Munich Opera Festival (4) - Tannhäuser, 9 July 2017

Nationaltheater

Wolfram von Eschenbach (Christian Gerhaher)
Images: Wilfried Hösl

Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia – Georg Zeppenfeld

Tannhäuser – Klaus Florian Vogt
Wolfram von Eschenbach – Christian Gerhaher
Walther von der Vogelweide – Dean Power
Biterolf – Peter Lobert
Heinrich der Schreiber – Ulrich Reß
Reinmar von Zweter – Ralf Lukas
Elisabeth – Anja Harteros
Venus – Elena Pankratova
Shepherd Boy – Elsa Benoit
Four Pages – Members of the Tölz Boys’ Choir

Romeo Castellucci (director, designs)
Cindy van Acker (choreography)
Silvia Costa (assistant director)
Piersandra di Matteo, Malte Krasting (dramaturgy)
Marco Giusti (video, lighting assistance)

Chorus of the Bavarian State Opera (chorus master: Soren Eckhoff)

Bavarian State Orchestra
Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Romeo Castellucci’s aesthetic – if one may speak in the singular – is very different from almost anything else one on show in the opera house at the moment. That, I have no doubt, is unquestionably a good thing. Castellucci is a serious artist and it is all too easy for any of us to become stuck in an artistic rut, congratulating ourselves not only on our understanding but also,  may God help us, our ‘taste’ – as if so trivial a notion had something to do with anything other than ourselves. We thereby run the risk of becoming ultimately almost as conventional as those we think we have left behind. I shall happily admit that I have been wrong, should I see this staging again, crack the code – if code there be – and find greater enlightenment than I did on this occasion. As it stands, however, I found myself somewhat disappointed by a staging that seemed to pale beside Castellucci’s fascinating Paris Moses und Aron – to which there were perhaps a few too many visual resemblances for comfort, let alone provocation – or indeed to what I know of his other theatrical work. That Castellucci has thought intelligently about Tannhäuser is clear from an interview in the programme; I wish, though, that there were more of a sign, at least to me, that such thoughts had made their way into the staging. There were times, I am afraid, when this production, for all its stylised, internationalised ‘beauty’, veered close to the merely boring.

The setting is almost brazenly non-specific. There is nothing intrinsically wrong with that, especially when Wagner himself treads the line between myth and ‘historical’ drama. An air of mystery, even of mystification, concerning where we are, who these people may be, is in many respects welcome; not everything need be set in a present-day or time-of-composition warzone. The sinister quality of strange rituals is palpable. Is there perhaps a hint of ISIS or some such in the cult-like environment of the world beyond the Venusberg? Perhaps, but it all begins to look a little too much like the world we had seen in Moses and, more to the point, so what (without anything more on which to go)? Is there not a hint of Wieland Wagner without the content – he himself has often been accused of having, for ideological reasons, divested his grandfather’s dramas of much of their content – and in the achingly fashionable, yet vacuous, scenic language of the modern corporate art installation? Unlike many operagoers I am not, I hope, one to roll my eyes at the mere mention of interpretative – or non-interpretative – dance, but does the beautifully choreographed movement do anything more than, well, be beautiful? Is that the point? It may well be, but at some point, might it not be argued, or at least demonstrated? Or am I again missing the point, hidebound by my own, doubtless Teutonic or even Socratic preconceptions? Designers – Castellucci is to an extent his own – have their tics, of course, their house styles; but what is the idea, even the Idea, shrouded, often literally, by the undeniable style?

Venus (Elena Pankratova)

Great play – great scenic play, at least – is made of the kinship between the harp of the Minnesänger and the crossbow of the warrior. It is an interesting idea, not least in this most dualistic – at times, catastrophically if fascinatingly so, in dramaturgical terms – of Wagner’s operas. (In Tristan, even, there is more mediation than here, and it is of course infinitely more accomplished not only than Tannhäuser but than most other human drama in giving the appearance of reconciliation even when ‘reality’, whatever that may be, belies that appearance.) Alas, it never really progresses beyond a few striking visual signs, whereas an explanation, not necessarily didactic, of the relationship between art and war, love and death, is surely invited here. Even the ugliness of the fatty mound that is the Venusberg and its outgrowing creatures – the decay of boredom, satiation, and so forth, I presume – is so ‘beautifully’ stylised as to lose its dualistic edge. Or did it never have that edge in the perfect place? Lacan is clearly going round and round here, but is anything more than that happening? Again, is that the point? The second act has a great deal of slow business with people almost losing themselves in curtains; well, not a great deal, just much repetition of a little business, really. There is something intriguing about whether that mysterious thing is, flailing, writhing, maybe writing, in the central box, on which the singers’ principal concepts are inscribed; at the same time, there is a little, however inadvertent, of a Dr Who monster to it too.

I have no idea why the tombs in the third act are inscribed ‘Anja’ and ‘Klaus’ rather than ‘Elisabeth’ and ‘Heinrich’; whatever metatheatrical point may have been made quite eluded me. Likewise the passing of increasingly absurd increments of time, signalled in an o-so-‘beautiful’ typeface: from one second, to endless milliards of milliards of years. Meanwhile corpses rot – beautifully, tastefully, needless to say. The actual singers look on and occasionally move around. Eternity, perhaps, although it never actually reaches that state? Is that, again, the point? Is there a role for history after all? I certainly hope so, in this most Hegelian of composers, but I am afraid I had simply ceased to care. Having opened by saying how different Castellucci’s aesthetic was from what we tend to see in opera, I have to admit that the results, if not the intent behind them, were in some respects not so very different from Sasha Waltz’s explicitly balletic production (verging on non-production) for the Berlin State Opera. As I said above, I should be delighted to be proved, even to prove myself, wrong; none of us is infallible. I did so over Frank Castorf’s Bayreuth Ring. Perhaps I simply need to immerse myself more in Castellucci’s way of thinking; or perhaps this was not his finest hour. Time will tell.

Tannhäuser (Klaus Florian Vogt)

We need await no passing of time to reach some sort of critical judgement on the musical side of things: never less than good, in some cases quite outstanding. I do not think Tannhäuser is really the role for Klaus Florian Vogt; Lohengrin is. And yet, the unearthly, almost pre-pubescent (on steroids) beauty of the voice can bring fruitful contradictions of its own, intentional or no. What if Tannhäuser is just an overgrown choirboy after all? Vogt certainly has the stamina for the role, and can sings its notes – even if he relied a little too much, especially during the first act, on the prompter, whose sibillants were almost as audible as Vogt’s own. Anja Harteros gave an excellent performance, although I could not help but think that this was perhaps not quite the role for her. She seemed almost as if she would have been happier singing Verdi; at any rate, she gave the impression of trying to play a ‘character’, which Elisabeth is perhaps not, at least in a straightforward sense. Whatever Tannhäuser may involve, it is not straightforwardly a world of psychological realism. Christian Gerhaher’s Wolfram was at least as beautifully sung as any I have heard from him (which is saying quite something indeed). It was not just beautiful though; there was an edge, an anger even, suppressed or otherwise, which had the character, such as he is, become more rounded, more interesting than I can recall. Elena Pankratova’s Venus was finely, even movingly, sung, her reappearance in the third act from on high (unseen) quite magical. Georg Zeppenfeld’s Margrave and Dean Power’s Walther von der Wogelweide also stood out, making the most of their roles without exaggeration. Choral singing, once again, was quite outstanding, a tribute both to members of the chorus and to Soren Eckhoff, their chorus master.

Elisabeth (Anja Harteros)

Last but certainly not least: Kirill Petrenko’s direction of the outstanding (once again!) Bavarian State Orchestra, whose depth and variety of tone are truly second to none. Petrenko’s way with the score is anything but conventional, without ever so much of a hint of being ‘different’ for the sake of it. If my preference, lazy or otherwise, is for the more overtly symphonic line a conductor such as Daniel Barenboim brings to this music, Petrenko’s insistence upon the individuality of ‘numbers’ – which to all intents and purposes they are, or at least can be – within the score reaps its own, explicitly musico-historical rewards. He has clearly thought about each section, however defined, and how it might characterise it – and, moreover, is able to do so. The Overture, for instance, began in surprisingly Mendelssohnian fashion, blossoming, expanding into something more, as if to suggest Wagner finding his way from roots he may or may not have wished to acknowledge. In the second act, Wagner’s antecendents in French opera, not least Meyerbeer, came very much to the fore, without loss to a greater sense of the whole. The third act was more truly ‘symphonic’; here, one felt, the Wagner of the music dramas proper had arrived. Fascinating, instructive, provocative in the best sense: more so, alas, than what I was able to glean from Castellucci.

Munich Opera Festival (3) - Munich Piano Trio: Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Brahms, 7 July 2017

Cuvilliés-Theater

Beethoven: Piano Trio in D major, op.70 no.1, ‘Ghost’

Shostakovich: Piano Trio in E minor, op.67

Brahms: Piano Trio in B major, op.8 (revised version, 1889)

Michael Arlt (violin)

Gerhard Zank (cello)

Donald Sulzen (piano) 

Each year, the Munich Opera Festival offers a number of chamber concerts, as well as symphonic concerts and song recitals, in addition to its staple fare of at least one opera, sometimes more than that, per evening. Since I was in town, I thought I should go to hear the Munich Piano Trio, not least since it would be my first opportunity to attend a concert in the extraordinary, ultra-Rococo Cuvilliés-Theater. I once happened on a string quartet rehearsal there many years and resolved to return. One day, I hope, Idomeneo, which received its first performance there, will return when I am somewhere in the vicinity. (It did in 2008, so there is hope.) In the meantime, it was a pleasure to hear three contrasted piano trio works, performed with a welcome lack of affectation.

Beethoven’s Ghost Trio – like all the performances, I think – received a performance somewhat on the Apollonian side. This was not a Beethoven to storm the heavens, but perhaps not every performance need be. In the first movement, taken at a tempo that seemed spot on for Allegro vivace e con brio – perhaps faster than my inclination, but who cares? – scalic passages proved properly generative. Derivations therefrom and breaking up into small motifs was the business of the development: no need for Romantic metaphor, which might have seemed somewhat out of place. And yet, this was not ‘easy’ listening; one simply needed to listen to hear the difficulty, at times not so far from late Beethoven, in the music. The lyricism of the second group, especially during the recapitulation, was especially welcome. Not that the movement was over then; the coda offered surprises aplenty, again, so long as the listener kept to his or her side of the bargain – and listened. Concision was, rightly, striking. There was an air of mystery, its roots in Mozart, to the slow movement, which unfolded simply, inevitably. Again, the twin features of simplicity of basic material and developmental inspiration shone through. There was radiance, to be sure, but it was hard won and never permanent. The finale proved playful in its disjunctures, disjoint even in its play: often, at least. String intonation was occasionally somewhat awry, but not so as to trouble unduly. In a sense, such fallibility reminded one that this was a performance, with all that entails.

In a very different way, simplicity and extremity characterised the Shostakovich E minor Trio. The poor cellist at the opening! There was, again, a different sort of inevitability to the first movement, but it was undeniably present in the main, Moderato section. Its simple harmonies might have been made to feel connected to Beethoven’s tonic-dominant oscillations, but did not; context was all. The enigmatic quality to the transformations of the second movement was well handled; there were no answers, but questions were certainly asked. If the Largo is possessed of a bleakness that for me comes perilously close to mere emptiness, the players had the measure of its contours in a well shaped reading, preparing the way for an equally accomplished performance of the insistently straightforward finale. If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you would have liked.

Brahms is much more my sort of thing. The second half therefore brought the pleasure of a return to home territory, albeit with a twist: the revised version of the B major Trio. Recently, the original seems to have been more popular. There are arguments for both, but I think I should opt for this, if I had to choose. The Trio has played both and thus made the decision in full knowledge and understanding. It was a splendid work for cellist, Gerhard Zank to have to start saying his farewells to the Bavarian State Orchestra, with which he has played for thirty-nine years. An interesting programme interview offered reminiscences of work with conductors such as Wolfgang Sawallisch, Carlos Kleiber, and yes, Kirill Petrenko. Motivic integrity and development came to the fore from the outset. The players drew upon a varied palette that yet never quite partook of expressive extremities. Such matters are largely a matter of taste; this was, again, relatively Apollonian Brahms. Occasionally, I found Donald Sulzen’s piano a little recessed in tone, but perhaps that was the acoustic. There was certainly no doubting his collegiality; he was not a pianist, as many are, to overwhelm his string colleagues. Rhythms were nicely sprung in the scherzo, Brahms’s Beethovenian inheritance clear. The trio spoke more of Schubert. Such, after all, one might say, is Brahms’s tendency more generally. The stark simplicity of Michael Arlt’s violin and Zank’s cello at the opening of the slow movement seemed to recall late Beethoven, although the lyricism that ensued proved quite different, and rightly so, in quality. The movement never lost its apparent roots in (imagined) song, whilst never pretending simply to ‘be’ its roots. I have heard bigger boned performances of the finale, in particular, but the refusal to exaggerate, to play to the gallery, however dazzling in this theatre, offered its own rewards. So too did the Piazzolla encore.

Munich Opera Festival (2) - Die Frau ohne Schatten, 5 July 2017

Images: Wilfried Hösl
Dyer's Wife (Elena Pankratova)
and the Apparition of Youth

Nationaltheater, Munich

Emperor – Burkhard Fritz

Empress – Ricarda Merbeth

Nurse – Michaela Schuster

Spirit-Messenger – Sebastian Heleck

Barak – Wolfgang Koch

Dyer’s Wife – Elena Pankratova

Apparition of Youth, The Hunchback – Dean Power

Voice of the Falcon, Guardian of the Threshold of the Temple – Elsa Benoit

Voice from Above – Okka von der Damerau
The One-Eyed – Tim Kuypers
The One-Armed – Christian Rieger

The Hunchback – Dean Power

Keikobad – Renate Jett

Servants, Children’s Voices – Elsa Benoit, Paula Iancic, Rachael Wilson

Children’s Voices – Elsa Benoit, Paula Iancic, Alla El-Khashem, Rachael Wilson, Okka von der Damerau

Voices of Nightwatchmen – Johannes Kammler, Sean Michael Plumb, Milan Siljanov

Krzysztof Warlikowsi (director)

Georgine Balk (Abendspielleitung)

Malgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)

Felice Ross (lighting)

Denis Guéguin (video)

Kamil Polak (video animation

Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Children’s Chorus (chorus master: Stellario Fagone) and Chorus (chorus master: Sören Eckhoff) of the Bavarian State Opera

Bavarian State Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Empress (Ricarda Merbeth) and Nurse (Michaela Schuster)

It was fascinating to see – and of course, to hear – Krzysztof Warlikowsi’s productions of Die Gezeichneten and Die Frau ohne Schatten on consecutive nights of this year’s Munich Opera Festival. First, and perhaps most important: both received outstanding performances, fully worthy of any festival in the world, let alone one such as this which offers both new productions and stagings from the repertory. This FroSch may have been the latter, but who would have known? There are clearly advantages to being conducted by the Music Director – not least the identity of this particular music director – but even so…

Both works offered the director considerable challenges. In the Schreker opera, Warlikowski rose admirably to the challenge of drawing out what was of greatest interest in a flawed work and, indeed, even to criticising certain of its more problematical aspects. Die Frau ohne Schatten is not without its problematical aspects either, of course, not least Hofmannsthal’s bizarre pronatalism – perhaps a staging that made more of its wartime context (or near-context) might help, but I have yet to see one – and, more broadly, the mismatch between Strauss and Hofmannsthal here. If Strauss misunderstands Hofmannsthal, though – and we should be wary of awarding priority simply on a chronological basis, especially with so complex a composer-librettist relationship as this – it is, to borrow a term from Webern and the post-war avant garde, a productive misreading.

Emperor (Burkhard Fritz), Nurse, and Empress

How does Warlikowski deal with that, in a production first seen in 2013? I am not entirely sure that he does, but it may well be that I am missing something. What he certainly does accomplish is to present a number of standpoints, which may, to an extent, like those presented in the work ‘itself’, be reconciled, or even set against each other. The world of medicalised hysteria, of the sanatorium is present, just as in Claus Guth’s production (seen at La Scala, Covent Garden, and the Berlin State Opera. Perhaps counter-intuitively, for a work in which, laboriously at times, Hofmannsthal at least seems to offer layer upon layer of symbolism, often highly referential or at least allusive, Warlikowski penetrates to a very human drama at the work’s heart. It might sound banal; perhaps in some ways it is; but why not actually present this as a drama concerning a woman, the Dyer’s Wife rather than the Empress, who wishes to have children, is pressured to renounce her desire, and then achieves what would seem to be genuine fulfilment by doing so? There are various answers to that, of course, or at least to why such a drama might be problematical; but they are not unanswerable answers.

Freud hangs less heavily over the production than he does over Guth’s, but he is there, glimpsed indeed in video projections at the end alongside a motley crew that includes (I think) Gandhi, Christ, the Buddha, King Kong, and Marilyn Monroe. (I have no idea, I am afraid; I suspect I am missing something terribly obvious, but never mind…) More overtly present is Last Year in Marienbad. Pictures from the film lead us in to the opening of the opera and accompany its course, far from obtrusively, yet offering connections should we wish to follow them. A sadness born of lack of fulfilment, perceived or otherwise, hangs over what we see – and interacts, sometimes harmoniously, sometimes less so, with what we hear. Even the Nurse seems a far more human figure than usual. There is, perhaps, loss there too, but to see her a broken woman, trying to deal with an impossible situation that is not of her choosing is fascinating: it certainly made me reconsider the role. 

Empress, Falcon(s), and Emperor

Where Ingo Metzmacher had given a commanding account of Schreker’s score the previous night, Kirill Petrenko went further still in Strauss’s score. It does no harm, of course, that Strauss is by far the greater composer and musical dramatist. But that can come to naught, or at least be severely diminished in the wrong hands. Musical performance is certainly not a matter of league tables, but I can certainly say, hand on heart, that I have never heard the opera better conducted or played. This was at the very least a musical performance to set alongside those by Christoph von Dohnányi and Semyon Bychkov at Covent Garden, and superior to any of the others I have heard. Petrenko’s ear for Strauss’s complex orchestral polyphony is second to none, not only amongst any conductor alive but any I know from recorded performances.

The similarities and differences between Strauss and Schoenberg – you will have to forgive me for having the latter very much on my mind at the moment – are as complex as their music ‘in itself’. There is, though, something here which, ironically, given Strauss’s reported remarks on Schoenberg’s score, brings Strauss closer than one might expect to the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16. Alma Mahler just could not help herself in telling Schoenberg that Strauss had said Schoenberg would be ‘better off shovelling snow’ than ‘scribbling on manuscript paper’. (What is less often reported is that he recommended the younger composer for the Mahler Foundation grant in any case. Schoenberg, unsurprisingly, never forgave him; when asked the following year for a fiftieth-birthday tribute, he responded angrily: ‘He is no longer of the slightest artistic interest to me, and whatever I may once have learned from him, may God be thanked, [I had] misunderstood.’) Petrenko is a very fine Schoenberg conductor; indeed, it was in Erwartung at Covent Garden that I first heard him. The interplay between colour, line, harmony, every changing parameter was such that I could not help but think I was hearing Strauss with somewhat Schoenbergian ears – and that was not entirely to be attributed to my own present preoccupations. The Bavarian State Orchestra was at least equally responsible: in every respect worthy of the most exalted comparisons, past or present. I do not think I have ever heard the solo cello part played with greater tenderness and yet with such a sense of where, motivically and harmonically, it is heading. Nor have I heard the full orchestra sound more thrillingly present and yet more transparent. It was not only seeing the glass harmonica in one of the boxes overlooking the pit that meant I could hear it so well.

Barak (Wolfgang Koch) and the Dyer's Wife

Vocal performances were almost equally magnificent. Burkhard Fritz greatly impressed in Berlin earlier this year, and did so again here: quite tireless and perfectly capable of riding Strauss’s orchestral wave. The Emperor is, perhaps, the best role in which I have heard of him. Ricarda Merbeth was more than his equal as his consort: as tenderly moving as, when required, imperious. She truly drew one into her particular drama, as did the Dyer and his Wife, even, as mentioned above, the Nurse. Elena Pankratova and Wolfgang Koch were also in previous casts I had seen, London and Berlin respectively. Fine though their performances had been then, Petrenko’s conducting seemed to incite them to still greater things in Munich. (The more I consider Zubin Mehta in Berlin, the more uncomprehending his conducting seems by comparison.) Theirs was at root a human, commonplace relationship, exalted by particular musico-dramatic circumstance and by musical performance into something transformative, in a sense that both Strauss and Hofmannsthal might have acknowledged. The sadness both felt could be perceived in their faces, their body language, but still more in the alchemy of stage, words, and music that is opera at its greatest – and which, with the best will in the world, a lesser composer such as Schreker could never have summoned. To her trademark malevolence in the role, Michael Schuster was here fully enabled to offer a poignancy one rarely sees and hears in the Nurse. Sebastian Heleck’s Spirit Messenger was perhaps first among equals – intelligent, deeply musical singing – amongst the ‘smaller’ roles, but there was no weak link here. Choral singing and acting were equally outstanding. Likewise those roles played by non-singing actors: the Apparition of a Youth here our first among equals, sporting an excellent line in gigolo contempt when collecting his earnings for unachieved attempted seduction from the Nurse. As had been the case in the previous night’s performance, the dramatic whole was greater than the sum of its parts – just not quite in the same way. Now how about a Moses und Aron?

Munich Opera Festival (1) - Die Gezeichneten, 4 July 2017

Foreground (in white): Duke Adorno (Tomasz Konieczny) and Count Tamare (Christopher Maltman); Staatisterie of the Bavarian State Opera
Images: Wilfried Hösl

Nationaltheater, Munich

Duke Antoniotto Adorno/Capitaneo di giustizia – Tomasz Konieczny

Count Andrae Vitelozzo Tamare – Christopher Maltman

Lodovici Nardi – Alastair Miles

Carlotta Nardi – Catherine Nagelstad

Alviano Salvago – John Daszak

Guidobald Usodimare – Matthew Grills

Menaldo Negroni – Kevin Conners

Michelotto Cibo – Sean Michael Plumb

Gonsalvo Fieschi – Andrea Borghini

Julian Pinelli – Peter Lobert

Paolo Calvi – Andreas Wolf

Ginevra Scotti – Paula Iancic

Martuccia – Heike Grötzinger

Pietro – Dean Power

Youth – Galeano Salas

Friend/Servant/Giant Citizen (!) – Milan Siljanov

Girl – Selene Zanetti

Senators – Ulrich Reß, Christian Rieger, Kristof Klorek

Little Boy – Soloist from the Tölz Boys’ Choir

Servant – Niamh O’Sullivan

Father – Yo Chan Ahn

Mother – Eleanor Barnard

Citizens – Harald Thum, Thomas Briesemeister, Klaus Basten, Burkhard Kosche, Tobias Neumann, Sebastian Schmid

Krzysztof Warlikowski (director)

Malgorzata Szczęśniak (designs)

Felice Ross (lighting)

Claude Bardouil (choreography)

Denis Guéguin (video)

Miron Hakenbeck (dramaturgy)

Children’s Chorus (chorus master: Stellario Fagone) and Chorus (chorus master: Soren Eckhoff) of the Bavarian State Opera

Bavarian State Orchestra

Ingo Metzmacher (conductor)

There is a host of fine operas out there languishing more or less unperformed (in some cases, quite unperformed). A few of them might even qualify as ‘great’. (Feel free to remove inverted commas, should that be your thing.) Franz Schreker’s Die Gezeichneten, whatever its proponents might claim, is certainly not one of those: not even close. Nor, however, is it a piece that fails to merit the occasional outing. Whether it merits the torrent of productions seemingly in store is rather less clear. For what it is worth – and this is partly a matter of taste, or lack thereof – there is not a single opera by Mozart, Haydn, or Gluck I should not rather see before sitting through this again. That said, I was immensely grateful not only for the opportunity afforded by the Bavarian State Opera not only to see the opera staged, but to see and hear it performed and staged so well – so much so, indeed, that the whole experience was enjoyable, absorbing, very much more so, I think, than the intrinsic merits of the opera might suggest.

That might sound odd, but it is not really so very odd – at least not necessarily. A peculiarity, indeed a fascination, to the opera is that almost every charge one might lay at its door might conceivably meet with the rejoinder: ‘that is the point’. It depends whose point, really: it is less often the point if we focus narrowly on ‘intention’, but why should we? Krzysztof Warlikowski’s production seems to nod to this thorny question by interpolating, immediately after the interval, before the third of the three acts, Schreker’s own character sketch of 1921, in which he presents – even, to an extent, ‘reclaims’, as we might say – accusations thrown at him and his art. It is, we may be reasonably sure, intended ironically or, perhaps better, with understandably vicious sarcasm, having been constructed from criticisms he had received:

  I am an Impressionist, Expressionist, Internationalist, Futurist, a musical purveyor of verismo; Jewish, and rose through the power of Jewishness; Christian and was ‘made’ by a Catholic clique under the patronage of a Viennese arch-Catholic countess.

 I am a sound artist, sound fantasist, sound magician, sound aesthete, and have no trace of melody (other than so-called short-breathed empty phrases, newly known as Melodielein). I am a melodist of the purest blood, as a harmonist however, anaemic, but perversely in spite of this a full-blooded musician! I am (unfortunately) an erotomaniac and work balefully upon the German public (eroticism is obviously my innermost contrivance, despite Figaro, Don Giovanni, Carmen, Tannhäuser, Tristan, Walküre, Salome, Elektra, Rosenkavalier, and so on). ... 

 

The rest, in which he continues, to explain that he is not of the true modernistic ‘left’ (Schoenberg and Debussy), owes something to Verdi, Puccini, Halévy, Meyerbeer, et al, and so on, may be read here. (It is well worth doing so, if you have the German.) It made for a powerful moment, or rather few moments, in the theatre, not least since Warlikowski has it read by the tragic, ugly hero-artist (the libretto was originally intended for Zemlinsky), who thus becomes at least in part an explicit realisation of Schreker’s plight. The problem, however, remains that, insofar as we may dissociate criticism of Schreker from anti-Semitism – perhaps it is impossible historically, but it need not be so now – many of the criticisms levelled tend actually to be born out; either that or the comparisons (Figaro, Tristan, etc.!) are rather embarrassing, doing neither composer nor opera any favours at all.

Carlotta (Catherine Naglestad) and Salvago (John Daszak)

What we have, then, is an evening in the theatre in which that problem is, if not worked out, at least explored. The slipperiness of artistic creation and agency is embodied in Alviano Salvago. Is he a good artist or a con artist? There are many other possibilities; we do not end up necessarily falling short of Mozart and Wagner because we are not trying. Salvago has created a garden of delights, an island park of Elysium, which he wishes to give to the people of Genoa. Is the suspicion of its establishment justified? In part, perhaps. Dark things clearly go on there. Are they the creator’s doing? Not intentionally, but they can be readily understood, made out to be, especially by other, more attractive noblemen who wish to be able to pursue something far more dastardly, indeed truly shocking – such as to leave our aesthetic-moralistic sniping at Schreker-Salvago look at best misguided. Do we really want to be the ones to say ‘yes, I’m sorry, your music is overblown, verging on the formless, an illustration or at least a piece of evidence, moreover, that Schoenberg was right: once a certain point of chromaticism has been reached, there really is nowhere else to go other than somewhere you would not…’, and so on? Of course we do not, especially when we know with whom we are allying ourselves, especially when we know how the crowd may be swayed – either by Salvago or by his opponents. On the other hand, Goebbels is not the only option: there is Schoenberg too; there is Moses und Aron, where we can see and hear these antinomies, or better dialectics, actually treated with the seriousness they deserve.

Give ourselves a third hand, though, or, Blair forbid, a ‘third way’, and perhaps we may wish to tarry. It is not as bad as Korngold, say. There is genuine fascination in the harmonic and instrumental colour: evidence of the most extraordinary ear. Alas, there is such an utter lack of variety that it all sounds more or less the same. One may like the sound; I might, for a few minutes. But for three acts? Three acts, that is, intruded upon only by a strange vulgarity in the third: dramatically effective, to a certain extent, as a suggestion of crowd dynamics, yet ultimately incongruous and, more to the point, unconvincing. The lack of ‘traditional’ melodic invention is not the end of the world in itself, but let us not convince ourselves that this is replaced by the still well nigh incredible perpetual self-transformation of Erwartung. Nor is the lack of musical characterisation necessarily fatal, although it is clearly a flaw, for this is not Fidelio, in which characterisation is simply not the point. Returns, however magnificent they sound in themselves, diminish all the time, without ever being replaced by something which, in that old Romantic way, we might consider to be true inspiration. Contrivance is all very well; who cares, ultimately, if the result is good. But is it?

Warlikowski proves himself, unsurprisingly, a dab hand at the erotomaniac side of things. The burlesque dance performed before the angry Schreker-Salvago is not the half of it, although it is perhaps the most memorable side. He shows also, quite unsparingly, how evil one side of the accusers is: that is, the party of Vitelozzo Tamare. Rich, unscrupulous, deceiving, plausible, violent: it is they who do the real harm, who have kidnapped and abused Ginevra Scotti, whilst framing the poor Salvago. How many other productions manage to incorporate a boxing training session into proceedings, as if to underscore the lavish obscenity of the violence? The humanity of the genuine artist, Carlotta, is underscored equally well, not least given an exemplary, heartfelt performance from Catherine Naglestad. She looks for the soul and perhaps she finds it: or perhaps, given her fate, she realises there is none at all, and is better off out of the game entirely. In that, encasing herself, she becomes an installation, perhaps an artwork of her own. The raging rodent crowd – more than a nod to Hans Neuenfels’s Lohengrin – would neither understand nor care. Salvago does though – we think.

The Bavarian State Orchestra under Ingo Metzmacher played with such glorious golden tone that it might have been the Vienna Philharmonic in Strauss – other, that is, than the score itself not having Strauss’s sense of drama, of direction, of characterisation, and so on, and so on. There was no sense of hurrying, which may or may not have been an unalloyed advantage. I think it was pretty much an advantage, for one certainly gained the impression of the score being permitted to speak for itself, even if to be hoist by its own petard. John Daszak gave a deeply moving account – like so many of the performances, seemingly moving beyond the limitations of the work ‘itself’ – of the central role. Christopher Maltman proved diabolically irresistible as his wicked opponent in love, art, and so much more; there was more than a hint of an ultra-decadent Don Giovanni here (definitely without the idealism – or Idealism). Tomasz Konieczny gave a magnificently forthright performance as Duke Adorno: duly ambiguous as to whose side he was on, if any, never anything but fully committed, though, in vocal terms. The doubling of his part with that of the Capitaneo di giustizia – gleefully ripping off his mask to confirm what we suspected – only heightened the troubling implications. The huge cast did not, so far as I can recall, have a single weak link to it; this, and the equally fine choral contribution showed just what an opera house and company can achieve. The extraordinarily self-reflexive quality of the evening and its aftermath will, I suspect, continue to intrigue. The Vorspiel zu einer Drama, the concert version of the opening Prelude, says it all - and yet, in another way, says none of that.

Elektra, Vienna State Opera, 26 June 2017

Vienna State Opera

Elektra – Nina Stemme

Chrysothemis – Regine Hangler

Klytämnestra – Waltraud Meier

Orest – Alan Held

Aegisth – Herbert Lippert

First Maid – Monika Bohinec

Second Maid – Ilsyear Khayrullova

Third Maid – Ulrike Helzel

Fourth Maid – Lauren Michelle

Fifth Maid – Ildikó Raimondi

Overseer – Donna Ellen

Young Servant – Benedikt Kobel

Old Servant – Dan Paul Dumitrescu

Orest’s tutor – Wolfgang Bankl

Confidante – Simina Ivan

Trainbearer – Zoryana Kushpler

Uwe Eric Laufenberg (director)

Karin Voykowitsch (revival director)

Rolf Glittenberg (set designs)

Marianne Glittenberg (costumes)

Andreas Grüter (lighting)

Chorus and Orchestra of the Vienna State Opera

Michael Boder (conductor)

I first saw Uwe Eric Laufenberg’s production of Elektra in 2014; two-and-a-half years on, it still impresses, although much seemed at least a degree less sharp – not in pitch, well not always...! – than first time around. Perhaps that is simply a reflection of available rehearsal time and the travails of a repertory house. It had the consequence, to my mind somewhat regrettable, of throwing the focus more upon the musical performances as such – not, of course, that they are not greatly important – and less upon the sum of the parts, or, if one must, the Gesamtkunstwerk.

As I observed last time, Laufenberg’s production is intelligent throughout and, for the work, intriguingly different, although not for the sake of ‘difference’. It is certainly infinitely preferable to his truly dreadful Bayreuth Parsifal, which manages somehow to be deathly boring and downright offensive at the same time. (Let us hope, against hope, for major revisions this summer!) Rolf Glittenberg’s set designs remain in keeping with the general ‘look’ of Elektra: does any major opera seem to lend itself less to a radical change of scenery? Accentuating the domesticity is in line with the Strauss-Hofmannsthal psychoanalytical approach to the myth. It is not that there is anything small-scale about this, but we are reminded that this is a home, a home of sadness, of ‘perversion’, whatever that might be, and far less a political setting. That said, I thought the interwar – Nazi-ish – overtones of the costumes, of the characters’ look, came across more strongly than last time. This is not simply a place of death, but a place death has visited and will not release for particular reasons. One need not worry too much about that context if one does not wish, but the uniforms and dogs are suggestive.

The lift connecting the palace proper to the courtyard remains a crucial cabinet of movement, of display, a cabinet of curiosities taken to its deadly extreme. Klytämnestra descends, twice (the second time dead) in it, and Aegisth never reaches the top. Behind the glass, the characters, above all Klytämnestra already seems encased, entombed: a taxidermist’s objet d’art, as I thought of it last time. Again, I can imagine that some might be irritated by the cliché of her wheelchair. But it is put to good, if relatively straightforward, use. Once her retinue is out of the way, she can put it to one side, actually engage with Elektra ‘as a mother’ – as Andrea Leadsom might put it. The overtly ‘beautiful’ dancers and dancing at the close, in counterpoint to Elektra’s own plight, continue to make an interesting, not un-Adornian point concerning Strauss’s score. That Adorno was, I think, quite wrong to condemn Strauss as he did is neither here nor there; we can argue about that. There is something, though, to the hollowness of the ending that merits exploration – and it receives that here.

I wrote at length on Nina Stemme’s performance last time. She is a very great singer, of course, one who pays a near ideal blend of attention – attention, moreover, that is fully achieved – between words and vocal line. That said, her performance did not grab me quite as it did in 2014, let alone as it did in the unforgettable Patrice Chéreau production (which I saw on the Met cinema broadcast last year: much better, incidentally, than when it came to Berlin that autumn). Like much else on this occasion, there seemed to be a relative disengagement. Waltraud Meier’s Klytämnestra likewise suffered from that same comparison with New York. I yield to none in my admiration for her as a singing actress, but the ‘singing’ part was unquestionably lesser on this occasion. Regine Hangler was a highly variable Chrysothemis: sometimes wildly out of tune, on other occasions – alas, too few – thrillingly able to ride the orchestral wave. Her acting skills, though, proved rudimentary: a pity. Alan Held’s Orest offered an estimable blend of musical values and subtle dramatic psychopathy. Herbert Lippert’s Aegisth was, sadly, no better than last time. The orchestra did not fail to impress; it would be a sad day indeed if this of all orchestras did not in Strauss. However, it did not impress as it had done under (the surprisingly good) Peter Schneider in 2014. Michael Boder knew how the score went, but there was a touch of fuzziness around the edges by comparison. Certain passages came a little too close to dragging. As for Esa-Pekka Salonen in New York – or indeed, Daniele Gatti in Salzburg a few years ago – that was conducting in a different league altogether.

Prince Igor and Die Fledermaus, Vienna Volksoper, 25 and 30 June 2017

Volksoper

Prince Igor – Davide Damiani

Prince Galitsky – Martin Winkler
Vladimir Igorevich – Vincent Schirrmacher
Skula – Daniel Ohlenchläger
Yeroshka – David Sitka
Yaroslavna – Melba Ramos
Konchakovna – Annely Peebo
Ovlur – Jeffrey Treganza
Khan Konchak – Sorin Coliban
Boyar – Levente Szöke
 
Thomas Schulte-Michels (director, set designs)
Renate Schmitzer (costumes)
Teresa Rotemberg (choreography)
Christoph Wagner-Trenkwitz (dramaturgy)
Angela Schweiger (Abendspielleitung)

 

Gabriel von Eisenstein – Jörg Schneider
Rosalinde – Ulrike Steinsky
Adele – Anja-Nina Bahrmann
Ida – Klaudia Nagy
Dr Falke – Daniel Ochoa
Prince Orlofsky – Martina Mikelić
Alfred – Szabolcs Brickner
Prince’s Manservant – Heinz Fitzka
Frank – Daniel Ohlenschläger
Boris Eder – Frosch
Dr Blind – Christian Drescher
 

Heinz Zednik (Szenische Neueinstudierung)

Pantellis Dessyllas (set designs)
Doris Engl (costumes)
Evelyn Frank (original sketches)
Lili Clemente, Susanne Kirnbauer (choreography)
Karin Schynol-Korbay (Abendspeilleitung)

Youth Chorus (chours master: Lucio Golino), Chorus, and Additional Chorus of the Vienna Volksoper (chorus masters: Thomas Böttcher and Holger Kristen)

Vienna State Ballet

Orchestra of the Vienna Volksoper

Vienna State Opera Stage Orchestra

Alfred Eschwé (conductor)

 

As my time in Vienna drew to a close, I was lucky enough to make two visits to the Volksoper. I thought it might be interesting to treat the two evenings together, very different though they were, not least since the differences were not always what I had expected they might be. In the blue corner stood Borodin’s Prince Igor, new last year to the house, and thus still operating in the shadow of its premiere; in the red stood Die Fledermaus, this production alone, so it would seem, receiving its 499^th (!) performance.

I say ‘it would seem’, since I was a little unsure what was intended by crediting Heinz Zednik – yes, that Heinz Zednik – with ‘Szenische Neueinstudierung’, without naming a director. No matter, anyway. This is a straightforward staging, with little attempt to mine any Freudian undertones – how I wish Christopher Alden’s attempt at ENO had been better accomplished – but that is not what it is ‘for’, rightly or wrongly. It clearly brings in a large number of visitors, and actually has English titles (for the sung passages, the dialogue making do with brief summaries), whereas German titles are the norm for the German-language performances on other evenings: for instance, for Fürst Igor. In such a show – for that is essentially what this Fledermaus is – much, then, depends on the acting of the performers, and members of this cast were undoubtedly inside their roles. It is perhaps more akin to The Mousetrap than to contemporary theatre, but for a more general audience, which this undoubtedly attracts, it is an attractive way in. (Not that, for the moment, I am suggesting it is the only way in, far from it.) I do wish productions did not encourage over-acting to the nth degree by whoever plays Frosch, but there we are. The dancers of the Vienna State Ballet looked and moved beautifully; it was truly a joy to watch – and indeed to hear – their Johann Strauss waltzes and polkas. (At the ghastly New Year’s Concert – does anyone still watch that? – a little goes a long way indeed.) The one more overtly directorial touch sits a little oddly, I thought. Yes, Orlofsky is clearly a bit of an oddball, to put it mildly. But does that mean he must be gay? I tend to think he either needs more queering – the work too – or to be left alone; here, such treatment seems at best dated, at worst, something, well, worse…

 

Fürst Igor, by contrast, is a bit all over the place as a staging. That is partly the work, of course, insofar as one can consider it a ‘work’ at all. This almost new staging, by Thomas Schulte-Michels, comes across as unsure of what it is trying to accomplish (not helped, I admit, by decidedly peculiar choreography). Perhaps there is something to be said for treating the opera as a series of barely connected tableaux, but if so, it probably needs framing as such more clearly. Here, we have a more or less ‘stand and sing’ Prologue, followed by a bizarrely Orientalist first act in the Polotsvian camp. I assume, or hope, the latter were intended ironically, but without that framing it is difficult to tell. Following the interval, the second act, what we should have expected to be the first, seems to be from an entirely different production: full of violence and debauchery, much more contemporary – to us – in its visual impression at least. The third and fourth acts attempt, it seems, some sort of synthesis, which I presume to be the point. I should like to have been convinced more than I was. In the end, it made me appreciate just how extraordinary Dmitri Tcherniakov’s achievement at the Met had been, welding this problematical opera into searing, coherent drama. The comparison is doubtless unfair, but another – with the ultra-repertory Fledermaus – would not be in this staging’s favour either.

 

In both cases, the orchestra, under the same conductor, Alfred Eschwé, was excellent. Without bowing to Viennese operetta nativism, one can probably say that there is something to playing this music so often that can help – although equally, it could lead to something drearily routine, which it did not. Eschwé’s conducting of Die Fledermaus was no more interventionist than the staging, but it carried the action along well, and charmed, without ever hinting at sentimentality. If there were times when I might have liked something a little more yielding in Prince Igor, especially at certain tricky corners, there was a great awareness of colour throughout, and the orchestra came across as enthralled by the opportunity to play such music. Choral singing was excellent too.

 

If there were a stronger sense of company acting in Die Fledermaus, there would be, really, given the nature of the enterprise. Ulrike Steinsky (a former Adele herself) made for an elegant Rosalinde, Anja-Nina Bahrmann a characterful Adele, offering pinpoint precision in both pitch and timing. Jörg Schneider was somewhat hammy as Eisenstein, but Szabolcs Brickner afforded a degree more self-awareness – not too much – as Alfred; he has a fine tenor voice too. Martina Mikelić’s depth of tone as Orlofsky made me keen to hear her in other, deeper repertoire. Daniel Ohlenschläger, the one singer common to both casts, impressed equally as Frank and as Skula. His double-act with David Sitka’s Yeroshka had more than a hint of the mendicant menace in Boris Godunov to it. Davide Damiani’s Igor was well sung and capably acted. I should have loved to see what he might have made of a more coherent staging; likewise Martin Winkler as Galitsky. Melba Ramos tugged on the heartstrings as Yaroslavna. Annely Peebo and Sorin Coliban also stood out vocally. Much to enjoy then, and not a little on which to reflect.

Bruckner Orchestra Linz/Angelico - Mahler, 23 June 2017

Musikverein

Symphony no.3

Elisabeth Kulman (contralto)

Ladies’, Children’s and Youth Choirs of the Landestheater, Linz

Bruckner Orchestra Linz

Francesco Angelico (conductor)

‘Honoured Herr Direktor,’ began one Arnold Schoenberg, fresh from the dress rehearsal on 12 December 1904 for the first Vienna performance of Mahler’s Third Symphony. Schoenberg continued his letter to the Director of the State Opera, hymning his experience of that concert, from which he dated his conversion to Mahler’s music:

In order to come close, even remotely so, to the unheard-of impression your symphony had upon me, I cannot speak to you as musician to musician, but must rather speak to you as one human being to another. For: I have seen your soul naked, stark naked. It lay before me, like a wild, mysterious landscape, with blood-curdling depths and ravines, and next, bright, comely, sunny meadows and idyllic places of repose.

Schoenberg confessed that he had not found the symphony’s ‘programme’, which he had only read after the performance, remotely in correspondence with his own experience. Instead, he had felt ‘the pain of one disillusioned … truth, the most relentless truth!’ Few encounters with the Third, perhaps with any of Mahler’s symphonies, will prove quite so decisive, quite so transformational, as that: how could they? By the same token, a performance that does not teach one something new, does not present something of a different way of considering, of hearing the work will have failed. I am delighted, then, to report that this performance, from the Bruckner Orchestra Linz, under Francesco Angelico, certainly showed me much that was new, as much about possibilities of listening as about the work ‘itself’.

The first surprise was that Angelico was conducting at all. Most of the audience, me included, had expected Dennis Russell Davies. Angelico, a very late replacement, soon had one thinking, or at least feeling, that, a few occasional slips of ensemble apart, he had always been going to conduct. From the opening of the third movement, we heard a performance that was flexible yet directed: none of the arbitrary, frankly narcissistic pulling around of the score that made a London performance from Simon Rattle and the Berlin Philharmonic a few years ago well-nigh unbearable. (Fashion victims went wild, of course; they always do.) This was a monumental awakening, greater than any of us, which could yet incorporate individual subjectivity: Mahler’s, the performers’, our own, even Schoenberg’s. There was something of what I imagine, however absurdly, the spirit of a Mengelberg in this music to have been. Even when I personally – who cares? – would have relaxed a little more, there was always good, supportable reason for what Angelico did. The chorale passages were taken swiftly: light, lucid, transparent even, as if a message from another world. And the marches could both be nervously enjoyed for their own sake, whilst still knowing where they were heading. The golden sound of the orchestra – doubtless the hall’s too, but a great acoustic still needs a great orchestra – was magical, but never gave the slightest impression of being such for its own sake. Just as important, the players and their conductor were not afraid to sound nasty, to snarl, to take the music to the edge. The final climax was almost – I said ‘almost’ – enough to make one reconsider one’s dislike of applause between movements. It would certainly have been preferable to silence, followed by applause (from some) as the soloist came on stage. What were they thinking?!

The second movement perhaps lacked simplicity (however artfully contrived that simplicity may be), but that is better than being simplistic. Angelico showed himself fully aware of colour and its complications. Again, extremity was an option – even to the point of contradiction. There were a few too many rough orchestral edges, but in the greater scheme of things, they barely mattered. The third movement offered a seductive sardonicism in colour and rhythm. Its edges’ sharpness was unquestionably a good thing. If there were a few occasions on which I wondered whether the line were in danger of becoming lost, complexity again certainly registered. The posthorn solo was delivered from above with surpassing beauty, a truly ravishing contrast to the disconcerting weirdness of tricksters or the truly malign to be heard elsewhere. Here there was to be no ironing out of differences.

The colour of Elisabeth Kulman’s voice seemed to me perfect for the fourth movement. Almost reed-like, it spoke with truly Zarathustrian dignity. The Linz orchestra was both a wondrous backdrop and far more than that, speaking as if it were Wagner’s orchestra as Greek Chorus. Kulman could be more imploring, though, too, as she showed later on, when the text suggested or demanded it. The sudden lift of mood for the fifth movement was just the ticket: a signal for duly ambiguous enchantment. It was a fairy-tale – and we all know of what difficult, unconscious desires those speak. There was again, no break before the finale – which nicely highlighted the tonal difference. Angelico kept it moving, never mistaking sentiment for sentimentality. It was not a huge, overwhelming string sound; instead, it sounded like a string quartet writ (very) large. One truly felt, as well as heard, bows on strings. And yes, it did what it needed to do – just as it had for Schoenberg many years earlier. There was an honesty, an integrity to this performance that moved me just as it should.

Mahler, who had already been observing Schoenberg’s career from afar, immediately sent him a ticket for the premiere itself. The rest is musical history.