casino Director – Armand Rabot
First Croupier – Samuel Stopford
Second Croupier – Michael Dimovski
Fat Englishman – Jasurbek Khaydarov
Tall Englishman – Vladyslav Buialskyi
So-So Lady – Seray Pinar
Pale Lady – Lilit Davtyan
Revered Lady – Cassandra Doyle
Doubtful Old Lady – Zole Reams
Passionate Gambler – Santiago Sánchez
Sickly Gambler – Tae Hwan Yun
Hump-backed Gambler – Aaron-Casey Gould
Unsuccessful Gambler – Navasard Hakobyan
Old Gambler – Amin Ahangaran
Six Gamblers – Slaven Abazovic, Konrad Huber, Juraj Kuchar, Jarosłav Pehal, Wataru Sano, Oleg Zalytskiy

Director – Peter Sellars
Set designs – George Tsypin
Costumes – Camille Assaf
Lighting – James F. Ingalls
Dramaturgy – Antonio Cuenca Ruiz

Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus director: Pawel Markowicz)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Timur Zangiev (conductor)

Images: SF/Ruth Walz

This new production by Peter Sellars of The Gambler had four important things in common with Mariame Clément’s Tales of Hoffmann, which I saw in Salzburg the previous evening. It imposed a fashionable concept on a work that might or might not have proved receptive to it, had it been pursued more coherently; the concept was at least on one level something to which it would be difficult for a thinking twenty-first-century person to object; it took reading of a programme note to discover fully what that concept had been; and finally, upon that discovery, I was left certain that the work’s own ideas were rather more interesting and fruitful than what had been imposed upon them. There were also, however, at least two important differences. Sellars’s production worked much better as a relatively ‘straight’ reading of the work, in which one could either ignore or remain in ignorance of the rest. And musically, whilst both productions had excellent casts, this one was well conducted. It made, then, for a far more satisfying night in the theatre. 

This was, I think, the third production of The Gambler I had seen, following stagings in Berlin (Dmitri Tcherniakov, 2008) and London (Richard Jones, 2010), and certainly the first in a while. The Felsenreitschule stage imposes certain constraints, though doubtless also offers certain opportunities to a director. One is unlikely to be able to do much in the way of scene-changes mid-act. In this case, since the opera was given without an interval, one is unlikely to be able to do much in that respect at all. Sellars and his team responded inventively, though, with a little help from the resources a Salzburg Festival production will have at its disposal. Spinning tops suspended from the ceiling, poised for action – I initially thought of a Russian opera from an earlier generation, Boris Godunov’s heir at play in the study – descended when required to form a casino of roulette tables. Green moss suggested both a park and a sense of decay and time running out. The rest could be understood pretty much on its own terms. 

At least I thought it could, notwithstanding irritating, capitalised anachronisms in the surtitles. ‘DADDY’, ‘ACTIVIST’, ‘CAPITAL’, and so on seemed little more than minor distractions. Prokofiev and indeed Dostoevsky still for the most part shone through. The presentation of Polina as an ‘activist’ was half-hearted enough that for the most part I missed it. Her clothes seemed a bit odd, her behaviour too, but neither of those things is especially unusual in such stagings. Brief portrayal of sadomasochistic activity between her and Mr Astley – I later learned he had been a ‘British venture capitalist’ – intrigued. Yet since nothing more happened in that respect, it was soon forgotten, until she eloped with him at the close. Presumably he had co-opted her, as venture capitalists do. Ultimately, then, Sellars’s concept seemed to be anticapitalist-cum-environmentalist, yet also to an extent a critique of that world of protest, Alexey hardly turning out to be a role model. It was difficult not to feel that Dostoevsky’s existentialism – Prokofiev’s too – was not more fitting, more interesting. Yet, since this mysterious world of ‘sole traders’ had barely impinged on my consciousness during the performance, it did not much matter either. I had witnessed obsession, social climbing, self-destruction, and the rest, and it had largely made sense. Sellars’s Personenregie, then, had worked well, whatever one thought (or noticed) of his concept. 

That was doubtless also testimony to the strength of the cast. I have never seen or heard a performance in which Sean Panikkar has failed to excel, and this was no exception. He truly inhabited as actor as well as singer the role of Alexey, providing the focus of the work and duly engaging our sympathies. Asmik Grigorian, here far more at home than in Strauss’s Four Last Songs the previous morning, sang gorgeously as a wilful, spirited, and ultimately enigmatic Polina. Peixin Chen’s stentorian General also offered a fascinating character study in personal weakness, not necessarily the easiest combination to bring off. Juan Francisco’s wheedling Marquis, Michael Arivony’s clever, apparently trustworthy Mr Astley, Nicole Chirka’s alluring yet shallow Blanche, and others all offered sharp characterisation. Perhaps needless to say, Violeta Urmana’s Babulenka stole the show; it is in the nature of work and role, yet hers was nonetheless a towering performance, rich-toned, impulsive, and finely characterised.    

It was doubtless no coincidence that, at the point of her arrival, the general temperature of the musical performance shot upwards. Again, that is in the nature of the work, but it seemed also to act as a spur to Timur Zangiev and the Vienna Philharmonic in the pit. A greater sharpness was to be heard, Prokofiev’s motor rhythms acquiring greater force, achieving greater impact. There was also, though, an ineffably human tenderness not only to be perceived, but to be moved by. Prokofiev’s lyricism proved the increasingly prominent obverse of the existential-dramatic coin.

The Gambler, Royal Opera, 11 February 2010

Royal Opera House, Covent Garden

(sung in English translation)

General – Sir John Tomlinson
Polina – Angela Denoke
Alexey Ivanovitch – Roberto Saccà
Babulenka – Susan Bickley
Marquis – Kurt Streit
Blanche – Jurgita Adamonytė
Mr Astley – Mark Stone
Prince Nilski – John Easterlin
Baron Würmerhelm – Jeremy White
Baroness Würmerheim – Emma Bernard
Potapytsch – Dawid Kimberg
Casino Director – Graeme Danby
First Croupier – Hubert Francis
Second Croupier – Robert Anthony Gardiner
Gaudy Lady – Simona Mihai
Pale Lady – Elisabeth Meister
Dubious Old Lady – Elisabeth Sikora
Lady Comme Ci, Comme Ça – Carol Rowlands
Venerable Lady – Kai Rüütel
Rash Gambler – Jeffrey Lloyd-Roberts
Hypochondriac Gambler – Steven Ebel
Hunchback Gambler – Alasdair Elliott
Aged Gambler – John Cunningham
Six Gamblers – Luke Price, Andrew O’Connor, John Bernays, Jonathan Coad, Olle Zetterström, Michael Lessiter
Fat Englisman – David Woloszko
Tall Englishman – Lukas Jakobski

Richard Jones (director)
Antony McDonald (set designs)
Nicky Gillibrand (costume designs)
Mimi Jordan Sherin (lighting)
Sarah Fahie (movement)

The Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Renato Balsadonna)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Antonio Pappano (conductor)

The Royal Opera’s new production of The Gambler seems to me close to an unqualified success. This is the company’s first production of what is, save for juvenilia, Prokofiev’s first opera: sadly, not an unusual state of affairs, since it was only a couple of years previously that I had seen the Berlin premiere under Daniel Barenboim, in a fine production by Dmitri Tcherniakov. Only produced once during the composer’s lifetime, there is certainly no good reason to shun Prokofiev’s Dostoyevsky opera now, for it is one of his strongest stage works, as Richard Jones, Antonio Pappano, and an excellent cast demonstrated.

The action is updated to what resembles the inter-war period, so the time of the 1929 Brussels premiere, though I suppose it could be the time of composition, during the previous decade. One might, if one were so minded, question how credible that makes some details of the plot but it works well and looks good taken in itself, and the work is not in any especially meaningful sense tied to a particular period. Antony Macdonald’s designs splendidly evoke the cosmopolitan but empty world of Roulettenbourg’s hotel, whilst Nicky Gillibrand’s costumes permit the eye to assist the ear in the delineation of what can sometimes be rather fleeting characterisation, minor characters coming and going in Prokofiev’s finely observed vignettes. One of Jones’s extra touches is to set the first act in an adjoining zoo, rather than a park. Ideas of animal behaviour and of caging – and a wonderful turn for a performing seal (not real!) – nicely sets up the world we shall explore more fully. Likewise the framing device of the CASINO sign in front of the curtain at the beginning of each of the four acts. Given the recent wrecking acts of what some people curiously term the ‘financial services industry,’ these ideas could hardly be more topical, yet temptation to agitprop, should Jones indeed have felt any, is firmly resisted.

The musical pacing was sometimes just a little fitful during the first two acts. I do not wish to exaggerate, but there were occasions when Prokofiev’s motor rhythms seemed to follow the singers, rather than drive them as they should. There was no such problem following the interval: perhaps partly a consequence of the composer’s ratcheting up the tension, but also a sign that Pappano felt more able to reconcile his colouristic revelations with that increased rhythmic drive so necessary to the depiction of intensified gambling addiction. The more the orchestra was given its head, the better, and the players were certainly on excellent form, revelling in Prokofiev’s virtuosic scoring. For its brief appearance, the chorus was on equally excellent form.

Roberto Saccà captured the difficult balance between Alexey’s weakness of character and his increasing determination. Character progression was also finely observed in Angela Denoke’s Polina, a rounded and, by the end, moving portrayal. Sir John Tomlinson’s inimitable way was well suited to the General; whatever his flaws, one could not help but sympathise. Jurgita Adamonytė and Kurt Streit captured the rootless world of the international demi-monde in their Blanche and Marquis, without resorting to the seductive prospect of the mere stock character. It was, perhaps unsusprisingly, Susan Bickley’s Babulenka who stole the show: a consequence of the role, doubtless, but also of this wonderful artist’s musico-dramatic skills and commitment. Stefania Toczyska had made an equally commanding impression in Berlin; when Babulenka arrives, the clock should stop, as it did on both of those occasions. She sees through the ghastly array of hangers-on and ensures with style that the General will not inherit a sou, whilst movingly evoking the Mother Russia to which she returns. Other characters come and go – this is not a criticism, but an observation of how the opera works – but special mention might go to Mark Stone’s enigmatic Mr Astley, a lynchpin and yet not, and Carol Rowlands’s telling Lady Comme Ci, Comme Ça: concerned or detached, who knows?

My sole cavil relates to the decision to perform the work in English: very much the director’s decision, according to Tomlinson, in the interview he gave me a few days earlier. I can see the arguments in favour, not least the speed of conversation. And I am sure that Tomlinson is right to observe that the Russian language does not have time to colour the music in the way that it does, say, in Mussorgsky. But the sound of the words is very different and nothing can quite compensate for that, even for a non-Russian speaker such as myself. Though diction was generally very good and in some cases, such as Tomlinson’s utterly beyond reproach, one inevitably must consult the surtitles from time and time, in which case one might as well have the sound of the original. In addition, the titles did not always keep pace with the delivery of the words: a little confusing. Nevertheless, this was in most respects a fine achievement, for which three cheers should go to the Royal Opera.

Interview with Sir John Tomlinson, Royal Opera House, 8 February 2010

Fresh from a morning rehearsal of Prokofiev’s The Gambler, playing the part of the General, and an interview with the BBC, Sir John Tomlinson kindly took time out to speak to me in his Covent Garden dressing room about The Gambler and other aspects of his career. Almost universally considered the greatest Wotan of his generation, it was perhaps inevitable and certainly welcome that the conversation would turn to Wagner, taking in Bluebeard and Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau along the way. I began by saying how delighted I was that The Gambler, Prokofiev’s first completed opera, save for some juvenilia, was coming to the Royal Opera House, the only other time I had seen it being in Berlin a couple of years ago.

JT: Oh yes, under Barenboim.

MB: That’s right, with an almost exclusively Russian cast.

JT: And in Russian, of course.

MB: So I imagine it will sound quite different on this occasion.

JT: Yes, they made a decision to sing it in English this time, because it’s a very wordy piece. It’s a work that is very conversational, with lots of text, and they think it’s important that everyone on stage and in the audience understands every word that’s being said, in the interests of being good theatre. Richard Jones [the director] was, I think, the man who wanted it in English. So it seems to be going pretty well, and you get more of a theatrical feeling this way in the vernacular.

MB: And particularly with a cast that is largely non-Russian, I can imagine that this might help their communication to the audience.

JT: Yes. I’ve actually sung a lot in Russian: Boris Godunov, Pimen, and Khovanshchina. But for this piece, I think there’s a very good case for doing it in the vernacular, because it’s a very fast-moving piece with all these motor rhythms [cue a brief vocal demonstration]. And the Russian language really comes into its own when you have those great sustained passages [cue a brief excerpt from Boris].

MB: Yes, you need to hear it in those works in which almost every other words is Slava [Glory], the Boris Coronation Scene and so on. If you didn’t know what the word meant before, you soon would…

JT: Whereas here, I don’t think the language has time to colour the piece, in a way.

MB: And at this time, Prokofiev’s style is to a certain extent more cosmopolitan.

JT: Well, I’m actually quite surprised by the amount of Russianness in the score: a very impressive score, the orchestration, for example.

MB: Yes, it can be quite stunning; it makes me think of the early piano concertos.

JT: Very virtuoso, almost depicting a gambling addiction. There is incredible energy…

MB: … which can’t really be done slowly.

JT: There’s gambling, there’s love – obsessive love relationships – and high-flying society, spending all the money.

MB: And just thinking about Prokofiev’s style at this time, the vocal writing is very declamatory, isn’t it? That was certainly his stated aim. Does that then present any issues, given that you are performing it in translation, or does English actually lend itself quite well to this?

JT: Yes, I think it works well. And of course, it was first done in French. I never have actually sung this piece in Russian. I did it twenty-seven years ago at the Coliseum, for ENO, in English, in a David Pountney production. And so, whilst I’ve done the opera before, it’s a reasonably long time ago.

MB: Yes, a decent break. I was reading beforehand what Prokofiev had to say when he was writing the music, when it was first going to be performed for the abortive Mariinsky premiere, interrupted by the Revolution, amongst other things, and he is very contemptuous of pretty much every aspect of operatic convention. What he perhaps sends up in The Love for Three Oranges he seems to want to fight against here. Does that come across in the work?

JT: Well, yes, it’s a very theatrical work: there’s no grand opera in it at all. There’s no aria or anything approaching an aria.

MB: You couldn’t really have a disc of highlights. In fact, his Four Portraits and Denouement from the work had to be assembled in an odd way: ripping up pages from the score and ‘dealing’ them, since there were no numbers to extract conventionally.

JT: No, I don’t think you could take excerpts. My big scene is like a mad scene really, without the flute obbligato [as in Lucia di Lammermoor]…

MB: ... or the glass harmonica, as seems to be the new big thing.

JT: That’s right. But you need a lot of voice for this, it’s a bit role in that sense; it’s a big score, with a lot of decibels. So you need a voice with a lot of muscle in it. And you need very clear words and very pure vowel sounds. You need energy too: vocal energy, vocal muscle. It’s written for quite a big part; it’s not a walk in the park.

MB: And it’s a huge cast too.

JT: Well, there’s only really actually half a dozen main characters, but then there’s a million smaller parts.

MB: Having looked down the cast list, they all seem to be taken by different people too, which must make putting the opera on pretty expensive.

JT: It probably does.

MB: It’s certainly not often staged, is it?

JT: It’s a very good piece too. Written by Prokofiev and based on this great book by Dostoyevsky. But it’s an odd piece, a bit of an oddball; it’s unique.

MB: It doesn’t really fit into any of our ready-made opera categories.

JT: There’s something of Pelléas et Mélisande, sometimes, that I hear, and also of course some Russian music, Mussorgsky and so on.

MB: Unavoidable.

JT: And I also hear some Bartók, some of Bluebeard’s Castle.

MB: Which you’ve sung quite often?

JT: Many times, yes.

MB: In Hungarian and in English.

JT: In Hungarian, yes. Oh, and of course, I did do a recording in English. I’ve done more recordings of Bluebeard than any other piece. One with the Berlin Philharmonic and Bernard Haitink, one with [the] Munich [Philharmonic] and James Levine, one for Chandos in English, basically the Opera North set-up, and another from the Proms, with [Jukka-Pekka] Saraste conducting. It’s such a wonderful piece. And I think one of the reasons it’s recorded so much is because it lasts about the length of a CD.

MB: And also, it seems to me, it loses so little by being recorded, by being listened to at home. If anything, the imagination is better at producing it than anything one could hope to materialise on stage. The opening of those doors is almost bound to be a disappointment in the theatre, unless one tries something extremely inventive, not at all obvious.

JT: It’s almost not a real opera; it’s half-way there, a bit like La Damnation de Faust. Whereas this [The Gambler] needs the theatre.

MB: Just to realise what’s going on; it all happens so quickly.

JT: It needs a great director.

MB: And actually, although this is a wholly different piece, though written not so long before, the situation is not wholly unlike that of Rosenkavalier. I remember when, as a teenager, I first listened to the work on CD, I thought it wonderful, but I didn’t really have a sense of what it might be like in the theatre; for one thing, the dialogue passes so quickly. I needed to see it in the theatre before I could really appreciate Karajan and Schwarzkopf.

JT: Yes, I can understand that. Some friends who listened today have likened the General to Baron Ochs. It’s similar, I suppose, in one sense that Ochs is the one character in my normal repertoire – you know, Wotan, Gurnemanz, Hagen – which is not huge in dramatic terms. Ochs is a wonderful acting part.

MB: I saw you in Munich in the role, a couple of years ago [see here].

JT: With Felicity Lott, possibly, was it?

MB: I don’t think it was [racking brains]. Oh yes, I remember, it was Angela Denoke, whom I saw a few minutes before coming in here. She’s playing Polina, isn’t she?

JT: Yes, she is. I think it might well have been her in Munich.

MB: And, of course, in that venerable Otto Schenk production, the one Carlos Kleiber conducted.

JT: With Jürgen Rose’s designs. So in a way, it’s the same sort of character to play, the same sort of world as Ochs’s, I suppose. But it’s different, too. Ochs loves life; he loves women; he loves having lots of women. The General is besotted with Blanche; he loves Blanche; he adores her. And he’s not a multiple ladies’ man. He’s been married a couple of times and is now completely enamoured of Blanche. And that’s what makes him go mad in the end: the lack of money. He loses all of his money. Blanche then goes on to the next rich man; she very much latches on to him.

MB: Really the demi-mondaine.

JT: Yes, as is the Marquis, who’s lending all the money. And my credit-worthiness depends upon the fact that my mother-in-law is going to die any minute. There’s a comedy element there.

MB: It’s actually a similar world to that of Lulu, particularly the beginning of the third act, with the buying and selling of Jungfrau shares.

JT: And, just to return to Rosenkavalier, there’s the similarity in terms of money. The whole story for Ochs is based on him marrying Sophie, so that he gets lots of money. He needs the money so that he can save Lerchenau, which is mortgaged up to the hilt. So there is that. And also, in the end, Ochs is undone and he’s sent packing. In this, the General’s world falls apart, so there is a similarity there.

MB: In a way, whenever the works are set, this seems a world that comes into its own very much in the twentieth century.

JT: And now, too. It’s wonderful: they’ve changed one world from Rothschild to Goldman Sachs. It’s incredibly topical: banking.
MB: We can’t open a newspaper at the moment without coming across the phrase, ‘casino capitalism’, and here this is, set in a casino.

JT: Another thing, just while I think of it: the animals in the production, this Richard Jones production. The first scene, instead of being in a park, is in a zoo, attached to the hotel. So you have the hotel, and part of the complex, a ‘leisure complex’, you have the zoo too. In a way, there’s an analogy between the people and the animals – and a lot of people are wearing furs. And there are the gamblers: the bear market and the bull market. There’s a strong connection between the behaviour of the animals and the behaviour of the people.

MB: And perhaps a sense that everyone is caged in some way by the dictates of capital?

JT: Yes, exactly, so it’s quite an interesting set up.

MB: And a very witty director.

JT: He’s a wonderful director. We’ve rehearsed for weeks – this is a seven-week rehearsal period – and it’s all been so detailed, even to the level of every brushstroke on the floor at the hotel: it’s almost choreographed. Not too much, not too little; not so much as to upstage anyone, but even so… Great concentration, this requires: it takes a long time.

MB: And you sang in his Ring here, of course.

JT: I did. I had a wonderful time. Of course, it was very controversial.

MB: I wonder whether it would be now. My suspicion is that it would be much less so now, because what audiences are used to has changed enormously over that time.

JT: But then, even in the ’90s, audiences were used to a lot of adventurous things, but perhaps it came a decade too early. If he did it now, who knows?

MB: I was an undergraduate at the time, and I remember coming down to London just for Götterdämmerung; it was actually the first time I had come to Covent Garden. And I thought it was amazing.

JT: Ah, you saw Brünnhilde with a paper bag over her head.

MB: Yes, a very powerful image. And yet I had seen it mocked by press critics, who seemed so extraordinarily reactionary and literalist in their attitudes – not all of them, but quite a few. I thought it was a very powerful way of registering the terrible shame she feels in the second act.

JT: People get really hung up on this business of updating productions. You know, there are good productions and bad productions. There’s good updating and bad updating. There’s good conventional and bad conventional. Perhaps there’s nothing worse than a bad conventional production, which is somehow nothing.

MB: The Zeffirelli sort of thing at the Met, where ‘patrons’ applaud the scenery.

JT: Yes. But this is an updated production and it’s a wonderful production. When I do these fundraising talks – we had one last week – there are always questions about: how do you get on with ‘modern productions’? People have really got a thing about that.

MB: A strange idea, that there is some thing, in inverted commas, called a ‘modern production’.

JT: And they’re not the same. Of course you get bad modern productions, but you get wonderful ones.

MB: And so much, it seems to me, depends on the sense of theatre a director has. He can bend the work to his will, he can penetrate to its heart, he can almost do what he likes, if he has a sense of theatre – and, of course, a sense of music, which, sadly, happens less often. Then he can make it work.

JT: A great director is worth his weight in gold – like a great conductor.

MB: Speaking of which, in the Ring, you had Haitink.

JT: Yes. But there were a lot of problems there too. Haitink and Jones didn’t see eye to eye. Bernard basically closed his eyes and conducted gorgeously. But here, Pappano and Jones are very much of one mind.

MB: They’ve worked together quite often, haven’t they?

JT: Yes, in Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, for instance, when I played a particularly gruesome character, eating those mushrooms with rat poison.

MB: And Shostakovich, of course, is very different from Prokofiev, isn’t he? Quite different temperaments.

JT: Yes, same country, but quite different. And when was that written? It was written after this, wasn’t it?

MB: Yes, the 1930s, the height of Stalin’s terror. There was the terrible Pravda editorial after Stalin attended the premiere.

JT: I don’t think he liked the scene with the rat poisoning, as a dictator.

MB: Looking over his shoulder and paranoid to begin with… Just to go back to the Ring, I saw Götterdämmerung here, and then went to the whole cycle at the Albert Hall, which was my first time for a cycle. I was utterly bowled over.

JT: A lot of people were bowled over. All these theatrical awards I won were from a performance not in the theatre.

MB: There’s a wonderful irony to that.

JT: Yes. I won the Evening Standard award, the Royal Philharmonic Society award, various others: all for a performance that was not in the theatre. But of course, it was sort of staged – and, at its best, that can be more intensely theatrical. It can be.

MB: Partly, I suppose, because there’s less to watch: no scenery certainly. So gesture, in a way as Wagner had hoped, becomes so much more telling.

JT: It becomes incredibly crystallised, incredibly economic.

MB: Another thing I remember, though perhaps now it is a side issue, is the end: what was so terribly moving was Haitink then speaking directly to the audience and asking for help. I fired off my letter to the Secretary of State the following morning, not that I imagine it made the slightest bit of difference.

JT: This place was in the doldrums.

MB: Nobody knew what was going to happen, whether it would survive – and there was this truly great musical performance.

JT: It was terribly worrying. One forgets.

MB: And it’s not that long ago.

JT: No, ten years.

MB: But presumably, it must feel like a completely different world.

JT: It does. Yes, as soon as the new place opened, within a couple of years, we were onto a different momentum altogether. But I think Jeremy Isaacs is treated a bit unfairly here. It was an incredibly difficult situation. They had to close, for safety reasons. Where was the money going to come from? How do you raise the money? Planning permission: the local Covent Garden community were up in arms about this development; they were protesting on the street. It was a really difficult situation. Money was such a problem.

MB: And giving money to the Royal Opera House is unlikely ever to be a popular cause, especially given the tabloid press here, and of course a New Labour government.

JT: But they succeeded in getting all that money – and look at this development [pointing out of the window]. It’s just perfect: a real home for the company. Always we seem to come back to Wagner though. Of course, Wagner is a magnificent composer: the music is incredible. Whatever other music I do, coming back to Wagner is like coming home. And I think it suits what in particular I’ve got to give: my voice, probably the way my mind works as well. I think it all fits very well with the North European mythology, the way the whole thing is psychologically constructed. It all feels like a completely natural expression of the human condition in a way.

MB: Never more so than in the character of Wotan, but in the Ring as a whole. Every time I return to it, I find so much more than I had found before. It never ends – unlike the gods. So compared to that, Gurnemanz must seem like a bit of a break for you.

JT: In a way. The thing about him is that he’s a narrator.

MB: He doesn’t actually do anything.

JT: The story would take place without him.

MB: I suppose we wouldn’t really know what the story was, but it would take place.

JT: Exactly, whereas Wotan is absolutely the centre. It’s about Wotan from start to finish. When he loses his eye drinking at the Well of Wisdom, when he makes the spear from the World-Ash Tree: that’s the beginning of the story. And the end, the World-Ash, Valhalla burn: that’s the end of the gods.

MB: And in a way, he’s never more present than in Götterdämmerung. You hear him all the time in the music, even though he is never on stage.

JT: He’s there, just waiting in Valhalla. And everybody talks about him. The Norns talk about him; the Norns talk about the end of the gods. They talk about Wotan at the beginning, the beginning of Wotan, and the end that is to come. Then Waltraute comes on and talks about him, thinking with a smile of Brünnhilde. And at the very end, when the ring goes back to the Rhine, due to what Brünnhilde does, perhaps that smile will come again: a smile of acceptance, of love. It’s his dying moment.
MB: And there is the moment in the Immolation Scene when she seems to come to terms with him, singing ‘Ruhe, ruhe, du Gott’: a benediction, in which she puts the god to rest: a coming to terms from the two of them.

JT: It is. Just about…

MB: There’s the element of doubt, too: has she rid herself of her anger?

JT: She just about understands the predicament that he was in.

MB: She says that she’s not wise, but she sort of understands… Have you ever, then, been in a production in which what Wagner wanted to happen actually does, when one sees the gods in Valhalla as it burns? I’m sure I have never seen that on stage: not that one necessarily should, but I can imagine it could have quite an effect, a cyclical effect even.

JT: No, I haven’t: not the gods, but Valhalla. Though in the [Harry] Kupfer production [at Bayreuth, available on DVD], Wotan comes back in the Funeral March, throwing the spear back into the hole. Now purists object to that, because one of the Norns says that, to create the fire that consumes Valhalla at the end, Wotan plunges the spear into Loge’s breast. But, you know, that’s neither here nor there really: it’s powerful theatre.

MB: Which is what really matters, whilst others miss the forest for the sake of a spear from a single tree.

The Gambler opens on Thursday 11 February at 7.30pm and runs until February 25th. Ticket prices are especially enticing, with even the most expensive seats costing only £50. Further details are available from The Royal Opera's Box Office (Telephone: 020 7304 4000) or online here.

The Gambler, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 23 March 2008

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

General – Vladimir Ognovenko
Polina – Kristine Opolais
Alexei – Misha Didyk
Baulen’ka – Stefania Toczyska
Marquis – Stephan Rügamer
Blanche – Sylvia de la Muela
Mr Astley –Viktor Rud
Prince Nilski – Gian-Luca Pasolini
Baron Wurmerhelm – Alessandro Paliaga
Potapytsch – Plamen Kumpikov
Casino Director – Gleb Nikolsky
First Croupier – Gregory Bonfatti
Second Croupier – Robert Hebenstrett
(plus other gamblers, etc.)

Dmitri Tcherniakov (producer, designs, costumes)
Elena Zaitseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)

Staatskapelle Berlin
Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

This was not quite the Berlin première of Prokofiev’s first completed opera, which had taken place a few days previously, but the second performance came close enough. It does Daniel Barenboim and the Staatsoper Unter den Linden great credit that, not only should they have undertaken such an important task, but that it should have formed the centrepiece of the company’s 2008 Festtage. Barenboim clearly believes in the work, for it receives a co-production with La Scala, again under his baton. Such commitment was triumphantly vindicated by a fine performance and production. During the first act, there were occasions when I wondered whether this might be a work more compelling musically than dramatically, but my doubts soon disappeared. The Gambler might not be quite so consistently gripping as The Fiery Angel, but it is a fine work, which deserves far greater exposure. It was given here, as has almost always been the case, from the first performance onwards, in its second, revised version, completed in 1928.

Barenboim and the Staatskapelle Berlin were on top form throughout, banishing memories of their somewhat disappointing Meistersinger. The orchestra proved fully equal to Prokofiev’s sometimes strenuous demands, unleashing a kaleidoscopic riot of colours. Rhythmic precision was impeccable, as was the inexorable forward narrative drive of the score. Where a few days before, the orchestra had sometimes sounded carelessly loud, little concerned with the events on stage, here orchestra, conductor, and soloists proved that good singers are perfectly capable of making themselves heard over considerable volume from the pit, so long as musical understanding is present and apparent. There was never any doubt that Barenboim was a sure guide, both to details and to the greater structure. We should hear more of him in Russian repertoire: a Tchaikovsky Sixth last summer was nothing short of magnificent.

The huge cast was very strong; I could not name a single weak link. Everyone seemed to appreciate the particular demands of Prokofiev’s declamatory style, which once may have seemed ‘anti-operatic,’ but like that of Mussorgsky or Janáček, with whom Prokofiev has much in common, now sounds unforcedly naturalistic. Misha Didyk displayed not only great stamina in the title role, but an exemplary command of musical line and subtlety in deployment of his considerable vocal resources. Likewise Kristine Opolais as his beloved Polina. Both could act too. Sylvia de la Muela put in a splendid turn, as much acted as sung, as the demi-mondaine Blanche, callously and casually deserting Vladimir Ognovenko’s carefully-observed General when the money ran out. Stephan Rügamer also judged to a tee his fair-weather friend act as the Marquis. A truly stage-stopping moment came with the arrival of Stefania Toczyska in the guise of Baulen’ka, come to disabuse the General of the imminence – or indeed possibility – of his inheritance. Here one felt one was truly in the presence of a star, albeit a star playing a role rather than presenting herself, as too often can be the case in the operatic world. Toczyska exhibited great vocal power, often commendably held in reserve, but also considerable thoughtfulness in her projection and modulation; her exchanges with Polina were genuinely heartfelt. Baulen’ka’s retinue of servants was powerfully directed to enhance her imperious majesty.

Here, as in much else, Dmitri Tcherniakov’s production was of great assistance, working closely with the musical performance. For instance, the climactic gambling scene in the fourth act was simply stunning in terms of its integration of a myriad of solo voices into a quasi-choral whole, without ever sacrificing the sense of this being a multiplicity of individuals. But equally powerful – and impossible to dissociate from the musical direction – was Tcherniakov’s careful direction of each of these individuals, once again in some sense part of an emerging mass, but never just that. The various non-singing actors throughout added a sense of place and ongoing activity, without seeming gratuitous, as can so often be the case in such situations. Tcherniakov’s designs were equally impressive. Most of the action took place in what I suspect would modishly be termed a ‘design hotel’, its modern, stylish business setting the perfect foil for the financial dealings taking place. The casino itself in the fourth act imparted a due sense of extravagance, but at the service of the drama rather than for its own sake. One could well understand, after the madness of this scene, why Polina would ultimately reject Alexei’s winnings, and thus why the opera takes the course it does. This, then, was a powerfully conceived performance at every level; it served Prokofiev’s drama very well indeed.