Bayreuth Festival (2) - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 10 August 2019

Festspielhaus

Hans Sachs – Michael Volle

Veit Pogner – Günther Groissböck

Kunz Vogelgsang – Tansel Akzeybek

Konrad Nachtigall – Armin Kolarczyk

Sixtus Beckmesser – Johannes Martin Kränzle

Fritz Kothner – Daniel Schmutzhard

Balthasar Zorn – Paul Kaufmann

Ulrich Eißlinger – Christopher Kaplan

Augustin Moser – Stefan Heibach

Hermann Ortel – Raimund Nolte

Hans Schwarz – Andreas Hörl

Hans Foltz – Timo Riihonen

Walther von Stolzing – Klaus Florian Vogt

David – Daniel Behle

Eva – Camilla Nylund

Magdalena – Wiebke Lehmkuhl

Night Watchman – Wilhelm Schwinghammer

Helga Beckmesser (Harpist) – Ruth-Alice Marino

Barrie Kosky (director)

Rebecca Ringst (set designs)

Klaus Bruns (costumes)

Franck Evin (lighting)

Regine Freise (video)

Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy)

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra

Philippe Jordan (conductor)

As a Wagner scholar, one becomes wearily accustomed to the most arrant nonsense being spoken and written about him and his work. The so-called ‘popular imagination’ – usually nothing of the sort, instead a carefully manufactured commercial view – will stop at literally nothing in its hunt for grievances. The actual problems Wagner’s work presents us with are far more important, far more interesting, but no matter. Perhaps worst of all is the pseudo-– very pseudo- – ‘literature’ that has been the bane of discourse concerning Wagner since at least the 1850s. It sells books, makes its way into newspapers; alas, it now makes its way onstage too. If only Barrie Kosky had been given a Wagner reading list by someone who knew what (s)he was talking about. Presumably his dramaturge, Ulrich Lenz, should bear some responsibility here; if his programme note is anything to go by, he surely does. Moreover, when we reach Kosky’s own note, we read the following extravagant claim, swiftly moving from the tendentious to the Ken-Russell-fantastical: ‘Wagner transforms medieval blood libel and reinvents it into 19^th[-]century music libel. Jews used to drink the blood of Christian children but now they drink the blood of German culture. And for this crime, for this act of “Crimes against Culture”, Beckmesser must be expelled from Nuremberg. Rather like those little Jewish figures in the anti-Semitic 1930’s [sic] board game “Juden raus!”’ 

Where to start? Where does Wagner say that Beckmesser is expelled from Nuremberg? Wagner’s stage direction reads ‘Er [Beckmesser] stürzt wütend fort und verliert sich unter dem Volke.’  He dashes off in fury, then, and disappears into the crowd. He has been humiliated, yes, in a fashion that may contain disturbing traces of anti-Semitism but which ultimately owes more to Shakespeare’s Malvolio and to Wagner’s earlier comedic villain in Das Liebesverbot: Friedrich, hypocritical German viceroy of Sicily, permitted likewise to lose himself during that work’s carnival finale. He has certainly not been expelled, let alone on the grounds of drinking blood, metaphorical or otherwise. No, let us not bother: it is not worth it. No one ever listens; it is always easier – ironically, as in the case of anti-Semitism, Wagner’s own certainly included – to blame the ‘other’, in this case a manufactured Wagner of lies, half-truths, and the odd fact taken out of context. In any case, whatever the misunderstandings – let us try to be charitable here – presented in such talk, it is always possible that something dramatically engaging might result.

Does it? Alas not. Familiarity may have blunted somewhat the offence of this Meistersinger (first reviewed here) onstage, but that is the best one can say for it. Whether that offence spring from ignorance or dishonesty is arguably beside the point. So, however, are the production and its underlying ideology. Moreover, it remains irredeemably glib, surely a very odd standpoint if one actually believes the things Kosky claims to, punctuated as it is by reams of slapstick and trademark silly dances. (And no, Chaplin is not a helpful comparison here: not even slightly.) Still, notwithstanding a few boos for Kosky on a surprise curtain call, most of the audience seemed to love the ‘entertainment’ placed before it. Interpolation of all-too-predictable campery will usually elicit wild applause from a good few. Doubtless others will flatter themselves that they were made to think. I doubt, though, that they could tell us how.

Once more, then to Wahnfried. It is not an original idea, but many things are not. What is ‘original’ – some might prefer ‘disingenuous’, ‘misleading’, or perhaps something stronger – is to present Die Meistersinger as somehow having originated there, in 1873, as part of an invented incident from Wagner’s life when he supposedly bullied Hermann Levi into kneeling and genuflecting. Wagner sometimes treated Levi appallingly, quite inexcusably; sometimes he treated him otherwise. What on earth that has to do with Die Meistersinger I do not know, given that he completed it in 1867. So all the alleged documentary evidence beamed onstage – including a temperature for the day, which some in the audience found side-splittingly hilarious – is untrue. It is not quite presented as ‘true’, of course, or at least it might be argued that it is not; it is difficult, however, to avoid the implication that it is so even then, still less when the production later becomes explicitly an attempt to put Wagner in the dock, on trial. No evidence for permitted: only (largely) manufactured evidence against.

A weird play of confused, confusing identities ensue, in which not only does Wagner become both Hans Sachs and Walther – in a sense, of course, that is fair enough, if a little restricting – but Liszt becomes Pogner, giving away his daughter, Cosima/Eva. Why, then, is Levi/Beckmesser – yes, I am afraid so – also wooing Cosima? Hans von Bülow, maybe, even Nietzsche, but Levi? The Masters have to be made to loathe Beckmesser from the start, although the words and music tell us quite differently. Why? Because, in the typical circularity of so much writing on Wagner and anti-Semitism, Beckmesser is an unattractive character, doing unattractive things, and therefore must be… well, you know the rest. He therefore ends up the victim of a pogrom at the close of the second act, replete with gigantic, horrifying, Völkische Beobachter caricature of a Jew. None of it makes any sense, because none of it ever seems either to have been thought through or properly prepared. At the moment any difficult question arises, one can always have another silly dance, or zoom in on a Nuremberg courtroom in, you guessed it, 1945. Even better, do both. Why choose?

Goodness only knows who ‘Helga Beckmesser’, onstage harpist for Beckmesser’s attempted rendition of the Prize Song, is supposed to be. She can hardly be his wife, given that he is attempting to woo Eva, or Cosima, or whomever the poor woman is supposed to be; unless, that is, Beckmesser nurses aspirations to bigamy, which seems an eccentric way to work towards his rehabilitation. ‘Helga’ seems actually to be dressed like Helga from the 1980s BBC sitcom, ’Allo, ’Allo! but perhaps that is just a coincidence. I hope it is, at any rate. At least much of the second act is played out with greater theatrical awareness than last time, Wahnfried clutter providing a backdrop, rather than Sachs and Beckmesser simply sitting in a green space inside a courtroom. That is a definite improvement, but the concept, if we may call it that, remains beyond questionable.

Musically, there was much to admire. Philippe Jordan’s conducting was fluent and inobtrusive (the opposite of the production, one might say). He handled the massive orchestral and choral forces with great skill; they responded with all the excellence one should expect from Bayreuth. This was probably the best Wagner I have heard from him, perhaps because he responded so keenly to the affinities with Mozart. I was put in mind of Georg Solti, shortly before his death, speaking of recognition that much in this work should be conducted as if it were Così fan tutte. Michael Volle’s Sachs was as magisterial as ever: word, tone, and gesture an object lesson to all. So too, in different vein, was Johannes Martin Kränzle’s keenly observed Beckmesser. Their chemistry was a wonder to behold. Klaus Florian Vogt’s assured Walther and Camilla Nylund’s lively Eva were beautifully complemented by similarly excellent, yet contrasting, performances from Daniel Behle as David and Wiebke Lehmkuhl as Magdalena. The relationship between the two couples might justly have been described, in line with Jordan’s conducting, as Mozartian. Günther Groissböck’s Pogner was similar impressive, the guild at whose head he stood cast from commendable depth.

As for the production, Wagner and his works will survive; they survive worse most days. It does not follow that they should have to.

BPO/Koopman - Bach, 27 October 2017

Philharmonie

Mass in B minor, BWV 232

Yetzabel Arias Fernandez (soprano)

Wiebke Lehmkuhl (contralto)

Tilman Lichdi (tenor)

Klaus Mertens (bass)

RIAS Chamber Choir (chorus master: Justin Doyle)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Ton Koopman (conductor)

Theodor Adorno: how I wish we could have heard your thoughts on this concert. In his 1951 essay, ‘Bach defended against his devotees’, written in the wake of the commemorations of the bicentenary of Bach’s death, Adorno so sharply characterised the reactionary delusions and disingenuities of musical ‘authenticity’ that one might well have thought that would have been the end of that. Except, of course, that it was not; we had barely reached the end of the overture. Vast swathes of repertoire have been entirely colonised, placed off-bounds to modern orchestras in the maniacal name of an ‘authenticity’ so self-contradictory that a five-year-old could instantly demolish its claims. And yet, so it continues. It was, then, with great interest that, two-thirds of a century after Adorno’s essay, I approached the rare opportunity of hearing the Berlin Philharmonic in the B minor Mass.

Not, alas, that this was a large-scale, ‘symphonic’ performance. (‘Symphonic’ is an especially silly word here: as if Klemperer or Jochum approached Bach as they did Beethoven…) The opening of the first Kyrie was, rather to my surprise, not at all brusque, although the chamber-scale of the forces – not small by contemporary (to us) standards, although certainly small by Adorno’s – immediately struck me, not least given the size of Berlin’s Philharmonie. After the tempo change – call that Largo?! – however, Ton Koopman’s approach proved both glib and metronomic: not unlike his strangely uncompelling way with the organ. A plea for divine mercy? Forget it. Perhaps a request for afternoon tea, although even that might have been to impart too much meaning. And therein lay the real problem. The musicians playing and singing were nearly all excellent: the Philharmonic, the Berlin Radio Choir, and at least two of the vocal soloists. But they were directed by someone who seemed not just to have a decidedly peculiar sense of what the text of the Mass might mean; he seemed to have none whatsoever. And here, as throughout the work, he simply took the piece one archly articulated phrase at a time, giving no indication of a longer line, let alone a unified conception. Even dynamic contrasts were minimal – and, when they were to be heard, weirdly arbitrary. The following ‘Christe’, then, however beautifully sung by Yetzabel Arias Fernandez, might on Koopman’s part have been computer generated – or, to return us to the 1950s, ‘sewing-machine Bach’. The second ‘Kyrie’, the clarity of choral lines remarkable in itself, sounded as a mere pendant.

Parts of the ‘Gloria’ fared better. The first section was hardly profound, and suffered from fussy articulation, but it more or less looked after itself. Moreover, much to my surprise, the ‘Et in terra pax’ section relaxed properly, even daringly, as did the ‘Gratias’. And yet, whilst instrumental obbligato parts were all very well taken (Emmanuel Pahud on flute, for instance), most of the vocal solos likewise – Wiebke Lehmkuhl’s ‘Qui sedes’ an object lesson in sounding imploring without sentimentality – there was never any sign of an overall conception. When musicians were allowed to get on with it, they generally did very well indeed; often, however, they seemed circumscribed. To return to Adorno’s essay, one could hardly avoid the suspicion that the sole concern of Bach’s ‘devotee’ was to ensure that ‘no inauthentic dynamics, no modifications of tempo, no excessively large choirs and orchestra’ should be employed. Is that your idea of Bach, I wanted to ask? Bach’s scoring of genius in the ‘Quoniam’ told properly, the bassoonists shining just as brightly as the horn player; it was a pity, here and later, that Klaus Mertens sounded so dry of tone, and that he faltered so audibly at one point. His tenor colleague, Tilman Lichdi fared better, but his light instrument – or performance – was put in the shade by Arias during their duet. The Cum sancto Spiritu’ was, to no one’s surprise, taken at breackneck speed. Whilst the choir acquitted itself with distinction, the question that lingered was: ‘why?’

Following the interval, an almost aggressively domesticated ‘Credo’ – without the ‘almost’, it might ‘almost’ have been interesting – signaled little more than the sense that the conductor might have a train to catch at the end. Everything sounded as if it were surface; that Bach might have held beliefs, even held them to be eternal truths, that we might need in some sense to reckon with that, with them, seemed never to have been considered by Koopman. If your vision of Resurrection is in pastel, then the ‘Confiteor’ and what immediately followed might have been for you. The ‘Sanctus’ can rarely have sounded less like the swing of a censer, Koopman unwilling to let go, stopping it at the end of every phrase so as to permit it to move another few inches. As for his decision to play the organ himself for the ‘Benedictus’, it added a disconcerting sense of the listless, of the merely meandering, but is that what the coming of the Holy Ghost should signify? Following a bar-to-bar, highly laboured ‘Agnus Dei’, very well sung on its own terms, an effort towards mild grandeur was made in the closing ‘Dona nobis pacem’. It was unclear, though, where it had come from, or what it might denote.

‘They say Bach, mean Telemann,’ was one of Adorno’s most devastating charges. Bach was being reduced to the level of a generic ‘Baroque’ composer. (Telemann devotees should feel free to choose someone else; there are more than enough to choose from.) The problem with Koopman was not that he said Bach yet meant Telemann; he did not seem to mean anyone or anything at all.

BPO/Nézet-Séguin - CPE Bach and Brahms, 19 October 2017

Philharmonie

CPE Bach: Heilig, Wq 217

Brahms: Ein Deutsches Requiem, op.45

Hanna-Elisabeth Müller (soprano)

Wiebke Lehmkuhl (contralto)

Markus Werba (baritone)

Berlin Radio Choir (chorus master: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Yannick Nézet-Séguin (conductor)

A slightly – well, perhaps more than slightly – baffling programme this. One might have presumed that the short CPE Bach cantata (eight minutes according to the programme, but I did not check my watch), Heilig, were present as a curtain-raiser for Brahms’s German Requiem. Brahms, after all, thought highly of Emanuel Bach, editing some of his music. And perhaps it would also have offered another opportunity for one of the vocal soloists. But no, the vocal types are different, so we had Wiebke Lehmkuhl sing a short solo and disappear for the rest of the evening. Perhaps even odder, the two works required different platform arrangements, so we had an interval in between them. Might it not have made more sense to have heard a selection of earlier music – Schütz, perhaps, even JS Bach or Handel? – with a more overt connection to the specific Brahms we were about to hear?

 

Anyway, we did not. It was a welcome opportunity to hear this 1776 cantata, for solo contralto, double chorus, and double orchestra, its text drawn from Herder, Isaiah, and the Te Deum. I cannot say that I found anything, save for its forces, especially individual in the writing: far more conventional than, say, many of CPE Bach’s orchestral or piano works. It would be difficult to begrudge it its Berlin Philharmonic premiere, though, and I have no wish to do so. Orchestra and choir (Berlin Radio Choir) alike offered a glorious sound throughout, antiphonal (Handelian) contrasts registering – although perhaps not quite so strongly as they might have done. Lehmkuhl’s performance sounded beautifully sincere, verbally and musically. It is always enjoyable to hear a little trumpet-led rejoicing too, and so we did. Yannick Nézet-Séguin ensured, greatly to his credit, that there was nothing unduly hurried to the performance, encouraging and retaining a note of necessary grandeur. It was nevertheless soon over, though, and I at least was left wondering ‘why?’

 

There was certainly nothing ‘off-the-shelf’ to Nézet-Séguin’s German Requiem either, conducted from memory. If I cannot say that his conception of the work was particularly close to mine, that is no reason to disqualify it; indeed, it was every reason to try to engage with it on its own terms. As sound, it was difficult to fault the performances of choir and orchestral alike, and again I have no wish to do so. What a joy – although is joy really what we should feel here? – it was, for instance, to hear those lower strings at the opening of ‘Selig sind, die da Leid tragen’. The blend of orchestral sound, moreover, was irreproachable, whilst offering plenty of opportunity to hear individual instruments and sections: the three harps, in particular, stood out beautifully, even celestially. And there was real warmth, even consolation, to that opening chorus, although I have heard Brahms sound darker, much darker. I was not at all sure, however, why we heard quite so robust an emphasis on ‘Freuden’; it came out of nowhere and merely sounded mannered. The great second number, ‘Denn alles Fleisch’ was a little darker, as surely it must be, but with a strange touch of ‘glamour’ to it. It was certainly worlds away from Klemperer or Furtwängler. What the performance did have, in spades, was clarity. Nézet-Séguin shaped the movement well, preparing transitions, rendering them convincing, the winding down at the close was handled especially well. What I missed, I think, was a greater sense of ‘meaning’: not just theological or even verbal.

 

Markus Werba proved a relatively light-toned soloist, which seemed to fit with the general approach. In ‘Herr, lehre doch mich,’ however, I could not help but think that the orchestral sound was a bit too close to Strauss; there is no single way that Brahms sound, of course, but I am not sure, by the same token, that just anything goes either. It would be churlish, nevertheless, to deny the sonic pleasure of the build-up above the movement’s pedal-point. Following a duly lieblich ‘Wie lieblich sind deine Wohnungen,’ Hanna-Elisabeth Müller got off to a shaky start in ‘Ihr habt nun Traurigkeit’. Brahms’s solo writing here is exposed, even treacherous, and so it sounded. She settled down before too long, though.

 

Nézet-Séguin took the opening of the following number, ‘Denn wir haben hie keine bleibende Statt,’ very deliberately: not just pace, but choral enunciation too. It certainly focused attention on the words, whatever else I thought of it. However, the blazing, almost ‘operatic’ approach – more Strauss again, even Wagner, than Brahms, I thought – to the Last Trump seemed somewhat out of place. A cappella writing in the final ‘Selig sind die Toten’ reminded us that the choir was in itself just as impressive as the orchestra. It flowed nicely, and sounded consoling. Concerning what, however, did we need to be consoled?

Bayreuth Festival (5) - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, 27 August 2017

Festspielhaus

Hans Sachs – Michael Volle

Veit Pogner – Günther Groissböck
Kunz Vogelgsang – Tansel Akzeybek
Konrad Nachtigall – Armin Kolarczyk
Sixtus Beckmesser – Johannes Martin Kränzle
Fritz Kothner – Daniel Schmutzhard
Balthasar Zorn – Paul Kaufmann
Ulrich Eißlinger – Christopher Kaplan
Augustin Moser – Stefan Heibach
Hermann Ortel – Raimund Nolte
Hans Schwarz – Andreas Hörl
Hans Foltz – Timo Riihonen
Walther von Stolzing – Klaus Florian Vogt
David – Daniel Behle
Eva – Anne Schwanewilms
Magdalena – Wiebke Lehmkuhl
Night-watchman – Karl-Heinz Lehner
Helga Beckmesser (Harpist) – Barbara Mayr

Barrie Kosky (director)
Rebecca Ringst (set designs)
Klaus Bruns (costumes)
Franck Evin (lighting)
Regine Freise (video)
Ulrich Lenz (dramaturgy) 

Bayreuth Festival Chorus (chorus master: Eberhard Friedrich)

Bayreuth Festival Orchestra
Philippe Jordan (conductor)

Whole-hearted approval from a typical opera audience, let alone a typical Wagner audience, in a production’s first run is rarely a good thing. There will be exceptions, of course. However – and I speak from experience, having struggled with some parts of Frank Castorf’s Ring the first time I saw it – if what you see is what you get, what will you see, or hear, a second time. As someone once said, or sang – and indeed, as someone once wrote: ‘Kam Sommer, Herbst und Winterzeit, viel Not und Sorg’ im Leben, manch ehlick Glück daneben, Kindtauf’, Geschäfte, Zwist und Streit: denen’s dann noch will gelingen, ein schönes Lied zu singen, seht; Meister nennt man die!’ Is there, as Brecht maintained, a ‘swindle’ inherent in art? One does not have to be a card-carrying Brechtian to say: yes, of course. Art conceals art, and nowhere more so than in Die Meistersinger; that is what the opera is about too, as well as the crucial element of reflection. There are different types of swindles, though. Ultimately, although Barrie Kosky’s new production of Die Meistersinger begins with promise, I fear that it turns out to be of a rather more disreputable variety. This, I am afraid, is Kosky – at his best, a fine director, although highly variable – at his most unsympathetic, his most cavalier; indeed, I should go so far as to say, at his most dishonest.

We start, part way through the opening Prelude, at Wahnfried. (Did not someone do something similar at Bayreuth not so very long ago?) For some reason, a date in the summer of 1875 is chosen and flashed in front of the stage. (Such ‘information’ is the extent of the video here, along with rather strained attempts at humour. An outside temperature is shown and many in the audience are helpless with laughter. I only wish that I were joking.) Wagner, Cosima, Liszt, and others assemble – as if this were something recounted in Cosima’s Diaries, but I am pretty sure that it is not. One of those others is Hermann Levi, apparently about to conduct Die Meistersinger at Bayreuth: before the Ring, it would seem, somehow, and thus before everything else. Never mind that the work was never conducted at Bayreuth in Wagner’s lifetime, whether by Levi or anyone else. The scenario gives Kosky the chance to invent an instance of anti-Semitism, anyway, by having Wagner and everyone else kneel for the opening chorale and genuflect. (As if Wagner would ever have done such a thing!) Levi is bullied into doing the same. Does it matter that that never happened? On one level, of course not. On another, not really, for we are not exactly short of instances either of virulent anti-Semitism on Wagner’s part or directed against Levi. On another level again, that of whether this be the right work, I am not sure: yes, with respect to Levi, it clearly should be Parsifal, but we can let that pass. On the final level, however, I think it does, very much. For Kosky’s conceit is to put Wagner, in the not entirely coherent guise of Hans Sachs, quite literally on trial. And Wagner receives neither a defence nor indeed a case against him that is anything other than a string of misrepresentations and fabrications. Yes, this is a staging, not a thesis, but I think it matters when the very clear implication is that much, at least, of what we are seeing is based on historical fact and, perhaps worse, upon critical Wagner scholarship.

Levi becomes Beckmesser as Wagner becomes Sachs. Somewhat oddly, Liszt becomes Pogner, as Cosima becomes Eva. That sub-plot, if you will – it should, of course, be the actual plot – does not work at all, even though Kosky admits, with varying degrees of clarity and coherence, that there is something of Wagner in Walther too. Wagner, after all, certainly did not have to rely on Liszt’s, or anyone else’s, permission to win his second wife; and it does not make obvious sense to have a younger version of himself snatch her from his older self. The problem, again, is that these things seem strongly implied; they neither cohere internally nor externally. The trial business is much more serious, alas. For after a great deal of first-act theatrical ‘business’ – more activity than real drama, I am afraid to say – Wagner’s villa recedes into the distance (again, quite filmic, in its way) just before the interval to reveal Wagner/Sachs on trial, in Nuremberg in – yes, 1945.

As it happens, I had been in Nuremberg just a few days previously. I had walked down the Strasse der Menschenrechte, a sign not only of true internationalism, of an order determined to defeat Nazism forever, but also reminding us of its resurgence since 1989. Names of Germans murdered on account of their ‘race’ since unification are movingly displayed on one monument. (Would that we might have something similar in the United Kingdom for our victims of ‘Brexit’ violence.) No country in the world has shown anything like the determination to come to terms with its past that Germany has, and no country is, I think, quite so clear that more, far more, still needs to be done. Vergangenheitsbewältigung works, but it is an ever-necessary process, not something ever to be completed. How about, then, we start blaming Wagner for everything? It is preposterous and, more to the point, very, very dangerous. Clearly it is very dangerous indeed simply to blame Hitler, to refuse to treat with National Socialism with the historical seriousness it deserves and demands, and thus to acquit the social and economic structures, as well as the other historical actors, who enabled Friedrich Meinecke’s ‘German catastrophe’ to happen. But to say that in any sense Wagner was responsible is to return to the thesis, if one may call it that, of what is perhaps the single most disgraceful book ever to be written about the composer: Joachim Köhler’s Wagner’s Hitler: The Prophet and his Disciple. Yes, Wagner’s Hitler, not Hitler’s Wagner. Köhler presented – and I am not exaggerating one iota – a monocausal explanation of the Second World War: Wagner. He has since, apparently, disavowed this book, although I should be surprised to hear that he had disavowed the royalties. It might as well have been Wagner and UFOs, only that would have been harmless by comparison.

Kosky nowhere in the ‘trial’ that ensues – rather hesitantly, for the second act, bewilderingly takes place on some grass that appears inside the courtroom – entertains the possibility that Wagner might not be guilty. Nowhere does he suggest that many Wagner scholars would dispute even the thesis that anti-Semitism is to be found within the dramatic works, let alone the ludicrous excesses of sensationalists such as Köhler, Paul Lawrence Rose, Marc A. Weiner, Hartmut Zelinsky, and so on. (Their ‘methods’, if one may call them that, are far closer to those of Goebbels than anything in Wagner, but never mind.) This is, quite clearly, although for reasons never explained, an entirely discreditable work by an entirely discreditable composer. I, presumably, am a Nazi too, for having dedicated so much of my life to the study of such discreditable, even murderous material. There are many more persuasive claims than those mentioned above for the thesis of anti-Semitism both in this and other works by Wagner; but frankly, when Kosky cannot be bothered to summon up a fair trial, I might as well leave naming them for another day too. So far, so disagreeable, but it is really the third act that takes the biscuit. Having told us – though very carefully, or very glibly, said nothing really – how wicked this all is, and having assembled all the paraphernalia of the courtroom ready for judgement, Kosky then cannot be bothered to pursue the case, such as it is, any further. Presenting Beckmesser as the victim of a pogrom at the end of the second act, replete with Stürmer imagery, horrifies – but lazily so. It has not been prepared, on the production’s own terms, let alone anything beyond them. What we then witness is a highly conventional –pretty much indistinguishable from David McVicar – ‘entertainment’ unfold in ‘pretty’, only slightly ironised (if at all) sixteenth-century costumes, bar or take the bizarre, disquieting appearance of caricatured 'Jewish' dwarves when Beckmesser is on stage. Otherwise, it just all happens within the courtroom; that is all. Thus Kosky both manages to construct a grotesquely unfair trial, and then to say that it never really mattered anyway.

It becomes glibber still. At the close, the courtroom recedes and disappears. The chorus reappears as an onstage orchestra and 'plays'. What Kosky seems to be saying is that most trivial of responses one sometimes hears to Wagner: ‘I hate the man, but love the music. Why can’t we just enjoy that?’ Well no, actually. For one thing, there is no ‘music itself’. One hardly need be a doctrinaire, or even heterodox, New Musicologist to appreciate that; this is, after all, a musical drama. If that is tainted, then yes, we do need to address that – unless, perhaps, you are going to remove the words completely, or at least their dramatic import. (I suppose, in a way, Kosky has a fair stab at doing that, if not quite in the way he thinks he does.) If the work and the composer have been put on trial, then at least let us see and hear the evidence. ‘Dann Tat und Wort am rechtem Ort,’ please; or at least let us have deed and word in a place whose sole intent, or at least result, is not seemingly to deceive.

It is a great pity, in part because the idea of constructing some sort of fairer trial would have been a genuinely interesting, worthwhile thing, not least at Bayreuth, but also because much, if not all, on the musical side proved genuinely worthy of celebration. Michael Volle gave at least as fine a performance of Hans Sachs as I have heard from him. Given his dual role as Wagner, that must stand as a still greater achievement in many ways than his Salzburg Sachs for Stefan Herheim (whose production remains quite hors concours). Such depth and sophistication in attention to word, tone, and gesture, would surely have delighted his alter ego. Likewise Johannes Martin Kränzle’s Beckmesser, in at least as great a performance (and in very challenging circumstances). Their dialogue during the second act was such as to be worthy of awards – in the spoken, let alone the lyrical, theatre. Günther Groissböck, so excellent a Fasolt earlier in the week, put all those earlier virtues to work in the role of Pogner, and Daniel Behle, Froh in that same performance, had greater opportunity, finely taken, to shine as David. Klaus Florian Vogt’s Walther is a known quantity; many dislike it on account of simply disliking his voice. I shall admit to having cooled somewhat on that count myself – maybe partly on account of having heard Jonas Kaufmann and Brandon Jovanovich – but he sang very well on his own terms, could always be heard, and dealt very well with a production that very much left him on the sidelines. Wiebke Lehmkuhl offered a likeable, musical performance as Magdalene. Only Anne Schwanewilms disappointed, quite miscast, it would seem, incapable of holding her line in the Quintet, and not only there.

The Bayreuth Festival Chorus’s contribution outstanding, as one might have expected, though no less worthy of comment for that. The ability of chorus members to combine such excellence in singing with highly detailed individual stage performances – always a Kosky strength – should also be praised to the rafters. If Philippe Jordan strayed too little from mezzo piano and mezzo forte in some sections of the work, his conducting nevertheless emerged considerably more variegated than it had in Paris last year. He generally handled the work’s corners skilfully, and showed a good rapport with the wonderful players of the Festival Orchestra, whose commitment could not be gainsaid. There were perhaps no great insights on Jordan’s part, but this is a very, very difficult work for a conductor to bring off; I am tempted to think it the most difficult of all, perhaps bar Tristan. If I still longed for the wisdom of Bernard Haitink, then I nearly always do in this work. And art, as it reminds us, must move on.

That is not, however, to say that just anything goes. ‘You see,’ Brecht wrote, ‘you can do lots of things with form, carry out all sorts of swindles and fake improvements which then simply exist in “external form”.’ There was ‘the “people’s community …; there was the “economic upturn”, the “economic miracle” thanks to rearmament. And, on paper, the people had a Volkswagen, though in the cold light of day it became a tank.’ Form, he went on, ‘plays a major role in art. Form isn’t everything, but it’s so substantial that neglecting it will destroy a work.’ Indeed – and so it goes for a production. It ‘isn’t something external, something that the artist confers on content, it’s so much a part of content that it often comes across to the artist as content itself.’ Except not – if one is perpetrating a swindle or a fake trial: not, perhaps, entirely unlike what I have just done to Brecht, yet that pales into insignificance when compared to what this production does to Wagner. What worries me most is that members of the audience, flattered and laughing along to Kosky’s jokes, will feel that Wagner – and they – have been acquitted. By all means let us have a trial, but let us not delude ourselves that we have had one here.