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| © Christian Leiber / OnP |
Opéra Bastille, Paris
Hans Sachs – Gerald Finley
Veit Pogner – Günther
Groissböck
Kunz Vogelgsang – Dietmar
Kerschbaum
Konrad Nachtigall – Ralf Lukas
Sixtus Beckmesser – Bo Skovhus
Fritz Kothner – Michael Kraus
Balthasar Zorn – Martin Homrich
Ulrich Eißlinger – Stefan
Heibach
Augustin Moser – Robert Wörle
Hermann Ortel – Miljenko Turk
Hans Schwarz – Panajotis
Iconomou
Hans Foltz – Roman Astakhov
Walther von Stolzing – Brandon
Jovanovich
David – Toby Spence
Eva – Julia Kleiter
Magdalena – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Night-watchman – Andreas Bauer
Stefan Herheim (director)
Heike Scheele (set designs)
Gesine Völlm (costumes)
Olaf Freese (original lighting,
realised by Phoenix (Andreas Hofer) and Stefan Herheim)
Martin Kern (video)
Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach (dramaturgy)
Choruses of the Opéra National de Paris (chorus master: José Luis Basso)
Orchestra of the Opéra National de Paris
Philippe Jordan (conductor)
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Rehearsal picture, Stefan Herheim centre stage as director
© Elena Bauer / OnP |
My experience in the theatre of
Die Meistersinger has not always have been happy. There are, of course, the great might-have-beens: Pierre Boulez, who
expressed a desire on several occasions to conduct the work, a wish never
granted, and what might have happened in Paris under Gerard Mortier, who,
disappointed in the chorus at his disposal, felt it impossible to do so.
Whatever the justice of Mortier’s judgement, the present-day strength of choral
singing at Stéphane Lissner’s Paris Opéra, as heard first of all in Moses und Aron, means that is no longer a difficulty. José Luis Basso’s work
as chorus master is clearly paying off; the chorus was outstanding throughout. Then there are the disappointing – or worse
than that – productions and performances; let us pass over them here in silence,
without so much as a link. Stefan Herheim’s production, first seen in Salzburg in 2013, was of course anything but a disappointment then; now, extensively
rethought, it is, I think, better still. It is difficult in so busy a spectacle
to know, at least in some cases, what has been changed and what one simply
missed. I shall largely refrain, then, from comparisons with respect to staging
and simply recount what I saw on this occasion. Comparisons with respect to
performance largely favour Paris; I shall come to those later.
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| © Christian Leiber / OnP |
We begin in Hans Sachs’s
nineteenth-century workshop. A key feature of Wagner’s Romantic conception of
Sachs and indeed of Nuremberg relates to overcoming division of labour – or, the
more cynical, perhaps Marxist, commentator might respond, never having reached
it in the first place. Yet Marx and Engels too, had their poetic flight of
fancy in a celebrated passage in The
German Ideology: ‘in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive
sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, … it
[is] possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the
morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after
dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman,
shepherd, or critic.’ Wagner and Herheim portray Sachs in more post-Nazarene
fashion. But he remains a polymath and, more than that, a rebuke to involuntary
specialisation; he cobbles, he writes verse, he sings, he paints too, and so
forth. Here, he also dreams, and with that Herheim reminds us of Schopenhauer,
of Freud, of fairy tales, and of course of the centrality of dreams to the work
‘itself’. And when he dreams, objects in his workshop grow, Nutcracker-Christmas-Tree-style; or is
it that he and the characters of his dreams shrink? There is certainly a strong
sense in the Bastille amphitheatre, its scale perhaps more helpful visually
than acoustically, of toy-town, even before the toys come out to play.
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| © Vincente Pontet / OnP |
And so, the Prelude over, the
curtain once again drawn back, the back of the writing desk – crucial, of
course, to any poet, and what a gorgeous writing desk this is! – has become the
church and indeed municipal organ. The green of the surface has become the
arena for contest, never more so than in the remarkable agon – intensified, I think, from Salzburg, in very interesting
ways – between Walther and Beckmesser. I thought there – but a personal train
of thought, of course, yet the openness of Herheim’s approach permits such
flights of association – of our own College Green in Westminster. Here, an
undeniably charismatic Beckmesser – now that is a way to have him taken
seriously, for which both Herheim and Bo Skovhus should take credit – had to
fight for the backing of the Masters, initially enraptured by Walther’s song.
They swayed, literally and metaphorically. Such seemed a contest as political
as it was æsthetic, and we are of course very much in the realm of Walter
Benjamin’s æstheticisation of politics, an idea which did not spring from
nowhere but was very much rooted in ideas which, if not Wagner’s as such, were
similar and historically related. We all know, sadly, where they could lead –
and what role Nuremberg would come to play. It is up to us whether we dwell on
that, but it would surely be wrong not even to think about it. (Memories of Herheim’s Berlin Lohengrin demand our
attention; so do those of Peter Konwitschny’s darker staging of the same work.) Dancing in concentric
circles around Walther, even after Beckmesser’s apparently successful intervention,
the Masters and, in front of them, the Apprentices, might yet decide in either
direction. They look outwards, though, not at Walther; are they looking at us?
I think not, but perhaps they do. It is certainly not a benign scene, whatever
its prettiness-on-steroids; the violence, just about sublimated, when Sachs
comes close to striking Beckmesser is shocking.
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| © Vincente Pontet / OnP |
What of the absorbing surface?
My goodness, it is beautiful, at least in inverted commas, but that perhaps
implies undue cynicism rather than multivalency and dialectics. The play-acting
is unmistakeable. Let us remember that the nineteenth-century German monarchies
as they stood were not ancient, far from it; they certainly laid no claim to
Sachs’s Nuremberg. Nor, famously, does Wagner’s score, speaking of Bach:
another century, another style, unless, perhaps, one counts Luther as a
sublated participant too. Bavaria as it stood when Wagner wrote his work ‘for’
Munich had only been a kingdom since 1806; much of its territory was very newly
acquired. Yet Maximilians and Ludwigs played alternating or rather intricately
interconnected æsthetic games of modernisation and mediævalism. Franconia and
Nuremberg were – here are – some of the pieces involved. The post-1815
Restoration here seems extended, perhaps as far as the time of composition;
there is both clarity and obscurity in the minutely observed designs (wonderful
work by Herheim collaborators, Heike Scheele and Gesine Völlm). Walther in noble
regalia and heightened blondness looks the part; Ludwig II would surely have
swooned. He is a peacock, and he knows – or at least wants to suggest he knows –
how to wield a sword.
Books feature heavily. In the
first act, Des Knaben Wunderhorn
proves our Romantic inspiration. Towering above the characters, the giant
volume is opened, to reveal, as such volumes often do, pressed flowers. They
come to life; they are visual instantiations of David’s tones. In the second
act, it is the Brothers Grimm, and it is their ‘characters’ who come to life,
incite and participate in the Prügelfuge.
Red Riding Hood as you have never quite seen her – or maybe you have, in your
imagination, perhaps earlier in your life than you would care to admit or even
to remember – is perhaps first among equals here. There is madness, delusion,
illusion – let us say Wahn aplenty –
in this dream of Sachs. What, however, are we to make of the part of the original
workshop set, stage left, which shrinks in none of the three acts? There is a
painting on the wall – not to be identified with the painting of Eva at which
he has been at work in the third act, when, in the cold light of day, normal ‘size’
is resumed – and we might speculate about the nature of its young woman (or Jungfrau?) Perhaps more intriguingly,
though, there is a puppet theatre. When Eva and Walther take refuge, it is
there. They are playing roles; and someone, of course, is the puppet-master. The
theatre is luxurious, like what we can see of Pogner’s house and its decor; one
can imagine it, them, in the Louvre’s nineteenth-century galleries, or indeed
in a Wittelsbach or Hohenzollern Schloss.
The damask luxury has a touch of the absurd, to it, though, not unlike Wagner’s
fabled – too fabled – pink silk. Wagner’s
bust at this point remains out of sight, although other old German masters may
be seen, in different sizes, from time to time. The puppet play of Herheim’s Lohengrin may again be
instructive here.
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| © Christian Leiber / OnP |
Meister Wagner comes into play
properly in the third act, as does Sachs’s workshop in what seems now to be
reality – although the conclusion will throw that all into disarray. Dreams,
memories and interpretations of them, have a habit of doing so; the unconscious
was not invented by Romanticism, but it was certainly placed centre stage, as
it is by Herheim. So is Wagner, and in what is now surely an act of defiance
against fashionable denigration or at least scepticism, all will bow before him
in the final scene. (Again, though, I should remind you that Herheim has a
final card up his sleeve, to which we shall come shortly.) There has, moreover,
been no one single book in play here; rather, for the festivities, Sachs’s
library, or part of it, has grown in size, so we may take our pick. Liberty or
licence? There is danger in the very question, as the determinedly anti-liberal
Wagner knew very well. Wagner’s work, even its stage directions, is acutely
observed. The Master’s banners even have harps: resplendent, again a little too
resplendent. Less trivially, although nothing in Wagner is really trivial, the
moment of devastation earlier in the act, when the triangle between Sachs, Eva,
and Walther is revealed has never moved, never wounded me so. Rent asunder,
Sachs and Eva have never seemed so real a prospect; rarely, however, have
Walther and Eva. One senses her plight as a plaything – however we try to dress
it up, her father’s idea is monstrous; she is a bartered bride – but it is
unclear whether Wagner or Herheim is actually indicting the situation. We must
make up our own minds; there is something truly Shakespearean here about the
lack of judgement being forced upon us.
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| © Vincente Pontet / OnP |
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| © Vincente Pontet / OnP |
All good, and bad, things must
come to an end, however. Everything starts to unravel with Sachs’s shocking
refusal to shake Beckmesser’s proffered hand. He has been humiliated, bruised
in every sense, and yet seems willing to meet Sachs half way. No chance, it
seems. Is Sachs actually the proto-fascist some have claimed him to be? Herheim
remains a master of theatre, however, and not just in the echt-operatic spectacle to which Wagner and he have treated us. As
the action freezes – I am sure you can guess when – the unravelling proper
gathers pace. There is another awakening – was not the visible pain Sachs had
suffered at ‘Wach auf!’ enough? – yet it is Beckmesser’s. Who has dreamed whom?
It is not Sachs who, for the final time, draws the curtain. Or is it?
My review concentrates on the
production not as an implicit denigration of the musical performances, but
because not only was it really ‘the thing’ here, it was, almost as much as
Wagner’s score, although of course springing in almost every respect from that
score, the framework for the vocal performances. Concerning Philippe Jordan’s
conducting, I wish that it had been more variegated, and thus more like the
staging itself, but one cannot have everything all the time. It was generally
light, sometimes too light, but it was more the lack of contrast that was a
problem than the somewhat strange cross between Mendelssohn and Ravel we seemed
to hear. There was no denying, however, Jordan’s fluency; again, I shall resist
the temptation to draw contrasts with a number of other conductors. Nor was
there any denying the magnificent playing of the orchestra itself. As with the Iolanta/Nutcracker double-bill two nights earlier, this
spoke of one of the great opera house orchestras of the world. What we
sometimes lacked was not only the last few ounces of grandeur, but also a real
sense of the music growing upwards from the bass line; that, however, was clearly
Jordan’s concept, which I found less than entirely convincing. Electrifying in Moses, and genuinely original in his conception, Jordan was perhaps too much the foil here; in Wagner, and in Herheim, the music enhances and is enhanced by the staging.
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| © Vincente Pontet / OnP |
The cast was generally strong.
If Daniele Gatti had convinced me more in Salzburg, the orchestra and singing
were surely superior here in Paris. Gerald Finley’s Sachs was not a
larger-than-life portrayal, and Michael Volle’s performance was unlikely to be
bettered by anyone. Finley’s intelligence, vocally, verbally, and on stage,
were in their very different way just as impressive, though; this was a Sachs
who made one think. I can hardly say better than that. Brandon Jovanovich, as I
have already said, looked the part as Walther; he sang it too, with the ease
that the role requires yet does not always receive. Again, he had one believe
in the part and think about it. So too did Skovhus’s Beckmesser, as provocative
and intelligent a rethinking as I can recall. He must have been as exhausted as
his character, yet it did not necessarily show. Julia Kleiter’s Eva was finely
sung, often reaching the calculated radiance the production imparted to her
appearance onstage. Toby Spence proved an eager David: a gift of a role, of
course, but a demanding gift nevertheless, ably supported by Wiebke Lehmkul’s
Magdalene. With a strong group of Masters, headed by Günther Groissböck and
Michael Kraus, there could be no reasonable complaints concerning the singing.
If it sometimes sounded a little distant, even small of scale, that was mostly,
I think, to be attributed to the acoustic.
If any opera, or at least any
nineteenth-century opera, is intended to have one reflect upon artistic
creation, it is surely this one. That it did, and that it did in ways novel,
remembered, and somehow both novel and remembered, even perhaps misremembered, stands
in many ways testament to a successful staging and performance. I left the
Bastille with a spring in my step, wishing only that I could see it all again, ‘so
alt und … doch so neu’.
