December 2010 – Likely Impossibilities

Best of 2010

December 27, 2010 4 Comments

It was a very good year for me and Opera. Here’s the best of it.

Putting this together was fun but confusing. I spent the first half of the year in New York and the second in Europe with a stop in California in between, so I had a fabulous variety of performances to choose from. Compared to prior years, it was an embarrassment of riches. This is the kind of problem one wants to have. But this list doesn’t correlate with my reviews very closely. I write a positive review of any performance that I think is good, but the ones I have the most affection for are usually those of works that I personally enjoy (Cardillac was an excellent performance, but it is not on this list). And sometimes the review I write a day or two after seeing something is a poor indicator of how much it will linger with me in following weeks and months. This is what I remembered.

Honorable Mention: Semele (Theater an der Wien), Tosca (Metropolitan Opera, April), Les Troyens (Deutsche Oper Berlin).

10. Carmen, Met (d. Richard Eyre, c. Alain Altinoglu, April) Two really great principals made this memorable without help from Richard Eyre’s mediocre production.
9. The Nose, Met (d. William Kentridge, c. Valery Gergiev) A perfect marriage of Shostakovich’s wacky collage score with William Kentridge’s artwork.
8. Lulu, Met (d. John Dexter, c. Fabio Luisi) A finely balanced performance of one of the greatest of 20th-century operas.
7. The Fairy Queen, Glyndebourne Festival/Brooklyn Academy of Music (d. Jonathan Kent, c. William Christie) Pure fantasy with excellent orchestral playing and a hilariously fanciful staging. Now available on DVD.
6. Adriana Lecouvreur, ROH Covent Garden (d. David McVicar, c. Mark Elder) An extravagant and lushly sung star vehicle that never got buried in its own upholstery.
4./5. (tie) Tannhäuser, Wiener Staatsoper (d. Claus Guth, c. Franz Welser-Möst) and Tristan und Isolde, Opernhaus Zürich (d. Claus Guth, c. Bernard Haitink) A brilliant Guth double-header considering Wagner through the lens of 19th-century society, with excellent musical performances on both counts.
3. Aida, Staatstheater Basel (d. Calixto Bieito, c. Maurizio Barbacini) Brutal and sometimes gruesome, but a revelatory, amazingly relevant interpretation that turned the tables on this problematic work.
2. Der Ring des Nibelungen, Los Angeles Opera. (d. Achim Freyer, c. James Conlon) A rigorously conceived, visionary production with a highly personal style and generally strong musical values.
1. Rusalka, Bayerische Staatsoper (d. Martin Kusej, c. Tomas Hanus) An immensely moving production with incredibly committed performances, a remarkably complete re-imagining of a distant fairy tale into something horrifyingly contemporary and immediate, and yet still faithful to the sad longing of Dvorák’s music.

And…
Special Award for Ladybusiness: Aida (Basel) and Rusalka (Bayerische Staatsoper) for compelling, three-dimensional conceptions of female characters who are usually denied inner lives.
Special Award for Awesome: Their productions might not have been all that great, but Petra Lang (Les Troyens, Berlin), Anja Harteros (Alcina, Wiener Staatsoper), and Nina Stemme (Ariadne auf Naxos, Met) were.
Special Award for Prolific Overachievement: Jonas Kaufmann. “Prolific” is due to my repeated efforts to track him down, but he’s seemingly fantastic in everything, so it was worth the effort.
Special Award for Tech: Rusalka (Bayerische Staatsoper). A complicated production perfectly executed, large quantities of water, collapsing walls, and (fake) dead animals included.
Special Award for WTF? (Short Form): The last 20 minutes of Harry Kupfer’s Ariadne auf Naxos (Theater an der Wien). Zerbinetta and Bacchus… Harlekin and Ariadne… whaaaaa?
Special Award for WTF? (Long Form): Don Giovanni (Wiener Staatsoper) and Armida (Met) for showing that more-or-less traditional productions can be every bit as incoherent as more radical efforts.
Special Award for Overrated: Le grand macabre (New York Philharmonic) You’re very shiny, but you’re not as clever or as seditious as you think you are. (Also Special Award for My Least Popular Opinion.)

For the record…
Most Popular Blog Posts as measured by Google Analytics, most popular first: Carmen at the Met (April), Adriana Lecouvreur at Covent Garden, Standing Room at the Staatsoper, Alcina at the Staatsoper, Aida in Basel, Tosca at the Met (April), Armida at the Met, Rigoletto at the Staatsoper, Semele at the Theater an der Wien, Liederabend of Popular Tenor.
Blogging Lesson Learned: For the accumulation of comments, challenge the supremacy of an institution such as The New York Times, the Wiener Philharmoniker, or Juan Diego Flórez (granted, in that last one we mostly ended up talking about various other tenors hanging off lampposts).
Other Blogging Lesson Learned: However, for the accumulation of sheer numbers of visitors, see “Special Award for Prolific Overachievement” and entries 1, 2, 6, and 10 on the most popular list.

I’ve enjoyed perpetuating this blog’s second life (third, to tell the truth), and hope you have enjoyed reading. In other news, New Year’s is coming up, so I’ve got some Sekt to drink, a Fledermaus to see, and a Germany-bound train to catch for the other half of my Schenk project. Here’s to a great (and equally transatlantically split) 2011!

Also, you want to follow me on Twitter, don’t you?

Edited for broken links because Blogger hates me.

Review

Der Rosenkavalier: Wie du warst, wie du bist

December 27, 2010 6 Comments

While Otto Schenk’s Wiener Staatsoper Der Rosenkavalier have been spiffed up and the staging is showing alarming signs of rehearsal, a great Rosenkavalier still requires a great cast. While Adrianne Pieczonka’s Marschallin is very fine, neither she nor her less distinguished costars quite lit up the stage. With the exception of the excellent orchestra, this wouldn’t have rated above a solidly routine Rosenkavalier in most houses. In Vienna, a city that takes its Rosenkavalier almost as seriously as its Mozart, it ranks as a disappointment.

Review

L’elisir d’amore: Your love is my drug

December 22, 2010 10 Comments

Sometimes the Wiener Staatsoper has a Noises Off! quality to it. I’m not talking about onstage mishaps, though those happen also, or middlebrow artistic attitudes, though those are far too common as well. No, I mean cast changes! When ensemble member Benjamin Bruns fell ill and couldn’t sing Nemorino last night, Ramón Vargas, in town for Un ballo in maschera, took it on. I’ve always thought Vargas a likeable guy and these one-off performances can be great fun, so I spent my ~~beer~~ Beerenpunsch money on a gallery standing room spot.

Bonus: it helps me organize my study of the art of Otto Schenk. Because here we have ur-Schenk. It’s CUTE!

Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore. Wiener Staatsoper, 12/21/2010. Production by Otto Schenk, conducted by Guilermo García Calvo with Julia Novikova (Adina), Ramón Vargas (Nemorino), Tae Joong Yang (Belcore), Alfred Sramek (Dulcamara), Elisabeta Marin (Giannetta)

I’ve never found never found Ramón Vargas’s forrays into bigger rep very convincing; he lacks a certain vocal heroism and stage authority (his earlier, more lyric efforts are excellent). But those would be liabilities when you’re Nemorino, and last night he turned in a free-wheeling performance of joyous singing and wonderfully undignified acting. It wasn’t very polished in an acting sense, but come on, it’s Nemorino, the primary task is to be endearing and dumb. And Vargas has that down, much more than Flórez in October. Vocally he sounded better than I’ve heard him in ages, with sweet tone and unbroken legato, though he sings pretty much everything forte and the one time he tried a piano (cadenza of the Lagrima), he immediately went flat. But such are the costs of the spinto years.

Yes, that’s La Netrebka. Only photo I could find.

Julia Novikova was a more vivacious and capricious Adina than Sylvia Schwartz in October. She has a beautiful upper range and easy coloratura, and showed sensitive phrasing in “Prendi.” But in a lyric role her voice is perilously small for the Staatsoper, and her sound got lost in ensembles. Tae Joong Yang’s Belcore has grown in comedy since October and is now quite funny, but he struggled with intonation in the aria and elsewhere sounded blustery. Vienna favorite Alfred Sramek sleep-walked through Dulcamara’s aria and somewhat compensated with tired schtick elsewhere.

I didn’t notice anything distinctive coming out of the pit but Guillermo García Calvo kept things together a lot better than Yves Abel did in October.

Otto Schenk’s production makes a better visual impression from the gallery than it did from the Parterre Stehplatz, because you can appreciate the depth of the stage and don’t see the dopey and wrinkly backdrop that clearly. But it still has the colors and details of a picture postcard and none of the texture that brings something to vivid life, or the ideas that would focus the story in any particular direction beyond a children’s book. People really like skipping around in circles in this production. It’s totally kitsch, and while L’elisir d’amore isn’t exactly an opera of extremes, if can be more touching and human and less old-fashioned cute if you give it a push.

Of course it probably looked better in 1973, when this production premiered. A coat of paint would do wonders, though it wouldn’t make it be about anything. Remember, you can see this production on DVD with Anna and Rolando. But if you’re just looking for an Elisir, I recommend Angie and Roberto in happier days more highly.

This is the first full entry in my series Schenk/Anti-Schenk. The Anti-Schenk counterpart will be David Bösch’s Bayerische Staatsoper production, which I’ll see in early January. Also, I am prepared to take whatever consequences I deserve for this post title. But if L’elisir d’amore were pop music, it wouldn’t be Radiohead in terms of intelligence, would it?

Review

Christmas G’Schenk

December 17, 2010 18 Comments

Otto Schenk! Love him or hate him, his productions are a staple if you’re a regular at the Wiener Staatsoper or the Met. The Viennese actor/director celebrated his 80th birthday in June and is still going strong, and many of his productions are… well, let’s just say they’re still going, though his Met Ring is on the way out. Today, many of his monuments to comfortable naturalism bear his imprint in name only (and sometimes not even that, reduced to “after Otto Schenk” in Vienna), their sets faded and their original direction nowhere to be seen. But we must see the Schenk that we are given (that we are geSchenkt?), not the Schenk we may wish we had. His productions, often in their beat-up repertory forms, represent the aesthetic mainstream of late-20th century operatic conservatism.

Over the next few weeks, I will be conducting a survey which pits a row of Schenk productions against (drumroll)… THE WORLD. When “the world” means “directors who are not very conservative.” First I shall see the Viennese Schenk productions, and then after New Year’s I shall go to Germany for the anti-Schenk productions of the same operas. This plan is actually pure happenstance, but due to the inclusion of an anniversary opera (Rosenkavalier, 100 years) and a holiday operetta (Fledermaus), it’s not much of a coincidence.

The program:
L’elisir d’amore: after Schenk (Wiener Staatsoper, reviewed here in October), then David Bösch (Bayerische Staatsoper)
Fidelio: Schenk (Wiener Staatsoper, DVD), then Calixto Bieito (Bayerische Staatsoper)
Der Rosenkavalier: Schenk (Wiener Staatsoper), then Stefan Herheim (Staatsoper Stuttgart)
Die Fledermaus: after Schenk (Wiener Staatsoper), then Philipp Stölzl (Staatsoper Stuttgart)

Unfortunately, Vienna isn’t seeing fit to haul out their Schenk Fidelio (yes, they have one) just for the sake of symmetry in my schedule, so I will try to take a look at that one on DVD.

The Vienna Rosenkavalier is notable because Schenk actually has been rehearsing it, as the Staatsoper is proud to announce. So at least in this case, I will be able to consider what Schenk is about beyond his preferences in decor. But Schenk himself seems OK with the usual under-rehearsed laxness, recently saying to the Salzburger Nachrichten, “There are almost 30 productions at the Staatsoper. It would be a job in itself, a major assistant director job, [to rehearse them all].”

In the Salzburg interview linked above, Schenk also says some things about directors more adventurous than himself: “I do not have the talent to find in a piece another piece. I can’t say that doing so is always wrong, actually sometimes I greatly admire such things. For example, the Don Giovanni in the forest in Salzburg [directed by Claus Guth -ed.] and the fatally ill, wounded Don Giovanni. That was so thoroughly worked out and moving, as if it were a work by Mozart.” The problem with this is that Schenk is imposing his own aesthetic and finding a new work within works as much as Guth or any other director is. But this is still more open-mindedness than I expected of him.

Schenk can be seen persönlich acting in Klaus Pohl’s play Einmal noch, currently playing at the Theater in der Josefstadt. I was going to go, but the only review I could find didn’t make it sound like a very good time, so I reconsidered. Besides, I think I have enough Otto on my schedule as it is.

Also, non-Schenk related, William Christie and Les Arts Florissants are playing Rameau in concert at the Theater an der Wien on Sunday, and I’m not about to miss that.

Review

Il Postino: You’ve got mail

December 15, 2010 2 Comments

In Daniel Catán’s opera Il Postino, currently receiving its European premiere at the Theater an der Wien, the postman always rings… well, only once each time he visits, but you shall know him by the hazy seventh chords in the strings, lush and yet tastefully not too lush. This is perhaps underscored with some understated, vaguely Spanish-sounding dance rhythms. (It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that this opera’s island setting is actually in Italy. The text is in Spanish, I’ve never seen the movie, and I didn’t buy a program.) Aribert Reimann, Catán ain’t. And the libretto, also by Catán and based on the Italian film of the same title, isn’t Medea in terms of dramatic conflict. It’s pleasant and lovely and easy to listen to. Unfortunately, I also found it mind-numbingly dull.

But Plácido Domingo is in it, so, you know, there’s the main attraction.

Daniel Catán, Il Postino, Theater an der Wien, 12/14/2010. New production by Ron Daniels, sets and costumes by Riccardo Hernández, lights by Jennifer Tipton. Wiener Symphoniker and Arnold Schoenberg Chor conducted by Jesús López-Cobos with Plácido Domingo (Pablo Neruda), Israel Lozano (Mario), Amanda Squiltieri (Beatrice), Cristina Gallardo-Domas (Mathilde).

If you like your Puccini put through a Copland sieve, you’ll love Daniel Catán’s score. At first, it sounds rather nice. Actually, the whole thing sounds rather nice. It is extremely consonant and gentle, the vocal lines are, sorry, Puccini-esque. The lyricism is cut with a lightness, a slightly impressionistic, slightly Applachian Spring open fields/open stack of thirds quality that saves it from irredeemable sappiness. It has rhythmic swing, and a few good moments of found music (diegetically provided by a cutely dinky little onstage military band, and an accordionist). But after a little while, the lack of contrast becomes grating. Almost the entire opera hangs in a warm, slightly animated torpor of niceness. Puccini’s chiaroscuro is missing. It’s like listening to “Che il bel sogno di Doretta” over and over and over.

The libretto seems like a good idea in its basic outlines: young mailman Mario strikes up a friendship with avuncular local exiled Nobel Prize winner Pablo Neruda, who gives him relationship advice via poetry lessons. He gets his girl, a lovely barmaid of no distinctive qualities, with minimal problems. In the second half, political events take over the plot. These developments had only been clumsily hinted at in the first half, and it feels tacked on. And I’m not sure why the libretto needs to tell of its most dramatic event, Mario’s tragic last poem, through the intermediary of a narrator. The music finally turns more dramatic, but not, to me, convincingly so (add an enigmatic sea incident with a healthy dose of Debussy, though).

The libretto is an effective mix of quasi-arias and larger ensembles. I don’t speak Spanish and can’t comment on its literary qualities, though the several inserted Neruda poems are very good as sung texts even when I was reading them in the German titles. However, I quickly tired of the libretto’s simplistic harping on the idea of a metaphor, particularly when illustrated by projections in a way that made me think of that classic of American pedagogical video, “Schoolhouse Rock.” Also, I have grown instantly suspicious of any opera staging that puts its love duet in the midst of a starry firmament. This is the second one I’ve seen this month to do so, and both times the effect was pure kitsch (I’m looking at you, Les Troyens).

For the most part, though, the production by Ron Daniels is relatively spare. The stage is covered in bright blue tiles, and many scenes take place in front of projections or a blank screen, or on small rolling set pieces center stage (which probably make this co-production easy to adapt to stages of different sizes). The very good lighting (by Jennifer Tipton) is a breath of fresh air after last weekend’s Don Giovanni fiasco. The whole thing is straightforward and not bad, though not particularly memorable, either. Sometimes the blocking turned static, but most of it is convincing, as these things go.

This opera exists more or less as a Plácido Domingo vehicle, and as that it works. The role of Neruda was clearly tailored to his current vocal estate, which is still remarkably good. The sound is still sizable, secure, and has a lot of tonal beauty, though smooth might not be the right word at this point. The wise old man role is a good one for him at this point, he can project authority while still being endearing in the Ask Grandpa Pablo sections. As the Postman, Israel Lozano sounded ardent but occasionally labored, yet was endearing. However, the character is underwritten, and I found his political sacrifice in Act 3 wholly implausible. Among the women, Amanda Squitieri has a warm, full soprano (which I initially identified as a high mezzo), occasionally tending flat, and was a charismatic presence in another underdefined role (she is a pretty barmaid who loves Mario and… that’s it). Cristina Gallardo-Domas’s voice has taken some beating, but she did her best as Neruda’s wife Matilde.

Unfortunately, the Wiener Symphoniker, conducted by Jesús López-Cobos, didn’t seem to be having the best night, and sounded out of tune and uncoordinated all evening.

It is a perfectly pleasant opera, and refreshingly lacking in grand pretensions, but its mushiness is beyond my tolerance, I’m afraid. You can hear it for yourself on ORF’s oe1 on Saturday.

Also, I have discovered the purpose of Twitter! And it is to trade Parsifal jokes in imaginary pidgin catspeak with prominent Heldentenoren. Just what I need, more ways to waste time. Join in here.

Edited to add: I unconsciously ripped off this post title from Mr. Out West Arts. He thought of it first, and I read his review of the opera’s LA incarnation and probably remembered it! Credit where it is due! It is such a very good title.

Photos copyright Armin Bardel/Theater an der Wien.
Video from the LA Opera premiere (same production, slightly different cast):

Review

Don Giovanni: Love in a boring climate

December 12, 2010 5 Comments

The Wiener Staatsoper’s new production of Don Giovanni was begging to be stolen all night. Had anyone shown a little initiative and done something exciting, they could have walked off with it in their pocket. But no, we had a balanced ensemble, and a milquetoast evening it remained to the end. From the scattered mess of a production to the respectable but not quite distinguished singing, it reminds you that there’s no Don worse than a boring Don. The orchestra was the best thing about it.

This is historically possibly the single most central work in the Staatsoper’s repertoire, and the disappointment among the premiere crowd was palpable. Watch out, Herr Meyer, the Stehplatz masses are restless.

Mozart-Da Ponte, Don Giovanni. Wiener Staatsoper, 12/11/2010. New production premiere by Jean-Louis Martinoty, sets by Hans Schavernoch, costumes by Yan Tx, lights by Fabrice Kebour. Conducted by Franz Welser-Möst with Ildebrando d’Arcangelo (Don Giovanni), Alex Esposito (Leporello), Sally Matthews (Donna Anna), Roxana Constantinescu (Donna Elvira), Sylvia Schwartz (Zerlina), Saimir Pirgu (Don Ottavio), Albert Dohmen (Commendatore), Adam Plachetka (Masetto)

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An article in the Staatsoper magazine trumpets the learned director Martinoty’s consultation of many other Don Giovanni tales (and he name-drops lots of them in the program book interview). I don’t know whether to suggest he should have spent more time with Mozart and Da Ponte’s text or just to note that he obviously hasn’t found his own version yet. Because this is a morally confused, interpretive black hole of an opera, and Martinoty does nothing to suggest who Don Giovanni is, or any of the other characters for that matter. He sticks in some novelties, but there’s no vision or concept to speak of in an opera that demands one.

The production is set in post-war Spain, for no perceptible reason (maybe 1950’s, but I’m not sure! sometimes it looks more recent). The stage is steeply raked, with a twisted series of proscenium arches. The sets by Hans Schavernoch consist of a few projected backdrops of Seville, something that looks like a wine cellar to meet Donna Elvira (?), a hotel lobby for Zerlina and Masetto’s wedding, Don Giovanni’s Baroque party room, a rather nice church in lieu of a cemetery, and Don Giovanni’s banquet hall. In the latter, the statue–a skeleton–confusingly remains from the cemetery, visible for the entire scene, making its dramatic vocal arrival somewhat anticlimactic. Finally, the Commendatore shows up in person, despite not having appeared except as bones in the previous scene (see the photo at the top of this post). The curtain frequently comes down for set changes, never for too long, but the interruption in the flow is unfortunate. So are the cast traffic jams at the too-small exits.

Fun fact: this is the second production of Don Giovanni I have seen in Vienna that is set in a hotel! But Keith Warner’s Theater an der Wien job was a sleazy, wild masterpiece, which this one isn’t.

The costumes by Yan Tax are blandly 1950’s-ish until everyone dresses up in period finery for the Act 2 finale, some retaining it for Act 2. The significance of this masquerade is unclear (because glittery suits are fun, and now there are men with ruffles, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, traditionalists?). The armies of Mozart lookalikes in the stage bands are amusing, though. Of the lighting, by Fabrice Kebour, welch’ Dunkel hier! I understand a lot of this opera is supposed to take place in the dark, but, for example, shouldn’t we be able to see Donna Anna’s face for her crucial narration of her abduction by Giovanni? (Putting her far upstage didn’t help either.) There are a few scenes of highly designed painterly beauty, but the rest of the opera seems to have been forgotten. Some illumination is provided by a mysterious bare hanging fluorescent tube, which looks like it was a housewarming gift to Dominique Meyer from Achim Freyer. But no one took any pictures of it, because it looked weird!

While some of the direction is lively and physical, it doesn’t do a very good job of developing the plot or characters or their relationships. Sometimes logic fails. Why doesn’t Leporello react before noting the presence of people in the introduction? What happens in the confusing duel involving a sword umbrella and a flashlight? Why does Donna Elvira have a voodoo doll? Why doesn’t Zerlina look at Don Giovanni during “La cì darem la mano”? What the hell is going on with that statue? But in the big picture everyone seems to like Don Giovanni: he and Donna Anna apparently have a consensual S&M thing going on, Donna Elvira just wants him back (despite voodoo), and even Don Ottavio is a good buddy. And Ildebrando D’Arcangelo’s Don seems like a good guy. He’s friendly, maybe a little aggressive on the romantic side of things, but basically decent. And that doesn’t make for a very interesting show.

Donna Elvira (Roxana Constantinescu)

In the arias, Martinoty frequently brings in extra characters to give the singers someone to act against–Leporello has a girlfriend in the opening, Donna Elvira gets a priest in “Mi tradi,” and a random servant girl appears repeatedly. A commenter here already pointed out the concatenation of the Catalog Aria with Zerlina’s wedding, which is nicely done except for shorting out Donna Elvira. There’s a monk praying through all of the final sextet, who I was expecting to be a reincarnated Don (because the Don dresses up as a monk in the church scene earlier), but nothing so interesting, he was just a monk. Unfortunately I think this technique ended up being more a crutch than anything else. And the ending, with its everpresent statue, has none of the crazy intensity that it needs (though Donna Elvira has apparently become a nun), and the descent to hell passes so quickly as to have very little impact.

Sorry to say so much, but I feel like I had to to describe everything, because this production doesn’t organize itself into easily-summarized coherence. It doesn’t ever develop any direction or guiding idea. There’s stuff there, but what’s it all about? AAAHHHH! I DON’T KNOW!!!!

Musically, the highlight was the orchestra, which knows this score inside out and can play it without breaking a sweat. But there were some conducting issues. Franz Welser-Möst’s account was more shaped on the orchestral than vocal side, and had coordination issues with the stage. The tempos tended to be odd, and the pacing lacked drama. Unfortunately the singing was accomplished without being memorable. Many of the arias were loud and unsubtle, the ensembles were better. Appoggiaturas were in oddly short supply. I prefer baritone Dons to basses, and while D’Arcangelo was perfectly fine, with a darkish lyric tone, he failed to seduce me. Er, I mean, he’s no Erwin Schrott in the acting department, and didn’t show much in the way of seductive tendencies (and some of us may have found Leporello better-looking, sorry, I’m superficial). I could have also used more vocal floating in the serenade. It takes skills to sing the Champagne Aria and take your shirt off at the same time, though.

Donna Anna (Sally Matthews)

Alex Esposito was a vocally solid if not particularly outstanding Leporello, with a very good Catalog Aria and a lighter and higher-sounding tone than his master. Their relationship didn’t go anywhere, though Esposito was a sparkier presence than D’Arcangelo. The best of the women was Sally Matthews’s Donna Anna, whose cloudy, sometimes constrained soprano has a vaguely Gheorghiu-esque quality, though more pointed. She took some time to warm up but gave a committed, grand performance with good coloratura and long phrases. Roxana Constantinescu’s mezzo Donna Elvira was hindered by a wide vibrato and a lack of contrast and acting detail. Sylvia Schwartz’s Zerlina was lyric and sweet but understated. Saimir Pirgu sang Don Ottavio with attractive tone but phrasing right out of Puccini, wringing every bit of drama and sentiment out of his two (yes we got both) arias and blasting every “-te” of “morte” in “Dalla sua pace.” Albert Dohmen disappointed as the Commendatore, not sounding bass-like at all. Except him, none of the principals were weak, but none really remarkable.

I think a few more tech rehearsals would have done this show good. I wondered if someone was writing the lighting cues as they were giving them, because they were that bumpy and randomly timed. Lights would abruptly change in the middle of scenes for no reason, making me suspect a cue was pages late or early. The trip down to Hell went about three times too quickly and started a good two pages too late, severely screwing up the drama. If you’re not going to get this kind of thing right at a new production prima, when are you going to?

There was rather a lot of booing at the end, particularly by generally-friendly Vienna standards, though there was also some enthusiastic cheering. The consensus in the standing room was that it fell short of Wiener Staatsoper standards for both Mozart singing and staging. “It would be OK for Zurich,” one Stehplatz member said. “Or Germany. But in Vienna?” In my experience Zurich and Germany generally come up with something more interesting than this production-wise, but point taken.

We’re getting a full Da Ponte cycle from this production team. The Figaro, already seen in Paris and already considered via DVD here, will premiere in February, the Così in two years’ time.

Also, typo in the cast list! They misspelled “Masetto” as “Masseto”.

Bows–the statue is not THE statue, it is only A statue:

Production photos copyright Wiener Staatsoper, except the first one, copyright APA/Robert Jäger

Review

Reimann’s Medea: Keeping it in the family

December 8, 2010 4 Comments

Aribert Reimann is not easy listening. His music is modernist with no trace of post-: dense, dissonant, non-tonal, and deadly serious. But his opera Medea was a surprise hit when it premiered at the Wiener Staatsoper last February, and in its first revival at the house it was not hard to see why. The libretto is clear as can be, the drama incredibly intense as well as emotionally accessible, and the music, despite its density, tells the story with a directness that is easy to hear even on the first time through.

Reimann, Medea. Wiener Staatsoper, 12/7/2010. Production by Marco Arturo Marelli, conducted by Michael Boder with Claudia Barainsky (Medea), Adrian Eröd (Jason), Michael Roider (Creon), Stephanie Houtzeel (Creusa), Elisabeth Kulman (Gora), Max Emanuel Cenic (Herold)

(FIRST a quick reminder if you are on the Twitter to follow me on the Twitter so my follower count isn’t pathetic.)

Reimann’s source material is not Euripides or Ovid or Seneca (or even Corneille) but rather the third part of Franz Grillparzer’s trilogy of plays The Golden Fleece (1822). Reimann adapted the text directly from Grillparzer without a librettist, Salome-style. This works well. The language and psychological world of the work feel remarkably modern, with complex characters who are all to some extent sympathetic. We begin as Medea and Jason seek refuge with King Creon in Corinth, and even many of the thematic concerns of the plot–Medea is a racial outsider who must discard her headscarf–feel all too relevant.

The set represents a hilly, rocky landscape that could be the surface of the moon (and that is how much comfort it seems to give the characters). An austerely bare modern room sits stage left, rising and falling, sometimes stage level and sometimes connected to the ground by stairs. This is the home of the “civilized” world of Creon, and he and his tribe wear pure white while Medea, her nurse Gora, and her children wear colorful, vaguely Middle Eastern robes in warm red and purple. Jason acquires white clothes once he has been brought back into his former home, and the children do as well once they are adopted by Creusa.

Reimann’s music is angular and violent, but each character does develop a distinctive voice. Orchestrally, there is a lot going on (particularly in the percussion section), but the balance is pretty good. Medea is one of those insane dramatic coloratura roles characteristic of post-war German opera, she is yet another suffering woman singing high Fs. (See also Die Soldaten, Simplicius Simpiccisimus, the ur-source Lulu, and almost anything else in the repertoire of Claudia Barainsky. Sometimes I wish Strauss had never opened Pandora’s coloratura box by composing my namesake.) Medea rages from high notes to low, skipping around everywhere in between. To my ear her music often sounded vaguely pentatonic, but this may have been my imagination used to pentatonic exotic characters. Jason’s music (lyric baritone) is no more stable but not as extreme in range. Creon is a muscular tenor of no great imagination or variety, and Creusa (lyric mezzo) gets the most memorable profile of all, a flurry of silly, bouncy coloratura showing her unknowing superficiality.

It’s an exciting score, and the tension barely lifts from the ghostly start until just before Medea’s (offstage) infanticide. Her solo scene leading up to her murder of her children is a tour de force, starting in haunting quiet and building to the rage she had shown throughout the opera. But the post-murder coda is full of astonishingly placid lyricism, a cathartic and beautiful end to a score that is otherwise very harsh. It’s a powerful piece of work, harrowing without the over-the-top, numbingly cruel misery of some modern opera, it’s tragic in the best sense. (Only in a period like this could a work in which a woman kills her own children be called restrained.)

The production is straightforward and effective. Jason forcibly leaving Medea in the ascending room stage left, she clinging to his hand, is a particularly memorable image. Medea’s magic disturbs the (volcanic-looking) rocks upstage–unfortunately as they roll down the hill their unlikely weightlessness is unmistakable. The blocking is impressively detailed for such complicated music (not to mention for a Wiener Staatsoper revival), and kept everything psychologically clear.

Putting on Reimann in a repertory house is a major challenge, of course. The singers in this production were the same as in the premiere, with the exception of Claudia Barainsky in the title role (premiere cast Marlis Petersen was to appear in this revival but is ill; Barainsky sang the work’s German premiere this fall) and Stephanie Houtzeel as Creusa. Note that all these photos show the premiere cast. But all the singers were spectacularly good with this impossibly difficult music. Barainsky has a narrow, focussed soprano with considerable power. She made an earthy, instinctual Medea; according to some other audience members, Petersen was more aloof. Adrian Eröd was a smoothly sung, dramatically conflicted Jason, and Houtzeel sang Creusa with flowing tone and skipped around like she was in a Mozart opera. There wasn’t a weak link in the whole cast, really, Elisabeth Kulman’s dramatic Gora, Michael Roider’s Herod-like Creon, and Max Emanuel Cencic’s forceful countertenor Herold were all strong.

Michael Boder did an excellent job balancing orchestra to singers. It’s hard to tell in this kind of score if everyone is together or not, but I did get the impression the orchestra was hanging on by the skin of their collective teeth at times. There were attacks that I believe were supposed to be together that were not. Passagework was dicey, and sections on opposite sides of the pit sounded questionably coordinated. But I’m not sure if I can really blame them for this.

This was the last performance of this opera this season. If you’re interested in seeing this work–and I hope you are–a DVD of the premiere is now available. (It’s available at the Staatsoper, at least, I can’t find it on Amazon yet.)

Next: Tomorrow night is the premiere of Il Postino at the Theater an der Wien, but I think I will be going next week. I’ll be at the premiere of the new Don Giovanni at the Staatsoper on Saturday for sure.

Bows. The fellow in the suit on the right is Reimann himself:

Production photos copyright Wiener Staatsoper.

Review

I have given in to the Twitter

December 8, 2010 3 Comments

Follow me at @ZerbinettasBlog. All new posts will be tweeted, other usage to be determined. Brevity is not my forte. For example, the name of this blog is too long for a Twitter username or even a Twitter real name, so an apostrophe-less possessive (let’s just call it a German genitive) it is.

Words about last night’s Medea later.

Here is some charming tweeting:

Review

Les Troyens: Decline and fall

December 7, 2010 6 Comments

Any performance of Les Troyens is automatically a Big Event. Its length, its awesomeness, and its strangeness are all on a grand scale. The Deutsche Oper Berlin’s new production is successful in a number of ways, and allow you to appreciate how wonderful a piece this really is. But it’s not an unqualified success, and while it boasts good conducting by Donald Runnicles, a good orchestra, a great chorus, and a super Troy staging with a fantastic Horse, some so-so principals and a wayward Carthage made it only partly unforgettable.

Berlioz, Les Troyens. Deutsche Oper Berlin, 12/5/2010. New production premiere, directed by David Pountney with sets by Johan Engels, costumes by Marie-Jeanne Lecca, lights by Davy Cunningham, choreography by Renato Zanella. Conducted by Donald Runnicles with Béatrice Uria-Mozon (Didon), Petra Lang (Cassandre), Ian Storey (Énée), Liane Keegan (Anna), Markus Brück (Chorèbe), many more, see the full cast list here.

David Pountney’s production is about the conflict between man (Troy) and woman (Carthage). This begins well. His Troy is set in dirty brown, rusty red, and gold, a large empty stage filled with teeming crowds. The costumes are those of timeless grungy warriors with much brown leather, grommets, and random incidents of facepaint. The Trojan Horse is a wonderful effect, seen only in terrifyingly enormous, living parts: kicking feet from above, a giant nose.

It’s good design, these people look like they’ve been besieged for ten years, and the tired, fragile, gilded grandeur of Priam (in a wheelchair) is just right. Cassandre hovers around a red, glowing crack in the brown stage, opposite Hector’s grave, and frantically knits. She is making something that looks like the head of a horse. I can appreciate this on a mythological level–Cassandra’s story is rather similar to Philomela’s–but this craft project looks like something that shows up every year at the church rummage sale (and made me think of The Godfather).

In Act 2, we see a a large metal circle, ringed with bare bedframes with a vortex in the middle. The ghost of Hector rises out of this center hole, and it is where Cassandre kills herself, along with an army of white-veiled women (their veils a foreshadowing of the women’s world of Carthage, a world they can’t create in Troy). The symbolism of the empty beds eludes me, but, like many other tableaux in this act, it’s a striking image. The Personenregie is simple but good, particularly that of the chorus. They move as a convincing crowd, in Troy alternately a steadily advancing, organized mass and a frantic flowing mob. Chorèbe and Cassandre’s scene is touching.

Unfortunately, things go downhill once we get to Carthage in the second part of the opera. While Pountney’s Troy was ruled by supposedly masculine might and ferocity, Carthage is a sensual woman’s utopia, decorated in white, yellow, and green and featuring curved lines instead of angles, pillows and lounging instead of armor, and many filmy curtains. The costumes go from warrior to cult, complete with turbans.

As a concept it makes sense, but everything stays too static, and particularly Didon is not given a chance to make any journey as a character. Les Troyens has a lot of static scenes to start with, and this kind of oppositional staging, without close attention to the characters, only makes things more flat. The calls of “ITALIE! ITALIE!” feel like no more than a bothersome interruption. And Didon also never shows much in the way of grandeur or power, only the serenity of a guru. (If you’ll forgive me a Lord of the Rings metaphor, Troy in this production is Rohan while Didon is Galadriel.) At the end of the opera, Cassandre guides Didon to her suicide in the middle of the bedframes again, but other than killing themselves in the middle of the same set piece, it’s not clear what they have in common.

The score was performed without any large cuts. But while it’s wonderful to hear all the great dance music, the choreography by Renato Zanella is weak, sometimes unintentionally comic (the matelots doing the wave, for example), and generally uninteresting as dance, resembling some sort of aerobics. Narratively speaking, I think Pountney and Zanella really erred with the staging of the Chasse royale. Instead of narrating the awakening love of Didon and Enée, we get a generic ballet of seduction that does not directly relate to the plot, and then we see Didon and Énée in full-fledged embrace right afterwards. We never see them fall in love, we just see them in love, and it feels tremendously abrupt and wrong for Didon’s character. The entire fourth act is treated like an interlude–but plot-wise, without it the fifth act wouldn’t be much, so this other-worldliness feels off.

(Also, at the end of the ballet, the women become pregnant and proceed to birth enormous clear plastic spheres in something I have already heard referred to as the “placenta ballet.” These spheres make a reappearance in the following scene, and eventually Didon and Énée float above the stage in their own circles. I’m sure they symbolize something circular or insular, but, hey, Cassandre did herself in in the middle of a circle, too.)

Musically there was more to be enthusiastic about. Donald Runnicles’s conducting did not have the neurotic tension nor the sheer strangeness of Colin Davis’s, but it had a light energy and forward momentum that kept things going a lot better than the staging did, with an excellent sense for the large-scale pacing of this long score. The offstage groups and otherwise enormous forces were excellently coordinated. He did not emphasize the crashing dissonances or eerie sounds, this was Berlioz that sounded remarkably normal, yet still like Berlioz. The orchestra sounded good but not great, with some scrappy wind sections and slackening towards the end of the evening.

The Deutsche Oper Berlin’s chorus is famously good, and they were one of the best things about this performance, singing with amazing nuance, homogeneity and balance. The chorus music seemed every bit as directed and musical as any other section of the score (more than some of the principals, actually), and that’s a rare thing. They also moved very well, and from my customary back-of-the-house seat looked like a convincing crowd even while singing so well.

Petra Lang’s towering Cassandre was by far the best of the leads. Her portrayal has grown since her excellent 2001 recording of the role (get that CD, it’s awesome!), and her Cassandre has fatal, desperate gravity, sung with an imposingly large voice yet great detail and attention to the text. She knows how to hold back until the biggest moments, she can be gentle as well as ferocious, and while I was sitting too far away to be a great judge of detailed acting, she has charisma, even while wearing someone’s grandmother’s afghan and maniacally knitting part of a hobby horse.

Béatrice Uria-Mozon was a tastefully sung and gracefully acted Didon, but until her intense final scene she failed to win me over for some reason. I found her portrayal somewhat small-scaled, and both the production’s simplicity and her dark-hued and spicy but very lyric voice didn’t help her out. I think from the front of the house she probably made a much better impression, but to have a Troyens without a heartbreakingly grand Didon was a problem for me. (I would have loved to hear originally cast Kate Aldrich, who canceled a while ago due to being busy having an actual baby, rather than a big plastic globe.)

I don’t quite understand why Énée is often sung by a Heldentenor, but whatever your volume it certainly requires more finesse and sense of French style than dark-voiced, baritonal tenor Ian Storey has, and from a clumsy opening aria onwards he sounded loud but completely wrong for the part. He can certainly blast out the notes, but Berlioz requires sensitivity. As Heldentenors go he is an OK actor, but that’s not a very high standard. (This blog would like to endorse the idea of a Roberto Alagna Énée, and I realize I might live to regret that. Kaufmann would be nifty too.)

The many supporting roles were more satisfyingly filled, with Markus Brück’s thuggish-looking but sweetly lyrical-sounding Chorèbe and Liane Keegan’s big-voiced Anna particular standouts. Ex-NYCO’er Heidi Stober sounded excellent as Ascagne and Gregory Warren was a pure Iopas. Technical values were mostly good except for some mysterious offstage clunks and a few poorly blended follow spots.

Was it worth it? Of course, its Les frickin’ Troyens! In case you haven’t noticed, I love this score. But I hope I’ll run into a more rounded production soon. The reception involved lots of cheering for everyone except lots of booing for the production folks. There were also an dismaying number of unsold seats. At a premiere of a major work, Berlin? Really? Is this normal?

I’m back in Vienna and tired, but will be off to Reimann’s Medea at the Staatsoper tonight anyways! I still owe y’all words on the Royal College of Music’s excellent Orpheus aux enfers, I am working on that!

Bows:

Production photos copyright Matthias Horn/Deutsche Oper Berlin

Review

It’s a dog’s life

December 6, 2010 2 Comments

My unearned London vacation continued last Thursday with A Dog’s Heart at the English National Opera. It sounded intriguing: production with theater company Complicite, source material from Bulgakov. But the composer, Alexander Raskatov, was an unknown quantity to me. Turns out this was bad, because while this opera some things going for it, the score isn’t one of them, alas.

Alexander Raskatov, A Dog’s Heart. English National Opera, 2/12/2010. Production directed by Simon McBurney, conducted by Garry Walker with Steven Page (Professor Filipp Filippovich Preobrazhensky), Peter Hoare (Sharikov), Elena Vassilieva (Shaik’s unpleasant voice/Darya), Andrew Watts (Shark’s pleasant voice), Leigh Melrose (Bormenthal), Nancy Allen Lundy (Zina), Blund Summit Theatre (dog puppetry)

A Dog’s Heart was composed by Raskatov to a libretto by Cesare Mazzoni after the Bulgakov novella of the same title. The source material is wonderful for an opera, a tale of a mad doctor/professor who in an unwise decision transforms a good-natured stray dog into an exceptionally intemperate man via the transplant of some, uh, vital organs. Hijinks, as they say, ensue. The setting is 1920’s Russia, and the absurdism, Soviet twists (telltale obsession with real estate, committees, informants, etc.) and series of short, episodic scenes, as well as some elements of the musical style, are strongly reminiscent of Shostakovich’s The Nose. Like that work, the libretto is a “sung play” setting of the Dargomyzhsky sort, consisting of massive amounts of dialogue without many ensembles and only a few extended solo sections. (Think Les parapluies de Cherbourg, Russian style.) The similarities to The Nose loom large enough to maybe say that A Dog’s Heart is derivative.

Raskatov is best-known for his completion of Schnittke’s Symphony No. 9, and his own mixture of styles recalls Schnittke as well. Unfortunately, I could never grasp a unique voice under the collage of Soviet anthems, jazz, and Russian folk music. The music is maddeningly disjunct, hardly ever lyrical, and changes texture and mood so quickly that I felt I never had a grip on it, nor could I figure out the way the music related to the dramatic situations. Most of it is not tonal, though Raskatov has an odd tendency to turn straightforwardly tonal at the most dramatic climaxes. Things settle down a bit in Act 2 with a Shostakovich-ish passacaglia, but I still have no idea what Raskatov is about musically. If there is a characteristic sound to this opera it is, alas, the combination of a flexatone and a farting trombone. That makes it sound much more entertaining than it is, the music rarely picks up on the wit of the text.

I suspect the poor text setting was a major impediment. The original libretto was in Russian (though the premiere was at De Nederlandse Opera), and while Martin Pickard’s English translation is satisfyingly immediate and vulgar, the emphasis and rhythm of the text enjoy only a tenuous connection with that of the music. The text proceeds slowly, and the surtitles were much appreciated because it is not easy to understand. Few characters acquire a unique musical profile, and some of the music associated with one is recapitulated by another with no clear dramatic intent. The most distinctive voice is the obligatory screechy New Opera coloratura soprano, here a maid who is given a particularly punishingly stratospheric part (Nancy Allen Lundy sang with flair). She’s got a character, but someone write a new opera that doesn’t involve a lady hanging around solely above the staff, please!

The inventive and very precisely choreographed production, directed by Complicite director Simon McBurney is the best thing going here. The set combines projections of Soviet scenery on a backdrop (and sometimes also on a front scrim) with an otherwise mostly-bare stage. Sharik, pre-transformation, is represented by an endearing puppet dog from Blind Summit Theatre (you may remember them as Trouble in the Met’s Butterfly–that production originated at ENO). His “pleasant voice” is sung by a countertenor, Andrew Watts, his “unpleasant voice” by a mezzo, Elena Vassileva, barking and squealing through a megaphone. The two sound quite similar in timbre; the main difference is the megaphone and musical style rather than the voices themselves. As a foul-mouthed balalaika-playing man with a taste for vodka, Sharik becomes Sharikov and is sung by tenor Peter Hoare, who makes an outrageous, overpoweringly energetic character who shakes up the slow proceedings considerably.

Unfortunately the production is content to be merely absurd, and while I don’t mind that it keeps the symbolism open-ended, I wish it had done something more with the piece’s politics. Its view of the Soviet society of the Professor’s apartment committee and Sharikov’s employment is underdeveloped and vague, and prevents things from really acquiring consequence and gravity. The chorus mostly lingers stage left in a straight line, and the production never really creates a society beyond the setting of the professor’s apartment. Despite the tightness of the staging and some strong scenes–an intriguing beginning mixing the two voices of the dog, a parade of strange patients at the Professor’s office, and most of the scenes involving Sharikov the man–the evening tended to drag. Singing was good and the orchestra dealt handily with the asymmetry of Raskatov’s score and its strange sounds. It’s not like I could have heard if things had gotten off but it all sounded very confident. But without music I can enjoy, I’m afraid I can’t call this one a success with me.

Possibly the most amusing thing I heard all evening was this dialogue in the ladies’ room before the show:
“Tom was so disappointing. Jen said to expect a stunner.”
“The best I can say is that he has very good skin.”

Trailer: