Bayreuth Festival (1) - Rienzi, 26 July 2026

Festspielhaus

Images (c): Bayreuther Festspiele / Enrico Nawrath

Rienzi – Andreas Schager
Irene – Gabriela Scherer
Colonna – Andreas Baer-Kanabas
Adriano – Jennifer Holloway
Orsini – Michael Nagy
Cardinal Raimondo – Vitalij Kowaljow
Baroncelli – Matthias Stier
Cecco del Vecchio – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Messenger of Peace – Victoria Randem

Directors, set and costume designs – Alexandra Szemerédy, Magdolna Parditka
Lighting – Bernd Gallasch
Video – Leonard Koch

Dramaturgy – Markus Kiesel  

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus director: Thomas Eitler-de Lint)
Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Nathalie Stutzmann (conductor)

On 22 May 1872, Wagner laid the foundation stone to his new festival theatre, followed by a performance of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, probably the single most important artistic work other than his own for Wagner’s own life and work. It has reappeared for key anniversaries ever since, not least the reopening (and ‘rebranding’) of the Festival as ‘New Bayreuth’ in 1951, including this year’s sesquicentennial edition. Unable to attend that official first night, I nonetheless hastened to the still more auspicious, unquestionably more historic event of the second, the first ever Festspielhaus staging of Wagner’s third opera, Rienzi, Last of the Tribunes. Excluded by Cosima – not without warrant from The Master himself – from the Bayreuth canon, Rienzi has actually appeared once before in Bayreuth, alongside the still earlier Die Feen and Das Liebesverbot, during the 2013 bicentenary of Wagner’s birth. That initiative, likewise from Festival Director Katharina Wagner, nonetheless operated in the penumbra of the Festival proper: in the Oberfrankenhalle sports complex, albeit played by the Festival Orchestra and (unlike its two predecessors) staged within the limitations of the arena. Now, however, for the first time since 1901, a new Wagner opera was admitted to the formal Festspielhaus canon. 

How many people in the audience, on this first night or thereafter, will have known Rienzi at all, and if so to what extent, is an open question. Probably more than in many (all?) other theatres, I should guess, but still with a considerable number who will never previously have had the opportunity to see it, and doubtless some who will never have heard it. That holds implications for how to present it and for how it will be received. So too does the vexed question of a text for the work. The latter opens up a fascinating, rich, and complex world in itself, which I cannot even begin to summarise here. Suffice to say that the very idea of a complete text sits at odds with the expectations of the grand opéra genre in which Wagner was mostly, if not entirely, composing this ‘große tragische Oper’. That is, even if there were a single version, it would not necessarily – almost certainly not – have been expected that all the material would have been used for any given production and/or performance. There is not, since Wagner made revisions even before performance, and would unquestionably have done so again for future performances in which he wished to offer even a provisional, let alone definitive, version to the world. Late in life, he famously declared he still owed the world a Tannhäuser; whether he felt similarly about Rienzi is more dubious, though we might do so. If I understand correctly, the 2026 ‘Bayreuther Fassung’ of the verbal text has its foundation in that Wagner authorised in 1871 (presumably for the Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen published that year), with some textual variants nonetheless adopted, and an important, almost equal role played by the piano score in Egon Voss’s complete edition. Wagner’s stage directions are, for better or worse, ‘only seldom adopted’—which, as Brahms might have told us, any ass can see.  

Lack of surviving sources that would enable definitive presentation, as opposed to reconstruction, of particular musical versions presents another, currently insuperable problem. The autograph, given by Winifred to Hitler, disappeared one way or another with him in 1945, as did performance parts in Dresden the same year, courtesy of ‘Bomber’ Harris et al. Much more could be said – and has been – about those difficulties, but like any such difficulties, they can also present creative and intellectual opportunities, perhaps especially when coming into dialogue, conflict, whatever we wish to call it, with a festival founded on strong notions – born in Wagner himself, at least the Wagner of late life – of a textual canon. At any rate, although the idea of a ‘complete’ Rienzi is straightforwardly impossible and probably undesirable, this gave a far better sense of the shifting boundaries and potentialities of the ‘work’ than my previous theatrical encounter, at the Deutsche Oper Berlin, with a version so mutilated as to verge upon the useless. 

The question then, remains: how did this new Rienzi fare—with relation to these parameters and, let us to be fair, to its own too? There are very few cases – in my personal experience, only Stefan Herheim’s Parsifal comes to mind – in which a first-year production at ‘Werkstatt Bayreuth’ has proved its strongest, and/or has not undergone considerable modification in light of stage experience. If, as we have been led to believe, this is to be a one-year-only production, that may prove unfortunate, but for the moment it is in any case all we have. My assessment would be mixed, albeit with overriding gratitude for the occasion so much as to present itself. To my mind, orchestral playing and vocal performance considerably eclipsed conducting and stage direction, although everything afforded material to consider and reflect on, both in itself and in relation to broader ideas of the Festival, its history, and its future, which is just as it should be. 

Alexandra Szemerédy and Magdolna Parditka’s staging had its moments, but mirroring Nathalie Stutzmann’s conducting, failed to my eyes (and ears) to form a coherent assemblage, let alone whole, whilst ultimately proving more successful than either director (Philipp Stölzl) or conductor (Evan Rogister) in Berlin. The staging opened chez Rienzi, with Irene and a child in attendance. Given the advanced state of their brother-sister relationship, I assumed the child was theirs; only in the programme, did I discover him to have been their brother. (So far as I was aware – and I may well have missed something – nothing defined who he was, the first of several signal directorial omissions.) The brother’s death whilst Rienzi and Irene pursued their relations formed the foundation of a psychosexual crisis that offered the ultimate explanation for Rienzi’s deeds thereafter. Reductionist, nous? But then we repaired to a world of rolling (and fake) news, of social media speculation about ‘keeping it in the family’ and worse, whilst opinion polls forecast apparently increased vote share for Rienzi vis-à-vis his electoral opponents, Colonna and Orsini. Whatever the scandal, it seemingly did our would-be-tribune, ‘Rienzi for Prez’, no harm, though the fickleness of the crowd ultimately would. In essentials, then, here was criticism of that which liberals have christened ‘populism’, with little fundamental recognition that the people may be right as well as wrong, and that in their systemic as well as charismatic manipulation lies the greater problem. I might add here that, in the absence of German, let alone English, titles – to my mind, a mistake for a work unfamiliar to many – some things could be filled in via placards and screens:  no bad thing, which merits commendation.

In Wagner’s second act, which formed the second half of the first of Bayreuth’s three acts, the ballet was, rather to my surprise, retained, although most of its sense was lost. Wagner’s brilliant idea, in defiance of grand opéra convention, of offering dramatically meaningful dance, in this case via an allegory of the rape of Lucretia, was ditched in favour of a Bayreuth metatheatrical show that took in many of the dramas to come, from Das Rheingold to Parsifal, all directed from the other side of the political-dramatic stage by a gilded mini-Wagner familiar from around the town (here played by a child—and very well too). If much was lost, a considerable amount was also gained, and the humour of showing us as audience rushing to the Bratwurst stall and lavatories was well observed. A turn to sacrifice and martyrdom – seemingly of the entire Rienzo family – was abrupt and, stigmata aside, a little too dependent on a screen relay of Olivet Discourse prophecies from St Matthew’s Gospel, first in English, then in Latin. Again, something more broadly rather than personally political would have been welcome, but it made its point well enough. Visual inheritance from Meyerbeer (and presentiment of Götterdämmerung) in stage positioning of Rienzi, Irene, and Adriano was striking in its complement to the score. 

The third/second act was perhaps the most successful, its colour and overall look splendidly dark. Rienzi suddenly becoming a crazed murderer, firing mortal shots, was a duly shocking moment—although I am not sure so ‘critical’ a stance to the opera and its hero was necessary or even advisable at this stage in its chequered reception. The final act(s) had politics more or less entirely collapse in favour of Rienzi as a sort of hapless Macbeth, incomprehensibly stabbed by Irene rather than meeting his death at the hands of the populace. For some reason, during the fifth act proper, they both went backstage, the world as theatre returning, the point presumably being that all of these worlds – social media, Bayreuth, politics, and more – are stages of some point. A lack of clarity in direction, though, made much of this seem weirdly arbitrary, as did Rienzi carrying on crying, gesturing, and singing for a long time after his death had apparently come. I gleaned little concerning who the ‘smaller’ characters were. One might say – unfairly to my mind – that Wagner might have offered more here; but even if one did, that surely presents a challenge or, better, an opportunity to the directors, not a fait accompli.

Rienzi explicitly looks forward to a united Italy, which in Vormärz Saxony had obvious implications for a German revolution from below. Nor for nothing did Friedrich Engels sketch a drama on the same subject at pretty much the same time. By all means try something different, but do it with more evident knowledge and understanding of that from which you are differing. Szemerédy would seemingly benefit from, among other things, a lesson in basic historical chronology if she seriously thinks, as she is quoted saying in the programme: ‘How much Hitler is actually in Rienzi? The case had to be reopened.’ None, literally none; there is no ‘case’ to answer. Hitler was born in 1889; Wagner died in 1883; Rienzi was written forty years before that. That is not what she meant, of course, but the starting point remains unfortunate and straightforwardly wrong, whether in theory or in practice.

At least as consistent a failing, though, was the directors’ failure to consider the crucial role of the Church and Papacy. If not eliminated from the words, it was entirely absent from the stage, without even a derisory substitute put in its place. One set design may well have been informed, as again the programme informed us, by a floorplan of St John Lateran, but it is difficult to imagine how anyone could have known this, nor appreciated why it might have mattered. If couching the drama in terms of opinion polls, electoral politics, and ‘private lives’ was a signal error – in drama, as in life, we need far more than #ImWithHer – so was avoiding any attempt to reinvent such broader social, political, and ideological structures of the drama. Final approach towards a video man of the future and failure to meet him are all very well, yet unprepared it went for little.

Stutzmann often drew a fine sound from the orchestra, the beginning of the Overture revealing a wondrously golden, blended sound that was not simply the achievement of the covered pit. Alas, the somewhat listless way in which it proceeded was similarly prophetic of much of what was to come. I assume part of the reason for her selection and for her interpretative choices was her attempt in Tannhäuser to emphasise its French origins, but inability to present tempi as part of a greater whole even within numbers, let alone between them, did little service to Wagner’s far from inconsiderable musical dramaturgy. I should usually be the last person to complain about a lack of applause, if perceived as merited, within acts. ‘Traditional’, ‘historically informed’, or not, I cannot stand the practice; it has been outmoded since long before Wagner (with the possible knowing exception of Strauss’s Zerbinetta). And yet here, awkward silences, born of the audience’s ‘proper’ Bayreuth respect for the unity of the act, cried out for something to fill them. It need not have been that way, but it was the conductor’s responsibility to impart a sense of unity that precluded thoughts of audience participation, even in its absence. Wolfgang Sawallisch’s live 1983 (another Wagner anniversary) Munich recording remains an object lesson, if not in forestalling applause, then more importantly in creating a convincing, compelling tonal-dramatic plan. It is not the only way to perform Rienzi; there is never one way. But it has an idea and achieves it, at least in musical terms.

Andreas Schager impressed in the title role as few have. One might cavil that this was Rienzi approached from Siegfried rather than from Restoration Paris, yet Schager, one, forgivable moment aside, proved tireless and commanding in vocal terms, if a little generalised in gesture. Although I suspect it thought it was doing just this, the production ultimately did Irene no favours, rendering her at times little more than a cipher. Gabriela Scherer made much, though, of the hand she was presented, offering a stylish, committed performance. So too did a tremendous Jennifer Holloway as Adriano, bringing thoughts of Wagner’s inheritance, partly via Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient, from Fidelio to mind that the conducting, sadly, did not.  Vitalij Kowaljow’s Raimondo stood out to me from the rest, doing what he could, in light of the production’s failure, to explain the presence of a cardinal. There were, though, no grounds for vocal disappointment. Bayreuth offered a fine cast, which could have been stretched further, yet acquitted itself handsomely. The Bayreuth Festival Chorus did that and more, even in the choral passages a little too close to Meyerbeer that Wagner would understandably later commend for their emptiness. Where they become more musicodramatically interesting, including a cappella writing that points its way to other, more occasional works of the 1840s, performance was duly arresting. 

Rienzi will probably always remain a singular, problematical opera, but to repeat myself, warts and all, what we saw and heard at Bayreuth was ultimately an opportunity for which to be grateful. That there is a big-heartedness to this ‘work’ offers a salutary reminder that, whatever uninformed people will tell you, Wagner had a complex personality and outlook, with many admirable as well as many less admirable traits. The ideology of some preposterous incarnation of evil is at least as absurd as that of the Bayreuth Circle and its Master. Of course reception plays a role; it always does. But so does historical truth, however shifting and uncertain. All historical truth is, by its very nature—and by that nature standing quite opposed to ludicrous, pernicious claims by the political Right to ‘protect’ it, whether it be that of Wagner, Bayreuth, or any other historical phenomenon. Statues and memorials fall, which may be good, bad or indifferent, but that creates rather than ‘destroys’ history. So too does erecting new ones. Rienzi now has an important memorial of its own; what follows is up to us. One can only hope that Die Feen, to my mind the most consistently fine opera of the unlucky first three, will succeed—and that Das Liebesverbot will be accorded an opportunity to convince us relative sceptics too. For now, this truly historic moment will more than suffice.

Boris Godunov, Hamburg State Opera, 4 October 2023

Images: Brinkhoff/Mögenburg
Boris Godunov (Alexander Tsymbalyuk)

Boris Godunov – Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Andrey Schchelkalov – Alexey Bogdanchikov
Nikitch (Police Officer) – Hubert Kowalczyk
Mityukha – Julian Arsenault
Prince Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky – Matthias Klink
Pimen – Vitalij Kowaljow
Grigory Otrepiev – Dovlet Nurgeldiyev
Hostess of the Inn – Marta Swiderska
Varlaam – Ryan Speedo Green
Missail – Jürgen Sacher
Xenia – Olivia Boen
Xenia’s Nurse – Renate Spingler
Fyodor – Kady Evanyshyn
Boyar – Mateusz Lugowski
Holy Fool – Florian Panzieri

Frank Castorf (director)
Wolfgang Gruber (assistant director)
Aleksandar Denić (set designs)
Adriana Braga Peretzki (costumes)
Rainer Casper (lighting)
Andreas Deinert, Severin Renke (video, live camera)
Maryvonne Riedelsheimer (live editing)
Patric Seibert (dramaturgy)

  
Children’s and Youth Choir of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Luiz de Goday)

Chorus of the Hamburg State Opera (director: Eberhard Friedrich)

Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra

Kent Nagano (conductor)

It is, of course, the opera for our time; arguably, it is for many other times too. Boris Godunov, in whatever incarnation – a more complex question than it is even for a Bruckner symphony – has nonetheless come under attack from some frankly bizarre nationalists who consider it should not currently be performed. The Polish National Opera’s Waldemar Piotr Dąbrowski announced cancellation of a Warsaw staging with a string of non sequiturs he could not possibly have believed. Ukrainian protestors mobbed La Scala to demand cancellation there. The country’s Minister of Culture went further and, incredibly, demanded other countries boycott all Russian culture. What on earth do they think happens in the opera? Boris’s reign is hardly characterised by its success; whatever this opera is concerned with, it is certainly not a ‘how to’ guide. It is rather like those strange people who think Hitler might have been politically inspired by the Ring. We can be fairly certain he noticed what happened to Wotan, Siegfried, and any other hero. And if we are to take the claims made for Russian culture seriously, surely we should seek to understand it, as of course we should Polish, Ukrainian, and any other culture: all part of our world.

Frank Castorf’s new production for the Hamburg State Opera is arguably not so new. It was due to open in September 2020, but was thwarted by coronavirus. Three years later, it has its chance in a very changed Europe. (You will struggle to go far in Germany without seeing a Ukrainian flag.) Layers of resonance, like those in the work, make it more rather than less relevant, and show those who would cancel or ban artworks for the fools, as well as the knaves, that they are. All societies write and rewrite their history. All respond to myth as well as to evidence, to the present as well as to the past. This is what we see here, in a Russian Empire whose costumes (brilliantly designed by Adriana Braga Peretzki) may be of the twentieth century, but also look back all the way to the Time of Troubles and beyond, boyars from before Peter the Great had their beards shorn. (Is that not, after all, what Stalin did with his ‘Great Patriotic War’?) These pasts are, in many ways, now, whether in Pimen’s chronicle or the electronically changing and updating battle maps of Boris’s imperial quarters, whose billiard games afford little relaxation, yet provide plentiful metaphors for surrounding machinations.

The writing and the dramatising are the thing. Many of us have probably fallen into the trap of taking Pimen’s witness for the truth. He seems so plausible. Perhaps Grigory/Dmitri did too; that is left rather more to our imagination. And does not the tragedy make more sense if Boris was guilty? (Yet if he was, why not, as dramaturge Patric Seibert points out in an excellent programme essay, give the people what they want? Confess and crush his enemy, who is nowhere near victory, in any case?) Perhaps it would, if this were a ‘classical’ anything, yet the rough edges of Boris, its very problematical qualities, are itself the grit of its drama and, perhaps, of its truth. In this, the 1868-9 version (speaking of ‘original’ or otherwise only muddies the water further), we see and hear, to quote Richard Taruskin in typically trenchant yet not unpersuasive form: ‘a set of scenes very roughly hewn from Pushkin’s unwieldy block of poetic marble, selected according to diverse and unrelated criteria. … Far from showing how carefully Mussorgsky structured his dramatic conception, the first Boris boldly displays a quintessentially realist disdain for a well-made play.’ 

‘No Polish scene?’ I hear you lament. Well, yes or no. For Castorf, permitted a degree of leeway here in the opera house to draw on his theatrical practice of introduction of other texts, fills in some of the gaps on film between scenes. Avaricious, cynical, lustful, and a great deal more: it is difficult to imagine the Grigory and Marina we see there as offering much of a solution for the ever-suffering Russian people, whose manipulation by church and nobility is clearly signalled. So too is that of Poland and the Roman Catholic Church more generally, as we see in the presence, also on film, of John Paul II and dispersal of propaganda leaflets headed by iconic – for once, surely, the term holds – emblems of ‘Solidarność’. More traditional icons are to be seen amongst flags and other emblems too: here is nothing if not a contested sphere.

This is less a revisionist (or, if you prefer, historically informed) portrayal of Boris and his rule than one which, in Shakespearean style, declines to judge and leaves that to us, should we wish. We may, of course, learn more by similarly declining: a controversial message,’ if message it be, right now. We certainly learn more by being afforded the privilege. As the action progresses, framed by yet another superlative revolving set of contrasts and connections from Castorf’s longstanding collaborator Aleksandar Denić, we head towards more than one tragic denouement. There is that of Boris, and what we might read into him as representing: perhaps a more ideal form of Soviet rule? His concern for the people seems genuine enough and he feeds them: a point made clearly here. One thing, moreover, that differentiates Boris from today’s politicians – those in power, anyway – is, as Seibert notes, his a conscience. His personal tragedy, and that, it seems here, of Russia too, is that that conscience proves his undoing; it kills him. A Gorbachev, perhaps? For there is the greater political tragedy too. What comes of nefarious external interference, aided and abetted by the Shuiskys (and Romanovs) within?

Fool (Florian Panzieri)

Boris dead, the set revolves once more for Fyodor to see what the future holds: the swift substitution for socialist realism of Coca-Cola, in the form of a huge, again ‘iconic’ bottle centre stage, with a straw whose colours are that of Yeltsin’s (and Putin’s) Russia. ‘Flow, flow, bitter tears,’ as the Fool would have sung again in a different version; the words nonetheless ring in our ears and the curtain falls. What we have seen, whether on stage, on live video close-up, or on film, and what we have still not seen, that variety of sources notwithstanding, may have helped us make up our own minds. What does Pimen do when he retreats inside? Who is exploiting whom at the Polish court? To what extent, if you will forgive the school examination format, is Boris the victim of psychological manipulation? Or we may emerge all the more confused at the complications of art and reality. There are far worse lessons than that. 

Kent Nagano’s conducting of the Hamburg Philharmonic State Orchestra intrigued me too. On the one hand, some of it sounded what I am tempted to call unidiomatic, though I should not exaggerate: closer to Tchaikovsky (though hardly Rimsky) than to Mussorgsky. Yet if we draw those lessons from the production, what of the musical performance? Should we not beware the idea that there is a correct or true path? If we cannot settle on a text for the work ‘itself’, should we not open that out in other ways? Nowadays, we pride ourselves on appreciating the radicalism of ‘pure’ Mussorgsky, even to the extent of preferring (to my mind, somewhat dubiously) the version heard here. What have we lost in the meantime? And can we seriously maintain that those before did not know what they were doing? For Nagano certainly knew where the music was going and, so it seemed, where it had more broadly come from. It was a reading that complemented and even complicated what we saw in stage, even if sometimes I longed for a little more starkness and bite.

 

Fyodor (Kady Evanyshyn)

In the title role, Alexander Tsymbalyuk offered a similarly thoughtful and complex portrayal: sympathetic yet never banally so. We might trust his witness no more than that of anyone else, but we could certainly trust the alchemy between music, words, and gesture. Matthias Klink’s wheedling Shuisky and Dovlet Nurgeldiyev’s sweet-toned faux-innocence as Grigory made their points in similarly thoughtful ways. Shuisky’s first-hand ‘happening’ to see Boris’s breakdown offered a duly chilling moment. Marta Swiderska presided in colourful, characterful fashion over a raucous hostelry close to the Lithuanian border, Ryan Speedo Green’s Varlaam a properly larger-than-life patron. Vitalij Kowaljow’s Pimen seemed very much the holy man we were given to believe, yet far from ruled out more sinister possibilities. All contributed to the greater whole, as of course did the chorus, whose disappointments, privations, and other sufferings were all too real. Not that they were not in some sense responsible too. Expertly trained by Eberhard Friedrich, with them we knew where we were—or rather, we thought we did.

Turandot, Royal Opera, 10 March 2023

Royal Opera House

Turandot – Anna Pirozzi
Emperor Altoum – Alexander Kravets
Calaf – Yonghoo Lee
Liù – Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha
Timur – Vitalij Kowalkow
Ping – Hansung Yoo
Pang – Aled Hall
Pong – Michael Gibson
Mandarin – Blaise Malaba
Two Girls – Marianne Cotterill, Tamsin Coombs

Andrei Serban (director)
Jack Furness (revival director)
Sally Jacobs (designs)
Kate Flatt (choreography)
Tatiana Novaes Coelho (choreology)
E. Mitchell Dana (lighting)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Antonio Pappano (conductor)

Images: Marc Brenner

Andrei Serban’s production of Turandot has certainly offered the Royal Opera its money’s worth. First seen – somewhat oddly, not at Covent Garden, but on tour to Los Angeles – in 1984, it has had no fewer than fifteen revivals on home territory, as well as touring internationally and being adapted for performances at Wembley Arena (1991 and 1992). No wonder, as Serban’s programme biography states, that ‘he is both surprised and delighted that his production … is still revived.’ This, however, is apparently to be its final outing. Assuming that to be the case, it is receiving a good send off: not before time, yet with strong performances and revival direction from Jack Furness considerably more convincing than what I saw in earlier reincarnations (2013 and 2014). 

What we see seems understandably eager to veer towards Carlo Gozzi’s fairytale. Ping, Pang, and Pong (I know…) lose the worst of their racialised appearance, clearly taking their leave instead from commedia dell’arte. Lively performances from Hansung Yoo, Aled Hall, and Michael Gibson certainly helped in that respect, perhaps even going so far as to suggest that these, alongside Puccini, might be the real orchestrators of the action, playful as well as sadistic, intriguingly beyond morality in an almost Nieztschean sense. Where that leaves the story of Turandot, Calaf, and of course Liù remains, shall we say, problematical. The ‘arias’ embedded in the score stood out awkwardly, as if remnants – and in a way they are – of bygone technique, which the composer at the height of his musical powers was unable to banish entirely, on account of theatrical and audience expectations. 

The closer the story moves to realism, the more repellent its final sadism becomes: magnificent in a way, yet also strangely unsatisfactory. The more fantastical the framework and action, the greater the artifice, the better. This seems to be well understood and indeed communicated, not least through a parade of dances that might readily have seemed theatrical for the sake of theatre. In a way they still do, yet in this context, that offers a possibility if not quite for redemption, than for something less (im)morally outrageous. The framing of the set as a theatre of sorts, or at least a public arena suggestive of one – are not the two often coterminous and coexistent? – contributes with unusual success to that desirable distancing of standpoint. Masks serve with similar, indeed still more absolute, necessity.

 

In the title role, Anna Pirozzi offered a well sung, unusually human performance, warmer than many, though also posing the question as to whether that is what we should want here. Why not, really? In posing that question it is surely performing a dramatic service of its own, difficult conflict being part of the point. Yonghoon Lee’s heroic stab at Calaf should also be commended. Only on rare occasions, when something more inwardly vulnerable was required, did it sound lacking, but that is always a difficult near-circle to square. He can ride an orchestral wave, and did. He also seemed very much at one with Furness’s reimagining of the production. Even reimagined, the production arguably does Liù no favours, but that is much to ask of any staging. Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha’s heartfelt, sincere performance was very much in the mainstream of expectations here. Timur’s strange appearance – an old man, to be sure, though it is stranger than that – likewise does the role no favours, yet when he sang, Vitalij Kowalkow was able vocally to rise far above visual limitations. 

In the pit, Antonio Pappano offered what for me turned out to be one of his best performances at Covent Garden. I have given up trying to reconcile myself to his Wagner; we clearly hear and understand that and much other music in such different ways that I am unlikely to ‘get’ it any time soon. Here, however, a Puccini darkly haunted by, even founded upon, marriage of darkly Wagnerian chromaticism to a surprisingly Wagnerian way with motivic construction – to my ears, more so than in Pappano’s Wagner – offered just the sort of musico-theatrical experience that was called for. Flexible yet goal-directed, enabling of singers yet also revelling in Puccini’s ‘symphonism’, it told us what we knew yet perhaps still wished we did not. This was a murky, malevolent tale that could not quite be wished away with a welcome does of theatrical fantasy. The oft-remarked affinities with more contemporary (to Puccini) music, not least Stravinsky and Schoenberg, were perhaps less immediately present, but viciousness both of score and broader theatrical purpose were certainly very much with us. With orchestra and chorus on excellent form, Pappano brought something both old and new to the score, greatly to his – and its – credit.

 

Farewell then, we think, to Serban. Even when revived with such intelligence as seen here, this is not a production directly to address the very difficult, probably insoluble, questions this extraordinary, flawed opera presents. Yet, given space such as was granted here – and was not, to the best of my memory, so apparent when I first saw the production – it can nonetheless permit them to play out. Taking a view seems more of a moral imperative here, on account of the sadism as much as the racism; there are many ways to do that, whether by transforming the work into something more directly political (or something else?) or by confronting its issues head on. We shall see what Serban’s successor does. This however, offers an often intriguing and absorbing last hurrah, as well, I suspect, as a hint to why new steps may prove necessary.

 

Salzburg Festival (7) - Médée, 19 August 2019

Grosses Festspielhaus

  

Images: Salzburger Festspiele / Thomas Aurin
Médée (Elena Stikhina)

Médée – Elena Stikhina

Jason – Pavel Černoch

Créon – Vitalij Kowaljow

Dircé – Rosa Feola

Néris – Alisa Kolosova

Two handmaidens of Dircé – Tamara Bounazou, Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur

Médée’s voicemail – Amira Casar

Simon Stone (director)

Bob Cousins (set designs)

Mel Page (costumes)

Nick Schlieper (lighting)

Stefan Gregory (sound design)

Christian Arseni (dramaturgy)

Vienna State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Ernst Raffelsberger)

Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra

Thomas Hengelbrock (conductor)

What a sad waste of an evidently considerable budget. A rare opportunity, my first, to see an important opera staged; a fine cast, both in vocal and acting terms; equally fine orchestral playing and far from negligible conductor; all undone, alas, by one of the most uncomprehending, unmusical, wasteful, inept stagings of an opera I have had the misfortune to see in quite some time. To render the story of Medea, in any of its versions, so mind-numbingly banal would have been achievement in itself; to rob that rendition of any internal, let alone other, coherence, would have been one of equal magnitude; to exhibit such a deaf ear to Cherubini’s score for Médée, whilst arrogantly, ignorantly disdaining the claims of its genre…

Marie-Andrée Bouchard-Lesieur (Second Handmaiden), Dircé (Rosa Feola), Tamara Bounazou (First Handmaiden)

Underlying director, Simon Stone’s premise, if we may call it that, is the patronising claim that, to be ‘relatable’, Médée must be brought down to size. That would appear to entail robbing her of all particularity, of anything that makes her remarkable, debasing her character into at least two more-or-less-incompatible clichés: not at all misogynistic, then. We start, ominously in all the wrong ways, with a film accompanying – actually, intentionally or otherwise, distracting from – the Overture. Médée and Jason are shown in this film to be a couple of unsympathetic, narcissistic rich people, with typically pretty accessory-children. (At least I think that was the claim.) Living somewhere in the Alpine region outside Salzburg - various film scenes take place round and about the festival city, though nothing, so far as I could tell, onstage itself – they enjoy a sickening ‘family’ breakfast and go to a concert. (If only I were making this up.) Jason cannot make it, so Médée and the children go without him, only to realise that they have forgotten something – if only I had – and turn back. Médée finds Jason in bed with Dircé, and they conclude a ‘high-net-worth divorce’. Just what Cherubini is suggesting in the score – and, for most of us, far less relatable than Euripides, Cherubini, or anyone in between.

Médée, Jason (Pavel Černoch), children

And so it ineptly staggers on. The next time we see her, the formerly well-to-do Austrian (or at least Austrian-domiciled) Médée has been expelled to Georgia. Her settlement had run out, we learn via voicemail (!) She communicates via an Internet café with Créon and Jason: more, it seems, to incorporate two expensive sets onstage at the same time than out of any dramatic imperative. For some reason, she does not use Skype, although refers to it, moving away from the computer terminal to a payphone at the café. Créon and Jason, meanwhile, are at a lapdancing club, replete with acts more tiresome than erotic. The ‘girls’ seem also to be at the same venue, a rare and puzzling concession to cost, though they have some male strippers on hand.

Immigration control looms large, though hardly relevant. Yes, all of us to the left of ‘conservative’ directors such as Alvis Hermanis – he might even have made a better job of directing this – revile what is being done in our name to migrants. But to attempt to disarm criticism by portraying Médée in this way is at best bizarre. There are other ways to dispense with magic, if you wish. Créon, who seems to be some sort of interior minister, appears at the airport – we learn, for some reason or seemingly none, again via voicemail, that Médée has flown in via Istanbul – personally to prevent Médée from entering. Quite why she had not been forbidden entry beforehand, having assaulted at least one immigration officer, is unclear in what purports to be a realistic, contemporary setting. Both participants conduct their struggle live on television, which is streamed to an expensive international hotel in which the wedding guests and wedding couple, somewhat bafflingly, are all staying. An economics programme, with stock exchange updates, provides light relief. Again, I wish I were making this up.

Stone dispenses with the dialogue. Fair enough, I suppose, though really I cannot see the need. (A common tendency may be seen in many tedious butcherings of Fidelio.) Instead, we hear absurdly ‘dramatic’ – ‘operatic’, almost in the pejorative sense – of the aforementioned voicemail messages from Médée to Jason, which often make nonsense of the acts seen onstage, let alone the acts we might have seen. References to Skype and so forth – the programme she seems unable actually to use – are both edifying and instructive. The creators of Gossip Girl would have done a much better job – in every conceivable respect.

As for the third act’s dread deeds of vengeance, Stone manages to make a nonsense both of what the work is telling us and of his replacement, let alone the score. An equivalent to the poisoned robe and other gifts is set up, in expensive-looking shopping bags, but instead Médée decides to drug a waiter, dress up as him, and poison Dircé’s champagne. Even that does not seem to be the agent of her death, though, for then Médée, presumably because Stone thought the banal drama he had created needed a touch of melodrama, stabs Dircé and Créon, blood spilled all over. We revert to film, for riveting footage of Médée leaving the building, finding a car, and driving along a motorway, until we reach our modern-day temple: a motorway service station. There, after a lengthy period of time in which all the high state security surrounding her could simply have incapacitated her and saved the children, not then dead but just seated in the car, she kills them and herself with exhaust fumes. The chorus could be seen waiting in the wings from where I was seated, apparently before it should. Even the lighting was not coordinated. And quite how Médée was supposed to have heard an offstage Jason, I have no idea. Any old police drama would have accomplished this with greater efficacy. At any rate: The End.

Poor Cherubini, then. Admired by Brahms and Wagner – a dual endorsement that is far from the easiest to have pulled off – not to mention minor luminaries such as Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and even the elderly Haydn, Médée is too often underrated, neglected, or just ignored. Its legacy to later opéra comique is clear, but so too is what that genre failed to take up, and may well have benefited from doing so; perhaps one might even say the same for much grand opéra. However much Berlioz may, amusingly, have fumed against Cherubini, he clearly learned a great deal, just as Cherubini, still more so, had from Gluck. (It is surely no coincidence that Riccardo Muti has shown himself such an unfashionable enthusiast for both.) The construction of scenes is often fascinating: a veritable missing chapter in so many accounts, more assumed than actual, of nineteenth-century musical history.

Créon (Vitalij Kowaljow)

Thomas Hengelbrock seemed more at home with that than with how the scenes might actually fit together, deplorably pausing to encourage, rather than at least to discourage, applause between them. But at least he brought that medium-term formal understanding to the table, along with a far from negligible ear for detail, in which the excellent players of the Vienna Philharmonic, on something approaching top form, truly shone. The chorus likewise sang with unfailing commitment: everything in Gluckian and other musical terms the production was not. Elena Stikhina gave a memorable, even moving, insofar as she was permitted, performance in the treacherous title role. Her coloratura proved searingly dramatic, a reinstatement Gluck himself would surely have understood and appreciated; her range of vocal colours was equally impressive. Dircé, in Stone’s world just another ‘real woman’, albeit less spirited, was fortunate to encounter such fine singing from Rosa Feola, who did whatever she could in these most trying circumstances. If Pavel Černoch sometimes sounded strained at the top of his vocal range, he proved tireless in communicating his difficult mix of allure and cowardice: unfailingly well-acted. Jason is just the thankless role you would expect it to be. Vitalij Kowaljow’s stentorian Créon and Alisa Kolosova’s rich-toned Néris likewise deserved better.

For Stone could not have shown less of an ear for music if he had tried. Perhaps he did. At any rate, his alternative irrelevancies distracted in the very worst way, even from themselves. By all means, comment on, question, even, if you are really sure about it, hold to account the work, of which the score is a crucial part. A production need not be its obedient servant. But to work so uncomprehendingly against it, by default rather than design: that was never likely to end well.