Salzburg Mozartwoche (1) – Mozart and Salieri, 27 January 2024

 

Salzburg Marionette Theatre

Images: Bernhard Mueller

Salieri: Axur, re d’Ormus: Piccolo sinfonia to Act IV; La secchia rapita: ‘Son qual lacera tartana’; Il ricco d’un giorno: ‘Eccomi più che mai – ‘Amor, pietoso Amore’; La grotto di Trofonio: ‘La ra la ra’
Rimsky-Korsakov: Mozart and Salieri

Director, designs – Matthias Bundschuh
Lighting – Matthias Bundschuh, Alexander Proschek
Production manager – Philippe Brunner

Isora – Ekaterina Krasko/ Svetlana Schönfeld/Maximilian Kiener
Mozart – Konstantin Igl/Ursula Winzer
Salieri – Brett Pruunsild/Eva Wiener
Blind violinist – Philipp Schmidt

Students from the Mozarteum University Salzburg
Kai Röhrig (conductor)

After a few years concentrating on Mozart alone, Rolando Villázon, Intendant of Salzburg’s Mozartwoche, has turned to Mozart and Salieri. There is so much more, so much more of interest, to Salieri than the preposterous charge that ‘everyone’ knows, but it has been greatly influential, whether we like it or not, and that of course includes its artistic legacy. Most celebrated of all is Peter Schaffer’s Amadeus, which will be seen here both as film and play. (I should have been keen to see the latter, but alas the scheduling gods had other ideas.) But long before Schaffer was Pushkin, with his short story: basis, almost verbatim, for Rimsky-Korsakov’s short, one-act opera of 1897, here given at Salzburg’s Marionette Theater with puppets, three young singers, and a chamber ensemble of students from the Mozarteum conducted by Kai Röhrig. 

It is a very short opera, so Matthias Bundschuh has decided, in a prologue, to provide a back-story and to redress a little the Mozart-Salieri imbalance by offering a little of the latter’s own music. A middle-aged prima donna Isora recalls her career in its prime: she worked often with Salieri, ‘Antonio’, though sadly never with Mozart. She sings us some of his music, from the buffa rather than seria end of his output, and tells of his unrequited love – he desired marriage – which resulted in her joking dismissal of him through the gift of poison (happily or unhappily, Gift in German). The scene is set, dramatically and musically, for the opera proper to begin, in a German translation by Bundschuh and Philipp Schmidt. And so, in brief, Mozart, full of live and a levity Salieri finds irresponsible, even obscene, calls upon the elder composer, brings him a blind violinist as a joke, massacring his own ‘Batti, batti, o bel Masetto’ – here accomplished with wicked skill – and is invited to dinner, for which he returns in rather darker mood. He tells Salieri the story about the mysterious stranger who has commissioned his Requiem, drinks from the goblet Salieri has prepared, goes to the piano to play from the work he is composing, and is killed. 

All is accomplished through collaboration and synthesis in music, a little speech, and of course the excellent working of Bundschuh’s own puppets. Nice additional touches include a crackly record of Mozart as tango which, somewhat incongruously, the two composers dance, and the intrusion of a recorded excerpt from the Requiem itself. But the scene in which the puppet Mozart plays a new composition of his own at the piano, with interjections from Salieri, is perhaps most impressive. One sees, hears, and appreciates just what craft is required in the collaboration of puppetry and music.

In a programme note, Bundschuh tells of his dislike for ‘Russian pathos’: fair enough, I suppose, but I wonder whether the approach adopted sells Rimsky’s opera, which in any case is hardly Eugene Onegin, somewhat short. It is partly owed, of course, to the requirements of marionette theatre, but might there not have been room for something a little stronger, dare I say more Amadeus-like? Still, the general lightness of what is in any case a light score by Rimsky’s standards has its own allure, and allows our vocal Mozart and Salieri to impress. Konstantin Igl as the former reveals an adept, characterful tenor. The (literally) deeper, even more fragmented Salieri is a Chaliapin role, no less. (The bass apparently claimed to have sung the work as a monodrama, given Mozart’s part also lay within his range.) It was equally well sung by baritone Brett Pruunsild, the two achieving considerable chemistry, notwithstanding the necessity of singing offstage. Similarly impressive was Ekaterina Krasko’s sparkling despatch of the Salieri arias, likewise to sympathetic playing from the conservatoire students and lively overall direction by Röhrig.

There is charm and not a little magic here in this co-production between the Stiftung Mozarteum, the Mozarteum University, and the Marionette Theatre. And once again, I find myself wishing more composers would, as Pierre Boulez suggested some time ago, avail themselves of the possibilities puppetry might offer opera. There is something unquestionably Mozartian to the idea.

BPO/Petrenko - Schoenberg, 25 January 2024

Philharmonie

Chamber Symphony no.1 in E major, op.9
Die Jakobsleiter

Gabriel – Wolfgang Koch
One who is called – Daniel Behle
One who protests – Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
One who struggles – Johannes Martin Kränzle
The chosen one – Gyula Orendt
The monk – Stephan Rügamer
The dying one – Nicola Beller Carbone
The soul – Liv Redpath, Jasmin Delfs

Berlin Radio Chorus (chorus director: Gijs Leenaars)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Kirill Petrenko (conductor)

Image: © Stephan Rabold

150 years on from the birth of Arnold Schoenberg, we could be forgiven for lamenting this world still does not know what to do with him and his music. The most important of twentieth-century composers, he languishes respected yet for the most part unperformed. The muted tones in which even this, his anniversary year, is being celebrated – if not now, then when? – are such that it could readily be missed altogether. There are exceptions, not least my friends and colleagues at Vienna’s Arnold Schönberg Center; I am referring essentially to the world of musical performance—and listening. And just perhaps here also in Berlin, second of Schoenberg’s three major cities. (Los Angeles, alas, has long seemed a lost cause.) Not so much in the city as a whole: we search in vain for contributions from its opera houses – surely things would have been different, were Daniel Barenboim still at the helm of the Staatsoper – and indeed from most of its orchestras, yet in the Philharmonie, home to the Berlin Philharmonic, we at least see in the foyer a little exhibition, mounted in conjunction with the ASC, and here we have now also heard the first of several contributions planned from the orchestra. 

If they continue even to approach the level of this instalment, all will not be lost. The First Chamber Symphony offered a splendid way to start. It was the first live Schoenberg I heard, travelling down as a schoolboy to London on the coach from Sheffield for my first Prom; I think it was actually the first piece on the programme, so the first notes I heard at the Proms, at the Royal Albert Hall, indeed in London, were Schoenberg’s. An attempt at comparison would be pointless: I cannot remember much other than that, even then, it impressed me greatly. But this is therefore a work with which I have lived for a while, and of which I have heard a number of fine performances since that CBSO Prom with Simon Rattle (and Maurizio Pollini), one next door at the Kammermusiksaal included (from members of this same orchestra as the Scharoun Ensemble and Pierre Boulez). Today’s Berlin Philharmonic and Kirill Petrenko have little to fear from even the most exalted comparisons, but it is better simply to consider their performance on its own terms. 

In some ways the most conservative – in the proper rather than the debased, contemporary sense – of revolutionaries and surely the most revolutionary of conservatives, Schoenberg stands Janus-faced, that historical position readily conveyed here in immanent, performing terms. For a work so sunny and life-affirming, it is haunted by ghosts, many of whom cheerfully partook of this particular feast. First up, in the opening bars, was Richard Strauss, already balanced by a heightened sense that this was as much chamber music, a gathering of soloists, as symphony (or indeed symphonic poem). Brahmsian developing variation, Wagnerian melos, passage of transition that owed much to both, and of course Lisztian formal inheritance were to the fore, but through the particular material and character of this piece; it never felt like anything other than itself, though there was to be heard something of a more traditional, darkly ‘German’ sound and warmth to the ensemble than might often have been the case from Petrenko’s two immediate predecessors, Claudio Abbado and Simon Rattle, albeit without sacrifice to clarity and balance. So assured was the latter that one might almost have forgotten what an astonishingly difficult feat it is to bring off (as Herbert von Karajan, Abbado’s predecessor, freely admitted). Illuminating detail – sepulchral, Alberich-like playing from violist Diyang Mei, a snatch of Pierrot-laughter from Kilian Herold’s clarinet – was present to an extent sometimes difficult to believe, but always within a sure and malleable sense of the whole. The development truly developed, showing Schoenberg as heir to Beethovenian struggle. The ‘lightness’ of the beginning of the ‘slow movement’ offered a surprising presentiment of the ‘air of another planet’ soon to be experienced in Schoenberg’s Second String Quartet, prior to well-nigh Mahlerian ‘deepening’. No performance of this complex piece can be perfect; it contains more than can ever be achieved in a single performance. This came closer than most.   

True revelation, though, came with Die Jakobsleiter. So seldom is this extraordinary work heard that I cannot have been the only audience member hearing it live for the first time. I had thought I knew this incomplete oratorio well enough, yet such were the strength and all-round excellence of this performance that I realised I had hardly known it at all. Indeed, not the least of my realisations was that one cannot really begin to know it other than through live performance. Recordings, however excellent, can barely suggest the spatial dimension – here the hall came into its own as much as the performers – nor, more important still, the overwhelming power and conviction inherent in the work and any performance worthy of it. One felt the work’s constructivism from the off, its opening cello hexachord so clearly, powerfully generative of what ensued: musical expression first, words from Wolfgang Koch’s Gabriel next. ‘Whether right or left, forward or backward, uphill or downhill’: one felt, harmonically, motivically, conceptually the multi-dimensional Schoenbergian Idea. Just as important, its colours, not only orchestral (though the inheritance of the Five Orchestral Pieces, op.16 was thrillingly apparent) but vocal too, not least from the souls of the Berlin Radio Chorus, individual and as a mass. Instrumental lines, as if generated by the Chamber Symphony and further developed here, contributed equally to the composer’s hyper-expressivity and the sense of its absolute necessity. It was relentlessly dialectical, relentlessly communicative, already pointing to elements of the world of Moses und Aron. A well-nigh flawless cast of vocal soloists had been assembled and exceeded expectations. Again, the variety of colours and expressive gestures within a single performance, be it that of the increasingly Wagnerian Daniel Behle, the dark, rich Gyula Orendt, Liv Redpath and Jasmin Delfs’s souls in vocalise, or anyone else had to be heard to be believed. Schoenberg’s vivid imagery – or is that too representational a characterisation? – was brought still more vividly to life that was both fleeting and aspirant to the eternal.

All the while, we moved, after Swedenborg, upwards, heralded by the sweetest of violin solos from above, instruments and voices surrounding us as if truly from the heavens. This was less the air of another planet than of another dimension, music and post-Wagnerian, post-Mahlerian redemption above, beyond, around us. This was a magic unlike anything I had yet heard. Part of our world, then, does know what to do with Schoenberg and his music. May it serve as an example to the rest.

Daphne, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 20 January 2024

Peneios – René Pape
Gaea – Anna Kissjudit
Daphne – Vera-Lotte Boecker
Leukippos – Johan Krogius
Apollo – David Butt Philip
Four Shepherds – Arttu Kataja, Florian Hoffmann, Adam Kutuy, Friedrich Hamel
Two Maids – Evelin Novak, Natalia Skrycka

Director, set design, costumes, lighting – Romeo Castellucci
Revival director – José Dario Innella
Choreography – Evelin Facchini
Assistant director – Maxi Menja Lehmann
Set design assistance – Lisa Behensky, Alessio Valmori
Costume assistance – Clara Rosina Straßer, Theresa Wilson
Lighting assistance – Marco Giusti

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Thomas Guggeis (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Daphne (Vera-Lotte Boecker)

Seen first last year, Romeo Castellucci’s production of Daphne receives its first revival. In one sense, it could hardly be more timely, snow falling outside in wintry landscapes across Berlin and beyond, as it does onstage. Yet that immediately presents a greater untimeliness to the mise-en-scène, for a modern snowscape seems perversely distant from the Thessalian pastoral of Joseph Gregor’s libretto (and Strauss’s imagination). It is beautiful, of course, and with Castellucci, matters aesthetic have a tendency to take on a life, approaching the painterly, of their own. I have heard it said several times that Castellucci has no concept of the dramatic; I think that goes too far in this case, for this is no ‘mere’ installation and a story certainly is told. But the alterity to his aesthetic imagination, to which audiences, perhaps particularly opera audiences, respond very differently, is undeniably present—to my mind, more fruitfully than in, say, his Munich Tannhäuser or even his Salzburg Salome. It may or may not be the story some want to be told – ultimately, I think it remains the same story, albeit from an angle unexpected until one becomes accustomed to its shift – but we certainly have narrative and development as well as setting. 

That setting is one of widespread estrangement from Nature: not, I think, in an especially environmentalist sense, though that need not be excluded, but more existential. In light of that, the conception of the nymph Daphne, according to a programme interview, as ‘a being who withdraws from all social relationships in search of intensive, I should say, (skin-)contact with Nature … a contemporary creature who breaks with her surroundings’, seems central; so is her spiritual, as opposed to political, need to do so. And so, even in the deep snow, it is there she wishes to be. Whilst others, not unreasonably layer their clothing, she sheds much of hers. It is for us a radical break with all we value, social, erotic, and so on—and therein captures the dramatic essence of the work more clearly than one might suspect. The unexpected slant makes clear what that essence and her character are not. 

When Apollo does eventually bring sun to this world it registers powerfully, within its frame. He, after all, is far from entirely at home with himself, having uncomfortably, even shamefully, adopted the methods of Dionysus to ensnare the nymph. But acting in accordance with Nature brings the three key figures, Daphne, Apollo, and Leukippos briefly together, to an extent that would otherwise have been impossible; initial estrangement arguably assists that. I honestly cannot say I understood why the cover of the first edition of The Waste Land descended. It came across a bit too much as ‘referencing’ rather than drama, though I suppose quotation is inherent to the poem, and the act had an aesthetic as well as intellectual presence of its own. I am assuming, I think correctly, that there is greater significance to the invocation of Eliot than simply the scene of a winter waste land. But to return to the snow, one thing one can do with and in it is a favourite act of Castellucci’s: burial. (Another is the blood-like pouring and smearing of red paint over the dying Leukippos, tar-black reserved for Daphne.) Daphne’s transformation takes place both below – soon, we can no longer see her – and above, as the tree present throughout has a sort of apotheosis. There is something magical here, in the simplicity and wonder: ever tied or at least related to Strauss’s inspired orchestral and, eventually, vocalised concluding transformation (very much the composer’s own idea, rejecting Gregor’s idea of a choral finale).

 

Whilst we naturally – rightly – accord Daphne’s vocalise a key role here, it is actually quite short; for the most part this transformation is orchestral, and Strauss called it an ‘extended orchestral piece’. Here and elsewhere, Thomas Guggeis led the Staatskapelle Berlin with true distinction. From the opening Harmoniemusik throughout the score, the conductor traced an ever-transforming path, perhaps warmer than what we saw on stage, yet rarely heated and never remotely over-heated. This was a reading of subtle mastery, upset at most a couple of times by something intrusive from without—though that is arguably Strauss’s own responsibility. The Goethian metamorphosis that surely underpins Strauss’s method here as strongly and as generatively as in Metamorphosen was painted, indeed lived, as if this were a work far more frequently performed than it is; that is, conductor and orchestra showed deep knowledge and understanding, without loss to a proper sense of discovery and magic. For the orchestral players were at least equal participants in this achievement; I cannot imagine any orchestra, be it in Vienna, Dresden, or elsewhere, sounding more at home and proving a more rewarding guide. 

The cast likewise made an outstanding contribution. In the title role, Vera-Lotte Boecker’s silver glistened, gleamed and blended with her orchestral colleagues, though it could certainly grow into something fuller-voiced, thrillingly so, when called upon. Boecker entered enthusiastically, moreover, into the staging, grasping Castellucci’s at-times-somewhat abstract enigmas and personifying them, enabling one to believe. Like her fellow performers, she played the Straussian role of Music as well as singing or playing its lower-case cousin. To have had not one but two excellent Straussian tenor performances is quite something. Johan Krogius and David Butt Phillip both shone as Leukippos and Apollo respectively: the former offering a properly rounded portrayal, beautifully sung, Daphne’s likeable companion revealing tragic dignity in death; the latter’s rather different journey traced sympathetically and with due mystery. The deep voices of René Pape as Peneios and Anna Kissjudit as Gaea contributed much to the ensemble. Kissjudit may be described as a mezzo, but her chalumeau-like tones revealed, as in her Erda, the ability to sing a true contralto line too. Pape’s tone was similarly luxurious and similarly attentive to words. Shepherds, maids, and chorus were all excellent too. If Castellucci sometimes held the drama at arm’s length, though mirroring and responding it to throughout, that distance and conception of distance arguably enabled the riches of the evening’s orchestral and vocal performances to penetrate audience consciousness the more readily.

Così fan tutte, Komische Oper, 14 January 2024

Schillertheater

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Fiordiligi – Penny Sofraniadou
Dorabella – Susan Zarrabi
Guglielmo – Hubert Zapiór
Ferrando – Caspar Singh
Despina – Alma Sadé
Don Alfonso – Seth Carico
Sempronio – Amer El-Erwadi
Tizio – Goran Jurenec

Director, set and costume designer – Kirill Serebrennikov
Implementation of direction, choreography – Evgeny Kulagin
Staff director (Spielleitung) – Martha Jurowski
Co-costume designer – Tatyana Dolmatovskaya
Assistant set designer – Nikolay Simonov
Dramaturgy – Beate Breidenbach, Maximilian Hagemeyer
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Ilya Shagalov

Choral Soloists of the Komische Oper (director: Jean-Christophe Charron) 

Orchestra of the Komische Oper 

Erina Yashima (conductor)  

There should never be a run-of-the-mill Così fan tutte: Mozart’s most exquisite opera, arguably his profoundest, and perhaps ultimately his greatest. (It is, at any rate, my current favourite, and not only because I heard it last.) This was certainly not it, whether in origin, direction, or performance. Indeed, this staging from Berlin’s Komische Oper is an outstanding achievement in almost every respect, giving one much to think about, much to relish, and much by which to be discomfited. On top of that, it is a long time since I have seen and heard so thoroughly accomplished a cast.

 

Kirill Serebrennikov’s production was first seen in Zurich in 2018, albeit under highly unusual circumstances stemming from the director’s house arrest. His choreographer and assistant Evgeny Kulagin, here credited with ‘Umsetzung Inszenierung,’ took Serebrennikov’s place in person, passing to Serebrennikov’s lawyer film recordings of what was developing in rehearsal for the director in turn to comment on via video message. Hence the somewhat involved list for the production team, which I thought important to include as a whole and with as clear a translation of terms as I could. Following several extensions to his house arrest, followed by conviction for fraud, probation, dismissal from the Gogol Centre, and bans on travel and leadership of any cultural institution in receipt of government support, Serebrennikov’s suspended sentence was eventually cancelled by another court on account of good behaviour and the travel ban lifted. Having been permitted to travel to Germany in 2022, he was able to direct the Berlin incarnation of the production, of which this is now the first revival. It would be difficult to deny that these circumstances make the production’s achievement all the more impressive; it certainly suggests some truth may yet lie in the double-edged, Romantic adage that adverse circumstances can foster great artistic achievement.    

Onwards, in any case, to the production ‘itself’. It has already begun when one enters the theatre. A horizontally split set (levels 1 and 2) reveals at this stage – it remains, whilst the settings it reveals change over time – two gym settings, male and female, extras working out. Exercise of a different kind, orchestral tuning, provides the accompaniment. The more physical variety onstage continues into the Overture, skipping noises proving something of an aural irritant, albeit a minor issue in the greater scheme of things. Guglielmo and Ferrando arrive, and eventually Don Alfonso, with much stereotypically, indeed performatively masculine behaviour to be observed as the stage is set. It soon becomes clear, though, that whilst Alfonso has some sort of hold over the men at the gym – not only our pair of lovers – he is also a deeply damaged person, broadening and deepening his characterisation from the typical stock-character cynic. This may be connected with war, which looms eerily large for a production conceived in 2017-18; I could not help but wonder whether some changes had been made in light of the invasion of Ukraine, which Serebrennikov publicly opposed. For, when Guglielmo and Ferrando are sent off to combat – it is unusually clear what might be involved, coffins and all, the women in mourning – the military video game whose control Alfonso is trying, indeed struggling, has him shaken, traumatised. Is that merely a metaphor? Perhaps. We may remember Monteverdi’s Madrigali guerrieri et amorosi and any number of other literary and artistic connections and constructions. Revelation of the betrayal or defeat he has suffered in battles of the heart, via a display of text messages, offers further context but does not exclude something darker and deeper still. My sense was of a veteran of both types of conflict—and more.

 

For when the opposing ‘team’ takes stock, led by Despina, now not a servant but a therapist, she shows Fiordiligi and Dorabella slides of typical male behaviour, especially in the armed forces. What better way to show her patients – the word is actually used in the subtitles, which alternate as faithful translation and guide to the production – what their lovers will really be up to, if they are still alive? Her visual aids pursue a number of lines, some frankly feminist, some more cynical. The therapeutic turn that has informed many of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s more recent productions (e.g. Carmen, Les Troyens, and the Ring; as well, I am told, as his own Così, which I have not seen) is first brought on board but also brought into question. If anyone is perpetrating a hoax here, it is arguably Despina, who also, far from coincidentally, seems the most resilient of the lot.

Clichés that elsewhere have become tired, for instance the use of mobile telephones, both for messages and pictures, are for once used to genuine dramatic ends. This is, after all, how modern communications work—and modern relationships, even sex, too. Nowhere is this clearer, yet also more genuinely complex, than when Guglielmo and Ferrando are replaced by their ‘Albanian’ – in this case, first Arab – counterparts, Sempronio and Tizio, here played by actors (Amar El-Erwadi and Goran Jurenec) whose time at the gym seems to have been still more successful. The ambiguity over whether they are actual, hired replacements – I think they almost certainly are – is such that one can take different views. ‘Different views’, though, may be understood in a different sense, action (of various kinds) being viewed from another level via video link (not necessarily ‘inspired’ by the director’s treatment, but gaining greater meaning nonetheless through that connection) or even ‘in person’ but as ghostly presence, apparently unseen by and indeed deceased for Fiordiligi and Dorabella. There are especially cruel touches, such as thinking all is well, only to hear the lavatory flush from the en suite bathroom: all very much in the spirit of those extraordinary horns of cuckoldry Mozart employs at crucial points in the score. Actual horns are donned by both ‘Albanians’ at one point, suggesting an assumption of quasi-divine status, Dionysus or even Zeus, enabling and initiating congress and conquest. 

For men now are as objectified as women. As a gay man, Serebrennikov will know this all too well, but so do many younger heterosexual men too. This remains a heterosexual opera on the most fundamental level, without say the step into overt lesbianism taken by Stefan Herheim in his reimagination of Die Entführung aus dem Serail as an exploration of love between and beyond the sexes. On the other hand, the bodies of all concerned, but especially Sempronio and Tizio, are so resolutely in the gaze of us all that boundaries blur and dissolve whether we like it or not—and the implication would be that most, perhaps all, of us do. We are all actors, playing roles here, Ferrando explicitly in assuming the metatheatrical, ambiguous with respect to diegetic status, role of ‘a singer’ in ‘Un’aura amoroso’, ‘credited’ at its close by Don Alfonso. That extends, moreover, to gender roles, surely a tribute to the much-maligned yet ever-relevant Judith Butler. It ultimately comes as no surprise, perhaps even as a strangely satisfying fulfilment, that the title scrawled at the back by Don Alfonso is corrected to ‘Così fan tutti,’ tellingly ‘girlish’ hearts atop the ‘i's a further turn of the dialectical gender-screw (as it were).

 

And yet, this remains a deeply disillusioning experience for all, the modern anomie of what are either hotel rooms or a modern apartment so fashionable it might as well be, not the least of the bridges constructed between deeper meanings to be drawn from Mozart (to a lesser extent, Da Ponte too) and Serebrennikov’s conception. Both women have incomplete, neon-lit crucifixes above their beds: probably only a ‘design feature’, but extending into something more in Fiordiligi’s case, allied to her little shrine (to what, though?) assembled for ‘Per pietà’, when she drags it across the floor, failing twice to maintain the electric connection. For Mozart, these parodies of opera seria have a message that is, among other things, deeply theological; that may or may not be the case here, but it is certainly not to be excluded. This is, after all, a Passion of Passion to rival – to my mind, even to surpass – Tristan und Isolde.

Credit should again be accorded the company’s extras (Komparserie) who had much to do throughout and did it well, not least dressing the two brides in full traditional Russian wedding dress – they might almost have been auditioning for Les Noces – only to have to undress them once again in acts of inflation, deflation, and revelation. In a brilliant coup de théâtre, we turn suddenly to an interpolated musical reminiscence – or premonition – of Don Giovanni’s Stone Guest Scene. The Albanians, seizing hold like twin Commendatores of ‘their’ women’s hands, may be standing in judgement over them or may simply be trying to keep them. It is a disruption that can doubtless only be visited once, unique to this production, but a highly productive one, reminding us that even in the most hedonistic, secular, ‘sex-positive’ society, the question of sin, of remoteness from the divine, does not disappear, far from it; we simply pretend it has and mistake euphemism for theodicy. As desolate as ever, probably more so, the characters attempting to draw some sort of lesson from events that have shattered their world seem quite unaware that, on the level above, an actual fire has begun to blaze. Narcissism, after all, is not the least of our contemporary sins—and/or ailments. 

All this, or most of it, would go for little, were it not brought to life by fine performances. This it certainly received. I can honestly find nothing of any importance to which to object, and much to praise. If I write less about them on this occasion, it is not because I consider them less important; for one thing, they are not to be extracted from what has been said above, but rather very much part of it. In any case, Penny Sofraniadou and Susan Zarrabi portrayed, from the outset, properly distinguished Fiordiligi and Dorabella, clean of line, if hardly of deeper intention. Both drew on varied palettes of vocal colour that could blend where dramatically and musically necessary, without loss to identities that shifted yet never merged. Much the same could be said – and this is Mozart’s laboratory of musical quasi-geometry at work, as well as their artistry – of the Ferrando and Guglielmo of Hubert Zapiór and Caspar Singh. Equally adept as actors and singers, their exploration of wounded masculinities was every bit as revealing as that of Seth Carico’s uniquely subtle Don Alfonso. Ferrando, as usual, had two rather than his full three arias: a pity but not the end of the world. Alma Sadé’s Despina likewise not only acquired new depth as Despina, but contributed that greater range. (And what a relief it was, for once, not to have to endure the usual ‘silly voices’.)

 

Erina Yashima’s direction of the orchestra proved similarly impeccable. Hers was not the sort of deeply personal reading that leads one to speak of a particular standpoint, ‘Böhm’s Così’ or ‘Muti’s’; but it performed a different, more readily theatrical function, near-faultless in its incitement, mirroring, and at times questioning of the action onstage. That I barely noticed her tempi as such speaks for itself: there was a ‘rightness’ in context that could not be gainsaid. Nor could the excellence of the orchestral playing in a score in which any false move, any slight infelicity of intonation or phrasing, will stand out like a sore thumb. The Komische Oper may be known primarily for its emphasis on theatre, but that should not mean the orchestra matters less, rather that it is part and parcel of the action. At any rate, so it sounded here. They may not have been singing, but our ‘Albanian’ actors Amar El-Erwadi and Goran Jurenec also contributed greatly to the action and its ultimate achievement. If, as I suggested earlier, the production was able even to reinvigorate well-worn directorial clichés with new meaning, I may as well offer as my own ‘a true ensemble performance’. Do not take my word for it, though: if possible, try to see and hear this Così for yourself. It has, for whatever this may be worth, my highest recommendation.

Antikrist, Deutsche Oper, 13 January 2024

Lucifer, A Voice – Thomas Lehman
God’s Voice – Jonas Grundner-Culemann
The Echo of the Air of Mystery – Valeriia Savinskaia
The Air of Mystery – Irene Roberts
The Mouth speaking Great Words – Clemens Bieber
Despondency – Maire Therese Carmack
The Great Whore – Flurina Stucki
The Scarlet Beast – AJ Glueckert
The Lie – Kieran Carrel
Hatred – Philipp Jekal

Dancers – Ashley Wright, Giorgia Bovo, Ana Dordevic, Sakura Inoue, Vasna Felicia Aguilar, Yuri Shimaoka, Joel Donald Small, Shih-Ping Lin, György Jellinek, Miguel Angel Collado

Director, set designs – Ersan Mondtag
Revival director – Silke Sense
Costumes – Ersan Mondtag, Annika Lu Hermann
Lighting – Rainer Casper
Choreography – Rob Fordeyn
Dramaturgy – Lara Gebhardt, Carolin Müller-Dohle

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (chorus director: Jeremy Bines) 

Opera-Ballet and Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Hermann Bäumer (conductor)

ANTIKRIST, Regie: Ersan Mondtag, Premiere 30. Januar 2022 Deutsche Oper Berlin,
copyright: Thomas Aurin

Rued Langgaard’s ‘church opera’ Antikrist is a strange beast. The opera’s first staging was in 1999 at Innsbruck. This, its fourth ever, was due to premiere in 2020, but was delayed for two years on account of the pandemic. I was rather surprised to see a revival at all, let alone a revival with almost no empty seats and an audience so warmly enthusiastic. Limiting this season’s appearances to two, of which this was the first, seems to have been a canny move. I wish I could have shared the audience’s enthusiasm; instead, the work left me bewildered, although the performances seemed excellent.

There are arguments for and against doing one’s homework before experiencing a musical work for the first time. On this occasion, I did not, wanting to be surprised and to approach what I heard with as few preconceptions as I could. Surprised I certainly was, above all by an opera seemingly without plot, by a treatment of the apocalypse somehow devoid of dramatic interest. What we hear at the Deutsche Oper – and what, it seems, is always heard – is a revised version, from 1926-30. I am tempted to say goodness knows what the original (1921-3) was like, given (from what I read) the libretto was completely rewritten and yet still emerged almost comically unsuited to music, let alone drama, let alone both; yet it seems that the first version may have had a little more in terms of plot. At any rate, Langgaard’s own libretto was the determining factor both times in the Royal Danish Theatre’s rejection of the work, and it would be difficult, unless one were a Langgaard cultist (perhaps there are such people), to argue against that verdict. Not, I hasten to add, that the score proved especially convincing.

What we have, here given in a German translation by Inger and Walther Methlagl amounts to little more than a number of largely unidentified figures – I established that one was the Whore of Babylon and one the Antichrist, and suspected one might be Lucifer, but beyond that was lost – denouncing the lost state of the modern world until an almost literal deus ex machina puts things right. It was not at all clear to me, though this seems to have been the fault of my slowness, from what standpoint this was being presented. Part of me hoped a Nietzschean turn might be taken, but it seems ultimately that Langgaard – I assume his ‘voice’ was presented here as God’s – found all around him filth and depravity and wished to tell us so at great length (just over ninety minutes, but it felt longer). It was as if the ranting of a deranged street preacher were less transformed than converted, editing kept to the bare minimum, into a libretto that somehow must then be set to music. It takes all sorts, I suppose, and there is no intrinsic reason why a reactionary message, perhaps especially one so bizarre as this, should not prove fodder for drama; the problem is more that it does not. Perhaps some find a ‘rejection’ not only of plot, not only of characterisation, but also of drama itself. Again, there is no reason opera should not be postdramatic; much of it is and has been, even avant la lettre. What Langgaard presents, though, seems more incompetent than a positive choice or an aesthetic. 

Might the ‘opera’ have been better off as an oratorio? Perhaps, although it would surely still have required major surgery, even a transplant or two. For there is little redemption to be found in the music either. If you like the sound of Wagner and Strauss, but find their musical arguments difficult to follow, perhaps the music ‘itself’ will appeal. Here, phrases uncomfortably close to counterparts in Wagner dramas – all from at least Das Rheingold onwards – are served up randomly with little to connect them, and much the same is done with or to Strauss. Some might call it a collage effect; I could not help but think Langgaard would have been unlikely to survive a Turnitin inspection. There are, to be fair, more promising, even modernistic passages, especially when he writes purely orchestrally. (It is, by the way, difficult to discern much sympathy for the human voice.) Hints – again, arguably more than that – of Hindemith seem more amenable to something approaching sustained musical development, but ultimately they do not lead anywhere. Maybe that is the point, although I fear I may be clutching at straws. 

What I can say is that the Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper, conducted by Hermann Bäumer, played with evident conviction and even pleasure, making as strong a case for the score as is likely to be heard. The chorus, as ever well trained by Jeremy Bines, did likewise, as did the cast. Since neither work nor production gave much in the way of clues as to who anyone was, I shall limit myself to singling out some wonderful singing from Flurina Stucki as ‘The Great Whore’. The other soloists were excellent too, though, as were the dancers, even if some of the choreography – especially that without music, at the beginning – proved more puzzling than revealing. In that respect, one might say it suited the work. 

Ersan Mondtag’s production certainly looked good. (The set designs were his too, and he had at least a hand in the costume design.) To me it looked as if Achim Freyer were directing a sequel to La bohème. I am not sure a modern-ish street inhabited by clowns was actually intended as a wry commentary on Langgaard’s claptrap, but to an extent it could be taken as such. What was intended by a car suddenly falling from the sky or the similar aerial suspension of a large figure of a male God with vulva I have no idea, but they gave us something to look at, as did  detailed direction of members of cast and chorus. I can only applaud the Deutsche Oper’s courage in granting us a rare opportunity to assess this work for ourselves with such excellent performers. That said, I cannot imagine wishing to do so again.

Die Zauberflöte, Deutsche Oper, 11 January 2024

Sarastro – Tobias Kehrer
Tamino – Kieran Carrel
Speaker – Padraic Rowan
First Priest – Kyle Miller
Second Priest – Jörg Schörner
Queen of the Night – Hye-Young Moon
Pamina – Elena Tsallagova
First Lady – Flurina Stucki
Second Lady – Arianna Manganello
Third Lady – Davia Bouley
Papagena – Meechot Marrero
Papageno – Philipp Jekal
Monostatos – Burkhard Ulrich
First Armoured Man – Patrick Cook
Second Armoured Man – Youngkwang Oh
Three Boys – Soloists from the Children’s Choir of the Deutsche Oper

Director – Günter Krämer
Revival director – Gerlinde Pelkowski
Designs – Andreas Reinhardt

Chorus of the Deutsche Oper Berlin (chorus director: Thomas Richter) 

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Giulio Cilona (conductor)

DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Deutsche Oper Berlin, copyright: Bettina Stöß
Images from 2008, with different cast

Premiered on 24 September 1991, six days short of 200 years from the work’s first performance, Günther Krämer’s Magic Flute has done sterling service for the Deutsche Oper. The company would have had more than a year’s worth, if it performed this single work daily without a break, the performance total having reached 379. The work is no stranger to longstanding productions: Achim Freyer’s truly magical staging (I saw it twice in Salzburg) did the rounds for a good few years; David McVicar’s Covent Garden production has been seen regularly, though not so regularly as that, for more than two decades now. Closer to home, August Everding’s tedious offering for the Berlin Staatsoper has been around since 1994 and clocked up 300 in 2021, though it has now been joined in repertoire by a more innovative staging from Yuval Sharon. I have no idea what holds the record; it would not surprise me if there had been something at some point in Vienna, or indeed at another German theatre, small or large, in repertoire for a few more decades, though that is pure speculation. Krämer must surely, though, be a contender in a work whose particular German circumstances seem to conspire towards endless revival: popular here, there, and everywhere ever since 1791; written in the vernacular; rightly or wrongly (to my mind, at least questionably), considered by many to be suitable for children; thereby presenting something approaching box-office certainty for something that is not La bohème, Carmen, or La traviata.

It was the first time I had seen it, so I cannot claim any of the attachment some veterans will doubtless feel for it. It did its job well enough, I thought, though by now it will surely lie at some remove from either the director’s ‘intention’ or what it might have been today. It does not look tired in the way some productions, desperately needing to put out of their (and our) misery do; Andreas Reinhardt’s designs, clear, colourful, and not without mystery, continue to fulfil their brief. It is difficult at this remove to discern a particular standpoint, let alone concept; perhaps there never was one, though I suspect there may have been elements of that once. In particular, I suspect a degree of social criticism would once have come across stronger, not least with respect to the treatment of Pamina and thus women more broadly. Her uncertainty and something approaching momentary horror in the closing scene, realising an apparent lack of agency and, just perhaps, resolving to restore that in the future were intriguing. Concerning racial politics, I wonder whether the portrayal of Monastatos and other slaves in what appeared to be native American garb once made a point that has now been lost (at least for me). It was deeply uncomfortable to view in 2024, and not in an obviously productive way. I wonder whether something might yet be done about that by a future revival director, should there be one, whilst bearing in mind the lack of rehearsal such revivals are likely to be allocated.

 

Ultimately more detrimental to the dramatic flow were the cuts in dialogue. There is no need to be a purist about that: very few productions use Schikaneder complete, and not only for reasons of sex and gender. But the precise nature of the cuts sometimes made motivation and even straightforward action unclear. Many will have known what to fill in, but many in such an audience also will not. No one need be bored in a largely German-speaking audience by a little more pertinent spoken content. 

The other major problem was Giulio Cilona’s conducting. We all, of course, have different conceptions of the work and how it should ‘go’. Not everyone responds as I do to Klemperer, Böhm, or Furtwängler; nor do I expect everyone to do so. In any case, the question is largely irrelevant since none of them is with us, and no one conducts Mozart quite like any of them any more. (Having heard Colin Davis several times in this and other Mozart operas, I have surely had my share of good fortune for a while, perhaps even for a lifetime.) Disconnection between pit and stage can happen to anyone, though preferably less frequently than here, even on what was probably minimal rehearsal. But the lack of sense that anything might matter, taking too much at an all-purpose allegro and indifferent mezzo piano, ‘Ach, ich fühl’s’ a merciful exception, led to a desultory orchestral performance all round. I initially assumed the string section must have been very small. However, though I could not see the rest of the section, I could see four double basses, so it could not have been that small. The angel of death appeared to be on strike for what should be the terrifying scene with the Two Armoured Men. So did Bach—and even Mozart. An old production needs all the more to be brought to life by comprehending, sympathetic conducting. Such was not the case here.

There was, fortunately, nothing to disappoint in the vocal performances—again bearing in mind the realities of an ultimate repertoire piece in a repertoire house. Kieran Carrel’s Tamino was well sung, personable, very much in recognisable character. Likewise our Papageno, Philipp Jekal’s performance bringing together with skill lightly worn a number of different theatrical and emotional worlds. Tobias Kehrer’s Sarastro made the most of his low notes in particular, alert to deeper meaning without sacrificing essential or at least apparent ‘simplicity’. Hye-Young Moon’s Queen of the Night implored and sought vengeance with impressive accuracy and sparkle. Burkhard Ulrich’s Monastatos was properly sung, no mere caricature: particularly important given the character’s problematical portrayal. Performances from the Three Ladies and Three Boys all deserve favourable mention. For me, though, the stand-out vocal performance was Elena Tsallagova's as Pamina: clean of line, happy of musical and dramatic blend, and with true emotional depth that saw no need to draw attention to itself. Though I cannot help but feel it might be time to draw the final curtain on Krämer’s production, a few more performances such as Tsallagova’s might help delay the inevitable.

Jenůfa, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 7 January 2024

Grandmother Buryja – Hanna Schwarz
Kostelnička Buryja – Rosie Aldridge
Jenůfa – Vida Miknevičiūtė
Laca Klemeń – Stephan Rügamer
Števa Buryja – Pavol Breslik
Foreman – Grigory Shkarupa
Jano – Victoria Randem
Barena – Adriane Queiroz
Mayor – David Oštrek
Mayor’s Wife – Natalia Sckrycka
Karolka – Maria Kokareva
Herdswoman – Ekaterina Chayka-Rubinstein
Auntie – Rebecka Wallroth
Voices – Olga Vilenskaia, Ben Bloomfield

Director – Damiano Michieletto
Revival director – Marcin Łakomicki
Set designs – Paolo Fantin
Costumes – Carlo Teti
Lighting – Alessandro Carletti

Choreography – Thomas Wilhelm  

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Dani Juris)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Axel Kober (conductor)

Images: Bernd Uhlig (from 2021 premiere, with different cast)

Damiano Michieletto’s 2021 production of Jenůfa, now receiving its first revival, offers a relatively straightforward retelling of the story without prettifying or sentimentalising. Paolo Fantin’s set designs are stark: semi-transparent, enabling one to see, as in a small rural community, most of what is going on, whilst still maintaining some degree of secrecy. This is a world of violence and poverty, and so it feels, whilst avoiding undue specificity: the level of abstraction is such that the message need not be restricted to any one milieu. That enables a degree of symbolism, perhaps not entirely unlike Olivier Tambosi’s 2001 Covent Garden production (my first, with Bernard Haitink and Karita Mattila no less).

Ice/water is central to Michieletto’s conception. There is something icy to the walls, but more fundamentally, not unlike Tambosi’s giant boulder, although the other way up, an iceberg descends from the ceiling or sky. It hems in the action to varying extents, according (I assume) to the emotional and broader dramatic temperature. Števa hacks a block of ice to pieces, with violence shocking both in itself and in its childishness, when he has been rejected for conscription. Jenůfa’s child is buried and preserved in the ice too, of course, that discovery provoking the final reckoning and thus enabling the advent of some limited hope and here, literally, sunlight for Jenůfa and Laca. And its melting provides a downpour to punish, symbolically at least, the Kostelnička. The community, arguably the true villain here – Števa is too weak to deserve such billing – is represented by a few actors, whose shifting shape and role say most of what needs to be said. We can fill in the gaps, bring something to the table ourselves, or simply watch things ‘straight’. Whether the chorus’s placing, largely offstage, was at least in part a response to pandemic restrictions, I do not know, but it works, perhaps paradoxically, to enhance the onstage claustrophobia.

 

Choral singing was good, although coordination with stage and pit sometimes went awry. Indeed, conductor Axel Kober’s coordination of his different forces often left something to be desired, the opening seriously awry, both in that respect and concerning balance of orchestral lines. By and large, Kober gave a good enough impression of the score without penetrating deeper. The Staatskapelle Berlin responded in kind, often more than that. But where the musical action should erupt, forcing itself into our consciousness as a literal matter of life or death, Kober seemed largely content to offer an accompaniment to scenic action: involving enough, but an accompaniment nonetheless. There was little sense, at least from the orchestral direction, of the composer’s speech rhythms determining line and form (surely a crucial argument for preferring Janáček in the original Czech). 

The cast did a better job in that respect and others. Vida Miknevičiūtė seems very much to be a soprano of the moment, unable to put a foot (or note) wrong. Her assumption of the title role proved no exception: no mere victim, but a somewhat headstrong young woman, who made choices of her own as well as suffering those of others. Here was to be heard a definite command of the composer’s writing and its dramatic implications, as well as stage presence and collegiality. The same could be said of her colleagues, Rosie Aldridge a compassionate yet broken Kostelnička, Hanna Schwarz still an estimable force as Grandmother Buryja. Pavol Breslik skilfully trod a tightrope as Števa, keenly alert to the character’s contemptible weakness, whilst maintaining allure and vocal security. Stephan Rügamer’s Laca grew in stature as Števa receded from our – and Jenůfa’s – consciousness. Sterling work was done in the smaller roles, Maria Kokareva’s Karolka, Natalia Sckrycka’s Mayor’s Wife, and Victoria Randem’s Jano shining examples for me. There was fine ensemble work here, in which it was rightly difficult to distinguish between singing and acting.

Koncz/Preussens Hofmusik - Naudot, L. and F. Couperin, Boismortier, and Bernier, 7 January 2024

Apollosaal, Staatsoper Unter den Linden

Jacques-Christophe Naudot: Flute Concerto in G major, op.17 no.5
Louis Couperin: Pavanne in F-sharp minor
François Couperin: Concert Royal no.4 in E minor
Joseph Bodin de Boismortier: Suite no.4 in A major
Nicolas Bernier: Cantata: Le Caffé

Regina Koncz (soprano)

Thomas Meyer (flute)

Laura Volkwein, Jueyoung Yang (violins)

Otto Tolonen (viola da gamba)

Matthias Wilke (harpsichord/director)

  

Autumn’s Barocktage brought Charpentier’s Médée to the Staatsoper Unter den Linden, conducted by Simon Rattle and directed by Peter Sellars. I was alas in the end unable to go, but as a consolation prize heard this intelligently programmed concert of French Baroque music from soprano Regina Koncz and members of the Staatskapelle Berlin in their Preussens Hofmusik incarnation, directed from the harpsichord by Staatskapelle violist Matthias Wilke. 

Jacques-Christophe Naudot was represented by a flute concerto in G major, a fine introduction to the concert and performance as a whole both in instrumentation and in uniting elements of French and Italian styles. It also showed that, whilst Naudot was unquestionably a ‘flute composer’, he was far from only that. Outer movements, played as skilfully and comprehendingly by the one-to-a-part orchestra – the sole occasion on which we heard both violinists – as by flautist Thomas Meyer led us down a broadly Italianate path, albeit with strong elements of French ‘language’ in melody and harmony. Flute and violin duets delighted as if this were chamber music—which, at least on this occasion, indeed it was. A richly expressive central Adagio revealed Naudot still more to be possessed of an individual voice, with roots in Lully yet not to be reduced to any one particular influence.   

Louis Couperin and Naudot’s friend Joseph Bodin de Boismortier, another ‘flute composer’ though more than that, were both to be heard in works for solo harpsichord, played by Wilke. The grave beauty of the former’s F-sharp minor Pavanne was brought sympathetically to life in all its often surprising harmonic colour. The latter’s A major Suite offered four character pieces, ‘La Veloutée’, ‘L’Indéterminée’, ‘La Frénétique’, and ‘La Brunette’, whose vivid titles might have led the more Romantically inclined to expect greater contrast than was forthcoming. Wilke certainly attended to their particularities, but also lightly imparted a degree of unity to them, again straddling that line of ‘national style’. 

In between came Couperin le Grand: the fourth and final of his first set of Concert royaux, its series of dances broadly alternating the ‘French’ and the ‘Italian’, explicitly so in the third and fourth ‘Courante française’ for spirited harpsichord solo and ‘Courante à l’italienne’ (violin, harpsichord, and gamba, but no flute). The two ‘goûts’ would be reunited in his second set, the Nouveaux concerts, ou les goûts réunis, but here there was a spirit of light, civilised contrast, reminding us what a joy it was to hear eighteenth-century French music played in such enlightened fashion on a mixture of modern and ‘period’ instruments, equally well paced and shaped, without vibrato-Verbot, yet likewise without trace of crashing anachronism. The courtly phrasing of the opening ‘Prélude’, the grace of the ‘Sarabande’, and the infections invitation to the dance of the closing ‘Forlane’, intriguing episode for gamba and harpsichord included: these and more contributed to a suite greater, yet certainly not heavier, than the sum of its parts. 

Nicolas Bernier ‘reunited’ or, perhaps better, united the French and Italian tastes in ‘the other’ coffee cantata, Le Caffé by not dissimilar alternation or, as Jean-Paul C. Montagnier puts it in his New Grove article on the composer, ‘equilibrium’, ‘vigorous recitatives and da capo airs … follow each other freely, while the expressive melody, with few wide intervals or long melismas, is rooted more in the French tradition’. Here the Gallic grace of the instrumental ‘Prélude’ betrayed just a hint of a shadow, but by and large, the mood was (rightly) bright and clear, as was Regina Koncz’s brilliant, idiomatic, and yes, expressive singing. Her invocation of ‘Caffé’ in the second of her airs seemed, by one of those tricks of history that are mere coincidence, to pre-empt Bernier’s more celebrated Thuringian contemporary. And the shameless thrill of the third air’s melismata, all the more startling for their trespass against accustomed style, was as stylishly despatched and unfussily shaded as anything in this lovely concert. It was a fitting thought to repeat it as an encore.

Der Rosenkavalier, Staatsoper Unter den Linden, 2 January 2024

Die Feldmarschallin, Fürstin Werdenberg – Julia Kleiter
Der Baron Ochs auf Lerchenau – Günther Groissböck
Octavian – Marina Prudenskaya
Herr von Faninal – Roman Trekel
Sophie – Golda Schultz
Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin – Anna Samuil
Valzacchi – Karl-Michael Ebner
Annina – Katharina Kammerloher
Police Officer – Friedrich Hamel
The Marschallin’s Major-domo – Florian Hoffmann
Faninal’s Major-domo – Johan Krogius
House Servant – Jens-Eric Schulze
Notary – Dionyios Avgerinos
Landlord – Johan Krogius
Singer – Andrés Moreno Garcia
Milliner – Regina Koncz
Vendor of Pets – Michael Kim
Leopold – Oliver Chwat
Lackeys, Waiters – Sooongoo Lee, Felipe Martin, Insoo Hwoang, Thomas Vogel
Three noble orphans – Olga Vilenskaia, Anna Woldt, Verena Albertz
Lerchenauschen – Peter Krumow, Stefan Livland, Mike Keller, Thomas Vogel, Ben Bloomfeld, Andreas Neher
Paper artist – Tomas Höfer
Mohammed – Joseph Umoh

Director – André Heller
Assistant director – Wolfgang Schilly
Set designs – Xenia Hausner, Nanna Neudeck
Costumes – Arthur Arbesser, Onka Allmayer-Beck
Lighting – Olaf Freese
Video – Günter Jäckle, Philip Hillers

Children’s Choir of the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (chorus director: Vinzenz Weissenburger)

Staatsopernchor Berlin (chorus director: Gerhard Polifka)

Staatskapelle Berlin

Joana Mallwitz (conductor)

Image: Stefan Liewehr (from 2020 premiere, with different cast)

First seen in 2020, André Heller’s production of Der Rosenkavalier, ‘in collaboration with’ Wolfgang Schilly, is something of an enigma. Not only does there appear to be no overriding concept, nor even sense of what the work might be about; there also seems to be little, if anything, in the way of direction of the characters. There are striking set designs from Xenia Hausner and similarly striking costumes from Arthur Arbesser, although the latter dart about confusingly when it comes to chronology; insofar as one can discern any idea, it comes from the former—and that really seems to be it. On entering the theatre, we are confronted in lieu of a curtain with a playbill for a 1917 benefit performance for war widows and orphans in Vienna. I assume that has some relevance to what unfolds, though war and its consequences are nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the Marschallin is supposed to stand in some relationship to Princess Marie Thurn und Taxis-Hohenlohe, under whose auspices the performance is listed as taking place. The costumes, to this untutored eye, suggest something later, perhaps progressively so, the setting European japonisme. (My heart went out to Michael Kim as Pet Vendor: ‘orientalism’ does not begin…) In the second act, Klimt’s Beethoven frieze and ostentatious vulgarity do a reasonable job in evoking something more up-to-date for Faninal’s palace, although dressing Faninal entirely in gold overeggs the pudding to the point of exploding it. Quite why the third act is set in a giant palm house, I have no idea, but Heller apparently has ‘never understood’ why Hofmannsthal set it where he did. Perhaps he might have tried harder, but no matter. 

There are occasional aperçus and likewise causes for bemusement. As an instance of the former, a full-grown Mohammed’s lingering over the Marschallin’s handkerchief at the close comes as a nice (or even nasty) surprise; he clearly loves her as much as the rest of us. Concerning the latter, I have no idea why a team of opera house crew walk on, in T-shirts saying ‘Staatsoper Unter den Linden’, to mob the Italian singer; such metatheatrical (?) presentism is not evident elsewhere. None of this does any particular harm; by the same token, none of it substitutes for an actual production, its thinking through or its accomplishment, although it might well have offered an attractive if slightly arbitrary mise-en-scene. If I remain some way off declaring ‘Come back Otto Schenk, all is forgiven,’ I could certainly forgive on this occasion someone for saying so. At any rate, it was unclear why it should have been thought necessary to replace Nicolas Brieger’s staging with this lavish Berlin successor. 

Joana Mallwitz unquestionably brought more in the way of ideas, as well as greater familiarity with the work—and with opera more broadly. (One might have thought such qualities sine quibus non, yet in this brave new world in which anyone other than an opera director can be an opera director, seemingly not.) The Preludes to the first act and the opening of the second were attacked with great energy, vividly pictorial or at least amenable to vivid pictorialisation. The Introduction and much of the Pantomime to the third were spellbindingly Mendelssohnian in lightness and balance of textures; I have never heard them quite like that, but should be keen to do so again. Tempi tended to broaden as the acts proceeded, and there were times when I felt the lack of something a little more classical (or indeed closer to Strauss’s own conducting), but there are far worse things than expansiveness in Der Rosenkavalier. At any rate, the Staatskapelle Berlin seemed to respond with enthusiasm to her approach and, if I have heard a greater range of kaleidoscopic colour drawn from the orchestra here, there remained much to admire. 

So too was there in the singing. It seems only yesterday I was making the acquaintance of Julia Kleiter’s artistry as Pamina; now she is the Marschallin, and a distinguished one at that. Her performance showed equal sensitivity to verbal meaning and deeper emotional currents, neither mistaking opera for Lieder nor painting with too broad a brush. Nor did she turn Strauss into Wagner, drawing on considerable Mozartian experience as well as natural, fitting stage presence. Plight, grace, and reassertion of control were moving indeed. Marina Prudenskaya’s Octavian was fruitier of tone than one often hears, though none the worse for that. She captured his ultimate cluelessness to a tee, and likewise offered due bearing for the role. The Faninals were hardly favoured by the production, but Golda Schultz’s unusually headstrong Sophie proved unusually likeable. Roman Trekel made much of his words in particular as her father. Günther Groissböck was audibly ailing, yet nonetheless offered a vigorous and far from off-the-peg performance as Ochs. His command of Bavarian came in handy for baronial rusticity. There were no weak links in this cast; for me, Katharina Kammerloher’s lively Annina, Anna Samuil’s stern yet caring Jungfer Marianne Leitmetzerin, and Johan Krogius’s double turn as intelligent Major-domo to Herr von Faninal and spirited (and far from unintelligent) third-act Landlord stood out. No one hearing these performances could reasonably have been disappointed; if only there had been more of a production with which to engage.