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.

Il trittico, Deutsche Oper, 30 September 2023

Michele – Misha Kiria
Giorgetta – Carmen Giannattasio
Luigi – Jonathan Tetelman
Il Tinca – Ya Chung-Huang
Il Talpa – Andrew Harris
La Frugola – Annika Schlicht
Song seller – Andrei Danilov
Two lovers – Lilit Davtyan, Andrei Danilov

Sister Angelica – Mané Galoyan
La Zia Principessa – Violeta Urmana
Abbess – Lauren Decker
Sister Zelatrice – Annika Schlicht
Mistress of the Novices – Davia Bouley
Sister Genovieffa – Lilit Davtyan
Sister Osmina – Stephanie Lloyd
Sister Dolcina – Gyumi Park
Nursing Sister – Arianna Manganello
Alms Sisters – Alyson Rosales, Kristina Griep
Novice – Maria Motolygina
Lay Sisters – Julie Wyma, Margarita Greiner

Gianni Schicchi – Misha Kiria
Lauretta – Mané Galoyan
Zita – Annika Schlicht
Rinuccio – Andrei Danilov
Gherardo – Burkhard Ulrich
Nella – Karola Pavone
Betto di Signa – Michael Bachtadze
Simone – Andrew Harris
Marco – Dean Murphy
La Ciesca – Arianna Manganello
Maestro Spinelloccio – Jörg Schörner
Ser Amantio di Noclao – Markus Brück
Pinellino – Christian Simmons
Guccio – Gerard Farreras
Buoso Donati – Derrick Amantidis

Pinar Karabulut (director)
Michela Flück (designs)
Teresa Vergho (costumes)
Carsten Rüger (lighting)
Dorothea Hartmann (dramaturgy)

Children’s Chorus (director: Christian Lindhorst) of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (director: Christian Lindhorst)
Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (director: Jeremy Bines)
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin
John Fiore (conductor)

IL TRITTICO von Giacomo Puccini, Premiere am 30 September 2023, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Eike Walkenhorst (Suor Angelica)

Integral performances of Puccini’s Il trittico, first seen and heard at New York’s Metropolitan Opera in 1918, have seemed to gain in popularity of late. In recent years, I have seen two different productions in London (Covent Garden and Holland Park) as well as last year’s Salzburg Festival staging. The problem is largely one of cost, I suspect: to stage three operas, with decidedly different casting requirements, in a single evening does not come cheap, even if one does what one can to share resources, human and scenic. The balance will continue to shift between treating each opera as an individual work and some sense of a greater whole, and that is no bad thing. A signal virtue of Pinar Karabulut’s new Deutsche Oper staging, of which this was the first night, is that that balance and indeed the idea of the altar triptych remain central to her conception: not in a didactic or even overtly representational way, but nonetheless so as to suggest one knows the same artist and purpose are at work. In the middle stands the explicitly (anti-)Marian Suor Angelica, ‘flanked,’ as Karabulut explains in a programme interview, by ‘the dramatic tragedy Il tabarro and the grotesque comedy Gianni Schicchi’. 

Dante informs proceedings too. Gianni Schicchi has its origins in The Divine Comedy, of course, but Karabulut and her team offer a progression that takes us from the inferno of Il tabarro, explicitly headed with the celebrated inscription, ‘Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch’intrate’. It is far from an unreasonable location for the tragedy of Michele, Giorgetta, and Luigi to unfold; indeed, one might see it as approaching self-evident. What is often given in a naturalistic, or at least highly suggestive, Parisian setting, here becomes a more fantastic, invented world, with at least a hint of science fiction to it, visited at one point by curious visitors who might be from another planet. For this is certainly not an overtly Christian or theological approach, even as we progress through purgatory to paradise; indeed, it becomes if anything less so. Suor Angelica has, quite deliberately, nothing of the Christian convent to it, although its scenic connections with what has preceded and what will follow are cleverly suggested by framing elements retained, as if we were travelling upwards within a (secularised?) theatrical cupola. It is a futuristic society, or seems to be, albeit one with a perhaps unfortunate air of colourised early Dr Who. This, at any rate, is the world from which those visitors have earlier passed through another, as they will do also in the final piece, presented as a satyr play with a vengeance. We see suggested not only an entirely female world, but one in which patriarchy may actually have been superseded, or at least set to one side. If so, its mixings seem decidedly blessed—and perhaps that is the point.

Gianni Schicchi

 

Influence of the commedia dell’arte is seen throughout, in masks, in stylisation of action, and not least in Teresa Vergho’s costumes, connecting in scarlet what she describes as ‘three veritable figures of death: Michele, the Principessa und Gianni Schicchi’. I am not sure I agree when it comes to the third figure, though it is an interesting and far from insupportable thesis. The important thing is not whether one necessarily agrees, though, but that one is led to reflect. Commedia dell’arte functions as a distancing, even alienating (pre-, yet also post-Brecht) strategy, yet proves also in its relative artificiality to provide a way in to emotional directness that avoids the sentimentality to which Puccini stagings can still fall prey. The audience certainly seemed strongly to appreciate the release offered by the final piece’s presentation, living up to Karabulut’s billing of grotesquerie. Doubtless there is a vein of puritanism in my wishing for something a little more restrained, subtle even; such matters are more related to taste than judgement, and this high degree of physicality is more a mainstay of German than English theatre. 

John Fiore stepped in at short notice as conductor, replacing an indisposed Donald Runnicles. There was no doubting, doubly impressive in the circumstances, Fiore’s knowledge of the score and his ability to communicate his reading of it to the excellent Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper. At times, though – and again I think this is mostly a matter of taste – I found the sound a little too pre-packaged: without wishing to essentialise, this seemed a rather transatlantic understanding of Puccini, made, as it were for the Met. (Fair enough, one might say, given that is precisely where the operas were made for.) Surface sheen and extraordinary dynamic range were characteristic, yet so was stereotypical ultra-broadening for vocal climaxes—and, sadly, no attempt to evade or silence the applause within operas this helped provoke. I missed a little more Wagnerism – doubtless I would – though I greatly appreciated the unapologetic refusal to tone down the shock, in context, of Puccini’s bitonal and other explorations. Petrushka may be a little too apparent in Il tabarro, but there are many, many worse models. And if the Seine were less apparent visually – the water we saw was somehow both more elemental and more figurative, Stygian perhaps – we certainly heard it loud and clear as a character of its own in the score.

Il tabarro: Michele (Misha Karia), Luigi (Jonathan Tetelman)

 

Misha Kiria, Salzburg’s Gianni Schicchi, played the (anti?)-hero here too, as well as Michele. His versatility and sensitivity rightly garnered prolonged audience approbation. Likewise Mané Galoyan’s heartfelt, properly differentiated Suor Angelica and Lauretta. Violeta Urmana’s Zia Principessa proved a typical star turn: almost, one might say, an ‘also starring…’ moment. Carmen Giannattasio and Jonathan Tetelman, doubtless assisted by the production, brought undeniable sexual chemistry to their portrayal of Giorgetta and Luigi; it was difficult to take one’s eyes and ears off them, whether apart or together.  Andrei Danilov’s Rinuccio was similarly as ardent as one could wish for, a winning development of his (retrospective) cameo as the Song seller in Il Tabarro. Andrew Harris’s Simone and Annika Schlicht shone as Simone and Zita respectively. But there was little in the way of weak vocal links—and plenty of character to even the smallest performance. That quality was certainly shared by the Chorus and Children’s Chorus, splendidly prepared by Jeremy Bines and Christian Lindhorst. Whatever my doubts concerning a few aspects of detail, doubts that seemed from the audience reaction very much a minority response, this was an evening that spoke of the strength in depth of the Deutsche Oper as well as the enduring appeal and enigma of Puccini’s Trittico.

Berlin Festtage (5) - Götterdämmerung, 10 April 2023

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Siegfried – Andreas Schager
Alberich – Jochen Schmeckenbecher
Hagen – Mika Kares
Brünnhilde – Anja Kampe
Gunther – Lauri Vasar
Gutrune – Mandy Fredrich
Waltraute – Violeta Urmana
Three Norns – Noa Beinart, Kristina Stanek, Anna Samuil
Woglinde – Evelin Novak
Wellgunde – Natalia Skrycka
Flosshilde – Anna Lapkovskaja
Erda (silent) – Anna Kissjudit

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director, designs)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)
Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)
Alexey Polubpoyarinov (video)
Tatiana Werestchagina, Christoph Lang (dramaturgy)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Martin Wright)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Brünnhilde (Anja Kampe)

‘Alles was ist, endet.’ Erda’s words from Das Rheingold apply both to the rule of the gods and to Wagner’s depiction of that rule, its decline, and its fall. The Ring does strange things to one’s sense of time, time in any case a strange thing to experience. By the time one reaches Götterdämmerung, let alone its end, one both feels one has been through a good deal, to put it mildly, and yet also that it has only just begun. Partly, of course, that is or can be the work’s message too. Wagner counselled Liszt to mark well his poem, containing the beginning and end of a world, not, as sometimes has been said, the world. Those ‘watchers’, men and women (on which Wagner is very clear) ‘moved to the very depth of their being’, who, at least according to his stage directions, should observe Brünnhilde’s final acts and who implicitly remain with us to create a new world, would otherwise have no role. Nor, on one level, would performing and staging the work. Here we were again, though: the end of another Ring, one which had challenged and taught us much, moving us too, even if not always living up dramaturgically to the moments of its highest promise. 

For, if much of Siegfried, especially its first two acts, had left me enthused and eager to find out what might happen next, Götterdämmerung sometimes suggested Dmitri Tcherniakov had lost his way, failing to follow up – or at least electing not to do so – on themes and threads which instead were left hanging. Wagner’s more uncomprehending critics might claim he did so too; we have no need to discuss them further here. The research centre in which the work – all of it, probably – takes place opened up questions of agency and control in which Tcherniakov seemed, at least in part, to have lost interest. If the Norns, whom we had seen throughout, filing away information, seemingly keeping matters in order, are now locked out of proceedings, what does that mean? I could speculate, perhaps fruitfully, yet the production largely seems to abdicate any responsibility it might have to tell, to explain, to suggest.

Hagen (Mika Kares), Staatsopernchor Berlin

The Tarnhelm’s failure again to work, Siegfried looking and dressing like Siegfried, not Gunther, on Brünnhilde’s mountain, could have many potential explanations and implications, yet where were they here? If the world has been disenchanted – fair enough, returning to Adorno and Horkheimer, or indeed many others – where, and I am sorry to bang on about this, does that leave the objects of Wagner’s work (musical as well as verbal and scenic)? It is not always clear to me that that problem has been adequately considered, though I think it could be in a revised production building on what has gone before. Where steps had been taken in Siegfried to suggest Wagner lay beyond any of the characters in setting up the experimental basis for the production, here if anything we went backwards—and it did not, Dallas- or Die tote Stadt-style, seem all to have been a dream.

Hagen, Gunther (Lauri Vasar), Gutrune (Mandy Fredrich), chorus

There are lovely and other telling touches. The return of Erda and ultimately the Wanderer (his cloth cap still somewhere between Chéreau’s Brechtian ‘watchers’ and Wagner’s own carefully curated portraiture) to pay tribute to the dead Siegfried is genuinely moving. Has this particular experiment concluded? In that respect we can, I think justly, draw our own conclusions, however inadequate. Siegfried’s earlier Don Draper-like sprawling on the sofa and a plethora of cigarettes tell their own story of toxic – literally so – masculinity. So too does the basketball court on which Siegfried meets his death. That Gutrune may be drugged too is interesting: perhaps an addict rather than a formal object of experimentation, but is that not in any case part of a broader societal experiment of death and disaster? (Her other treatment is decidedly unsympathetic to the point of misogyny: a pity.) 

And what to make of the ending? I am tempted to say very little. To the text of Wagner’s rejected ‘Schopenhauer ending’ – he rejected it for sure dramatic reason – Brünnhilde approaches Erda, ultimately rejecting a paper bird such as Siegfried had rejected from the Woodbird. She pulls down the curtain, after it has become stuck. Making her own way with a clichéd bag in hand? Doubtless, yet could we, should we not expect more? It did not strike me as a deliberate drama of the underwhelming, a world failing to end, as in Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Ring, rather a need to do something, almost anything. But perhaps, even probably, I am failing to understand. Tcherniakov’s Parsifal and, more controversially, his Tristan were tauter, more thought through. Is the lack the message? We begin to pursue ourselves, or our thoughts, in circles.

 

More understandably, Thomas Guggeis’s musical interpretation seemed to have tired somewhat. It was still an excellent show, a fine achievement for one at this stage of his career, which would put many others to shame; yet, a few orchestral fluffs (near-inevitable) aside, there were a few more cases where, not unlike the staging, the conductor did not always seem sure where next to turn. There was tremendous playing from the Staatskapelle Berlin led, at its best, by a keen sense of where the score was heading, but there were hesitations too. That, I have little doubt, will change with greater experience. 

Andreas Schager’s Siegfried created the drama before him: tireless, cocksure, yet with a crucial degree of stunted development (Tcherniakov’s toy horse Grane another nice touch). He and Anja Kampe as Brünnhilde once again held the stage at least as well as anyone this century. Mika Kares added Hagen to Fasolt and Hunding, excelling once again in words, music, and gesture. Lauri Vasar (Gunther) and Mandy Fredrich (Gutrune) were not given the most promising hands in Tcherniakov’s conception, teetering on the edge of the merely silly, yet worked to gain our sympathy—and ultimately succeeded, a true sign of excellent artistry. The Norns and Rhinemaidens made fine contributions, though Violeta Urmana’s Waltraute did not make so consistently strong an impression as one might have expected.

Hagen, Alberich (Jochen Schmeckenbecher)

It was, moreover, a joy to welcome back, however briefly, Jochen Schmeckenbecher’s thoughtful, detailed portrayal of Alberich. As so often, one’s thoughts returned to him, dead, alive, or somewhere in between. ‘Schläfst du, Hagen, mein Sohn?’ That near-liturgical question, so alluring to Boulez at work with Chéreau on the Centenary Ring, retains its irrational enticement. In lieu of a more conventional conclusion, that might do.

Betrothal in a Monastery, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 13 April 2019

Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Images: Ruth and Martin Walz
Bogdan Volkov (Don Antonio), Goran Jurić (Mendoza), Aida Garifullina (Luisa), Anna Goryachova (Clara d’Almanza), Violeta Urmana (Die Duenna), Maxim Paster (Moderator), Stephan Rügamer (Don Jerome) und Lauri Vasar (Don Carlos)

Don Jerome – Stephan Rügamer

Don Ferdinand – Andrey Zhilikovsky

Luisa – Aida Garifullina

The Duenna – Violeta Urmana

Don Antonio – Bogdan Volkov

Clara d’Almanza – Anna Goryachova

Mendoza – Goran Jurić

Don Carlos – Lauri Vasar

Moderator – Maxim Paster

Dmitri Tcherniakov (director)
Elena Zaytseva (costumes)

Gleb Filshtinsky (lighting)

Alexey Poluboryarinov (video)

Jana Beckmann, Detlef Giese (dramaturgy)

Prokofiev and Sheridan might not immediately sound the most obvious match. When one thinks about it a little, however, it is not incongruous – even if it remains surprising. The collaboration stands at a distance, of course, of more than a century-and-a-half: a distance that brings its owns challenges and opportunities. Mediating ‘in real life’ was Prokofiev’s partner, Mira Mendelson, who was translating into Russian the libretto Sheridan had written for Thomas Linley the Elder and Younger. As ever, things are lost and gained in translation, perhaps itself a form of performance or at least akin to performance. Dmitri Tcherniakov’s new production of Betrothal in a Monastery plays with these and other ideas, creating and recreating – and inviting us to do likewise.

There is already parody in the text: that of ideas of honour in Spanish drama, that of opera, that of pasticcio, and so on. What remains? Many such questions are open; it is, to a certain extent, up to us. For it is the ‘opera community’, or rather some from its more extreme wing, ripe for parody or perhaps incapable for further parody, that lies at the heart of the production. We find ourselves at a meeting of a group for recovering opera obsessives: an aspirant singer; a burned out opera critic; a young woman whose affection for Jonas Kaufmann was sadly unrequited; a man who lives his life via ‘classic’ recordings; a star diva, whose attempts at a comeback have not proved successful, and who wishes to rid herself of this world; and so on. These people need help. But will they receive it from this course, which, in having them come to collaborate in consideration of an opera, might liberate them? And what would such liberation entail? We follow them through their breathing exercises, their quarrels, their bringing to life stock characters and more, the (necessary?) cruelties inflicted on them by the Moderator (or is he just a fraud?) As they put together an ‘opera’ of sorts, something that may or may not fit the bill, depending on who we are, when we are, where we are, so do we (or not).

Goran Jurić (Mendoza), Aida Garifullina (Luisa), Anna Goryachova (Clara d’Almanza), Andrey Zhilikhovsky (Don Ferdinand) und Maxim Paster (Moderator)

Choruses are heard - by them, not by us! - through headphones, guiding excerpts from a ‘real’ work. There is no difficulty in apportioning further, incidental roles to the same singers (for instance, drinking monks in the fourth acts). It is a virtue or rather dramatic necessity, given that the number of group members remains the same. Once again, therefore, the process of dramatic creation returns to the foreground; once again, we consider possible connections between characters, perhaps (or perhaps not) in a new light. Our human caricatures build, it seems a community of their own, one that no one could or would have built for them. (Untrue, I suppose, given that director, cast, other musicians, and the audience do just that – but in a way, the untruth remains true.) Ultimately, they seem reconciled to the absurd(ist) glories of an operatic past to be plundered at will: represented on stage by a colourful, jolly, yet ridiculous pageant of characters and assumptions from past and present – just as Prokofiev was doing in something that both was and was not an opera buffa. How we judge that is up to us, but we know that some magic, something beyond mere construction, has taken place; the conceit has broadened out into a ‘real’ drama, a ‘real’ performance, whatever they might mean.

Lauri Vasar (Don Carlos), Goran Jurić (Mendoza), Violeta Urmana (Die Duenna), Aida Garifullina (Luisa) und Bogdan Volkov (Don Antonio)

The opera is not often heard outside Russia. Here, wisely, there were a good number of Russian singers in the cast. There was much to enjoy from all of them, whatever their nationality, Moderator Tcherniakov having guided their dramatic progress with his customary skill. At the centre of machinations stood the magnificent Violeta Urmana, seemingly having a whale of a time sending up her very own star ‘role’, whilst retaining something poignant beneath. Aida Garifullina and Anna Goryachova both revealed strikingly rich voices, complementary yet contrasted, as if woodwind instruments that spoke. Stephan Rügamer and Goran Jurić offered finely judged parodies of parodies – again, without that being their sum total. Andrey Zhilikovsky’s touching Don Ferdinand left one wanting more. The whole was definitely greater than the sum of the parts: just as it should be.

If Daniel Barenboim’s leadership of the Staatskapelle Berlin – and the musical forces more broadly – sometimes sounded as if it might have benefited from a couple more performances truly to come into focus, there remained much to savour, especially after the interval. Conductor and orchestra relished Prokofiev’s quicksilver changes of mood, not only mirroring but commenting on, even contradicting what we saw and heard onstage. The composer’s extraordinary gifts as a melodist were reconfirmed and contextualised. Again, there was work for us to do – as there surely always will be in this enigmatic work. Some, booing at the close, clearly resented that; they always will. For the rest of us, it was an intriguing, challenging, and amusing evening.

Prom 19: BBC SO/Bychkov - Tristan und Isolde, 27 July 2013

Royal Albert Hall

Tristan – Robert Dean Smith

Isolde – Violeta Urmana
King Marke – Kwangchul Youn
Kurwenal – Boaz Daniel
Brangäne – Mihoko Fujimura
Melot – David Wilson-Johnson
Steersman – Edward Price
Young Sailor/Shepherd – Andrew Staples

BBC Singers

BBC Symphony Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Jackson)
BBC Symphony Orchestra
Semyon Bychkov (conductor)

 

For those whose Wagnerian thirst had not yet been quenched by three parts of the Ring, the Proms now offered Tristan und Isolde. Semyon Bychkov, whom I heard conduct the work in Paris in 2008, once again proved a sure guiding presence, though perhaps without the final ounce or two of delirium that is required to elevate the work to the deserved status of Nietzsche’s opus metaphysicum. The opening Prelude underlined the crucial importance of the bass line, even in – arguably particularly in – this work, straining as it does at the bounds of tonality, without ever quite transgressing them. As Theodor Adorno wrote, in his Versuch über Wagner, ‘‘It is with good reason that the bars in the Tristan score following the words “der furchtbare Trank” stand upon the threshold of new music, in whose first canonical work, Schoenberg’s F-sharp minor Quartet, the words appear: “Take love from me, grant me your happiness!”’ I never felt that quite so much was at stake, but this remained a distinguished reading in a more conventionally dramatic sense. Part of that, perhaps, was to be attributed to the orchestra. Whilst on fine form, the BBC Symphony Orchestra could not, with the best will in the world, be said to have conjured up the tonal, metaphysical depth of Daniel Barenboim’s Staatskapelle Berlin, especially when it came to the all-important string section.

 

That said, Bychkov worked wonders at times. The orchestral swaying at the beginning of the first time managed to convey just the right mixture of physical and metaphysical turbulence. Sinuous woodwind as Isolde told of her ‘art’ looked forward to the Flowermaidens. The orchestra as a whole, even if it sometimes lacked true depth, still assumed its role as Greek Chorus, or, in Wagner’s later terms, representation of the Will. As Isolde instructed Kurwenal to have Tristan come to her, there was a true sense of tragic inevitability both from orchestra and singer. Bychkov, here and elsewhere, understood and communicated both musical structure and its interaction with the external ‘drama’. (In this of all Wagner’s works, the drama lies more in the orchestra than anywhere else; indeed, more than once, I found myself thinking how much I should love to hear him conduct Schoenberg’s avowedly post­­-Tristan symphonic poem, Pelleas und Melisande. The stillness of Hell, as much as Nietzsche’s ‘voluptuousness’, truly registered as Isolde drank the potion; moreover, the shimmering sound Bychkov drew from the BBC SO violins had them play to a level I have rarely heard – certainly not under their recently-departed absentee conductor.

 

The Prelude to Act II was unusually fleet, but not harried: probably wise given that one was not dealing with the traditional ‘dark’ German sound of an orchestra such as Barenboim’s Staatskapelle. Offstage brass, conducted by Andrew Griffiths, were excellent. Again, the BBC SO often surpassed itself, its scream at the opening of the second scene – responding to Isolde’s ‘Tristan – Geliebter!’ – offering a somewhat embarrassing contrast with the puny sounds heard from Tristan himself. Woodwind again excelled, at times, for instance after Isolde’s ‘O eitler Tagesknecht!’, evoking Baudelaire’s Fleurs du mal. As Tristan – just about – harangued the spite and envy of day, we heard an apt orchestral sardonicism, mid-way between Loge and Schoenberg. (I thought in particular of the First Chamber Symphony.) And the deadly slowing of the heartbeat – Karajan truly worried about this Act II music, fearing it might literally take the lives of conductors – was well conveyed. I liked the idea – and practice – of having the Shepherd’s English horn solo piped from above, as if from the ramparts. The spotlighting of the (very good) soloist put me in mind of Stockhausen’s later practice of blurring the boundaries between instruments and ‘characters’. If the level of orchestral playing was not so impressive during much of the third act, most obviously earlier on, that may have been part of a doomed attempt to enable Robert Dean Smith’s Tristan to be heard. There was, though, also a problem with balance at times, the brass tending to overpower in a way never heard in Barenboim’s Ring performances. Dramatic urgency was regained, however, after Tristan’s death.

 

Violeta Urmana opened in somewhat shrill fashion, her words often indistinct. She improved quickly, though, and as early as the second scene, was both more sensitive in terms of tonal variegation and far more comprehensible. There were times, especially during the first act – for instance, on the ‘preis’ of ‘mit ihr gab er es pries!’ – when her climaxes were a little too conventionally operatic, but hers remained a committed performance. She had no difficulty in riding the orchestral wave in her transfiguration: impressive, if not necessarily moving. Mihoko Fujimura excelled as Brangäne; indeed, it seems to be more her role than Kundry.  There was true musical satisfaction to be gained from the ‘rightness’ of her phrasing, as well as dramatic truth from the honesty of her character portrayal. Her second-act Watch was radiant, euphonious, somehow sounding as if from a greater distance than the RAH organ, as if carried to us by an opportune, clement breeze. Andrew Staples put in excellent performances as both the Shepherd and the Young Sailor. The latter role, sung from above, was very nicely shaded, and with diction of an excellence that put many other cast members to shame. As Shepherd, his voice was audibly, somewhat awkwardly, more virile than that of the lamentable Tristan.

 

Robert Dean Smith was, alas, a grave disappointment as Tristan. From his ‘Fragt die Sitte!’ to Isolde, matter of fact in the wrong way, there was little dramatic involvement to be gleaned. He often sounded more like Isolde’s grandfather, about to expire, even in the first act, than her lover.  The orchestra, as guided by Bychkov, often  compensated for him, but it should not have had to do so.. When Tristan sang that he and Isolde were ‘ungetrennt’ (undivided), the division was all too glaringly apparent. It was not just that he lacked charisma and volume, though he certainly did, but that his performance throughout seemed entirely unaware of the deadly eroticism in which it should have been soaked; he often sounded more like an attempt, a couple of sizes too small, at Beckmesser, than Tristan. Boaz Daniel proved an ardent Kurwenal, his ‘Heil Tristan!’ a proper reminder of a doomed attempt to return to the chivalric mores of Lohengrin, of the day. David Wilson-Johnson’s Melot was unpleasantly blustering, the only other real disappointment in the cast. Kwangchul Youn gave an excellent performance too. I have often found him a little dull in the past, but here his tenderness and passion showed King Marke to be a true human being, not a mere saint. Had I been Isolde, I should certainly have stuck with him on this occasion.

 

The combined male forces of the BBC Singers and BBC Symphony Orchestra made for a goodlier crew than I can recall, a veritable male voice choir. There was no compromise between heft and diction; the former quality had the excellent consequence of already emphasising the threatening nature of the external, phenomenal world of the day. If not necessarily a Tristan for the ages, then, there remained much to admire.

 

Tristan und Isolde, Philharmonia/Salonen, 26 September 2010

Royal Festival Hall

(concert performance)

Tristan – Gary Lehman
Isolde – Violeta Urmana
Brangäne – Anne Sofie von Otter
King Marke – Matthew Best
Kurwenal – Jukka Rasilainen
Melot – Stephen Gadd
Shepherd/Young Sailor – Joshua Ellicott
Steersman – Darren Jeffery

Bill Viola (visual artist)
Peter Sellars (artistic collaborator)

Philharmonia Voices (chorus master: Aidan Oliver)
Philharmonia Orchestra
Esa-Pekka Salonen (conductor)


As autumn hit London with a vengeance, my ensuing cold ensured that I missed the opening concert of the London Philharmonic’s new season: Vladimir Jurowski conducting Zemlinksy and Mahler. I was determined therefore not to miss the Philharmonia’s opening salvo. Almost irrespective of the results, it was quite a statement to open with Nietzsche’s ‘opus metaphysicum of all true art,’ Tristan und Isolde. Billed as a concert performance, it was not really, though I could not help wishing that it had been. Peter Sellars’s direction, or ‘artistic collaboration’, is restrained: generally a good thing in Tristan, which needs very little ‘doing’, though that very little can make all the difference. Would that Bill Viola showed such or indeed any restraint with his ‘video art’.

I saw his projections first at the Opéra national de Paris, two years ago. Then I was irritated and distracted, though there was a little more in the way of staging. Here, there was slightly less staging, which worked at least as well. The Royal Festival Hall was used imaginatively, singing from boxes providing, for instance, a nice impression of the ship: it actually put me in mind of the use of the same space for Nono’s Prometeo in 2008. However, I discovered on returning home that my distraction and the rest of my response tallied precisely with what I had written about the Paris performance, so my hopes for further understanding or at least ability to set Viola on one side were dashed. The Southbank Centre’s publicity read: ‘This concert performance will be set against the stunning backdrop of Bill Viola's film projections, further exploring the emotional subtexts of the work.’ Rarely, however, did these projections begin truly to engage with the work, let alone to explore texts or subtexts.

Distraction remains greatest during the first act. ‘Act I,’ to quote Viola, ‘presents the theme of Purification, the universal act of the individual’s preparation for the symbolic sacrifice and death required for the transformation and rebirth of the self.’ We are in the world of Orientalism – or ‘the Hindu and Buddhist traditions of Tantra that lie submerged in the Western cultural consciousness’. One wonders whether Viola has ever read Edward Said; he certainly seems blissfully unaware of the pitfalls of evoking ‘the East’ in such a way. Sellars made him aware of ‘this connection to Eastern sources,’ but the outcome was hardly a drawing into ‘Wagner’s 19th-century work’. The first act represents anything but purification; it is instead a reawakening and a headlong rush into catastrophe. As I commented last time, the death that approaches is not sacrificial, but the selfish bidding of Schopenhauer’s Will. (Schopenhauer’s Orientalism might have been well worth pursuing: no such luck.) As the act progresses, the video projections of ceremonial purification seem merely disconnected rather than daringly contradictory; worst of all, they make it difficult to concentrate on the surging musical drama. Some images later on work better: that across the sea at the beginning of the third act, for example, and the magical reverse drowning of the conclusion. But for the most part, this is a display of superimposed self-indulgent Californianism. Candles are lit, of course, since candles show ‘spirituality’. Indeed, throughout, the imagery evokes the tedium of 'New Age' self-fulfilment, which could hardly be further from Wagner’s vision – and which is not sufficient of a counterpoint to evoke true contrast either.

The musical performances were of course a different matter – and it was a sad thing that they were sometimes overwhelmed. Esa-Pekka Salonen steered a sure course through the work, though the miraculous opening prelude began with excessive ponderousness. Though JPE Harper-Scott’s programme note made a powerful case for Tristan as an avowedly tonal drama – I shall return to this at the end – Salonen tended to stress the presentiments of late Mahler and Schoenberg rather than the Romanticism of Wagner’s score. Tristan’s delirious monologue responded especially well to this approach: I am not sure that I have ever heard it sound so clearly as a male Erwartung. But to return to Nietzsche’s description of this as art’s opus metaphysicum, it was the metaphysical that was really lacking. Furtwängler, whose recording with this orchestra, remains the first choice of any sane – and perhaps even insane – listener, could not have been more distant. The Philharmonia played extremely well, the strings sounding more German than I have heard them in a while. It was all a little too clinical, though, too well-drilled. Often, I found myself asking: yes, but what does this mean?

Violeta Urmana’s approach was rather different, not in the sense of metaphysics but in assimilating her role to nineteenth-century grand opera. She sang very well and made as dramatic an impression as one could reasonably hope for, but this was Isolde as diva. Her concerns again seemed resolutely of this world, the possibilities of the Schopenhauerian noumenal failing to register. On the more earthbound level, a little Nilsson-like sarcasm or irony would have helped too. Gary Lehman marshalled his resources well as Tristan. His was not a large-scale portrayal, but he did much more than get through the role, which is in itself a rare achievement. The delirium of the third act was perhaps a little too Lieder-like, but it was conveyed, albeit without those metaphysical implications expanding its horizons yet further. Matthew Best’s vibrato was somewhat intrusive as King Marke, especially during the second act, but his third-act forgiveness was humanly credible. I found the vowels of Jukka Rasilainen a little too much in a tradition that seems to mark Finnish singers in German – it must be something to do with the language – but otherwise he did fair enough service, if without scaling the heights or the depths. Anne Sofie von Otter’s Brangäne, however, was impressive in its detailed response. If hers is not the sort of voice I immediately think of for the role, one should retain an open mind in such matters. Her way with the poem was second to none, and her relative coolness, suggestively different from the typical Brangäne, fitted well with Salonen’s approach. I was especially impressed by Joshua Ellicott’s Shepherd: quite heart-rending, as moving a rendition as I can recall.

To return, briefly, to the matter of tonal or atonal (to steal from Schoenberg’s Three Satires), this performance made me reconsider my position somewhat. I am broadly in agreement, or at least I was, with Harper-Scott and others, for instance Roger Scruton, who insist upon the tonal underpinning of Wagner’s score. I now worry a little more, however, that such a reading, tracing its roots ultimately to Heinrich Schenker’s analytical approach, carries with it the danger of underselling what happens in between the opening Prelude and Isolde’s transfiguration. We do not, I hope, simply sit waiting for the end, for that final cadence. Indeed, the generative association of Wagner’s motivic web as well as his harmony carry with them important seeds of the serial constructivism that could lead twentieth-century composers to expansive, open-ended new universes of sound. There is a strong tendency towards the totality in Wagner’s work, of course, but there is also resistance within the material. Salonen’s intimations of Schoenberg heightened this sense – which rethinking, whatever my reservations, is testament to a successful performance.