To celebrate 1500 blog posts: Deutsche Oper Strauss-Wochen (5) - Der Rosenkavalier, 10 April 2016



Der Rosenkavalier © 2008, Bettina Stöß
(Images are indicative of the production, not of the present cast.)

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg – Michaela Kaune

Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Albert Pesendorfer
Octavian – Daniela Sindram
Herr von Faninal – Michael Kupfer-Radecky
Sophie – Siobhan Stagg
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Fionnuala McCarthy
Valzacchi – Patrick Vogel
Annina – Stephanie Lauricella
Police Officer – Seth Carico
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Peter Maus
Faninal’s Major-domo – Jörg Schorner
Singer – Matthew Newlin
Flautist – Djordje Papke
Servant – Thomas Lehman
Milliner – Alexandra Hutton
Landlord, Vendor of Pets – Matthew Peña
Three noble orphans – Sabine Dicekcmann, Gabriele Goebbels, Christa Werron
Their mother – Satu Louhi
Hairdresser – Younes Laraki
His assistant – Sandra Meyer
Marschallin’s Lackeys – Haico Apal, Ulrich George, Tadeusz Milewski, Rüdiger Scheibl
Mohammed – Jason Boateng
Almonier – Frank Sufalko
Leopold – Olli Rantaseppä
Doctor – Carsten Meyer
Pair of Dancers – Silke Sense, Christopher Matt
Four Waiters – Ralph Eschrig, Mike Fischer, Heine Boßmeyer, Imma Nagne Jun
Children – Children’s Choir and Children Extras
Leopold – Dirk Wolter
Lackeys – Ingolf Stollberg, Andreas Keinze, Jun-Seok Bang, Matthias Beutlich
Waiters – Rafael Harnisch, Torsten Schäpan Norbert Klesse, Thomas Müller
Three noble orphans – Jennifer Porto, Emily Dorn, Christel Loetzsch

Götz Friedrich (director)

Gottfried Pilz, Isabel Ines Glathar (designs)
Duane Schuler (lighting)
Gerlinde Pelkowski (Spielleitung)

 

What a splendid way to finish, with Götz Friedrich’s Rosenkavalier. Few opera productions have a productively long life; I do not mean that as an insult, for by their very nature, successful stagings tend to respond to the concerns of their time, which will not necessarily be ours. There are exceptions, of course; have you ever met someone who has tired of the Chéreau Ring? (Perhaps there remain, somewhere on a reserve, a few choice creatures who still angrily reject it, ‘in the name of all that is winged in helmets’, but let us leave them to their webpages.) Friedrich’s 1993 production, doubtless in conjunction with (very) successful revival direction, still has a great deal to offer. Unlike, say, Otto Schenk’s ideas-free, drama-free, totally-missing-the-point-of-the-opera bad-taste-Rococo-fest, Friedrich’s staging, surely the inspiration for almost all interesting productions thereafter, might have been imagined yesterday, or even tomorrow; comparison with Chéreau is far from exaggerated. Its seventy-fifth performance had me think more than a little; it also had me cry more than a little. It can therefore be said to have done its work very well indeed.

Anachronism is the opera’s thing, or rather it is part of the opera’s most profound concern: the passing of time. Die Zeit, die ist ein sonderbar Ding. (Or ‘sonderbares’?) It is too in Friedrich’s staging: it is about playing roles, wearing masks, navigating the æsthetic and historical disjunctures with tragic wit and comedic fate. That is done out of love, out of necessity; as a game, as a way of life; as a Viennese, both rooted and cosmopolitan, of ‘then’ and of ‘now’. The point is, of course, that the Vienna of Der Rosenkavalier never existed; it is not ‘really’ the ‘Jesuit Baroque’ of Maria Theresa, to which Hofmannsthal referred in a letter to Strauss (24 April 1909). Yet if there is both truth and untruth – more a matter of dialectical drama than of dishonesty – in Hofmannsthal’s claim, there is likewise both truth and untruth in another Hofmannsthal letter (to Harry Graf Kessler, 20 May 1909) that the Marschallin is not intended in a ‘voltairianisch’ way. Again, there is reference to the ‘Austrian Jesuit Baroque’, but there is something that both encompasses and transcends, or perhaps transgresses, the Austrian, even the Viennese, setting. There was never really a Vienna of Voltaire in the first place; the Austrian Enlightenment was richer – and poorer – than that. Joseph II, whilst co-Regent, pointedly passed by Voltaire’s château rather than visit him. But the artwork has a cosmopolitanism to it too that should not be ignored; the Marschallin’s French may not be intended in that way, at least not entirely, but she is not so far from the salons of Paris – or of Capriccio. There is something of the historico-æsthetic need to recreate in all of that, as there is in what we see.

For the production opens not in the ‘Jesuit Baroque’, not really; nor even in the Vienna of 1911, not really. It seems, and semblance is surely the important thing here, a way in rather than an endpoint, to have more of the 1920s of it, albeit an ‘interwar period’ as we now know it, looking back: fondly, nostalgically, maybe even a little desperately. That is not just Friedrich’s doing, of course; his production, aided enormously by the excellent designs of Gottfried Pilz, Isabel Ines Glathar and by Duane Schuler’s clever lighting, has lived on too, now in the Spielleitung of Gerlinde Pelkowski. The work’s over-ripeness – a part, but only a part of it – has been historically anticipated, almost as if it were aware of Walter Benjamin, which in a sense, of course, it is. It and its after-history are certainly aware of the Marschallin’s hopeless desire to stop the clocks; the poignancy is, if anything, added to, by the extension of the ‘too late’ quality, but also by the Marschallin and Octavian dressing up, recreating, with some of the greatest eroticism I have seen in this work, that never-was dix-huitième we know and love. (Not the Rococo: are you listening, friends of Otto Schenk? Listen to Hofmannsthal… Listen to Strauss: even Johann, via Richard!) The Personenregie unfolds with deceptive, unsparing realism and non-realism; we feel on the one hand it is real, and on the other, that it is artifice. Such is the work; such is the production; such is musical performance. We cannot stop the clocks, although everyone of us would help the Marschallin do so.

 

Perhaps the greatest victory against the ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’ tendency, though, is the beginning of the second act. It looks magnificent, on a first glance; it does on a second, too, although not in the way they think it does.  Some of them actually applauded, presumably thinking they were in Schenkstadt. But they were not; the joke was on them. They do it with mirrors, as the Marschallin would have told them, if only they listened, or cared. Faninal’s Palais actually resembles a smart hotel; it is all a little too functional. It even resembles the smartness of the Salzburg Festival, a Straussian, Hofmannsthalian, strenuously ‘Austrian’ invention itself. We love it; our lives are enriched by it. But it is an invention; an imposter, even, claiming Mozart, in no meaningful sense whatsoever an ‘Austrian’, just as it claims his Salzburg, his Vienna.

 

The third act is perhaps the greatest triumph of all. The pretension – and I use the word deliberately – of a created Beisl is revealed for what it is: again, this is true criticism. The exaggerations of this ‘old Vienna’, presumably ‘suburban’ in the old sense – think, perhaps of Mozart’s Theater auf der Wieden, or of any other example that takes your fancy – are revealed and, just perhaps, explained. If it is an old Viennese ‘farce’, then it is also old Viennese Fasching; Faschingsschwank aus Wien, as Schumann might have had it. The commedia dell’arte hints (the lovers’ dressing up) of the first act find their destiny here, the Pantomime ‘real’ and the events ‘proper’ theatre; or is it vice versa? The splitting of the stage and the interaction between the two ‘halves’ show us that it is not either-or, but also that a sense of either-or is necessary to appreciation of the delights of the metatheatrical constructions, both Werktreu and otherwise. Valzacchi’s photography is spot on. He draws us into his world, makes us voyeurs, foreigners, consumers, anachronisms, participants. The scandal sheets, the situation, the carnival would be nothing without us. And none of this detracts from our being moved at the end; quite the contrary, it enhances, it necessitates that.

 

And how we were moved at the end – and not just then. The three women – well, two women and a ‘man’ – complemented and contrasted with each other splendidly. Michaela Kaune’s dignity was unanswerable; it grew, as time went on. She became more beautiful in every way, the more her fate and her mastery of the situation were sealed. Daniela Sindram’s Octavian, stuck in the middle, was unsparingly portrayed: quite right, there should be no sentimentalism here. The character’s youth might seem attractive, but it is not, neither for him, nor for us. Siobhan Stagg’s spirited Sophie was just the thing: horrifyingly little-girlish at the start – the schoolgirl dress was also just the thing – and developing, little by little, not too far but far enough. Albert Pesendorfer’s Ochs was not merely boorish; there was an element of charm, as there should be, at least at times. His pretensions to being a Kavalier were satirised, but not too much, as much in performance as in the silly reddishness of his wig. It was intriguing to encounter a Faninal with real charm too, as well as undeniable arriviste qualities. In Michael Kupfer-Radecky’s portrayal, we were treated to vocal as well as stage suavity, no mere caricature; he knew how to turn it on too. The Italians were uncommonly fine in vocal terms, and more complex character than one generally sees; Patrick Vogel’s quicksilver Valzacchi was complimented by Stephanie Lauricella’s glamorous Annina. Nothing else, I am sure, would have done in this ’20s-ish world.

 

So it went on, everyone playing his or her part, and the quality of the ensemble playing the greatest part of all. Except, perhaps, for the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, whose praises I have sung in every one of these reviews, and which I shall sing again here. ‘In its blood’ is perhaps an unfortunate, if not entirely inappropriately unfortunate, metaphor here, but it really, doubtless unsurprisingly, seems to speak Strauss like few other orchestras. Ulf Schirmer, in one of the finest performances I have heard from him – self-effacing, not faceless – was first among equals; one had the sense that the orchestra’s waltzing coaxed him, just as he coaxed it. Moments of stillness were such that a pin could have been heard to drop; moments of commotion were so finely balanced that this might have been a second Meistersinger. There was direction, but there was time to linger. Rubato might not stop the clock, but it might increase our desire to do so. Strauss’s Wagnerism – leitmotif here unusually apparent, without overbalance – and his worship of Mozart were as carefully held in check, as productively drawn into conflict and, perhaps, even reconciliation, as they were on stage. As I said, I thought – and I cried.

 

 

 

Deutsche Oper Strauss-Wochen (4) - Die Liebe der Danae. 9 April 2016

Die Liebe der Danae © 2011, Barbara Aumüller

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Jupiter – Mark Delavan

Merkur – Thomas Blondelle
Pollux – Andrew Dickinson
Danae – Manuela Uhl
Xanthe – Adriana Ferfezka
Midas – Raymond Very
First King – Paul Kaufmann
Second King – Clemens Bieber
Third King – Thomas Lehman
Fourth King – Alexei Botnarciuc
Semele – Nicole Haslett
Europa – Martina Weischenbach
Alkmene – Rebecca Jo Loeb
Leda – Katharina Peetz

Kirsten Harms (director)

Bernd Damovsky (set designs)
Dorothea Katzer (costumes)
Manfred Voss (lighting)
Silke Sense (Spielleitung)
Andreas K.W. Meyer (dramaturgy)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper , Berlin (chorus master: William Spaulding)
Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin 
Sebastian Weigle (conductor)

Strauss’s penultimate opera has been unlucky, more a victim of circumstances than of its intrinsic qualities, although Joseph Gregor’s libretto admittedly falls somewhat short of Hofmannsthal. Its 1944 would-have-been premiere at the Salzburg Festival fell victim to ‘total war’ and closure of theatres, so the only time Strauss himself heard it was at the Generalprobe. Thereafter, despite a successful posthumous premiere in Salzburg, it has never secured itself in the repertory; so much the worse, as so often, for the repertory. A committed performance such as this will have done it no harm whatsoever, although, as with the only other performance I have attended (Salzburg again, 2002), I am not convinced that the production (then Günter Kramer, now Kirsten Harms) made the best of its opportunities. Perhaps Salzburg’s third attempt, this year, will do better.

In the meantime, there could be no doubting the work’s musical qualities. That extraordinary evocation of sadness – not tragedy, ‘just’ deep sadness – in the third-act Interlude is not the only candidate from this score for Strauss at his greatest. ‘Jupiter’s resignation’, as Strauss called it, is not the only time one cannot help but draw parallels with Wotan; indeed, such parallels suggest themselves in the libretto perhaps all too readily. At any rate, in the very capable hands of Sebastian Weigle – quite the best thing I have heard him do – Strauss’s musico-dramatic empathy spoke as eloquently as one could hope for. Throughout, Weigle’s pacing convinced, as did his balancing of the Deutsche Oper orchestra, which once again proved itself worthy of the most exalted comparisons in the music of a composer long so close to its heart.

At the risk of becoming unduly repetitive, I should like again to draw attention to the skill with which each conductor in this mini-festival (arguably not so mini- a festival!) and the orchestra have commanded and communicated Strauss’s phantasmagorical wizardry, not just with respect to orchestration, not just with respect to shifting of timbres, but perhaps most important of all, in the marriage of timbral to harmonic shifts. (I promise that I shall try to restrain, even to eliminate, my use of the word ‘phantasmagorical’ for a month or so, once these Strauss reviews are done and dusted.) This is undoubtedly an old man’s score; it sounded all the more loved for recognition of that, in a reading that was unhurried without ever losing its impetus. The aristocratic refinement of Capriccio is not Strauss’s way here. (It is certainly not Gregor’s!) However,t the Strauss of Die Frau ohne Schatten is here at times, albeit perhaps softened (I am not sure that is quite the right word), and what a joy it is to hear that Strauss one last time. Indeed, more than once I was put in mind of Strauss’s reworking of Idomeneo, the Wagnerian and Mozartian tendencies in his work performing their endlessly fascinating interaction, even battle.

 

Manuela Uhl proved a moving exponent of the title role, especially as the opera progressed. To make a distinction between the ‘vocal’ and ‘dramatic’ is always, or should always be, to err; here, there was no doubt of that, for the sympathy with the character as engaged by Uhl was part and parcel not only of beautiful tone but its alliance with her stage action. Raymond Very was equally impressive as Midas. Apparently he was ailing, but one would rarely have known it, so secure were his technique and his similar ability to engender sympathy. Mark Delavan’s Jupiter was occasionally a little bluff, but that is arguably in keeping with the character, or at least a perfectly respectable interpretation thereof. His sadness, as well as the orchestra’s, in the third act reminded us that the Wotan parallel would have been even stronger when the role was created by no less than Hans Hotter (at the rehearsal, that is, not the public premiere). Thomas Blondelle was quite the stage animal, and quite the vocally winged messenger, as Merkur. I had no complaint with any of the singers; the Deutsche Oper can cast from depth, and regularly does. Its chorus remains one of the finest jewels in its crown; this performance was no exception.

 

Harms’s production does no especial harm. It is ‘stylish’ enough, in a generalised fashion, but does not seem to me to offer any particular insights. Apart from a predictable updating – or should that be demythologising? – this is a somewhat conventional staging, but in a work unfamiliar to many, that might not always be a bad thing. I am not sure why Pollux’s auctioned-off piano is suspended in the sky during the third act. Is it to come crashing down, with catastrophic or even Zerbinetta-like, consequences (a troupe perhaps concealed within it)? No; it simply remains there, arresting in visual terms, yet seemingly contributing little beyond that, except perhaps a vague reminder of what has gone before. Transformation into gold relies upon suggestion, and is probably all the better for that. Personenregie is generally impressive, although that will presumably long since have been delegated from the original director. In this case, however, Strauss’s score was definitely the thing. How it glowed!

 

 

Deutsche Oper Strauss-Wochen (3) - Die ägyptische Helena, 8 April 2016

Die ägyptische Helena © 2009, Marcus Lieberenz

Deutsche Oper

Helena – Ricarda Merbeth

Menelas – Stefan Vinke
Hermione – Selina Isl
Aïthra – Laura Aikin
Altaïr – Derek Welton
Da-Ud – Andrew Dickinson
First Servant – Alexandra Hutton
Second Servant – Stephanie Weiss
First Elf – Elbenita Kajtazi
Second Elf – Alexandra Ionis
Third Elf – Rebecca Raffell
Omniscient Mussel – Ronnita Miller

Marco Arturo Marelli (director, set designs)

Dagmar Niefind (costumes)
Andreas K.W. Meyer (dramaturgy)
Claudio Gotta (Spielleitung)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Andrew Litton (conductor)

 

Gratitude to the Deutsche Oper for staging Die ägyptische Helena, in generally excellent musical performances, is, alas, mixed with sadness at Marco Arturo Marelli’s production. Works such as this really need help from a director. Here, the apparently non-ironic (if irony were intended, rarely if ever did it come across) glossiness of Marelli’s staging, the sort of thing that might be considered a little adventurous for the Met, threatened to smother the work completely. Were this a self-reflexive acknowledgement of that quotation from Schoenberg I cited at the beginning of this series, it might have been a splendid, meta-theatrical starting-point. To refresh our memories, Schoenberg responded to Strauss’s typically faux-philistine remark, ‘in each of my works, there must be a melody which can be understood by the most stupid fellow in the hall’, with the charge: ‘Problems arise for him and are solved by him in the same way: he misunderstands them. But it cannot be disputed that he has dealt with them: he has hidden them under a coating of sugar icing, so that the public sees only the … world of a Marzipanmeister. This is not the way of thinking of a man whom God has given a mission.’ Maybe there is an apologia to be made for Marelli’s expensive high-camp, but I spoke to more than one friend afterwards who was resolutely of the mind that this was not a good opera at all. Opportunities to change their minds will not, alas, be frequent.

 

Is it a good opera? Well, I suppose it depends what one means. No one in his (or her) right mind would say this was another Elektra, or, for that matter, Capriccio. But what is lost here is any sense of lightness of touch. It is, I remain convinced, in many respects a work of considerable wit. Delve beneath the alluring surface and there is real bite. It is all too easy, when one does not listen to the work, to scorn Hofmannsthal’s ambition, inspired by the artistry of Maria Jeritza, to write a successor of sorts to La belle Hèlene, but an ear – and an eye – for irony are all that is needed. Glitziness, like any brand of spectacle, can generally be put to dramatic use, perhaps especially operatic use, but Marelli seems unable to distinguish between, say, Strauss and Korngold. Just when Marelli has an idea that might be worthy of development, for instance the light allusion to the background of warfare – it is, after all, all ‘there’ in the work – it is quickly dropped, so as not to scare away the horses. Non-ironic Orientalism, school of David McVicar, does not help: have we not gone beyond finding veiled women intrinsically ‘mysterious’? Even if Strauss and Hofmannsthal had not, that is all the more reason for a critical approach on stage. Something can be made of the undeniable differences between composer and librettist; something should be made of it. That is surely the thinking director’s task.

Where a Stefan Herheim – we desperately need more Strauss from him! – might perhaps have made such play of bad taste gloss in dramatic counterpart to any number of other themes, Marelli seems content, not only to take Strauss at face value, but to avoid any questioning of why Strauss might have been writing in the style that he did, of what the implications of such writing might be. There is little, or no, sense of actually listening to the contours of the score, let alone of a critical response to it. There are many possible avenues might take from a more Konzept-driven standpoint. Is this unhappy married couple not the next instalment in Strauss’s Intermezzo domestic saga? How might we relate the work to Elektra? To Crusading operas such as the Armide of Strauss’s esteemed Gluck? The sense given from time to time, and especially in the closing scene of luxury tourism is welcome, but alas it is not enough to provide a coherent concept, and is for the most part too little, too late. And could we not at least have some sense of the Omniscient Mussel – yes, I know it is really a shell rather than the bivalve itself, but that makes it no less bizarre – being more than a housekeeper with somewhat garish dress sense?

Enough, now, of all that! The musical performances offered a good deal of compensation. Once again, the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper proved itself to be a Strauss ensemble of the first rank. Even at his more dramatically dubious, as I shall admit he is here on occasion, Strauss is a prince amongst orchestrators. That is probably misleading, since there is not really material to consider separately from its orchestration; that was certainly how Strauss’s writing sounded under the loving care of Andrew Litton. Litton clearly relishes the score, and why would he not? We hear references to a number of earlier scores, both by Strauss, and others; sly Tristan-isms were certainly given their due on this occasion. And the colours! The gold, the purple, the scarlet, the azure, and so much else, the transformation of one into the other; the steel with which it is accomplished; all that and much more came across powerfully indeed – yes, luxuriantly, yet with a proper sense of tonal, timbral, and dramatic hierarchies, and their interaction, whether successful or, even on occasion, less so. Again, if only the staging had made something similar of the work’s terms of reference.

Ricarda Merbeth gave an excellent account of Helen’s part. A few instances of less than comprehensible diction could readily be forgiven for the many passages of gloriously Straussian lyrical abandon. Even I must admit that Menela(u)s does not signal Strauss’s finest hour: a graver indictment of his writing for tenor than the more celebrated, often exaggerated other ‘cases’. That said, Stefan Vinke barked more than is necessary, let alone desirable. On the positive side, he never flagged. If only we could hear Andreas Schager in this role. Laura Aikin’s performance as the Sorceress, Aïthra, seemed to me an unqualified success. She conveyed a great deal of the mysterious ambiguity missing from the production, without sacrifice to verbal and musical requirements. Derek Welton’s Altaïr was an intelligent, forthright portrayal. Andrew Dickinson’s Da-Ud revealed a beautiful lyric tenor. And yes, as the shell whom we do not call a shell, and who on this occasion was not a shell, Ronnita Miller excelled. Hers is a rich, deep mezzo voice. I look forward to hearing more from many of these artists.

Deutsche Oper Strauss-Wochen (2) - Elektra, 7 April 2016

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Elektra – Evelyn Herlitzius

Chrysothemis – Manuela Uhl
Klytämnestra – Doris Soffel
Orest – Tobias Kehrer
First Maid – Annika Schlicht
Second Maid – Rebecca Jo Loeb
Third Maid – Jana Kurucová
Fourth Maid – Fionnula McCarthy
Fifth Maid – Elbenita Kajtazi
Overseer – Stephanie Weiss
Confidante – Nicole Haslett
Trainbearer – Alexandra Hutton
Young Servant – James Kryshak
Orest’s tutor – Seth Carico
Aegisth – Clemens Bieber

Kirsten Harms (director)

Bernd Damovsky (designs)
Claudia Gotta (Spielleitung)
Silvana Schröder (choreography)

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin (chorus master: William Spaulding)

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Donald Runnicles (conductor)  

With the second of these five evenings at the Deutsche Oper, we come to Strauss’s first collaboration with Hugo von Hofmannsthal – and probably his (and their) greatest opera of all, Elektra. It may or may not be one’s ‘favourite’; such is a matter of personal taste. But the greatness of this relentless tragedy, which grabs one by the scruff of one’s neck and refuses to let one go for well-nigh a couple of hours, would be disputed by no one, even Theodor Adorno, notwithstanding his attack on its ‘entire final section,’ in which ‘banality is dominant’.

Is that how it seemed here? (The greatness, that is, rather than the alleged banality.) Yes, of course. We were in safe hands with Donald Runnicles and the excellent orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, Berlin. If I had a reservation concerning Runnicles’s conducting, it was that, in the longest term, it had a tendency towards the sectional. The post-Wagnerian melos flowed wonderfully within scenes, or subdivisions thereof, and the attention paid to characterisation, harmonic and timbral, of such sections was very much welcome. However, the connections between them sometimes were sometimes a little obscured. One can have both, as Semyon Bychkov showed so triumphantly at the Proms in 2014; but then, Bychkov arguably has no peer, certainly has very few peers, at least who are alive, in this music. That concert performance was one in a million, as anyone there would attest. This was a very fine performance in the theatre, with which no one could reasonably have been disappointed. Runnicles also offered considerable variety of pacing, which never jarred, and which complemented, interacted with, the variegation of the orchestral writing so thrilling brought to life by his players.

 

I am now entirely converted to the cause of Evelyn Herlitzius: what an artist! One performance in particular I had heard from her in the past had been somewhat problematical, although I admired her Kundry here in Charlottenburg a couple of years ago. Here that wildness of intonation had been tamed, but without damage to the wildness of characterisation, which was such that the most exalted comparisons with any great Elektra of the past would not have been in vain. The range of colourings in the voice, opening almost contralto-like, would be worthy of an essay in itself, but just as noteworthy was the dramatic use to which they were put, certainly responding to the words, yet with equal certainty leading them, challenging the seemingly indissoluble mixture of ‘Strauss-Hofmannsthal’ to ever-greater heights, readily yet thrillingly achieved. She inhabited, gave voice to, embodied the character of Elektra, standing in a line of singing-actresses which, for any Wagnerian, necessarily extends back to Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient. (And no, of course Schröder-Devrient did not sing Elektra; but imagine…!)

 

Doris Soffel was an imposing, vicious Klytämnestra. All singers in this role must navigate the treacherous boundaries of caricature, pantomime, even camp. Soffel did so with great success, tragedy enhanced rather than undermined. The Aegisth of Clemens Bieber I found rather rough-hewn vocally, although well enough acted. Manuela Uhl brought to life a splendidly sympathetic Chrysothemis, not without character flaws (to put it mildly!) but credible in the dramatic round. Tobias Kehrer’s Orest started stunned, even shellshocked, drained of his humanity, regained through a truly moving recognition scene with Elektra, and checked by what fate ordained he must go on to do. It was a chilling progression and regression, which reminded us that, possessed though she might be, Elektra is, in her way, as manipulative as they come, and that Orest is, by any standards, a deeply troubling character. The smaller roles were all well taken.

Alas, there is little to be said in favour of Kirsten Harms’s production. For the most part, until the end, it does not get in the way, but that is because it does not do anything much at all. Bernd Damovsky’s designs are impressive, and would doubtless be more so in a more involving production. (Most sets for Elektra tend to look pretty similar; this is no exception.) For the most part, the singers seemed to have to fend for themselves. Perhaps it was as much from this as from the pit, a new singer or two wandering on as another left the stage, that that sense of a ‘sectional’ quality had arisen; it was certainly much more pronounced scenically. As for the bizarrely choreographed final scene, in which Elektra was joined by strikingly hapless Furies (I assume that is who they were): more amdram than Sophocles, sadly. Even here, though, at least for the most part, the musical drama managed to rise above its scenic limitations.

 

Deutsche Oper Strauss-Wochen (1) – Salome, 6 April 2016

Images: Monika Rittershaus
(The Salome pictured is Catherine Naglestad)

 

Deutsche Oper, Berlin

Herodes – Thomas Blondelle

Herodias – Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet
Salome – Allison Oakes
Jochanaan – Michael Volle
Narraboth – Attilio Glaser
Page – Annika Schlicht
First Jew – James Kryshak
Second Jew, Slave – Gideon Poppe
Third Jew – Andrew Dickinson
Fourth Jew – Clemens Bieber
Fifth Jew – Andrew Harris
First Nazarene – Dong-Hwan Lee
Second Nazarene – Thomas Lehman
First Soldier – Alexei Botnarciuc
Second Soldier – Tobias Kehrer
Cappadocian – Michael Adams
Salome as child – Alix Heyblom, Elisabeth Johanssen, Laura Meyer, Leonie Schöning, Maria Schulz, Katharina von Stackelberg
Dancers/Dummies – Uri Burger, Floris Dahlgrün, Alexander Fend, Nikos Fragkou, Oren Lazovski

Claus Guth (director)

William Robertson (revival director)
Muriel Gerstner (designs)
Olaf Freese (lighting)
Sommer Ulrickson (choreography)
Yvonne Gebauer, Curt A Roester (dramaturgy)

Statisterie and Male Dancers from the Deutsche Oper

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper

Alain Altonoglu (conductor)

 

Five consecutive nights of Richard Strauss: how could anyone resist? Plenty of opera-goers would have little hesitation, and not just those for whom Donizetti and Verdi are the height of musical sophistication. Strauss, as I have discussed in one of the chapters of my book, After Wagner, remains an object of distrust for many. Their problems often seem to be moral, or at least to be couched in moral terms; perhaps Strauss has turned out to be the Nietzschean Anti-Christ after all. (Had Strauss called his Alpine Symphony, as was his early intention, The Antichrist, it and we might have been saved a great deal of spectacularly uninformed sniping.) We shall see; perhaps more to the point, we shall also hear. Will this prove too much of a good, a bad, or even an evil thing? I doubt it, but perhaps I am already a lost cause. At any rate, the Deutsche Oper’s Strauss festival offers an extraordinary opportunity, for which I nobly put myself forward as moral-æsthetic guinea pig.

Schoenberg accused – at least he had good reason to feel personally affronted – that Strauss’s was the art of a Marzipanmeister: ‘Problems arise for him and are solved by him in the same way: he misunderstands them. But it cannot be disputed that he has dealt with them: he has hidden them under a coating of sugar icing ... This is not the way of thinking of a man whom God has given a mission.’ One can well imagine Strauss’s materialist response to that. Stravinsky was, if anything, more hostile still: ‘I would like to admit all Strauss’s operas to whichever purgatory punishes triumphant vulgarity. Their musical substance is cheap and poor; it cannot interest a musician today. That now so ascendant Ariadne … makes me want to scream.’ Well, scream away, Igor – although perhaps not this week, in which Ariadne auf Naxos, which surely stole from your neo-Classical future, will not appear. However, Salome, Elektra, Die ägyptische Helena, Die Liebe der Danae, and Der Rosenkavalier will.



Artists include: Thomas Lehman, Tobias Kehrer, Noel Bouley, Jörg Schörner

 

Claus Guth’s Salome, first seen here in January, sets the bar high for what is to follow. It offered a splendid follow-up, perhaps less profound (but is not the work itself?) but even more chilling than Dmitri Tcherniakov’s outstanding Parsifal for the Staatsoper. Childhood horrors loom large, obscuring, perhaps even obliterating, the boundaries between ‘then’ and ‘now’; memory and above all trauma are like that. Can we ever recover? Do we even really want to? And what are our coping strategies? Do some of us, perhaps as self-proclaimed æstheticists or, worse, protectors of the artwork (c.f. the Donald Trump-like ‘Against Modern Opera Productions’, or its provisional wing, ‘Gegen Regietheater in der Oper’), try to take refuge in the very thing that should be challenging us, waking us up, and leading us to confrontation, even catharsis?

 

If opera is, to you, ‘about’ pretty frocks, then you might be out of luck here; but salvation of sorts it at hand, for there are some handsome suits and sportcoats instead; indeed, clothes rails are full of them. Indeed, dressing up – attempting, like AMOP to avoid the questions, or to misunderstand, to smother them, as Schoenberg accused Strauss of doing – is thrust to the forefront of Guth’s staging, once the lights have been switched on, Olaf Freese’s lighting very much at the heart of the drama and its (would-be) turning-points. However, we must first travel the road to the superior (deceptively so?) gentleman’s outfitter – wonderful designs by Muriel Gerstner! – in which  stylish ‘solutions’ will be no problem, though likewise no solution.

Jochanaan (Michael Volle) and Salome

 

For the first scene has been dark, grim, at times in a weirdly twilit state of suspended animation; it has been far from clear who the actors in this drama even are, or might be held to be. Salome tours the set – her mind, or something more? – in agitation but, at times, in the pleasure that might, uncomfortably for all of us, especially as audience-voyeurs, accompany such agitation. The table at which she has sat – will sit? still sits? should sit? wishes to sit? – with her parents is at the centre. Does she wish to relive or to pre-empt what will happen there later? It is unclear, as our recollections often are. Shop dummies haunt her. Or are they ‘real’ people, acting as dummies? Who is operating them? How can they be stopped? Should they be stopped? We only really begin to make sense of this – we cannot, just as the opera says we should not, see Jochanaan for quite some time – once the lights have been switched on; or do we just delude ourselves that we make sense of it? For much of what happened there happens again, albeit in a shrine to fashionable consumption, Herodias making the most of the readily available alcohol. Might you not too, in such circumstances?

The child versions Salome has seen of herself earlier come into play most starkly for the Dance of the Seven Veils. There are six of them, seven including her, and they are the playthings, the instantiations of trauma. There is no need for titillating nudity (although not in the sense that our ‘conservative’ friends would understand); whatever has happened and is continuing to happen is genuinely shocking. Should Werktreue fanatics complain that they have been denied the opportunity to play Herod? Over to them. Salome tears the head off Jochanaan herself. But he had somehow become a dummy in the meantime. Was he always? What was it she really wanted from him. An answer is perhaps suggested by the similarities, physical as well as dramatic, between our prophet and the Tetrarch, productively rather than negligently at odds with the differences in soundworld. (Strauss simply could not ‘do’ religion, which, given his materialist credo, does him a certain degree of credit. Or does it?)

 

The return to darkness is most traumatic of all. Like many a victim, we feel, indeed we are, disoriented. Yet we have the additional guilt of that aforementioned voyeurism. Is Strauss’s sensationalism being given especially disconcerting musico-dramatic form? Julius Korngold wrote of the composer: ‘The Germans want a priest, someone who will champion an art with deep intentions. Strauss is driven by the ego sensibility of the modern artist, who wants above all to serve himself and his sensations.’ Is he right? If so, is that a problem? Herod orders Salome dead, but nothing happens; or does it. Her child form begins again; or does she? Have we returned to childhood, or never left it? We do not seem to have ‘moved on’.

Such a reaction certainly seemed to be suggested by those dreadful closing chords. For whilst I had sometimes been a little unsure about aspects of Alain Altinoglu’s conducting, I was not here. The deadness, the modern(ist) materialism, at least as shocking as that of the conclusion to Elektra, registered as powerfully and yet as dully (in a positive sense) as I have heard. It was at such moments of modernist crisis, quite in keeping with the staging, that not only Altinoglu’s fastidiousness but also his ear for marriage between timbre and harmony registered with great musico-dramatic import. I have heard performances of Salome which have danced more freely, and to start with I found that more of a problem. As time went on, I began to suspect that I was relying too much upon my own memories, false or otherwise; a performance today of Salome, in this particular production, need not, perhaps even should not, sound like the Salome of Böhm or Karajan. There was certainly no gainsaying the quality of the performance from the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, whose colours phantasmagorically shifted as the harmonies ground – and ground us down. (Or should that have been vice versa?)



Herodias (Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet) and Salome

 

Catherine Naglestad had been due to sing the title role. Her replacement, Allison Oakes, proved an outstanding replacement. I had not come across her previously, but certainly hope that I shall do so again. Hers was a tireless, unceasingly rewarding performance, vocally and ‘dramatically’, insofar as the two may be distinguished. Her lyricism called into question her trauma and yet justified it; in this case, there is no doubt as to the necessity of the vice versa. Herodes is a larger role than I tend to remember. (What was that about faulty remembrance?) Thomas Blondelle offered a detailed, disturbing portrayal: far better sung than one often hears, yet just as heedful of dramatic requirements. Jeanne-Michèle Charbonnet was a splendid grande dame Herodias; elements of caricature are surely justified, indeed written in. She was a monster and proud of it. Michael Volle's Jochanaan, suave, brutal, thoughtful, by turns and sometimes simultaneously, was just the thing for this production. Attilio Glaser’s sweetly sung, sincere, hopelessly lovelorn Narraboth left one wanting more. But more, of course, was not his fate on this night.

Above all, though, this felt like a strong company achievement; those singing smaller roles, those engaging as dancers and as ‘extras’, as much part of the dreadful events as the rest of us, whether on stage or in the audience. With trepidation, I should like to see this again, to try once again to make sense of what I might see, hear, and remember.

 

Gerhaher/Huber - Schubert, 31 March 2016

Wigmore Hall

An den Mond in einer Herbstnacht, D 614; Hoffnung, D 295; Tiefes Leid, D 876; Abschied, D 475; Herbst, D 945; Über Wildemann, D 884; Der Wanderer, D 649; Der Wanderer an den Mond, D 870; Der Zwerg, D 771; Abendstern, D 806; Im Walde, D 834; Nach einem Gewitter, D 561; Der Schiffer, D 694; An die Nachtigall, D 196; Totengräberweise, D 869; Frühlingsglaube, D 686; Nachtviolen, D 752; Abendlied für die Entfernte, D 856; Wehmut, D 772; Der Strom, D 565; Der Hirt, D 490; Lied eines Schiffers an die Dioskuren, D 360; Nachtgesang, D 314; Der Sänger am Felsen, D 482

Christian Gerhaher (baritone)

Gerold Huber (piano)

 

There was a great deal to admire in this recital. However, with a few exceptions, I found myself strangely unmoved by Christian Gerhaher’s singing. Perhaps that was my fault or, at any rate, my problem; however, I shall attempt to explain what it was, for me at least, that seemed to be missing. Gerold Huber’s playing of the piano parts I found constantly illuminating: full of colour, incident, strength, subtlety, and a fine sense of form too. One thing for which I can certainly not fault Gerhaher is his programming, not just here, but elsewhere too, including a November recital in Vienna, in which I found his performance far more engrossing. Here, in London, the balance of Schubert songs, mostly but not all familiar, varied in mood, was well judged indeed.

Opening with an early quasi-scena, An den Mond in einer Herbstnacht, neither entirely characteristic nor entirely uncharacteristic, we heard sweetness, delicacy, and, when the verse turned nasty (‘Wenn ein schrecklicher Geier an der Seele nagt’), nastiness in the voice too. That, however, was something of which we heard perhaps too little later on; one does not expect Gerhaher to sound like, say, Matthias Goerne, for they are very different artists, but that was a comparison coming to mind more than once for me. A brief, welcome contrast in the Goethe setting, Hoffnung, was followed by what I thought of us as very much the ‘real thing’ in Schubert: the despair of Tiefes Leid. There was sorrow, but was there despair? It felt observed: perhaps a valid choice, but one that did not entirely convince me on this occasion. The second stanza offered more, but was it enough? In Abschied, the long lines played to Gerhaher’s strength of sustaining. Here, we could feel the beauty as well as the pain of resignation: perhaps a little like Mahler, albeit less mediated.

In Herbst, there was less vocal defiance than one will often hear, but there was musical weariness, especially in the piano: the continuity of its chill was striking. Über Wildemann offered immediate intensification, first in the piano, and then next, yes, in the voice: considerably closer to Fischer-Dieskau than one might have expected. Uneasy repose in Der Wanderer led to an unmistakeable sense of portrayal of a wanderer in Der Wanderer an den Mond, both in the piano tread and in the softly restless vocal delivery. Abendstern perhaps inevitably brought to mind Gerhaher’s starlit Wolfram, but I found the vocal part in Im Walde a little too understated. There was no doubting, however, the dark nobility heard in the piano part, decidedly ‘late’.

 

Following the interval, Nach einem Gewitter presented a post-Mozartian mood in piano and voice, poignant concerning implicit loss: we might want to return to Mozart, but we cannot. It was in the piano part that the drama of Der Schiffer really seemed to lie: pictorial and form-creating. The second stanza brought butterflies to the stomach, but I am not sure that Gerhaher did. Likewise, in Totengräberweise, I heard the song almost instrumentally, at least until the penultimate and final stanzas, in which suddenly, Gerhaher seemed resolved to do more with the words – and how! Frühlingsglaube was suffused with quiet longing, whilst Nachtviolen again offered an emotional build up rooted in words as well as music. However, there seemed once again to be a somewhat excessive degree of vocal reticence in Abendlied für die Entfernte; Huber’s command of rhythm offered considerable compensation.

In the final group, Wehmut had a more strongly defined mood to it. I was intrigued that Der Strom sounded decidedly ‘late’, despite its relative earliness (1817?) Here, Gerhaher sounded more animated than had often been the case; if ‘enraged’ would be an exaggeration, it would be a pardonable one. Der Hirt received a splendidly subtle performance, the slight vocal wanness in the final stanza telling of much. Nachtgesang likewise drew one in subtly, as did the closing Der Sänger am Felsen. There one heard undeniable artistry of the highest order, Gerhaher offering, in one sense, a return to the world of the very opening, but now laden down by some of the cares voiced in the intervening songs. That was a significant achievement of both programming and performance. Perhaps some of my expectations had been unreasonably high.

 

The Importance of Being Earnest, Royal Opera, 29 March 2016

Image: ROH/Stephen Cummiskey

 

Barbican Theatre

Lane/Merriman – Simon Wilding

Algernon Moncrieff – Benedict Nelson
John Worthing – Paul Curievici
Gwendolen Fairfax – Stephanie Marshall
Alan Ewing – Lady Bracknell
Miss Prism – Hilary Summers
Cecily Cardew – Claudia Boyle
The Revd Canon Chasuble, DD – Kevin West

Ramin Gray (director)

Ben Clark (associate set designs, ‘after an idea by Johannes Schütz’)
Christina Cunningham (costumes)
Franz Peter David (lighting)
Leon Baugh (movement)
 

Few comedies are less amusing than operatic comedies, few audiences less dramatically aware than conventional opera audiences. The slightest thing, regardless of intention (which otherwise matters to our reactionary ‘protectors’ of the form more than life itself), occasions riotous guffaws: even, God help us, ‘Contessa perdono’. Is there anything less amusing, more worthy of silent, awestruck listening than that moment in which forgiveness, both human and divine, is sought? The Countess’s response, of course, but that has already been ruined by such cretinous behaviour. The crime is enough to have one reconsider a lifetime’s opposition to capital punishment. Rossini’s comedies: well, they tend to be less tedious than his ‘serious’ operas, but about as funny. As for the ‘joke’ of, say, the interminable second act of Pfitzner’s Palestrina, ‘German humour’ is not sufficient mitigation. For the most part, many seem to forget that comedies need not be uproariously funny; they need not be ‘comic’ and indeed rarely are.

Gerald Barry’s The Importance of Being Earnest is, then, that rare thing, at the very least approaching unique: a genuinely funny, even hilarious, opera. It even approaches something at least as rare, perhaps rare still: genuine musical surrealism. Oscar Wilde’s play needs no music; nor does Shakespeare. But Wilde can – more on account of a reverence for his wit that fails truly to relish it, to play with it – seem terribly dated, likewise his brand of æstheticism. I am not saying that they are, or are not; they are certainly done no favours by endless revival from callow, indeed dismayingly earnest, undergraduate stagings. Barry’s musico-dramatic sledgehammer not only liberates the witticisms – the play has become, like Shakespeare, too full of quotations – but liberates the wit, by doing something so completely, unthinkably monstrous to it that somehow it emerges stronger, both in its transformation and, at least in my case, how one might once again view the ‘original’. Kagel and indeed Ligeti come to mind intellectually, perhaps, and not only on account of the forty-eight dinner plates to be smashed. Yet it is difficult to think of this as anything but a thing-in-itself, as original, as it were, in the exaltation of its shameless, parodic derivations, as in its ‘originality’. Given the brevity of the compositional period, Barry’s method seems forged in the necessary white heat of inspiration (how æstheticist, even Erwartung-like!), driven and liberated by it.

 

One can take the first of the three short acts – hurrah, an opera that does not overstay its welcome! – as a Von heute auf morgen that raises more than an indulgent smile; or one can take it as a swipe at Schoenberg. One can take it as neither of those things. One can simply, or not so simply, enjoy it. Both tightly organised and anarchically free, one might even say that Webern lives again, with a twist: irrationality, rather than rationality, is both internalised and externalised. And if that sounds Romantic, in a sense it is. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, and not just Schiller, is mysteriously parodied, many characters having a go: not just making it fun, but once again rendering it strange. It is not Furtwängler’s way, but it intrigued; it is certainly a great deal more interesting than pieties of Werktreue. (Having said, that perhaps a part for that great menace of musical life, the metronome, with shades of Ken Russell’s Lisztomania, might put in an appearance in a subsequent production?) French Revolutionary culture, aestheticism, Nazism, gender politics: all these and so many more are grist to Barry’s mill. What on earth is Auld Lang Syne doing? Ives with a sense of humour and without the Emerson? Who knows what it means? Is that the point? Is not caring the point? We doubtless talk too readily about deconstructing meaning and so on, but for once that, and perhaps even its reconstruction, seem actually to take place here – and crucially, in performance. Although the opera is less overt about its metatheatricality than some, or perhaps more because it is so genuinely funny, it does not come across didactically. But there is something both bleak and liberating here: if not quite Beckettian, not entirely un-Beckettian too. Wilde edges, or rather is pushed, closer to many of his greatest countrymen than ‘earnest’ light undergraduate comedy might ever conceive. As so often, fidelity lies in infidelity.  

 

Performance and staging seem indissoluble from the work, although who knows? They might, and surely will, prove not to be so; such is the nature of performing art. Ramin Gray’s production has transferred very well from the Linbury Theatre, where it was first seen in 2013, to the larger space of the Barbican Theatre. (The Linbury will re-open in 2018; in the meantime, Royal Opera ‘Linbury productions’ will be seen elsewhere. Next stop: the Hammersmith Lyric, for Mark Simpson’s eagerly-awaited first opera, Pleasure.) It seems to me to do something similar to, and with, the opera that the opera does to, and with, the play. Not having seen the score, I do not know how much is prescribed; I am told that, ironically, and doubtless dialectically, quite a deal has been. As musical figures repeat, a parody of themselves, of something else, or perhaps just for the hell of it, they might do on stage or they might not. A moment of tenderness might be undercut, or might not. Yet there is never, except in a sense I am tempted to think of as æstheticist, or perhaps neo-æstheticist (think of Ligeti’s anti-anti-opera, Le grand macabre), a sense of the merely arbitrary. Arbitrariness is far too important for that. Above all,though, and in case you have not already despatched me to Pseud’s Corner, it is funny.

 

What I have said about the work, about the staging, I shall – you guessed correctly – say also of the musical performances. The Britten Sinfonia were their usual superb selves ‘straight men’ (and women) crucial to the comedy. Whether playing Stravinskian motoric rhythms, seemingly to the power n, or shouting ‘Where is that baby?’ they were an integral part of and commentary upon the drama. Tim Murray’s conducting was at least as impressive as last time too. Score in the head rather than head in the score, he and his band seemed as liberated as Wilde. Benedict Nelson’s Algernon knew and projected the difference, whilst simultaneously rejecting it, between life and art. He and Paul Curievici as Jack offered indissoluble comic and musical timing – and a good line in dance too. The tenderness of certain of Jack’s moments – blink and you might miss them, or imagine them – was not the least of Curievici’s performing achievements. Stephanie Marshall’s alluring Gwendolen and Claudia Boyle’s stratospheric Cecily were excellent foils, but far more than that. Alan Ewing’s pinstriped tour de force Lady Bracknell lost nothing in repetition, not even, indeed particularly not, his post-Chaplin metamorphosis of Schiller into Hitler. Hilary Summers’s voice is ideal for the ‘depth’ of Miss Prism; this wonderful singer proved just as excellent in the ‘lighter’ comedy too. Work, staging, and performances alike came together in their tearing each other apart. Or, alternatively, I have never laughed so much at an opera.