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.

Tally of musical performances in 2023 (opera and concert)

Since I am busy at work on my new book project, a two-volume study of the complete operas of Mozart in their eighteenth-century political and intellectual context, it seems fitting to have heard more music by Mozart than by any other composer this year. (For 'rules' on counting, please see my previous post.)  Beyond my top four, Mozart, Wagner, Beethoven, and Strauss, I heard a good range of music from Alkan to Zimmermann and beyond.

19 Mozart

12 Wagner

8 Beethoven, Strauss

7 Brahms, Schumann

6 Bach

5 Schubert, Byrd

4 Mahler, Prokofiev

3 Benjamin, Chopin, Ligeti, Liszt, Ravel

2 Berg, Bizet, Debussy, Dvořák, Handel, Haydn, Henze, Knussen, Puccini, Schoenberg

1 Alkan, Dieter Ammann, CPE Bach, Johann Christoph Bach, JCF Bach, Bartók, Beethoven, Berberian, Berio, Boismortier, Boulez, Busoni, Cage, Chausson, Cherubini, Unsuk Chin, Coleridge-Taylor, Crumb, Duparc, Elgar, Fauré, Francesco Filidei, Grisey, Saed Haddad, Hartmann, Hindemith, Holliger, Humperdinck, Ibert, Janáček, Korngold, Kurtág, Márton Illés, Jolas, Sigurd von Koch, Lachenmann, Edward Lambert, Manoury, Martinů, Messiaen, Mompou, Mussorgsky, Elizabeth Ogonek, Poulenc, Purcell, Rachmaninov, Reger, Reimann, Rossini, Saariaho, Saint-Saëns, Scarlatti, Schmidt, Schoeck, Schnittke, Schoenberg, Schulhoff, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Scriabin, Sweelinck, Tchaikovsky, Telemann, Tippett, Ustolvskaja, Varèse, Vivaldi, Wagner, Weelkes, Weill, Widmann, Wolf, Xenakis, Zimmermann

Tally of concerts heard in 2023

Mozart exchanged second operatic place for first in 2023 concerts. Perhaps no great surprises, save for Byrd's high-placed anniversary showing. (I should be very happy for it to be repeated in other years.) The world's bizarre neglect of the Second Viennese School, even Berg, shows no sign of being reversed, though surely 2024's Schoenberg anniversary will bring some temporary respite.

As usual, I have counted one appearance or twenty in a concert as one. That has its problems, but I am not sure counting every piece, even if it were practical, would be any better. Encores are not included. I have endeavoured to remember performances I attended but did not review, but it is of course possible I may have missed something.

11 Mozart

8 Beethoven

7 Brahms, Schumann

6 Bach

5 Schubert, Byrd

4 Mahler, Prokofiev, Strauss

3 Benjamin, Chopin, Ligeti, Liszt, Ravel

2 Debussy, Haydn, Knussen

1 Alkan, Dieter Ammann, CPE Bach, Johann Christoph Bach, JCF Bach, Bartók, Beethoven, Berberian, Berg, Berio, Boismortier, Boulez, Busoni, Cage, Chausson, Unsuk Chin, Coleridge-Taylor, Crumb, Duparc, Dvořák, Elgar, Fauré, Francesco Filidei, Grisey, Saed Haddad, Hartmann, Henze, Hindemith, Holliger, Ibert, Kurtág, Márton Illés, Jolas, Sigurd von Koch, Lachenmann, Manoury, Messiaen, Mompou, Elizabeth Ogonek, Poulenc, Rachmaninov, Reger, Reimann, Saint-Saëns, Scarlatti, Schmidt, Schoeck, Schnittke, Schoenberg, Schulhoff, Wolfgang von Schweinitz, Scriabin, Sweelinck, Telemann, Tippett, Ustolvskaja, Varèse, Vivaldi, Wagner, Weelkes, Weill, Widmann, Wolf, Xenakis, Zimmermann

Tally of operas seen in 2023

 

A visit to Bayreuth coupled with a Ring in Berlin made this year's operatic victor well-nigh inevitable. Mozart, though, was not so far off, with a couple of live 'firsts': Il re pastore and Ascanio in Alba. A somewhat restricted chronological range too, with no Monteverdi, nor indeed anything before Purcell. As usual, I have included concert and staged performances, and anything treated as an opera (e.g. the Komische Oper's staging of Henze's oratorio, Das Floss der Medusa).

11 Wagner

8 Mozart

4 Strauss

2 Bizet, Handel, Puccini

1 Berg, Cherubini, Dvořák, Bushra El-Turk, Henze, Humperdinck, Janáček, Korngold, Edward Lambert, Martinů, Mussorgsky, Purcell, Rossini, Saariaho, Schoenberg, Tchaikovsky

Argerich/BPO/Barenboim - Beethoven and Brahms, 20 December 2023

Philharmonie

Beethoven: Piano Concerto no.2 in B-flat major, op.19
Brahms: Symphony no.3 in F major, op.90

Martha Argerich (piano)

Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra

Daniel Barenboim (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus

Seventy-four years ago they met in Buenos Aires. They continue to play together, here in Beethoven’s Second Piano Concerto, and continue to delight audiences. For my final concert of the year, it was a treat to hear Martha Argerich and Daniel Barenboim, this time – and, I believe for the second time ever – with the Berlin Philharmonic. The warmth of applause at the beginning, let alone the close, offered testament to a special evening. 

Although I have heard Barenboim many times in Beethoven, as pianist, as conductor, and as both, I do not think I had heard him conduct the BPO in Beethoven. Even with him, it offers a different sound from the Staatskapelle Berlin, but needless to say, there was absolutely no rebarbative faddishness to it, whether in tonal quality or tempo. Instead, the opening tutti spoke in a heart-rending beauty of tone in direct line from Mozart, and owing as much in its fundamental harmonic rhythm to Klemperer as to Furtwängler (as has generally been the case in Barenboim’s Beethoven of the last decade or so). Every note mattered—and meant: as noble as the Fifth Symphony or Fidelio, though with requisite lightness of touch. Argerich responded in kind, though not without (quite rightly, as soloist) a certain wresting of initiative that yet always furthered collegial, chamber-music give-and-take. The piano part sang and scintillated, Barenboim and Argerich both bringing particular, complementary gifts to the performance. How a pivot chord from the piano told; how an orchestral sequence built harmonically; and how left-hand bass rumbling led us toward the tonic for the moment of return. The music continued to ‘grow’, not only to develop, throughout the recapitulation, Berlin strings truly digging in, preparing the way for Beethoven’s own cadenza, a missive from the Beethovenian future, lying gloriously beyond the language of the concerto ‘itself’.

 

The Adagio’s opening tutti, in contrast, complement, and development, was consoling as well as dramatic, a new frame for a new yet related painting. Argerich’s solo grew from within, its ethical subjectivity both singular and in accord with that of Barenboim’s wise narration. Together, their voice, Beethoven’s voice, had one believe – and so one should – that it was the voice of truth, its hushed tones and awe prefiguring the ‘late’ voice of the Ninth Symphony or even the Missa solemnis, piano elaboration nonetheless reminding us of the different nature of this music. Spun from finest Egyptian cotton, it was a sensuous delight as well as a musical necessity. This was the very model of a Beethoven slow movement. The finale was forthright as ever, from all concerning. After Elysian reverie, fun and goodness were to be had back on earth—and how. Like sparks of the divine, they were present in the detail as well as the broader contours, in articulation and acciaccaturas as in the tonal plan, in orchestral syncopation and in Haydnesque conversation. Civilisation matters, perhaps especially in our terrible historical moment, and the wonder of modulation is part of it, as triumphantly displayed here.

 

A surprise encore came in Schubert’s A major Rondo for piano four hands, D 951, Barenboim taking his seat next to Argerich, their page-turner none other than concertmaster Daishin Kashimoto. Here, in confidences whispered more softly than ever before, was a very different subjectivity, its fragility no less touching, an act of remembrance nonetheless in the here and now rather than an act that was ‘about’ remembrance. Episodes unfolded in their own time, and according to their own necessity. Indeed, time almost stood still, but not quite.

 

A larger orchestra assembled after the interval for Brahms’s Third Symphony, twelve first violins now fourteen, four double basses now seven, and so forth. Anyone expecting something sedate would have been immediately put to rights, the opening of the first movement not only febrile but angry, albeit quite without the trivial hysteria some, though never Barenboim, seem to think constitutes musical emotion and ‘excitement’. The second group retreated to the world of Schubert’s Rondo; here was music we over-heard, in a dialectical conception of the movement taking us between public and private. All the while, life was to be found in the inner parts, rather as if in a string quartet—or in Wagner. Sinews, honed again on Klemperer and Furtwängler, unleashed still greater anger in the development. This, for me at least, was music for and of Palestine, a musical land of beauty almost ‘occupied’, a heart of darkness terrifying in its truth. The grim determination of the recapitulation, and not only that, would not have been out of place in the composer’s Fourth Symphony. It was not without consolation, but need for that consolation had been immeasurably heightened.

Heard in a veiled dignity that enhanced riches both textual and textural, the Andante possessed a majestic intimacy suggestive somehow both of an expanded string quartet and, at times, of an imaginary ballet, Tchaikovsky closer than one might think. Once again, so much grew, motivically but also harmonically, from those glowing inner parts. Strange dissonances registered a pain both inner and inward. The third movement proved a sad serenade, whose eternally transforming song bore post-Beethovenian witness to the eternal – and eternally troubled – spirit of humanity. Did it meander? Perhaps a little, but not if that be taken to mean lack of clarity as to destination; rather, this was a musical stream, with twists and turns, yet undeniable, directed flow. The subdued opening of the finale only heightened the impact of subsequent bursting of the banks. Again, the Fourth was foreshadowed in darkness, even in tragedy, though that remained only one side of the coin. There was hard-won Beethovenian joy too, if briefly. Stubborn as well as graceful, this was a reading of thoroughgoing integrity, whether in those echt-Brahmsian half-lights, in ghostly reminiscences, or under a winter sun that just occasionally suggested spring might come. Above all, it was a struggle, a necessary one at that.

Ascanio in Alba, Oper Frankfurt, 17 December 2023

Bockenheimer Depot

Venus – Kateryna Kasper
Ascanio – Cecilia Hall
Silvia – Karolina Bengtsson
Aceste – Andrew Kim
Fauno – Anna Nekhames
Secretary – Aijan Ryskulova
Bodyguard – Stefan Biaesch
Silvia’s friends – Valentina Ziegler, Isabel Casás Rama

Nina Brazier (director)
Christoph Fischer (set design)
Henriette Hübschmann (costumes)
Jonathan Pickers (lighting)
Deborah Einspieler (dramaturgy)

Vocal Ensemble (recorded)

Frankfurt Opera and Museum Orchestra

Alden Gatt (conductor)

Images: Monika Rittershaus
Aceste (Andrew Kim), Silvia (Karolina Bengtsson), Venus (Kateryna Kasper),
Ascanio (Cecelia Hall), Fauno (Anna Nekhames)

It is not every day I get to hear a Mozart opera live for the first time. And yet, this year 2023, some time after my first year of opera-going, I have done so twice: Il re pastore at this year’s Salzburg Festival, albeit in concert performance, and now Oper Frankfurt’s new Ascanio in Alba, directed by Nina Brazier and conducted by Alden Gatt. Two to go, but another two ticked off the list—not that I ever wish to hear them only once. 

Ascanio presents its own difficulties for modern performance and reception. They lie not in Mozart’s age – though all of fifteen years old, he already had considerable operatic experience in different operatic genres – as in the nature of the commission and thus, quite properly, his and his librettist Giuseppe Parini’s response to it. The second of his three operas for Milan, Ascanio was the second of two operas commissioned for – wait for it… the 1771 marriage of Archduke Ferdinand Charles, Governor of the Duchy of Milan and a younger son of the Habsburg monarch, Maria Theresa, to Maria Beatrice, daughter of Ercole III d’Este, Duke of Modena, and his estranged wife, Maria Teresa, Duchess of Massa and Princess of Carrara in her own right. Various treaties and agreements were made concerning inheritance, which I shall not detail now, but this was, even by ancien regime standards, a complicated dynastic match, not even originally intended for Ferdinand, but rather for one of his elder brothers, (Peter) Leopold, passing down the line of succession when the latter went instead to Florence in 1765, succeeding his father, Francis Stephen, as Grand Duke of Tuscany (but not as Holy Roman Emperor, the lot of the eldest son and King of the Romans, Joseph, also appointed co-regent to Maria Theresa in the Monarchy). I could go on, and will elsewhere, but the point, now further underlined, is that this was not a marriage concluded for love; it was, like other Habsburg marriages, and as we now should say, a business arrangement. 

This festa teatrale therefore offered, its veil of allegory thin, Venus deputing her son (by the deceased Aeneas) Ascanio to rule the territory of Alba, literally civilising it by turning its pastures into a city, and informing him he would marry Silvia that day. Cupid has already had Ascanio appear in dream form to Silvia, causing her to fall in love with him. (There was a difference here too, since the actual marriage had been arranged when the participants were young children, and the pair did not know each other prior to their nuptials.) The situation, in any case, was a cause for celebration, yet offered little in the way of conventional drama. The most obvious ways in which that might have been achieved were out of the question: Venus’s (Maria Theresa’s) role as mistress of ceremonies who must unquestionably be obeyed could hardly be questioned. Nor was it possible to present some sort of intrigue in which the two ‘lovers’ might initially be thwarted, still less in which they might, however momentarily, have feelings for others. Instead, Venus instructs Ascanio – and never, it seems, does it occur to anyone to disobey her – not to reveal himself to her, leaving the poor girl to believe she is in love with another, whom she meets, until just before the marriage. Silvia will nonetheless do her duty and marry Ascanio, whom she finally discovers to be the one she loves. Cue rejoicing, as both parties have acted as they should, that is according to Venus’s instructions, and will be rewarded both in marriage and in rule.

A modern production might perhaps wish somewhat to deconstruct this and/or to historicise it. Brazier does the former, I think, in respectful, subtle fashion, though I admit to wondering whether she might have gone further. That may have been a matter of my slowness, though, and in some ways it is a relief not to report a sledgehammer attack on a serenata (as Mozart referred to it) whose slender nature might not withstand it. The contemporary setting is corporate, its blue and yellow colour-scheme suggestive either of the European Union (perhaps, in Frankfurt, specifically the euro?) or Ryan Air. I am not sure either was intended, but the insistence and thoroughness of Venus’s ‘corporate identity’ – in the Christoph Fischer’s totalising circular set design there can be no escape – imparted, regardless of intent, such thoughts to me. Otherwise, though, could not Venus/Maria Theresa/dynasticism/corporate power have been made a little more obviously monstrous? Or some other, modern slant on an arranged marriage been presented? A girlish and very pink Silvia, replete with equally girlish and pink girlfriends, was doubtless bringing money into the family/firm’s coffers, but that again had me ask whether an approach taking us back to the eighteenth century, presenting the real plot behind the plot, might have taken us further.

 

Silvia and her friends

That is not to say we should all have enjoyed a recreation of a Habsburg wedding: a prospect whose denial might have had more than merely financial grounds. But I wondered – and I cannot put it stronger – whether admirable reluctance to mess with the work’s dramaturgy had left us with an updating that neither connected quite strongly enough to the work nor presented us with something whose contemporary relevance, for want of a better word, was as apparent as it might be. Perhaps, though, that is simply in the nature of the work’s challenges, and on reflection, in representing the difficulties faced by creators it has indeed provided food for thought. Might something have been attempted in which today’s Venus aped yesterday’s Maria Theresa, whilst the rest of the world suffered accordingly? Possibly. It is easy, though, to come up with germs of concepts behind one’s laptop on the train back from Frankfurt. The craft of theatre direction is far more than that, and detailed, thoughtful Personenregie, even with what even an ardent Mozartian might concede is not always the deepest of characterisation, was very much on show.

Ascanio and Venus (centre) and Statisterie

For the situation did present Parini and Mozart with a particular opportunity for the titular hero, if we may call him that. In an ‘actual’ opera seria, we should be unlikely to find anyone facing such a problem in the central role. This was not the stuff of a primo uomo, though the musical style may well often be so, at least on the initial surface. This boy, completely under his mother’s thumb and not necessarily through any fault of his own, came vividly to life in Cecelia Hall’s performance. Initially somewhat pallid, of character if not of tone, there was true development here, and both Ascanio’s anguish and subsequent joy, in exhilarating duet with Karolina Bengtsson’s Silvia, stepped out of the confines of occasion and even genre, reminding us that Mozart already had not only experience of writing operas seria and buffa, but also a good amount of affecting sacred music. Bengtsson’s beautifully sung Silvia contrasted and complemented. Her graciousness in light of Kateryna Kasper’s demands as Venus, despatched with imperial precision, might even momentarily – that was all any child, let alone daughter-in-law might hope for – have impressed Maria Theresa. The role of Aceste, priest turned corporate fixer, was stylishly sung and acted by Andrew Kim, agile and clean of line. So too was that of the shepherd Fauno, Anna Nekhames revelling in its often absurd coloratura. All singers were making their role debuts. Choral numbers were recorded, yet had reasonable presence, and there was neither jarring nor disjuncture.

 

Fauno, Ascanio, Silvia, Aceste, with the orchestra and Alden Gatt in front

That was largely due, of course, to Alden Gatt’s coordination as conductor. Gatt’s tempi were well-chosen, and his command, from one of the two harpsichords, of the small orchestra was unquestionable. If there were a few times when I wished for greater string warmth that may have reflected the acoustic more than the performance. Passages of astonishing psychological acuity – yes, even at this age and in this work – and of sonorous delight from Frankfurt woodwind and horns were in any case numerous enough to be savoured. Everything was in place, and considerably more than that. First nights, in any case, tend to be succeeded by performances that delve deeper, though Ascanio in Alba never had that chance first time around. Continuo playing, moreover, was excellent throughout, recitatives explaining and connecting just as they should.

Just in case you were wondering: those two Mozart operas remaining for me to experience in the flesh are Lucio Silla and Il sogno di Scipione. So, if any enterprising opera companies within my reach would care to help out, I should be greatly obliged. And if a still more enterprising organisation were able to preface Ascanio with the first of the two Milanese wedding operas, Johann Adolph Hasse’s Metastasian Il Ruggiero, designed by the same team of brothers, we should at last have chance to discover how justified posterity’s verdict of definitive Mozartian victory actually was. For now, the verdict of Maria Theresa’s favourite composer, Hasse, stands: ‘This boy will render us all forgotten.’

Eugene Onegin, Komische Oper, 15 December 2023

Schillertheater

Eugene Onegin – Günter Papendell
Tatiana – Ruzan Mantashyan
Olga – Deniz Uzun
Lensky – Gerard Schneider
Mme Larina – Stefanie Schaefer
Prince Gremin – Tijl Faveyts
Filipievna – Margarita Nekrasova
M. Triquet – Christoph Späth
Zaretsky – Ferhat Baday
Captain – Jan-Frank Süße
Guillot – Alexander Kohl

Barrie Kosky (director)
Werner Sauer (revival director)
Rebecca Ringst (set designs)
Klaus Bruns (costumes)
Simon Berger (dramaturgy)
Franck Evin (lighting)

Orchestra and Chorus (chorus director: David Cavelius) of the Komische Oper

James Gaffigan (conductor)

Images: Iko Freese / drama-berlin.de

I first saw Barrie Kosky’s Eugene Onegin, premiered in 2016, in 2019, a few months before the theatres closed. Then it was at the Komische Oper’s permanent home on Behrenstraße. Now, the building having closed for several years for renovation, this latest revival may be seen across town in Charlottenburg’s Schillertheater, conducted by the company’s new music director James Gaffigan. The cast is a mix of old and new, Günter Papendell, Stefanie Schaefer, Tijl Faveyts, and Margarita Nekrasova survivors from 2019, the rest new (at least to me). 

Memory, though, is a strange thing; or rather, ‘memories’ are, since even one’s own will come into conflict with one another. Although I remembered liking what I saw, what I saw on this occasion did not always correspond to my recollections, which may indeed have been of other productions, real or imagined. Much the same might be said of what unfolds here (in many dramas, no doubt, yet it seems or seemed more than usually germane here). For there are certainly misunderstandings, missed opportunities, ‘bad timing’, and the rest in the relationships, not only Onegin and Tatiana’s, of Eugene Onegin. That of Tatiana and Prince Gremin may be an exception; yet if so, it is dependent on the failures of another. It is, in any case, hardly the central relationship; it serves as a contrast to what might have been, an antidote of reality to fantasy. Kosky’s setting the entire action in the same place, with one partial exception, brings with it some loss, not least in the inevitably lesser contrast between public and private, whose portrayal therefore becomes still more a matter for the orchestra. Yet its dramaturgical function here also brings with it considerable gain, anchoring character’s differing understandings, memories, and decisions in Rebecca Ringst’s almost pastoral, outdoor setting that yet takes in threatening woods behind. (It is not as if the libretto suddenly vanishes when all stage directions are not adhered to literally.) Although real enough – it is not abstract – it imparts something of a dream-like quality, in which not only memories but, at least as important, objects bind everything together.

 

Jam and jam-jars, for instance: when the opera opens, Mme Larina and the nurse Filipievna are making jam, readily eaten by Tatiana and Olga. When Tatiana sends her letter to Onegin, it is inside a jar sent as a gift. And so on, until the close, when it is there in what seems to be the same place: where it all (tragically?) began. There is something would-be bacchanalian to the ball scene, when it takes place outdoors. This, one feels, is as far away from civilisation as these characters, this society, dare travel. And, of course, it leads to the frozen, pointless misery of the duel scene. Onegin, moreover, does not face the decentring he sometimes can. There is plenty of and for Tatiana too, but we feel – and, I think, have suggested to us – more of his miserable wandering, his downward spiral than usual. Helplessly drunk when he arrives for the duel, he shows that it is already too late for him, let alone for Lensky. His early stiffness is probably a self-defence mechanism; at any rate, we feel its relationship to what is to come. All the while, subtle transformations in Franck Evin’s lighting aid the transformations, both gradual and sudden, in the drama itself. And when a room in Gremin’s palace appears, for the first St Petersburg scene, Onegin by now a sad, destroyed outsider, it is only to be dismantled onstage shortly after, in preparation for the ’return’ to a past which may or may not have ‘actually’ existed for the final scene.

 

Kosky’s conception remains the guiding one. The Komische Oper’s new music director, James Gaffigan, conducting his first production in the role, would appear to have been presented with certain challenges, not least among them caesuras when all stops, hearts included, all falls silent. On this, the first night of Werner Sauer’s revival, Gaffigan integrated these and other ‘givens’ to excellent effect. His reading, like Kosky’s, seemed to gain pace and depth as the evening progressed, the orchestra responding with eagerness to the vision with which it was presented. Almost chamber-like in scale to begin with, its Petersburg grandeur was undeniable, both in itself and in contrast. Choral contributions were likewise as well acted (and blocked) as sung.

 

Papendell’s Onegin follows and, to an extent, leads that trajectory too. It was a compelling portrayal in 2019 and is in 2023, his brokenness in the third act deeply moving. Ruzan Mantashyan travelled on a different, related journey as Tatiana, convincingly the shy, bookish girl at the outset, very much a woman at the close, albeit one struggling to keep herself in one piece. This she accomplished through musical and gestural means alike—as well as fine costuming (Klaus Bruns) and make-up. If I sometimes wished Gerard Schneider would adopt a less Verdian approach as Lensky, his was an undoubtedly committed performance, greatly superior to what I had heard from another singer four years ago. Deniz Uzun’s extravert Olga was a joy—and a telling contrast with her more complicated sister. Faveyts and Nekrasova at least matched memories of their excellent portrayals last time around: not a bad summary of the evening as a whole. The company may be on the move physically, but not aesthetically, whether that be in direction or quality.

Mayer/Berliner Barock Solisten/Goltz - JCF Bach, CPE Bach, JS Bach, and Johann Christoph Bach, 11 December 2023

Kammermusiksaal

Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach: Sinfonia in D minor, WFV 1/3
Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (arr. Albrecht Mayer and Matthias Spindler): Oboe Concerto in G major (after harpsichord concerto, Wq 9)
Johann Sebastian Bach: Brandenburg Concerto no.3 in G major, BWV 1048 (early version)
Johann Christoph Bach (arr. Spindler): Lamento: Ach, dass ich Wassers gnug hätte
CPE Bach: Symphony in E-flat major for strings, Wq 122/2
JS Bach: Oboe d’amore concerto in A major, BWV 1055R

Albrecht Mayer (oboe, oboe d’amore, English horn)

Berliner Barock Solisten

Gottfried von der Goltz (violin, director)

It is always time for Bach, likewise for the Bach family, but some times seem still more so than others. Advent is surely one of them, and this Advent seems all the more necessary than ever as a source of hope and light when sorely needed. Here, members of the Berlin Philharmonic, in their guise as the Berliner Barock Solisten, led by violinist Gottfried von der Goltz, were joined by their Philharmonic colleague oboist Albrecht Mayer in a programme of music by Johann Sebastian, two of his sons, and his first cousin once removed, Johann Christoph, described in Sebastian’s 1735 genealogy as ‘ein profonder Componist’. 

First, a fine curtain-raiser: a Sinfonia in D minor by Johann Christoph Friedrich Bach, JS Bach’s fifth son and only three years old when his father (we think) compiled that genealogy. This short three-movement symphony probably stood closest to CPE Bach of Bach’s other sons, though without his radicalism/mannerism (delete according to taste). It nonetheless offered invention and the occasional surprise, in more-or-less Sturm und Drang mode. In the opening ‘Allegro’, the ensemble offered cultivated, dramatic playing which, as elsewhere in the programme, rightly saw no need for mere ‘effects’. Committed, communicative musicianship, which recognised and demonstrated both the importance and joy of listening to one another, was enough. The slow movement, ‘Andante amoroso’ was announced in veiled, somewhat astringent intimacy, taking its leave from the director’s muting of his instrument. Its aria-like unfolding also suggested an organ piece; indeed, Goltz’s violin tone had something of a viola da gamba stop to it. Vigour and dynamism characterised a finale that was conceived and felt as such. 

Emanuel Bach’s G major harpsichord concerto was here arranged for oboe. If there were times when I was not entirely convinced, they were rare, and one can hardly blame an oboist for wanting to expand his instrument’s repertoire. From the outset, contrasts and mood-swings made the composer’s identity clear, though a rare instance of tentative string entry might have had me wonder. Mayer clearly relished the language and the twists and turns of this first movement, as did the ensemble, the physicality of whose playing had one feel in the best sense bows and rosin flying from their bows. This went ‘down’ all the way to the violone/double bass, Ulrich Wolff’s playing as nimble and expressive as that of anyone else. Another aria-like second movement followed, Mayer splendidly long-breathed, strings varying vibrato for expressive rather than dogmatic reasons. I found the harpsichord registration (a lute stop, I think) distracting, even irritating, but could see others in the audience responding more positively. Dramatic string interjections prior to the cadenza would surely have impressed Gluck. Likewise, in the finale, gestures told, whilst always forming part of a larger picture. Bright, incisive, string playing was matched by Mayer’s perky despatch of his part. It was a fine dialogue, enjoyable and nourishing in equal measure. 

The Third Brandenburg Concerto was given by three violins, three violas, two cellos, one double bass, and harpsichord continuo. Polished and lively, the first movement was a model of chamber-scale performance, wondrous transparency ensuring one could feel the import of every contrapuntal line and its direction. Whatever the virtues of his sons’ music – and they are great – Sebastian Bach cannot help but put them in the shade, his music once again proving so satisfying, engrossing, and yes, inspiring. All contributed equally, listening as keenly as they communicated. A rich harpsichord lead-in from Raphael Alpermann to ‘those’ two chords navigated passage to the finale. This I found a little too hard-driven, however impressive the playing, but it met with an enthusiastic reception. As a surprise ‘encore’, we were given the Sinfonia to ‘Ich hatte viel Bekümmernis’, BWV 21. One of Bach’s most extraordinary most memorable, and indeed most extraordinarily memorable cantata movements, it showed Mayer and Goltz in truly harmonious dialogue, violone pizzicato, bowed cellos, and the rest adding not only harmony and texture, but a glimpse of an entire theology. It flowed like tears, fermatas intelligible and meaningful to all, the drama leaping out as if from the aural equivalent of a stained-glass window. 

Johann Christoph Bach’s grave Lamento, arranged by Matthias Spindler, for English horn rather than contralto solo, against strings and continuo, was very much what it ‘said on the tin’, even before Mayer’s entry. Again, the keenness of unfolding dialogue between Mayer and Goltz (later, others too) was touching. Venetian antecedents were apparent, yet so was a more ‘German’ sense of melodic development. I could not help but think the loss of words here withheld from us a key to understanding; without that, the piece felt a little long, though it remained a rare and welcome opportunity to hear it. 

Emanuel Bach’s E-flat String Symphony came next, continuing and developing earlier tendencies of characterful performances which trusted the score without need for weird, ‘early musicke’ fetishisation, whether of instrument, articulation, ‘rhetoric’, or anything else. Alert, clear, directed, the first movement’s nerviness, present without exaggeration, was carried through into the ‘Andante’ minuet: a splendid surprise, all the more so for eschewing current fashions to take such music far too fast. Here, there was plenty of space for neurotic detail, and it was all the better to swing too. The players may have been relatively few in number, but they knew how to fill a hall with music (as much a matter of conception as of tone or mere volume). Catchy and disorienting, the finale proved just the thing both in its concentration and in the fascination of its plot-twists. 

And so, once more to Sebastian Bach, for the final piece, the (reasonably) well-known ‘return’ of the A major Harpsichord Concerto BWV 1055 to a putative oboe d’amore original. Whether an ‘authentic’ version or not – who cares? – the sheer ‘rightness’ of the music ‘itself’ brooked no dissent. Once again, the satisfaction of its construction, vertical and horizontal in perfect, productive balance in a way never surpassed and rarely matched, left one in no doubt as to the identity of the greatest Bach. That was partly, of course, a matter of the performance too: enlightened, surely, from whatever ideological standpoint (or none). Solo phrasing was so excellent one did not notice it. Tempi were just right, as was the sensitivity of dynamic shading, perhaps especially revealing in the ‘Larghetto’. An ebullient, even declamatory finale, as catchy as any Brandenburg Concerto, was taken quickly, without ever feeling rushed. As an encore, we heard Mayer and the ensemble in ‘Lascia ch’io pianga’ from Handel’s Rinaldo: a nice touch, not only permitting Kristin von der Goltz a wonderful cello solo leading us back from the ‘B’ section, but also lightly reminding us that Bach’s path to greatness is not the only one, tempting though it may be to think so when under his spell. Handel may look ‘less’ than Bach, but he can hold his own, and did here.

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, Deutsche Oper, 3 December 2023

Hans Sachs – Johan Reuter
Veit Pogner – Albert Pesendorfer
Kunz Vogelgesang – Gideon Poppe
Konrad Nachtigall – Marek Reichert
Sixtus Beckmesser – Philipp Jekal
Fritz Kothner – Thomas Lehman
Balthasar Zorn – Jörg Schörner
Ulrich Eißlinger – Patrick Vogel
Augustin Moser – Paul Kaufmann
Hermann Ortel – Stephen Bronk
Hans Schwarz – Tobias Kehrer
Hans Foltz – Byung Gil Kim
Walther von Stolzing – Magnus Vigilius
David – Ya-Chung Huang
Eva – Elena Tsallagova
Magdalena – Kathrin Göring
Night Watchman – Tobias Kehrer
Apprentices – Agata Kornaga, Freya Müller, Kangyoon Shine Lee, Yehui Jeong, Oleksandra Diachenko, Natalie Jurk, Jongwoo Hong, Thoma Jaron-Wutz, Leon Juurlink, Kyoungloul Kim, Sotiris Charalampous, Simon Grindberg

Jossi Wieler, Anna Viebrock, Sergio Morabito (directors)
Torsten Köpf (co-set designer)
Charlotte Pistorius (co-costume designer)
Olaf Freese (lighting)

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

Orchestra of the Deutsche Oper Berlin

Ulf Schirmer (conductor)

Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg, premiere am 12.6.2022 in der Deutschen Oper Berlin, copyright: Thomas Aurin. (Some roles were taken by different singers.)

In the depths of the coronavirus Great Silence, I mused that its horror would be over, musically speaking, when I had once again heard live three works: Gurrelieder, a large scale work by Richard Strauss, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Why not, say, Les Troyens, Mahler’s Eighth Symphony or Moses und Aron, I am unsure, though the difficulty of hearing Moses anywhere at any time presents its own challenge. It was not so much about individual as representative works, though, so as to be indicative of some sort of resumption of ‘normal’ musical life, rather than tailoring performances to pandemic circumstances. Strauss’s Alpine Symphony I heard surprisingly early on, though I am tempted to say I should still wait for a Frau ohne Schatten (all being well, next year); Gurrelieder came a little over a year ago. Alas, neither was a very good performance, though I felt relief and gratitude nevertheless. Now, at last, came Die Meistersinger, my first opportunity to see the Deutsche Oper’s current production, new last year, from Jossi Wieler, Anna Viebrock, and Sergio Morabito. 

There are good ideas, here: often, if not always, well achieved. That the most overt and complex instance of cultural nationalism in Wagner’s dramatic œuvre should, in the wake of subsequent German history, be a site of controversy, even of discomfort, should not itself be controversial. It is the least of the debts we must continually settle in the wake of Friedrich Meinecke’s ‘German catastrophe’. That this might yet be controversial in ultra-reactionary circles need not detain us. No, of course, Meister does not mean Herr, and anyone claiming Hans Sachs’s call to honour your German masters is concerned with political domination should be taken no more seriously than the Nazis on this; nonetheless, rightly or wrongly – for me, it would be some of the former, and considerably more of the latter – Die Meistersinger has, like so much else, been tarnished by the ‘catastrophe’ and we cannot simply pretend it has not happened. And so, to frame the action with the wood-panelling of a music school that more than hints at a certain conservatoire on Munich’s Arcisstraße, reminds us, for the most part beneficially, of our historical and cultural duty.

 

The Hochschule für Musik and Theater – if that be what it is – is as prestigious a school of advanced musical instruction as can be found. The building in which it now stands was built between 1933 and 1937 as the Führerbau; if you walk past today, you will see a plaque acknowledging the Munich Agreement, signed there in 1938. What you will not see inside are the Stolpersteine laid down earlier this century; the city of Munich removed them as an alleged fire hazard. The interior may also be familiar – again, I suspect far from coincidentally – to those who have watched Edgar Reitz’s Heimat 2. This is where Hermann and others received their musical instruction and gave many of their performances. Encircling 1968, the hopes it engendered and its bitter aftermath, Reitz’s films inhabit a similar world to that shown here, fashions suggesting (to me) the later 60s or early 70s. Hans Sachs is, of course, in some ways a harbinger of les évènements, though with a healthy does of Schopenhauerian reflection and interpretation that might have given them greater staying power. The hand of historical discomfort is present, then, though it is really up to us, for most of the performance, how much we feel that.

There are shades of Katharina Wagner’s Bayreuth Meistersinger. Not only is this set in a music school and hers an art school; there is some throwing around of shoes, if not so much as at Bayreuth. In this case, that seems, somewhat awkwardly, to be consequent to a realisation that the new setting does not readily permit Sachs to be a cobbler too, yet something at some point must be done with shoes. There are a few other cases where what we see sits awkwardly with what we hear, without proving a productive contradiction. It seems strange, for instance, to have Walther and Eva copulate in two corners of the hall during the chorale, only for him immediately after to apologise, seemingly without irony, ‘Fraulein! Verzeiht der Sitte Bruch!’ Sachs running off with Eva a little while afterwards, having creepily approached her from behind, is at best a bit silly, more Carry On Nuremberg than anything else. The point of gender imbalance and, frankly, violence inherent in the work is better made elsewhere, with female students/apprentices having to resist or endure Magisterial advances, often in full view. Alas, we know only too well now the wrong sort of ‘permissive’ culture that has been nurtured and protected in conservatoire education.

 

The position of the apprentices and chorus deserves further attention. Since there is no town of Nuremberg here – a different sort of Meistersinger ohne Nürnberg from that of Wieland Wagner – some other solution for the latter needs to be presented. At the close, this, reasonably enough, is the audience for what appear to be final recitals of sharply contrasting quality from Beckmesser and Walther. Earlier on, in place of the guilds, we have what seems to be David’s nightmare, in which the clock (a little too crassly) goes back to 19:33, whose horror is inadequately characterised by ghostly dancing. Likewise, the orgy (free love?) in which the apprentices indulge at the beginning of the second act, though to begin with intriguingly balletic, goes on a bit so as to become frankly tedious. No wonder they slope off in dribs and drabs. Perhaps that is the point, though I am not sure I believe that. More disturbingly, Sachs’s final peroration oscillates between one-sided condemnation and further silliness. His transformation into threatening, at least proto- (or post-)fascist mob leader receives little or no adequate preparation, unless that is why the ceiling lights having been moving around for the entire scene. (It suggests sea-sickness, but I do not think we have moved to the Titanic.) A recurrence of still greater ill-matched dancing may suggest the crowd having fallen under his sway, a warning, but it seems more suggestive of an inability to conclude. This, for me, would benefit from rethinking, as would some loose ends elsewhere.

 

For the nationalist underpinning and final turn are only one aspect of a multivalent work, whose humanity – yes, one can hear it, and should be unashamed of saying so – ultimately exceeds however one wishes to characterise the above. The idea that a father should seek to award his daughter as a prize in a song contest, even if she may refuse, is of course monstrous, even when we allow for historical difference. But the point, ultimately, is that he does not, and that is Wagner’s doing. We can dispute many issues of gender here; with which nineteenth-century artwork can we not? Yet the pain Sachs and, to an extent, Eva must suffer, and the joy of requited love between Eva and Walther are real and of dramatic consequence. Both, whatever my misgivings concerning surrounding details, are present here. I am not sure the unmistakable sexual element of the former relationship is especially helpful, since its dramatic import is blurred by warnings of abuse elsewhere, but the chemistry between Magnus Vigilius’s Walther and Elena Tsallagova’s Eva is stronger, more all-enveloping, and in its way victorious. That the two elope and do not take part in the concluding minutes, whatever it might mean, seems to me important. Beckmesser does not return either: a relief, for it has surely become too much of a cliché and would have been out of place here. 

Vigilius and Tsallagova both gave strong performances throughout. The former, new to me, is shaping up to be a fine Heldentenor indeed. Golden yet far from unvarying of tone, he also displayed verbal sensitivity and stage presence in equal measure. Tsallagova, whom I cannot recall hearing in Wagner before, proved similarly spirited and adaptable. If there were, understandably, times when Johan Reuter tired a little as Sachs, he soon recovered, and offered a properly complex reading of the character, both for work and production. Philipp Jekal trod the difficult lines of Beckmesserian performance, neither too absurd, nor too dignified, with aplomb: another reading with acute attention to the alchemy of words, music, and gesture. Albert Pesendorfer rarely, if ever, disappoints, and certainly did not here in a big-hearted (bartering the bride notwithstanding) Pogner of great presence. Ya-Chung Huang’s David made much of the uncomfortable bullying and bashfulness his character suffered in this reading, offering fine musical virtues too. Kathrin Göring’s Magdalena was well sung and characterised, as were all of the smaller roles, this group of Masters no mere collective but rather replete with individual voices and temperaments.

After an underwhelming, oddly balanced Overture, thin and dragging, the orchestra under Ulf Schirmer soon got into its swing, all the more impressive in the second and third acts. Without wishing to make any obvious points, Schirmer directed the players (and, more generally, the singers on stage) with inobtrusive understanding and wisdom. If there were inevitably, in a performance of this length, occasional cases of stage and pit falling apart – one unfortunately so in the Quintet – they were soon remedied. Far more noteworthy were a lack of awkward corners and an abundance of musical continuity, very much in the spirit of the work. The chorus was excellent throughout.

A qualified welcome, then, to the first revival of this Meistersinger. Its predecessor was, I think, the last of Götz Friedrich’s Wagner productions to be replaced here in Charlottenburg. I saw it in 2010 and recognise both loss and gain in its replacement. As the work reminds us, though, nothing is for ever and certainly not in art. There was enough here, not least in fine sung performances, to remind me of my love for Die Meistersinger – I shall admit to having shed the odd tear, in the Quintet and in both the Trial Song and Prize Song – and quite how much I have missed it. Work, production, and performances invited us to reflect that we never simply return; nor can or should we ever shed our past. The myth of a Year Zero is as unwelcome as it is chimerical.