June 2011 – Likely Impossibilities

Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos in Amsterdam

June 22, 2011 No Comments

While in Amsterdam, I went to Wolfgang Rihm’s Dionysos and wrote about it for Bachtrack, and you can read it here.

This was tricky to write. It was a stellar performance of an excellent production of an opera with stunning music… and a libretto that I strongly disliked. I’m glad I saw it–I always like seeing something new to me, and the music really was good–but I personally had misgivings. Just not my style. And not just because I am suspicious of any work where the women consistently wear so much less clothing than the men. (That’s a bad indicator, though.)

The Gashouder, however, is a very impressive space. It’s a giant old gas storage tank located in the Westergasfabriek, a former factory complex in the northwest part of town that now hosts performance spaces, galleries, restaurants, that kind of thing. I wish I’d gotten a chance to look around a little more, but, as you can see, it was raining (this is a frequent problem in the Netherlands).

Production photo © Ruth Walz

Review

Otello at the Opéra Bastille

June 16, 2011 10 Comments

I’m in Paris! And I went to Otello at the Opéra Bastille with Renée Fleming and Aleksandrs Antonenko, and I wrote about it for Bachtrack. You can read it here! Surprise: La Fleming was great. Not a surprise: Marco Armiliato was boring.

One thing I didn’t mention in the review: while doing her death throes, Fleming slid off the bed and her nightgown began to head north. She managed to push it down in a relatively natural-looking way before we saw her knees. That’s some stage experience.

This was my first visit to the modern and giant Opéra Bastille, and I kind of hated it. It’s an airport with good acoustics, astonishingly cavernous and soulless. I was expecting something like the Deutsche Oper Berlin but bigger, but it is so much worse. But once the opera starts you stop noticing, and the sight lines and acoustics are excellent. And the seats are very comfortable.

The same can not be said of the Théatre des Champs-Elysées, where I saw Idomeneo last night. It is a pretty theater with, from where I was sitting, bad sight lines and problematic acoustics. More on that in a bit. The Idomeneo, not the sight lines and the acoustics, that is.

Review

Boulez and Barenboim, BFF

June 9, 2011 1 Comment

Last Sunday the Staatskapelle Berlin visited the Musikverein with Pierre Boulez conducting and their music director Daniel Barenboim doing piano duty with both Liszt concertos, along with some piano-less Wagner works. I should say right off that at this concert I had the unusual experience of being plucked from the hellishly crowded standing room and moved to stage seating behind the basses. The acoustic made me feel like I was playing the orchestra myself (my instrument hangs out in the back) but particularly for the piano in the concertos the balance was strange and unblended, so I’m not sure I should be writing this review at all and I’m going to keep it short. Watching Boulez was fun, though–when I could see him (basses are big!). It was interesting but I’m not sure if I would choose stage seating again.

For someone who spends most of his time conducting and saving the world, Barenboim’s piano skills are in amazing shape, at least as evidenced by his performance of the second concerto (which he played first). Nonetheless, those looking for sheer virtuosity were probably better off with Lang Lang’s Philharmoniker Liszt program earlier the same weekend; Barenboim did not seem interested in superficial flashiness. He was most memorable in the chamber music sensitivity he brought to the quieter passages, where he worked admirably closely with the orchestral soloists. More than a few spots in the E-flat Concerto were approximate, and at one point he came in a few beats early. But between them Barenboim and Boulez made these (in my opinion) kind of annoying concertos sound better and more substantial than they deserve.

The rest of the program consisted of two instrumental works by Wagner: the early Faust Overture and the Siegfried Idyll. Both were vintage Boulez, spotlessly precise, lean, restrained, and transparent. The Faust Overture sounds more like Weber or Meyerbeer than mature Wagner, and isn’t the kind of repertoire I associate with Boulez at all, but I found Boulez’s cool approach surprisingly exciting. The Siegfried Idyll was just beautiful (and since I’ve played it a few times a little strange to experience from the orchestra’s sound perspective). The orchestra sounded even better than their already-excellent Chaikovsky under Barenboim last February.

Staatskappelle Berlin; Pierre Boulez, conductor; Daniel Barenboim, piano. Musikverein, 6/5/2011. Program: Liszt, Piano Concertos Nos. 1 and 2; Wagner, Siegfried Idyll and Faust Overture

Review

Yevgeny Onegin: Love in a cold climate

June 8, 2011 2 Comments

There’s a chance that this was my last rep performance at the Staatsoper this season, so it’s a shame I have to go out on a mediocre note. This revival of Falk Richter’s dire production is notable and perhaps worth seeing for Peter Mattei’s stellar assumption of the title role. But this isn’t really a star vehicle opera. I guess some people can overlook the incoherence in rest of it more easily than I can, but I didn’t find it a satisfying experience. Maija Kovalevska’s Tatiana isn’t that bad, though.

Chaikovsky, Eugen Onegin. Wiener Staatsoper, 6/11/2011. Production by Falk Richter (revival), conducted by Michael Güttler with Maija Kovalevska (Tatiana), Peter Mattei (Onegin), Marius Benciu (Lensky), Ain Anger (Gremin), Nadia Krasteva (Olga), Zoryana Kushpler (Larina), Aura Twarowska (Filipjewna).

Falk Richter’s production is a grab bag of clichés that come and go. The one constant is an awful lot of falling snow in nearly every scene. Dress is modern, set is minimal, and blocking is static. Color symbolism, imaginary characters and doublings, and really annoying acrobats are combined into a static, chilly mix that shows little interest in the story and characters, or any sensitivity to the music at all. At first, we see doubles of Tatiana with a mystery man as frozen couples in the background, and the happy peasants also seem to belong to her fantasy world, identifiably by its, um, romantic navy blue business suits. The more practical characters wear red. If anyone wants to make this red mean something obviously significant and Communist, I would first caution you that this production doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Russia at all. The blue plus red plus white snow does look like a Russian flag, though (after my Italian flag the other week). Also, he forgets about all this after Act 1.

Letter Scene

Act 2 features a truly dreadful party scene that includes awkwardly enthusiastic attempts at current dance styles by the chorus, further flips by said acrobats, and, because we’re in Austria, some people in puffy shiny dresses waltzing (Tatiana incongruously wearing diva-approved long sleeves). I kind of liked Monsieur Triquet as a faded rock star, but like everything else he doesn’t have a point. Act 3 involves lots of people in black walking up and down stairs quite slowly. I was hoping Tatiana or Onegin would rip off her bedazzled shower cap, but they didn’t. That would have made everything a little more exciting and less Norma Desmond-looking. I could go on, but I’ll try not to, because the main sin of this production is that it is not interesting. The lighting design is also far too dark at times, including a Letter Scene that while not too dark is lit entirely from the back (see above), the lack of front light means you can’t see Tatiana’s face clearly. OK, I’ll stop.

For two lead singers, both new to this production and in fact making their house debuts, the staging offered little help in terms of characterization, and while both showed good acting skills they ended up a little underdeveloped and generic. Maija Kovalevska cuts a pretty figure as Tatiana and is a good actress, within the unfortunate strictures of this production. I never warmed to her metallic, tense sound and fast vibrato, but her singing was musical and rock solid secure, and she can manage impressive power in her upper register. On the other hand, Peter Mattei is seemingly incapable of making a less than beautiful sound, with a chocolately baritone that he never forces (his voice is not large but it is well-projected). His Onegin went on a clear journey from arrogance (Act 1) to boredom (Act 2) to despondency (Act 3), but I think he was much better in this Salzburg production available on DVD.

Act 3

Michael Güttler conducted a rushed account of the prelude followed by an ensemble in which the sisters’ offstage singing had little to do with whatever the harp was playing in the pit. It got a little better. Being too tough on Güttler would be cruel since he probably didn’t get any rehearsal, but this was not good and the orchestra was not trying very hard. In the rest of the cast, Marius Brenciu was a thin-toned, underacted Lensky, though his pp account of the aria’s second strophe was nice. Ain Anger is the youngest and least crusty Gremin this side of René Pape and sang lyrically and not so giant Russian-ly but well. As Olga, Madame Larina, and Filipjewa, Nadia Krasteva, Zoryana Kushpler, and Aura Twarowska showed that the Staatsoper ensemble has a smashing group of Slavic mezzos and altos, all three of them outstanding. Somewhere there’s got to be an opera by Cui or Dargomyzhsky or somebody that has three lading mezzo/alto roles for these impressive ladies.

If you want to go hear them in Onegin, well, you can do that too. Performances remain on June 10 and 13.

Video: Peter Mattei in said Salzburg production