January 2011 – Likely Impossibilities

Berenice: Handel’s other Egyptian queen

January 28, 2011 No Comments

Actually, make that Handel’s other other Egyptian queen, because while Cleo is definitely No. 1, I think sort-of queen Seleuce in Tolomeo is more popular than Berenice. Alan Curtis recorded this obscure lady in 2010 on Virgin Classics, and brought his Il complesso barocco and most of the same singers to the Theater an der Wien for a concert performance last night. It’s not quite top-drawer Handel, but there’s still plenty to enjoy, particularly with a performance this good.

My Week of Living 18th Century continues.

Handel, Berenice. Concert performance in the Theater an der Wien, 1/27/2011. Il complesso barocco conducted by Alan Curtis with Klara Ek (Berenice), Ingela Bohlin (Alessandro), Milena Storti (Selene), Franco Fabioli (Demetrio), Mary-Ellen Nesi (Arsace), Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani (Fabio), Johannes Weisser (Aristobolo)

I didn’t do my homework and picked up a last-minute ticket 15 minutes before the show, sliding into my seat with only a few minutes to spare. Meaning, no time to read the plot summary. I think this may be the first time I have not even attempted to follow the plot of an opera, but to be honest it seemed complicated and not that compelling, so I just decided it was going to be Aria Night. With concert Handel, that works. And while none of the singers quite reached the lofty heights of Karina Gauvin and Iestyn Davies in last October’s Curtis Tolomeo, also at the Theater an der Wien (didn’t blog about it, sorry), they were first-rate.

Berenice dates from 1737, prime time for Handel creatively speaking (though personally not such a great year for him, with financial and health problems), but it was a flop and only ran for four performances. It’s quality stuff, but has an unusual number of smaller arias (also an unusual number of very nice duets). There are some pleasant and unusual numbers, but not many show-stoppers, and the seven roles of close to equal importance mean that star opportunities are sparse. The title character is indeed the lead, but it’s not the most thankful of Handel diva roles. She seems to be a “Da tempeste” and an “Ah! mio cor” short. However, Swedish soprano Klara Ek made the most of what there was, singing with technical accomplishment and bright, brilliant, sometimes hard-edged tone. Her biggest aria, “Chi’ t’intende” is certainly unusual in form, with many tempo changes and a complex oboe obligato part (wonderfully played by Vinciane Baudhuin), but it’s still not “Scherza infida” in psychological depth. Ek also brought a vivid characterization of a proud queen, and her animated facial expressions and occasionally extravagant gestures show her potential to develop into a Cult Early Music Diva. Kermes of the Future?

Fellow Swedish soprano Ingela Bohlin was an excellent contrast as Alessandro. She has a very light and girly voice for a castrato role, but her warm, liquid, sweet singing was some of the prettiest of the evening. What is it with the preponderance of fantastic Swedish early music singers? (I am also including Ann Hallenberg from Sunday’s Ariosti extravaganza, and Anne Sofie von Otter from the Rameau of last week.) I already wanted to move to Sweden, but now I want to even more.

Countertenor Franco Fagioli doesn’t have a very even or rich voice, sometimes sounding thin, but makes up for it with extraordinary range and agility. His “Guerra e pace, Egizia terra” was the showpiece of the evening. As Fabio, magnificiently named tenor Anicio Zorzi Giustiniani was accurate and pleasant, and the only snappy dresser in a somewhat disheveled cast. Mary-Ellen Nesi showed a powerful and beautiful low mezzo as Arsace, and Johannes Weisser, a holdover from last Sunday’s Ariosti, again sounded unfocused, though he acted well.

Mezzo Milena Storti was a very late replacement for the ill Romina Bassi in the role of Selene, and according to the preshow announcement received the score at three in the morning that day, learning it overnight. She has a round, dark voice and sang with impressive confidence, including great use of the text in recits and some playful moments in the arias, and was deservedly warmly received by the audience.

The baddest mustache in Baroque conducting, Alan Curtis, and his orchestra Il complesso barocco were the real highlight of the evening. They know this style inside and out, and play with easy, unexaggerated grace and energy, and perfect balance and textual transparency. I’ve never understood those who find Handel boring, but with playing with this kind of nuance and variety in character, well, I understand less.

Here’s this group’s CD of this opera again. If you’re in the market for any Handel opera recordings, I highly recommend Curtis’s recordings as a general policy for their excellent musicianship, stylistic accuracy, and animated drama.

Also, about that student Gluck performance of the other night, Il Parnaso confuso, at Schloss Schönbrunn: I went, I didn’t like, and I have no desire to beat up students, so that’s it. Except I wish to note that electronic composition and Gluck really don’t mix that well, in my opinion.

Review

Ariosti’s La fede ne’ tradimenti at the Konzerthaus

January 25, 2011 3 Comments

Attilio Ariosti’s 1701 opera La fede ne’ tradimenti has lots of charming arias, even more pretty good recitative, and the plot’s bumbling Python-esque medieval antics seem to be a barrel of laughs. I say “seem” because despite excellent singing and playing Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante’s concert performance did not show this small-scale satire to its best advantage. It may have been an evening more for operatic Kenner than Liebhaber, but it was still a welcome and intriguing introduction to a forgotten work. Forgotten composer. Forgotten style, even.

Attilio Ariosti, La fede ne’ tradimenti. Wiener Konzerthaus, 1/23/2011. Fabio Biondi and Europa Galante with Ann Hallenberg (Fernando), Robert Ivernizzi (Anagilda), Lucia Cirillo (Elvira), Johannes Weisser (Garzia).

Over the last few years, the Baroque crowd has been proving that there’s far more to early Italian opera than Monteverdi and Handel. While Cavalli and Vivaldi make occasional inroads into opera houses, many of these efforts seem to be taking place more in concert and on CDs than in staged productions. This includes not only the ever-expanding Vivaldi edition but also recital CDs such as Philippe Jaroussky’s Caldara, Vivica Genaux’s Hasse, Karina Gauvin’s Porpora, and Simone Kermes’s anything. Works by earlier composers such as Cavalli don’t have much to offer for virtuosic soloists, but their smoother-flowing plots seem to find greater success in theaters. Ariosti is somewhere in between chronologically and musically, and his operas haven’t found much modern success onstage nor on CD… yet.

This opera is from 1701 and was written for court, not a public theater. There are arias, a lot of them, and some of them feature the kind of coloratura fireworks and cantilena you get from Handel. But many don’t, and nearly all are smaller in scale. Some are AA’ structures, some just As, some even ABA’ da-capo-types. There are some longer solo scenes, but they consist of multiple arias connected by bits of recitative. There are a few beautiful duets, but the only other ensemble is the short choral finale (chorus consisting of the soloists). There’s a lot of recitative relative to aria, and while it’s good recitative, its volume means you’re going to be spending a fair amount of the time thinking about the dramatic action. So while there’s some very rewarding music here, I’m not sure a concert (in which the audience is following a libretto in the program) shows it to its best advantage. Considering Ariosti’s low name recognition, though, it’s probably the only option.

The venue wasn’t ideal either; the Großer Saal of the Konzerthaus is simply far too big for this work. The Theater an der Wien or even the Mozart-Saal would have been far preferable. The singers were appropriately cast for this style, the orchestra was the right size, but I’m really glad I was sitting in the third row, because I’m not sure how it would have registered much further back. (Acoustics can be funny, though.)

La fede ne’ tradimenti’s 1689 libretto, by Girolamo Gigli, is a gleeful affair that was set by a number of other composers before Ariosti. It can’t be taken seriously, nor is it meant to be. Expanding fantastically on a minor subplot in the fight between King Fernando of Castille and King Sancio of Navarre, it, in the words of Sabine Rademacher’s ace program notes, “trivializes the medieval figures and events, as well as their heroic ideals.” Briefly, the plot involves Fernando, engaged to Anagilda, though he killed her father. Anagilda’s brother is not happy about this and interferes. Anagilda, proving that ladies of Spain are just made for liberating their wrongfully imprisoned husbands, rescues Fernando. Elvira, Fernando’s sister, is also involved, and improbably ends up falling for Garzia. Of course, improbability is the point. My favorite twist is when Elvira gets into Fernando’s palace by dressing up as the servant of an African magician and telling him there’s a treasure buried in his backyard and she has to come in and wait for a particular time for the sun to make a tree cast a shadow, which will show her where to dig for it.

There is satire here! The music is heartfelt, but a violent aria from Garcia about not trusting women’s tears (“Di femmina al pianto, mai più crederò”) is immediately followed by an apparently sincere one from Elvira entitled “Pianto mio, che sangue sei.” This tone is another big thing that makes this opera tricky to appreciate in concert. Send this score to David Alden pronto and see what he can do with it! With staging, I have no doubt it would be suited for a wide audience.

Fabio Biondi’s Europa Galante, 16 members strong, plays with a silkier tone and slightly gentler attack than some of the more rattly HIP outfits, or maybe that was just the space. Ensemble and phrasing were excellent, and the continuo section was super, with great creativity in the art of bass line deployment. Solos, particularly Biondi’s own on the violin, were outstanding. Biondi, however, is one of those early music conductors whose vague gestures (with his bow) make absolutely no sense to non-HIP musician me. Looks like the ensemble gets it, though.

Mezzo Ann Hallenberg as Fernando (castrato role? I think? possibly just pants) was the star of the singers, with a large, vibrant voice, spotless coloratura and phrasing, and lively stage presence. She got most of the best arias, and her “Queste ceppi” was the highlight of the show. Fellow mezzo Lucia Cirilla’s slimmer, darker voice also excelled as Elvira. Roberta Invernizzi showed charm and agility as Anagilda, and her almost vibrato-free tone is attractive, but her sound did not project well. Johannes Weisser sounded unfocussed as Garzia.

This long evening bled some audience members during the intermissions (BTW, performers, I was the awake girl sitting next to the sleeping lady in the third row), but I’m glad I got to experience this piece, even in less than ideal conditions. It was broadcast live on the radio, and I hope will eventually be released as a CD. Maybe next time I’ll see it with staging.

Speaking of eighteenth-century obscurities, I’m off to the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst’s production of Gluck’s Il parnaso confuso on Wednesday night, in the distinguished and appropriate location of the Schloss Schönbrunn’s 18th-century theater. Opera titles with words like confuso, pazza, and finta are guarantees to get me into an audience in any case.

Review

Castor et Pollux: Brotherly love

January 22, 2011 4 Comments

Christophe Rousset and Mariame Clément’s Castor et Pollux is a breath of fresh air in the Theater an der Wien. After a string of disappointing shows, here’s one that fulfills the theater’s mission: a modern, polished production of an unusual work with a fabulous orchestra and chorus. The singing is uneven and it might be a little more gloomy than grand, but it all works together.

Rameau, Castor et Pollux (1754 version). Theater an der Wien, 1/20/2011. New production premiere by Mariame Clément, sets and costumes by Julia Hansen, lights by Bernd Purkrabek, projections by fettfilm. Les Talens Lyriques conducted by Christophe Rousset with Maxim Miranov (Castor), Dietrich Henschel (Pollux), Christiane Karg (Télaïre), Anne Sofie von Otter (Phébée), Nicholas Testé (Jupiter), Arnold Schoenberg Chor, directed by Erwin Ortner.

Clément and Rousset have chosen Rameau’s second, 1754 version of the opera, which is more dramatically focused and austere than the 1737 version. I came that evening familiar only with 1737 (as heard on William Christie’s recording). This was a problem; they are very different. There are fewer ballets, the action is tidied up and considerably changed, and the allegorical prologue is cut. The music slips between aria and récit in a way more reminiscent of much earlier Cavalli than most French music, and shows Rameau’s harmonic crunchiness at many points. The orchestra is large and colorfully deployed. It’s not a style you hear every day, but it’s not a difficult one to adjust to, the action moves along quickly enough, and it’s beautiful stuff.

Clément’s production takes place on a unit set dominated by a large, maroon-carpeted staircase. While the staircase is surrounded by a positively farcical number of doors, the production is nothing if not serious. Between the carpet, army of servants, and 1940’s clothes, I wondered if designer Julia Hansen was working with sloppy seconds from Robert Carsen’s Semele.

Despite the specific 1940’s setting, Clément’s production is relatively abstract, with no reference to the world outside that of the characters. The theme is brotherly love, and the happenings domestic. The ballet interludes show episodes from the characters’ earlier days (using child actors), Castor and Pollux playing and always showing affection for each other, their budding rivalry for Télaïre, and the interfering, slightly older Phébée. They’re charmingly staged and dramatically helpful, clearing up and deepening the relationships, but it’s a shame they have so little to do with the music. And that there is no actual dance.

Magic and myth are minimized. There are a few coy references to Pollux’s immortality, but they are minimal. Jupiter is a stern father with an imposing office at the top of the staircase, and he cares only for Pollux. There are no spectacular Baroque settings or transformations. Castor’s underworld is the only major set change, a white box hanging from above, in which we see his visions of life in the household projected on the walls. Pollux’s departure from his immortal life, surrounded by the chorus dressed in costumes of various time periods, is nicely done. The ending is slightly confusing (if you don’t know the piece well), and suggests that Castor’s resurrection may have been only a dream.

It does a good job telling the story, with strong blocking (mostly naturalistic, sometimes stylized in the choruses) and good variety. My only complaint, other than missing dance, is that it is somewhat too somber, too muted. It’s very tasteful and skillful, but a little more boldness or invention could have made things more exciting. However, this is a somber opera, so it fits.

On the technical side, Bernd Perkrabek’s lighting contains some awkwardly timed and bumpy transitions (more a problem of execution than design). The evening also got off to a difficult start when the surtitles machine remained blank, though it was fixed around 10 minutes into the show (after audible panic in the space behind the third ring).

The most exciting things of the evening were the playing of Christoph Rousset’s orchestra, Les Talens Lyriques, and the singing of the Arnold Schoenberg Chorus. Rousset conducted at a slightly cooler temperature than some of the peppier HIP types, but the orchestra still has tremendous rhythmic definition, agility, and virtuosity. And the Arnold Schoenberg Chor, a reliable highlight of everything they appear in, sang again with impeccable homogeneity and detail.

The soloists were somewhat variable. Up-and-coming soprano Christiane Karg was the brightest spot as Telaïre, singing with honesty, spontaneity, and beautifully clear, bright tone (including a gorgeous piano). Sometimes a stronger low register would have helped, though. Anne Sofie von Otter made a formidable figure of Phébée and sang with passion and conviction, but the role seemed to demand more emphatic recitative and less lyricism than would be ideal for the current state of her voice.

From the men, cute tenor Maxim Miranov handled the murderous haute-contre tessiatura of Castor with aplomb and bright and pleasant sound, though his fluttery vibrato may not be to all tastes. Dietrich Henschel seemed miscast as Pollux (he replaced Luca Pisaroni a little while back for reasons I don’t know), his woolly baritone lacking the flexibility and clarity required for this style. Basses Nicholas Testé as Jupiter and Pavel Kudinov as the Grand Prêtre were both excellent.

It’s a lot more of a piece than what you usually get from the Staatsoper, and to hear such an usual score makes this worth a trip in itself.

Further performances are on 22, 24, 26, 28, and 30 January, more information here.

Photos copyright Monika Rittershaus/Theater an der Wien

Review

Lucia di Lammermoor: Mad about you

January 15, 2011 11 Comments

So generous of the Wiener Staatsoper to throw in an opera along with that mad scene, no? But considering the spectacle of hopeless conducting and pathetic staging that surrounded Annick Massis’s moment of Crazy–and Piotr Beczala’s decent tenor aria–I kind of wish they hadn’t. That thing I said the other day about wanting boring productions to blog about instead of tricky stuff like Herheim? It was only a joke, but I TAKE IT ALL BACK.

Donizetti, Lucia di Lammermoor. Wiener Staatsoper, 1/14/2011. Production by Boleslaw Barlog, conducted by Bruno Campanella with Annick Massis (Lucia), Piotr Beczala (Edgardo), Eijiro Kai (Enrico), Dan Paul Dumitrescu (Raimondo).

Bruno Campanella conducted with some nice differentiation of color but soporific tempos, which crippled the singers at many points. They ran out of breath in the slow parts, they got ahead in the fast parts. Sometimes he pulled dramatic accelerandos at the ends of numbers, which were exciting, but didn’t excuse the snooze that had preceded them.

Stage direction was nonexistent, with park and bark scenes and indulgence in semaphoric gestures of the worst sort (“O Ciel’!” proclaims Raimondo, raising both hands towards the sky). Eijiro Kai has a solid, gravely, somewhat forced-sounding baritone, and was a stiff Enrico with little shading or expression. Protagonists Annick Massis as Lucia and Piotr Beczala as Edgardo are both experienced exponents of their roles and made much more of them than the rest of the cast. Unfortunately they had the chemistry and affection of two people who met that afternoon in the standing room line, but you can’t have everything.

Massis’s Lucia was delicate and neurotic, her incipient madness clear from her first entrance. Her characterization was detailed and natural, but unfortunately her small, colorless voice didn’t make nearly as good an impression. Her sound is thin and quavery, and she was often lost under the orchestra or in ensembles. Her ornamentation and acuti were good, though Campanella’s tempo in “Quando, rapito in estasi” was tortuously slow. But she pulled out all her stops for the mad scene, for which I suspect she had been saving her voice (and the orchestration is lighter), with more sound and creative, involving acting (including stepping off the main set to the very edge of the stage, almost literally leaving the world behind). The coloratura was perfectly accurate and the high Es, with the exception of the final one, secure. I’m not sure if she quite deserved the extent of the rapturous ovation she got, but in comparison to what had preceded the scene, it was understandable.

Beczala was said (unofficially) to be recovering from something or other and sounded off his best, singing with a reduced dynamic range of loud, loud, and loud, with a somewhat congested tone and strain on the high notes. His Edgardo is filled with conventionally gallant acting details. While this doesn’t quite create a rounded character, it beats standing still. Supporting characters were OK. The chorus sounded really good, I can say that.

Boleslaw Barlog’s ancient production begins with a few shabby, wrinkly drops that nonetheless necessitate 5-minute half-light scene changes every 20 minutes. (With 18th-century stage technology, they could have switched out those suckers in 15 seconds.) The Staatsoper understandably declines to provide photos of any of these sets on their website–the only photo they have that isn’t horribly blurry is the one above. In the first scene, a background painting of a wild forest is augmented solely with a mysterious tree stump kindly placed on the center-left hot spot, so Normanno can be both seen and heard. Things improve a bit when we go indoors, with some moderately impressive paneled rooms (pictured). Oh, and Edgardo’s avi miei are buried in some sort of crypt (again, the pallbearers were considerate enough to set Lucia’s corpse down right next to the center-stage right hot spot, so Edgardo could off himself in acoustic favorability). The costumes are also drab, and Massis was swimming around in a nightie that could have fit Joan Sutherland. Come to think of it, it probably did.

Also, there were bows after every scene. Not every act, every scene. Strange reception at the end: extremely enthusiastic but very brief applause. Vienna’s not the place of the Gesamtkunstwerk, though, and people are very willing to overlook massive deficiencies in some areas if there’s something they like elsewhere in the performance. I’d prefer something that shows a group effort. This wasn’t exactly my night. Take me back to Germany, please.

Next: I got some Schenk wrapping-up to do, and am braving a return to the Philharmoniker tonight for Jansons and Shostakovich and Berlioz.

Bows:

Review

Der Rosenkavalier in Stuttgart: Ist ein Traum…

January 14, 2011 4 Comments

The Marschallin of Stefan Herheim’s virtuosic Staatsoper Stuttgart Rosenkavalier is a sad woman with a lot on her mind. In her unconscious, she struggles between restraint and abandon, the ugliness of reality and the lush comfort of backwards-looking art. Backwards-looking art? Yes, this is a deconstructive production. But while Herheim doesn’t let Strauss off the hook for his sentimentality and conservatism, he also creates something with genuine beauty in the big moments and wit in the small ones. If it sounds overstuffed, well, it is, but so is the opera.

Review

Die Fledermaus in Stuttgart: Old Champagne in new bottles

January 11, 2011 No Comments

Time for the laced-up bourgeoisie to take another field trip into the wild forest of their collective id. Like any self-respecting piece of provocation, Philipp Stölzl’s Staatsoper Stuttgart Fledermaus is equipped with an orgy in Act 2 and a set that turns upside down, as well as that obligatory dark forest. But under the fancy dress–or rather undress–there’s a lot of traditional Fledermaus schtick struggling to get out. The concept might be superficial and none too original, but it’s visually nifty and that traditional Fledermaus is not bad at all.

Strauß, Die Fledermaus, version adapted by Philipp Stölzl and Xaver Zuber. Staatsoper Stuttgart, 1/8/2011. Production by Philipp Stölzl with sets by Stölzl and Conrad Reinhard, costumes by Ursula Kudra, lights by Volker von Schwanenflügel, choreography by Mara Kurotschka. Conducted by Timo Handschuh with Paul Armin Edelmann (Eisenstein), Adriane Queiroz (Rosalinde), Franziska Gottwald (Orlofsky), Robin Johannsen (Adele), César Gutiérrez (Alfred), Miljenko Turk (Falke) Georg Reiter (Frosch).

Stölzl’s production features a frame narrative in spoken dialogue. Appearing downstage is the aforementioned wild forest, realm of primal stuff and of Prinz Orlofsky, an androgynous raver in blond pigtails, tiny Lady Gaga-esque top hat, and silver tutu. At the beginning of the show, Orlofsky is hanging with sidekick Frosch, an old (judging by accent) Austrian man in Lederhosen. Frosch is the spirit of folk humor, Orlofsky of modern debauchery, and together they watch some tired strippers cavort. But with such hard partying comes ennui. “When was the last time I laughed?” Orlowsky asks. Of course the only solution is to again tell the story of the Fledermaus.

Behind the forest is a white box representing a 19th-century room, where Act 1 begins. Rosalinde is already having an affair with Alfred, but other than that it is an astonishingly by-the-book staging, in pale, mostly monochromic period dress. It even shows some amazing similarities in blocking with Otto Schenk’s Wiener Staatsoper production (the dancing happens in exactly the same places, and I suppose there is no other option but for Eisenstein and Falke to link arms and skip around in circles during the “La la la la” coda of their duet).

In Act 2, the (here masked) ball provides a space for the characters to let out their repressed inner urges, which means more cavorting with strippers (Ida and her ballet colleagues). The upstage room first appears upside down, the chandelier emerging from the floor and the chairs stuck to the ceiling. Then, during Rosalinde and Eisenstein’s duet, it begins to literally spin around to right itself, then back to upside down, slowly but constantly, giving space for a unusual Unter Donner und Blitz by the strippers (probably more accurately called burlesque dancers?). Whatever could this upside down world mean? It’s not like the servants are the masters and the masters are the servants or anything! Or like it is spinning through a duet about a clock! Or like there are waltzes in this work! But despite the heavy-handedness, it’s a pretty nifty visual and technical trick.

In Act 3, the room is skewed on its side, and the furniture has submitted to gravity, piling up in fragments on the bottom. Frosch turns into a Falstaffian drunken philosopher, the chiming-at-midnight grandfather clock has spilled into the forest, and it is Alfred and Eisenstein’s cell (imprisoned in a symbol of bourgeois regularity, natch). Yes, this was my second non-literal prison in an opera staging in a week. Here, prison is having to deal with the consequences of your id in the next morning’s daylight, though the stakes don’t seem to be too dire. Blame the champagne.

While a decent concept, with good images, it remains generalized and superficial, more the product of someone who has read some Freud and Schnitzler and maybe seen Eyes Wide Shut a few times than put in any real thought about Fledermaus–or at least about Fledermaus as a text rather than as a symbol. Something similar but far more potent and brutal was done by Hans Neuenfels in his 2001 Salzburg Festival production (which is available on DVD). Except Orlofsky, Stölzl’s characters don’t acquire much in the way of individual profiles. But while it isn’t revelatory, the direction is sharp, the interaction between the characters engaging, and the balance between dark comedy and parody rather good. The evening passed quickly and entertainingly, and while it might be Schenk-ish with a facelift and a frame narrative, it works.

Musical values were good. Unfortunately, the set seemed to be doing weird acoustic things (I’m not sure, because this was my first time in this theater), and all the singing and talking from the upstage center room sounded echo-ey and unclear. It also must have reflected sound, because everything was very very loud. While the orchestra has nothing like sheen or brilliance of Vienna’s, Timo Handschuh led a well-differentiated performance with lots of detail and good ensemble.

The cast did an excellent job maintaining the tone, which was far more consistent and defined than the Vienna production I saw last week. Singing was universally good, though the words from most of the female cast members were incomprehensible–I’m not sure if iffy German or the acoustic was at fault here. Paul Armin Edelmann made a suitably middle class, solidly sung Eisenstein (and the only member who sounded Viennese), Adriane Quieroz sang Rosalinde with smoky tone and very good coloratura, and Franziska Gottwald sang Orlofsky with dark tone and mopey acting. Standouts were Robin Johannsen’s impeccably accurate Adele, and César Gutiérrez’s boisterous, overflowing Alfred, a virtuosic piece of tenor parody in both voice and acting.

Orlofsky was laughing by the end, at least. I was somewhat less. It’s a refreshingly unfusty production, but I wish it had dug a little deeper.

Speaking of digging, I have some (OK, a lot of) words about Herheim’s Rosenkavalier, also from Stuttgart, that I will hopefully be able to post soon.

Photos copyright Martin Sigmund/Staatsoper Stuttgart

Video:

Review

Fidelio in Munich: Led to freedom

January 8, 2011 7 Comments

Of all composers, it’s Beethoven who we think we understand. The greatest achievement of Calixto Bieito and Daniele Gatti’s strange Bayerische Staatsoper Fidelio is how it disrupts our expectations and banishes calcified certainty and cliché. The prison exists only in the minds of the alienated characters, and Leonore finds that freeing her husband isn’t quite as simple as finding him and dressing him in a suit. The production’s fragmented dreaminess and vaguely unfinished quality can be frustrating, but its handful of revelatory moments and wonderful performances add up to a powerful experience.

Beethoven, Fidelio. Bayerische Staatsoper, 1/5/2010. New production by Calixto Bieito, sets by Rebecca Ringst, costumes by Ingo Krügler, lights by Reinhard Traub. Conducted by Daniele Gatti with Anja Kampe (Leonore), Jonas Kaufmann (Florestan), Franz-Josef Selig (Rocco), Wolfgang Koch (Don Pizarro), Laura Tatulescu (Marzelline), Jussi Myllys (Jaquino), LazArt Quartett.

Sit back, guys, this one is going to take a good amount of space. Also, I again had a restricted-view seat, and the chance I missed something important is pretty good, alas.

This production does not take place in a literal prison. The set is a shifting maze of glass and metal, in the first act a vertical structure of floors and ladders and, in Florestan’s cell, a horizontal one of hallways. Each character is a captive of this strikingly beautiful Borgesian labyrinth, each inside their own private mental prisons, alienated by the proverbial Modern Condition. Each has an obsession that prevents them from reaching the labyrinth’s center and the freedom found there. It’s a Bildungsroman for the Cormac McCarthy set.

Before the overture, Leonore opens the opera by reciting a Jorge Luis Borges poem. Here it is in English (it’s from In Praise of Darkness). Maybe the labyrinth doesn’t have a center at all; whether there is any escape is a key issue of the production:

Labyrinth
There’ll never be a door. You’re inside
and the keep encompasses the world
and has neither obverse nor reverse
nor circling wall nor secret center.
Hope not that the straightness of your path
that stubbornly branches off in two,
that stubbornly branches off in two,
will have an end. Your fate is ironbound,
as is your judge. Forget the onslaught
of the bull that is a man and whose
strange and plural form haunts the tangle
of unending interwoven stone.
He does not exist. In the black dusk,
hope not even for the savage beast.

The overture that follows is not the Fidelio but full-blown Leonore No. 3, here given a schizophrenically dissociated performance by Gatti, moving between Zen-like waves of crescendos and decrescendos and frantically fast sections. Onstage, Leonore takes off her shirt and binds her breasts. This is important: it is the denial of her sexuality and single-minded need to find Florestan that prevents her from escaping the labyrinth, not the lack of Florestan himself. (Giving the woman her own purpose in life, what a concept!)

Bieito has eliminated the spoken text almost entirely and inserted short quotations from Borges and McCarthy in its place. But they do not serve remotely the same function; most are some variation on “I am trapped in the labyrinth,” offering a few moments of spoken interlude between the musical numbers. The series of musical numbers does not present us with the plot but the various characters’ more or less independent psychological prisons, all products of the constraints of modern society. Rocco wants money. Marzelline wants sex, and Jaquino is, as could be expected, a rapist. Don Pizarro wants power. Leonore, determined and capable but denied a full life, struggles with literal ropes attached to the labyrinth in “Komm, Hoffnung.” In the Prisoners’ Chorus she puts pictures of Florestan’s face on the scattered prisoners, as if that would transform these momentarily free men into her husband and thus free herself. When some bits of the plot intrude into the sung texts it is as if they are fragments from some other world.

The first act exists entirely in this kind of timeless abstraction; in the second the labyrinth is lowered to a horizontal position and we disconcertingly enter the world of characters and events (we also acquire a number of hanging acrobats who descend from the flies, symbolizing floating freedom and such). What exactly is wrong with Florestan is unclear (perhaps mental illness, perhaps resigned into an exceptionally bad case of modernist alienation), but despite his vision of Leonore and attempts to climb out of the labyrinth, he is mentally elsewhere and scared of anyone who comes near him. Leonore dispatches Pizarro with both a bottle of water smashed over the head and acid thrown in his eyes.

The marital reunion begins euphorically, and Leonore ditches her man clothes for a dress and Florestan his asylum-like pajamas for a suit, but after “O namenlose Freude” they draw away from each other, Florestan unsure of leaving and Leonore not sure who this is that she has finally found. Then, where Mahler and Bernstein put Leonore No. 3, a string quartet descends from above and plays an excerpt from the slow movement of the Op. 132 string quartet, the Heiliger Dankgesang (only the molto adagio, not the “feeling new strength“ section). It’s a moment of perfect peace and stillness, and the hanging musicians seem to represent the consolatory, freeing, yet abstract power of art (cue Beethoven biography reference, and the program includes the text of the Heiligenstadt Testament). And yet it is only a momentary respite.

The finale confused me a bit. Don Fernando arrives in the personage of the Joker from The Dark Knight (some other parts of this production kind of recall Inception–I suspect that Bieito is a big Christopher Nolan fan), a deus ex machina who enters from the audience. He proceeds to shoot Florestan. While he does not remain dead onstage, I think he actually does die. Because the utopia of the finale is a freedom that can’t exist (especially when you’re in a Calixto Bieito production), and considering Florestan’s mental state, he isn’t going to be able to piece his life together again in this world, wife or no wife. The only release for him is death. The rejoicing of the reunion continues in some other space. But what does this mean for Leonore?

This is my biggest problem with the production: the characters exist in such isolation from each other. I think it may be too abstract for me; I miss having a plot and real characters instead of symbols of a vague existential struggle, and it was only during the more concrete action of the second act where I was fascinated (as evidenced by my descriptions–I really thought the treatment of the reunion was brilliant). The first half of Fidelio is inevitably a dramaturgical challenge, but this solution seems weirdly lacking in ideas, almost incomplete. And I missed the good old struggle for justice, however naive it might be. I guess I’m sentimental.

But the best thing about this production is how unnaive and unsentimental it is, how it expresses the power and desire of Beethoven’s score without lapsing into cliché. As intendant Nikolaus Bachler said at the post-show discussion, “The curtain goes up and there’s ironing! Always ironing!” But beyond avoiding ritual staging, Bieito expresses the central theme of freedom while pretty much destroying any comfortable historicist paean. He avoids the ideological truisms of black and white truth and Western idealism that are attached to Beethoven and this work in favor of something more unique and intensely personal. (My problem with most Beethoven presentations is encapsulated in the subtitle of Edmund Morgan’s Beethoven biography, The Universal Composer, a phrase that presents so many cultural problems that I don’t even know where to start. Bieito is an antidote to this.) It might be neither fuzzily inspirational nor coherent, but it has many other virtues, and its freshness and complexity are definitely some of them.

Musically, Daniele Gatti seemed like almost the right conductor for this production. He is willfully strange, with weirdly slow tempos and unexpected shifts, sometimes overwhelming the singers and sometimes lacking in coordination and rhythmic crispness (from the stage, this could have had to do with the production). But the static quality and unexpected twists seemed to fit with a production this unconventional, and his strange waves of music certainly sounded alien. The orchestra, particularly the strings, sounded very good, though occasionally a little bewildered.

Anja Kampe made a tremendously badass Leonore. Her large, rich voice sometimes struggled through Beethoven’s murderous vocal writing and Gatti’s slow tempo in the first half of her aria. But her singing was expressive and heroic throughout, and her giant high Bs ideal for this role. She acted with remarkable sincerity through the considerable demands of the production, and her naturalness and honesty provided most of its soul. Jonas Kaufmann navigated the terrors of the aria with great dramatic eloquence, including a daring crescendo at the beginning and a trumpeting ending with strong high notes. And his vaguely autistic, tic-ridden Florestan was a formidable piece of acting. But after the aria he sounded under the weather, and sometimes was drowned out in the ensembles. (This was his return to the production after several illness-related cancelations, and he coughed several times mid-aria. Hilariously, half the audience immediately broke out in sympathy coughs.) Laura Tatulescu and Jussi Mylls were animated as Marzelline and Jaquino, both singing with clarity through their considerable acrobatics. Wolfgang Koch made an oddly soft-grained Pizarro. Franz-Josef Selig was an excellently sung Rocco with robust, round tone. As usual in a Bieito production, the acting and commitment from the cast was across-the-board great.

I found parts of this production massively frustrating, but there is more of it that will stick with me. And, as you can see by the amount of words it took me to explain my thoughts about it, it certainly gave me something to think about. As much as I love the triumph of justice, it’s going to be a little tricky to go innocently back to the ironing after this.

All photos copyright Bayerische Staatsoper.
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Documentary (10 minutes):

Review

L’elisir d’amore: Punch-drunk love

January 6, 2011 4 Comments

If you’ve ever gazed upon a stage full of picturesque Italian peasants and thought, “This would be so much better if it looked like something out of Brazil!” then have I got an Elisir d’amore for you, directed by David Bösch at the Bayerische Staatsoper. Life in Nemorino and Adina’s post-apocalyptic village isn’t easy, what with the bombed-out looking landscape, rapey soldiers, and shortage of furniture. But, like the chorus with their pathetic little watering cans, they learn how to find love under difficult circumstances. The results are fabulous.

And your blogger does her best to appreciate the musical assets of Joseph Calleja’s Nemorino under some trying conditions.

Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore. Bayerische Staatsoper, 1/3/2011. Production by David Bösch, conducted by Justin Brown with Joseph Calleja (Nemorino), Laura Tatelescu (Adina), Nikolay Borchev (Belcore), Alessandro Corbelli (Dulcamara), Tara Erraught (Giannetta)

Adina and Belcore.
Note that all photos show premiere cast, not the cast I saw.

The set is at first a desert adorned only with a chair and umbrella (Adina’s) and a lamppost with a phone on it. Despite some quite spectacular effects (some using old-fashioned means like glitter and balloons), the production’s focus is on the characters. We first meet Giannetta, whose role is greatly expanded in this production into a nerdy teenage busybody in awkward glasses and a dirty wedding dress, who constantly hangs on Nemorino (who never notices that she has a giant crush on him). He’s a dork himself (though here neither stupid nor idiotic), and the elegant, literate Adina seems totally out of his league. Belcore and his soldiers are senseless brutes who rape and pillage, and his relationship with Adina never seems quite consensual. While Adina usually is played as a manipulative bitch who needs to learn to be nice, here Nemorino and Adina go through the same journey: they must learn to defy conventions, Nemorino by refusing the macho world of the army and Adina by learning to tell a man that no means no. This change was appreciated by me!

Dulcamara arrives in a gigantic spaceship/something that glows, shoots sparks, lets off smoke, and has twirly bits sticking out all over the place (see top of post). In the words of the program, he comes as a god to the village, one bringing the dream of consumerism (I love German programs! this one also indulges in a close reading of the gondola girl song!). The machine’s approach was the first time I ever found the excitement of the chorus greeting Dulcamara to be merited. The elixir itself comes in a giant tank with a hose of the sort you use to spray insecticide. The production is full of details like this, and confetti, and the treatment of Giannetta, but it balances this silly stuff with close attention to the protagonists and the darkness of the setting itself. The desolate atmosphere adds surprising poignancy: these people are really struggling to find happiness under difficult circumstances. Trust the Germans to make L’elisir d’amore depressing, I know. But I found it touching.

This production premiered around a year ago with an almost entirely different cast (original Adina Nino Machiadze sang earlier performances in this run). The spirit was not quite aligned this time around, and sometimes it read like a very ordinary Elisir on inventive sets. Not that there’s anything really wrong with that, but I suspect that the original cast was able to find a more distinctive tone and more comic details. The big set pieces, including Nemorino’s now-infamous striptease with the women’s chorus, were the best moments, but the less tinkered-with scenes were not nearly as interesting (also, note to tenors: you may think black underwear looks more flattering, but it makes you look like you’re wearing a 1920’s swimsuit).

As Nemorino, Joseph Calleja (not pictured) sang with effortless sweetness and his instantly recognizable timbre, a light, bright lyric tenor with a fast and narrow vibrato. It sounds lovely and he knows how to sing with style and feeling, but I found his Nemorino underplayed and not integrated into the production. He was sympathetic, straightforward, and I kind of like a Nemorino who has two brain cells to rub together, but this production seems to demand someone with more personality and presence onstage. The “Una furtive lagrima” was the most beautiful of my recent hearings, though not the most intense. One of the most famed moments of this production in its original iteration was Nemorino singing the aria from halfway up the set’s lamppost, but Calleja did not do this at this performance. I didn’t mind, and his release of a bunch of balloons into the flies during the final bars was a nice touch.

Laura Tatulescu (also not pictured) has a light, focused voice with plenty of carrying power, and made a sympathetic, rather passive Adina. Unfortunately, after a solid evening she came to considerable grief in the aria at the end of the opera, running out of breath and cutting off the usual fermatas, racing through cadenzas, and singing no acuti at all. I’m not sure what happened because the rest of her performance was good. Alessandro Corbelli as Dulcamara was not in best voice either, sounding blustery and approximate, and did not make as much of the comedy as I think could have been done, especially considering that Dulcamara emerges from his machine wearing a spacesuit. As Belcore, Nikolay Borchev showed barihunk qualities of swaggering acting and perfectly acceptable if not very memorable singing.

There must be something on the cover of the Elisir d’amore orchestral score that reads “This Score May Only Be Conducted Very, Very Poorly.” This was the worst-conducted performance I have heard since Elisir in Vienna in October. The orchestra sounded heavy and uncoordinated, and stage/pit relations were hostile. In the arias, the conductor more or less followed the singers, but ensembles proved a trial. Tempo changes were nail-biters. While star conducting isn’t exactly necessary for a solid Elisir, something this bad always gets in the way.

Schenk/Anti-Schenk: On December 21, I saw Otto Schenk’s Wiener Staatsoper production of this opera. Both it and this were repertory performances with non-premiere casts and showed signs of limited rehearsal. Schenk’s production emphasizes the preciousness of the story, making both protagonists childish, the peasants very tidy and cute, and the events always light. Bösch’s production has wildly creative visuals that interpret the story with much greater complexity, and the production has a whole featured a much more interesting mix of darkness and comedy. And the characters, even in minimally rehearsed form, seemed to grow a lot more. I found it a much more involving and emotional experience. Given the choice I’d pick Bösch’s fun-house in a second.

Photos copyright Bayerische Staatsoper.

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Review

Die Fledermaus: Bring your own fizz

January 2, 2011 1 Comment

Appreciation of the Wiener Staatsoper’s ritual New Year’s Fledermaus depends on your appreciation of Viennese rituals in general, of jokes about current Austrian politics in particular, of the simple joy of watching a tenor fall on his ass, and most of all on the amount of Champagne you have drunk. I missed the legendary special-guests New Year’s Eve showing (this year: Netrebko and Schrott) and went to the hangover special the next day instead. Once you get past the sociological aspects, this was a mostly first-rate cast threading their way through the greasy cogs of an ancient schticky Otto Schenk production with varying degrees of aplomb. Not bad, but magic only in a Viennese imagination.

Johann Strauss, Die Fledermaus. Wiener Staatsoper, 1/1/2011. Production by Otto Schenk, conducted by Patrick Lange with Markus Werba (Eisenstein), Camilla Nylund (Rosalinde), Angelika Kirchschlager (Prinz Orlofsky), Michael Schade (Alfred), Daniela Fally (Adele), Adrian Eröd (Falke), Helmuth Lohner (Frosch)

The sets and the tragic hair on the heads of the women suggest that this Otto Schenk production dates from the mid- to late-1970’s. It’s impressively lavish but rather cluttered and visually speaking strictly by-the-book realist (documented on this 1980 DVD with Gruberova, Popp, and Weikl). The turntable that took us to Prinz Orlowsky’s dining room got applauded, which tells you all you need to know. The direction features quite a lot of silly choreography in the ensemble numbers. But this two-performance run did not seem to be well-rehearsed, and this kind of thing requires very good ensemble timing to pull off with flair. The dramatic beats were signposted and underlined by the cast as they all tried to get into position for the next moment, and interaction was minimal. It seemed more sketched than realized, and some moments, like the Unter Donner und Blitz ballet, were just clumsy. This is too bad, because most of the cast was excellent and I’m sure they could have had an outstanding Fledermaus in them, even in this dated production. When they were able to loosen up in their solo moments, they were universally better.

Fally, Werba, and Nylund

Unfortunately the cast had a weakness at its center, and that was Markus Werba’s Eisenstein. This seemed to be a case of a Leporello being cast as Don Giovanni: too young, not sufficiently bourgeois, and vocally not authoritative. He was completely overshadowed by Adrian Eröd’s arch and polished Dr. Falke, probably the best overall role portrait of the evening (does he sing Eisenstein? also, nice handstand). Almost as good was Daniela Fally’s Adele. Unlike her Sophie of last week, her singing was precise, light, and full of humor, and her acting again very good (spoken with what sounded to me like credible Viennese dialect). Angelika Kirchschlager’s Orlowsky was similarly accomplished, with some of the best singing of the evening and appropriately off-kilter acting in this unfortunately short role. Alfred Sramek was similarly amiable as Frank, particularly in the third act’s drunken extravaganza.

Camille Nylund has a large voice for Rosalinde, but navigated the acrobatics quite well, though the end of the Csardas was not her best moment. While a good actress, she did not have quite the touch for comedy as some of the rest of the cast, and emerged as the straight woman of the production. Michael Schade as Alfred was willingly the simple buffoon, with gleefully parodic singing, many pratfalls, and tenorial in-jokes and references (I believe these are attached to the production rather than him, but I counted La Bohème, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Die Walküre, and Fidelio, I’m probably forgetting a few).

Particularly in Vienna, Act 3 of Fledermaus is a drawn-out affair, with sparse music and plot development and lots of unrelated stand-up comedy (much of which is not explained in the English titles, by the way). Last night our Frosch was veteran actor Helmuth Lohner, and while I could understand almost all of what he was saying, my grasp of current Austrian politics was not sufficient to appreciate many of the jokes. While drunken physical comedy doesn’t depend on cultural knowledge, I still thought it was far too long, and I wanted to return to the plot.

I’m still sad they cut Murray the Comic Canadian in Act 2, though. (I realize that everyone does this, but come on, guys, he’s a comic Canadian! Michael Schade could do it, Alfred isn’t in Act 2!)

Up-and-coming stick-waver Patrick Lange boasts an impressive head of Conductor Hair but led unobtrusively, and while his account was well-judged and phrased, it lacked the headlong rush and brilliance this opera can reach. I appreciated that he was not a young conductor speed demon, but it could have been more exciting. The post-Neujahrskonzert orchestra sounded suitably sparkling in the overture and perfectly fine elsewhere (though it was more Donner and less Blitz in the ballet). Strings better than the occasionally bumpy winds, as usual.

Had things managed to gel a little better, this could have been an outstanding performance, but it was something less than the sum of its parts. Alas, such is the repertory norm.

This post concludes for now my survey of Otto Schenk at the Wiener Staatsoper; soon I will turn to productions of these same operas by some modern enfants terribles (some not so jeunes) for comparison. I am posting from Munich, where I just saw Claus Guth’s brain-teaser of a Luisa Miller at the Bayerische Staatsoper. It required more thought than all the Otto Schenk productions put together. I didn’t like everything about it but it felt like a giant relief to have something to chew on after all this literalism. Singing was also excellent. Turntable used a lot but not applauded once. No Schenk comparison for this one but I didn’t want to skip it. More on all of this in coming days.