Review

La traviata: Death on a summer night

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My last
night at the Munich Opera Festival ended happily. Elusive Anja Harteros
canceled her first Traviata, but she
showed up for this one, her second. The other two leads, Ramon Vargas and Simon
Keenlyside, both sounded the best I’ve heard them sing in ages, and the three work
together beautifully: not exactly Italian, but dramatically sensitive and musically
stylish in a way that made for a moving performance. The production is tired
and the conducting was unfortunate, but with Traviata the cast can get you a long way.

Verdi, La Traviata. Bayerische Staatsoper, 7/31/2012.
Musikalische Leitung Omer Meir Wellber
Inszenierung Günter Krämer
Bühne Andreas Reinhardt
Kostüme Carlo Diappi
Licht Wolfgang Göbbel


Violetta Valéry Anja Harteros
Flora Bervoix Heike Grötzinger
Annina Tara Erraught
Alfredo Germont Ramón Vargas
Giorgio Germont Simon Keenlyside
Gaston Francesco Petrozzi
Baron Douphol Christian Rieger
Marquis d’Obigny Tareq Nazmi
Doktor Grenvil Christoph Stephinger
Giuseppe Dean Power
Ein Diener Floras Tim Kuypers
Ein Gärtner Peter Mazalán
Alfredos Schwester Demet Gül

This
production leaves no corners uncut, with vague minimalist settings that either
confuse or just don’t do anything (Act 1 features lots of doors, Act 2 a
children’s playground?). The setting is black-and-white (except Violetta’s red flower) Belle Epoque, with the ladies of the chorus wearing beaded shower
caps and the gentlemen in penguin suits. Act 1 features an inexplicable
multiplicity of conga lines. Sometimes the economy hurts—the ballet consists of
nothing more than the chorus gently bobbing up and down on the beat—but for the
most part it is just an absence. Act 2 Scene 1 features a visit from Alfredo’s
sister, but another problem is that the production keeps the action largely
confined to small areas of the stage. This is fatal in a theater with such poor
sightlines, and I saw almost nothing for this entire scene. I suspect the
people on the other side of the theater saw almost nothing in Act 3, but that’s
not the way to balance it out. Given some decisive Personenregie it might not
be too bad, as it is now it left the singers to their own devices.
Regal Anja
Harteros is a Violetta that anyone could take home to their parents. (I have
seen her sing the role once before, at the Met in 2008. I thought she was
better tonight, and the rest of the cast infinitely better.) As Act 1’s party
girl she doesn’t really convince, though the production has her do nothing more
debauched than twirl around some champagne glasses. In Act 2 her poise and
majesty is of a degree that would certainly impress Germont, but collapses into
a vulnerability that is very touching. She hadn’t shown many signs of weakness
in the first two acts, but apparently this Violetta went downhill very quickly,
and her hacking up of a lung in Act 3 is raw and brutal, with a technically
impressive amount of singing from a horizontal position (unrealistically luxe
pillows providing a suitable angle). Her voice is big but flexible, with a
dark, woody texture that isn’t really Italianate fullness but is uniquely
beautiful in its own way. For someone with a large sound she navigated “Sempre
libera” exceptionally well, but again it’s in the rest of the opera where she
really shows her strengths, with an almost too-slow “Dite alla giovine” and
letter aria sung with long phrases, and “Amani Alfredo” filling the house.

Ramon Vargas
and Simon Keelyside as the Germont family were both much improved from their
earlier Verdi essay in Vienna’s Don Carloin June. There’s something a little gummy about Vargas’s voice, possibly just
wear, but he’s so meticulously stylish; not a note comes out carelessly. (He knows
his limits—no high C. Harteros didn’t try that annoying E-flat, either, thank
goodness.) Simon Keenlyside also sounded more at ease, and developed Germont
with great passive-aggressive nuance, weighing his words and singing with a far
greater variety of color than he did as Rodrigo or Wozzeck (that this has been
my Summer of Keenlyside is purely accidental and unplanned).
Alas, there
was a hitch, and that was Omar Meir Wellbur’s conducting. It was improved over
his Vienna Rigoletto which was maybe
the closest I’ve ever heard to a train wreck in a major new production (FYI, that production of Rigoletto is not, after all, going to be the Met’s, it was, in fact, that bad), but
there were lots of little wrecks (the most obvious being getting a few beats
off  from Harteros in the Act 1 duet and
staying there for a measure or two). He pushed the orchestra into expressive
phrases, but sometimes the various sections didn’t really stay together, even
the usually ironclad strings. More problematic were his speed demon tempos. He
would strike up each cabaletta at a mean clip and the singer or singers would
enter at a slower tempo and a tug of war ensued (Harteros and Vargas won their
battles, Keenlyside seemed to cede defeat and regrouped after the end of each
phrase). Other times, singers seemed perfectly content in holding their high
note fermatas while the orchestra would prematurely reenter and obviously take
them by surprise. You can’t fault him for energy, but there was obvious
disagreement afoot.
Despite the
faults—and not being able to see much of any of Act 2 Scene 1—this was really a
lovely Traviata. Harteros is a frequent canceler and can be hard
to catch, but she’s worth tracking down if you can. This was a fortuitous combination of
three singers with great taste and similar styles. Given how much opera I see
with wildly mismatched casts I suspect it’s a fluke, but a rare and lucky one.

The Festival ends tonight with Rosenkavalier but I’m a little Rosenkavaliered out and am skipping it. See you this weekend from Salzburg, where I will be reporting on Ariadne (DUH) and La bohème.

Photos copyright Wilfried Hösl.

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Review

Wozzeck: Drowning

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Wozzeck is a
nasty, brutal, and short opera. Producing it requires balancing the human and
the inhuman, where a murderer is maybe the most sympathetic figure (unless
you’re counting the little kid). Andreas Kriegenburg’s acclaimed Bayerische
Staatsoper production—it’s what got him the Ring
job—does this expertly, and more, its characters splashing around in ankle-deep
water with no sign of relief.
While putting on a single performance of Wozzeck for a festival is unusual (it
not being known as an audience-pleasing star vehicle that is easy to put together without much rehearsal), when you can get
Waltraud Meier and Simon Keenlyside to do it, you probably should, and the Munich audience seemed to like it as much as I did.


Berg, Wozzeck. Bayerische Staatsoper, 7/22/2012.
Musikalische Leitung Lothar Koenigs
Inszenierung Andreas Kriegenburg
Bühne Harald B. Thor
Kostüme Andrea Schraad
Licht Stefan Bolliger
Choreographie Zenta Haerter
Chor Sören Eckhoff
Dramaturgie Miron Hakenbeck
Kinderchor Kinderchor der Bayerischen Staatsoper


Wozzeck Simon Keenlyside
Tambourmajor Roman Sadnik
Andres Kevin Conners
Hauptmann Wolfgang Schmidt
Doktor Clive Bayley
1. Handwerksbursche Christoph Stephinger
2. Handwerksbursche Francesco Petrozzi
Der Narr Kenneth Roberson
Marie Waltraud Meier
Margret Heike Grötzinger€

Note: the photos show two previous casts in this production.
Waltraud Meier is in some of the pictures (the other Marie is Michaela
Schuster), the Wozzecks are Michael Volle and Georg Nigl.
This production is, like the Ring, deceptively simple and never strays too far from convention,
and yet its subtle invention is quietly amazing. Much more than the Ring it creates a concentrated visual
language and world for the work. From the opening projection of AKT 1, the
guiding spirit is Brecht. The setting is vague, and doesn’t really
matter.  A enormous, dingy cement cube hovers
over a stage filled with water. Some of the action takes place in this box,
some in the water. The box itself moves upstage and down seemingly of its own
accord. Wozzeck and Marie and their son are relatively normal-looking people,
everyone else is a grotesque, white-faced caricature out of Georg  Grosz. The Captain is disgustingly fat and
naked while the doctor wears a contraption similar to the instrument of torture
he straps Wozzeck into. Many of the minor male characters are exactly the same
variation on Frankenstein’s monster. It is, it seems, the world as seen from
Wozzeck’s own eyes, with Marie as the only refuge among the expressionist monsters.
The child oversees much of the action and learns to make
sense of it, writing PAPA over the father who never acknowledges him, later
adding GELD (money) and HURE (whore).  He
is, we can see, going to turn out exactly like the father who ignores him. That
father seems, unlike the oblivious other characters, hyperalert, and yet
entirely uncomprehending. The Personenregie is not particularly musical, at least not in an analytic sense. I doubt Kriegenburg could tell you much about Berg’s symphonic forms, and he seems to care more about Büchner’s fragmentation than Berg’s cohesion. Much of the opera is delivered in a presentational
style, right out to the audience. It’s simultaneously an alienating tactic and
an apt reflection of the characters’ own alienation.  In another Brechtian
touch, the stage music is played by an onstage ensemble in modern concert
dress. A gloomy crowd of black-clad unemployed watch and occasionally provide
physical support to the action, with platforms for the Drum Major and the
orchestra literally on their backs, in a way similar to the Ring supernumeraries.
But it’s a classical staging as well, just as reluctant as
Kriegenburg’s Ring to take on a
specific social context. This is, that is to say, like the first three parts of
his Ring, not the last. The unemployed
in their coats, the water, the blank cement all speak to a timeless, placeless misery. It
operates on a level of simple images that resonate with the music and
story on a deep level. Except for the splashing through the water, there’s
never any friction between the two. It’s not quite as simple as it looks—and I
expect the Personenregie was considerably tighter on the 2008 premiere than
this one-off revival—but simplicity is its greatest asset.
I don’t think Simon Keenlyside has sung in this production
before, but he seemed to fit in well. Vocally, this role is, like much of the music he
sings these days, a size too big for his lyric baritone. When he struggles to
be heard he tends to sound pressured and grainy. But he seems to have the part
in his bones, and makes a twitchy yet disconnected Wozzeck. Waltraud Meier’s
Marie is the only character who seems to have any life left in her, miserable
as she is. Meier’s voice is still very strong in the higher registers, and she
sings this music with passionate earnestness.
Lothar Koenig’s conducting tended towards the beautiful,
tragic side of thinsg, finding its vocal counterpart in Meier’s almost Romantic
Marie. (He seemed very preoccupied with giving cues to everyone, I suspect this
one-off was not so thoroughly rehearsed.) The orchestra played with sustained
intensity that was, at times, just a touch messy, particularly in the winds. As
might be expected, the strings turned in a Mahlerian rendition of the Act III
interlude. The singers of the supporting roles sang more dramatically than
beautifully, but that’s only in fitting with the production. Having endured his
Aegisth twice I am not fan of Wolfgang Schmidt’s yelpy tenor, but for the
Hauptmann it is just right. Roman Sadnik sounded underpowered as the
Tambourmajor, but had a commanding presence, as did Clive Bayley as the Doctor.
Overall I found this production devastating, while the Ring rarely went beyond nicely poignant. The concentrated intensity of Berg and Büchner are perhaps a better match for Kriegenburg’s austerity, and while when staging the Ring a grand historical vision is non-negotiable, in a 90-minute piece it might be too much. I must admit this was my first time seeing Wozzeck live; it is not often played.
(I have hardly avoided it. In college I studied it in music, German, and
theater classes, at one point making me suspect I was actually majoring in Woyzeck/Wozzeck Studies. For comparison,
I didn’t study Lulu once.) This
performance sold out and received a sustained, enthusiastic ovation, heartening
for a work considered so audience-unfriendly. Kriegenburg’s pitch-perfect
production plus local factors (local language, the relative levels of general musical
literacy in Munich versus New York) have made that rare thing: a high art popular
success.

Photos copyright Wilfried Hösl. More follow after the video.

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Review

Turandot on ice. No, really.

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Would you like your opera to include

a) A game of hockey onstage. On actual skates.

b) Breakdancing

c) People waving baguettes

d) All of the above… IN 3D! Get out those Bay Staats-branded red and blue glasses, kids.

If you answered d), this production of Turandot from Carlus Padrissa of La Fura dels Baus is for you. Yeah, Turandot, an opera that is already This Close to being irredeemably kitsch. Some would try to retreat from this line, this production runs over it with a Zamboni. It’s like Zeffirelli, with B-grade scifi and LSD instead of brocade and crockery. Musically… eh. The singing and characters are about as important to this thing as they are in Zeffirelli, unfortunately. They did try their best, though.

Puccini, Turandot.  Bayerische Staatsoper, 7/26/12.
Musikalische Leitung Dan Ettinger
Inszenierung Carlus Padrissa – La Fura dels Baus
Bühne Roland Olbeter
Kostüme Chu Uroz
Video Franc Aleu
Licht Urs Schönebaum

La principessa Turandot Jennifer Wilson
L’imperatore Altoum Ulrich Reß
Timur, Re tartaro spodestato Alexander Tsymbalyuk
Il principe ignoto (Calaf) Marco Berti
Liu Ekaterina Scherbachenko

I gather from the program book that this production is about Europe in 2046, when it has been bailed out by and is now controlled by China. This political dimension was not so evident from the production itself, which is just generically futuristic Chinese. It was, Padrissa claims in the program note, inspired by a visit by La Fura dels Baus to China. Padrissa seems blissfully unaware that he is taking Orientalism Central and making it into Futuristic Orientalism Metropolis, so maybe it’s good that he didn’t actually attempt to pursue this political theme. If you are curious about cultural implications, you can read an essay entitled “China through the eyes of occidental poets. A literary-historical foray through contrasting topoi of violence and powerlessness, grandeur and submission, multitude and individual”* in the program. For that matter, you could also watch Rush Hour 2.

The entire thing is ridiculously over-the-top and utterly straight-faced. Padrissa takes the Ice Princess idea really literally and the entire stage is an ice rink, populated at various times by figure skaters, hockey players, and at one point guys with brooms like curlers (Spanish dude tragically neglected Bavarian curling, though, which doesn’t have brooms). The color palette is largely black and white marked by splotches of red, orange, and yellow. Descending at times is an enormous gong on a platform with a hole in the center, where Turandot makes her dramatic entrance and most of the 3D projections also happen. Just in case you though I was joking about the 3D glasses, I wasn’t:

3D is not used often in theater because live people, certain tenors excepted, generally possess three dimensions already. Here, it was just another trippy gimmick in a staging full of them, but I can’t deny that it’s kind of a fun trick. Shame that the projections themselves weren’t that interesting, mostly resembling a spirograph or maybe a screensaver from the Windows 95 era. (The surtitles showed a little glasses symbol when 3D was approaching, and there was a rustle in the theater of everyone putting on their glasses. It was maybe four or five times over the course of the opera, for a few minutes each time.)

Padrissa doesn’t have much to say about the story or characters, and most of the staging is as strong as the spectacle. The big scenes work, the intimate ones don’t so much. Personally I found the whole thing totally ridiculous (I offer this caveat because I think other audience members took it entirely in earnest) but a blast in a “so bad it’s good” sort of way. The reasons for many of the effects—a lot of business with an undulating carpet of skulls for Ping, Pang, and Pong, various spinning acrobats, a crowd of children in white-hooded robes like a small KKK army, what I still swear were baguettes at some point during Act 2—completely eludes me, but it’s kind of fun, no? Not that I can imagine ever wanting to see it again.

There is one significant bit: Padrissa ends with the score as Puccini left it, with Liu’s death, without the big love duet. It is abrupt and musically rather unsatisfying, but for the Konzept, it had to be thus. Liu dies via “bamboo torture,” with a tree growing through her, and we go into a Verwandlung that is nominally Taoist but seems lifted from Daphne, with nature melting the ice and the evil Chinese people getting back in touch with their natural roots. Or something.

The music’s purpose in this staging is principally coloristic. Maybe if I had been closer to the stage I would have had a better sense of the drama, but the enormous costumes and largely park-and-bark blocking for the singers meant that I wasn’t overly involved in their plight. Dan Ettinger led a solid though very loud account of the score. The orchestra sounded good, though some of the singers seemed less than confident about the tempos. As usual, Liu more or less walked off with it. Ekaterina Scherbachenko has a delicate but full lyric soprano and sang with more emotion that she could physically express here, hers is a voice I want to hear again. Marco Berti made a stolid yet solid Calaf, producing a lot of strong, healthy sound and rarely overpowered by the orchestra. But he does very little to shape the music or character. Jennifer Wilson was adequate but somewhat disappointing as Turandot, her large voice sometimes turning shrill though she can sing all the notes. Supporting characters were fine, and in this scheme didn’t make too much of an impression.

This was… something else, that’s for sure. Call it a popcorn opera. You can’t fault the Bay Staats for their commitment, even when the thing they’re committing to is bonkers.

* “China im Augen abendländische Dichter. Ein literaturhistorichesr Streifzug durch Topoi des Kontrasts von Gewalt und Unmacht , Größe und Unterwerfung , Masse und Individiuum”Photos copyright Wilfried Hösl.
Video, more photos follow:

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Review

Tosca jumps again

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The Met and the Bayerische Staatsoper might not have much in common but one thing they do is a certain Luc Bondy production of Tosca, hated just as much by the Müncheners as the New Yorkers. I was going to skip it but upon further reflection decided that missing a Bryn Terfel Scarpia would be a crime. So I got a ticket but being tardy it was one that afforded almost no view of the stage. While I love seeing Terfel ham it up, considering the imbecility of this production I do not consider this as great a loss as usual. I cannot offer you any assessment as to how the set looks on the smaller stage of the Nationaltheater, whether Scarpia groped the Madonna or simply flipped her off, or what attitude Tosca assumed while fanning herself at the close of Act 2 (um, for a production we all think is awful, this one has developed quite a few iconic moments, hasn’t it? just saying…). Here’s what I wrote about this production when I last saw it at the Met. In relation to tonight, let’s talk about the singing!

Marco Armiliato conducts Tosca with the verve of a lukewarm glass of beer. He keeps things together and this was a fairly clean reading, except for almost losing the chorus just before Scarpia’s Act 1 entrance. It unfolds nicely in lyrical sections but in the exciting bits it never rises to the occasion, lacking intensity, drama, and weight. The brass played with laser-bright tone that wasn’t my favorite color, but the strings had a nice depth to their tone in the introduction to “E lucevan le stelle.” But how can one of the most perfectly paced of all operas feel so slack and matter of fact?

Luckily the cast had two excellent singers. Catherine Naglestad is a fine Tosca. Her sound is big and just on this side of being blowsy, with a wide vibrato that sometimes turns dry. While she doesn’t have a lot of variations of color, her duskiness feels just right for this role and her top notes are easy and reliable. (Her chest voice, however, is a little funky, not the best thing for a Tosca.) Most importantly, she sings with refined and yet natural musicality, making a grand and impressive, yet still expressive Tosca. Her “Vissi d’arte” had a lovely swell on the final note and an expertly tapered quiet ending. As Scarpia, Bryn Terfel was his usual self, this portrayal is by this point well known. His voice can turn rough and barky at patches, hurting him most in the opening of Act 2, which sounded ragged. But in the declamatory passages his voice is imposing and firm, and he relishes the evil with audible (as I could not, for the most part, see him) glee.

Workmanlike lyric tenor Massimo Giordano sounded overextended as Cavaradossi, and despite generally singing on pitch with acceptable sound his too-small voice and relentlessly flat-footed, unnuanced phrasing kept his Mario from ever developing into an audible character. He has a habit of approaching high notes from a running start of a third or so below, sliding up to the actual pitch (even on Vittoria!), which I assume is supposed to be stylistic, probably also is a technical aid, and definitely is irritating. The smaller roles found the Staatsoper’s usual solid Slavic-tending crew, notably Goran Juric a well-projected Angelotti.

I can offer a few random notes on the staging. The jump at the end was timed better that I have seen it at the Met, but that blackout has to be much blacker for it to be convincing. When the victory cantata’s Starbesetzung is announced in Act 1, the Munich children yelp “BRAVO!” while the New York ones go “OOOOO!” Also, Mario’s painting, in classic Bay Staats fashion, appears to be a blotchy impressionistic rendering of the same image that appeared in New York in far more realistic form. Can’t keep a creative scenic artist down.

Absent some star casting, I’m hoping not to see this particular Tosca again anytime soon.


Puccini, Tosca. Bayerische Staatsoper, 7/24/2012.
Musikalische Leitung Marco Armiliato
Inszenierung Luc Bondy
Bühne Richard Peduzzi
Kostüme Milena Canonero
Licht Michael Bauer
Chor Stellario Fagone


Floria Tosca Catherine Naglestad
Mario Cavaradossi Massimo Giordano
Baron Scarpia Bryn Terfel
Cesare Angelotti Goran Jurić 
Der Mesner Christoph Stephinger
Spoletta Francesco Petrozzi
Sciarrone Christian Rieger
Stimme eines Hirten Tölzer Knabenchor
Ein Gefängniswärter Tim Kuypers

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Review

Tales of Hoffmann, Tales of Villazón

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This brief Festspiele return of Les Contes d’Hoffmann to the Bayerische Staatsoper was marked by
major cancellations, notably Diana Damrau as the three heroines (preggers) and conductor
Constantine Carydis (presumably not preggers). Ironically, canceler par excellence Rolando Villazón
actually showed up and sang the title role; sadly I spent most of the
performance wishing he hadn’t. It was a bumpy ride, and the production isn’t
Jones’s best, but the three excellent new women, Brenda Rae, Olga Mykytenko,
and Anna Virovlansky, oddly shifted the focus of the opera.

Offenbach, Les Contes d’Hoffmann. Bayerische Staatsoper, 7/19/2012.
Musikalische Leitung Marc Piollet
Inszenierung Richard Jones
Bühne Giles Cadle
Kostüme Buki Shiff
Choreographie Lucy Burge
Licht Mimi Jordan Sherin

Olympia Brenda Rae
Antonia Olga Mykytenko
Giulietta Anna Virovlansky
Cochenille / Pitichinaccio / Frantz Kevin Conners
Lindorf / Coppélius / Dapertutto / Miracle John Relyea
Nicklausse/Muse Angela Brower
Stimme aus dem Grab Okka von der Damerau
Hoffmann Rolando Villazón
Spalanzani Ulrich Reß
Nathanael Dean Power
Hermann Tim Kuypers
Schlémil Christian Rieger
Crespel / Luther Christoph Stephinger
Wilhelm Andrew Owens

Watching Rolando Villazón in Les Contes d’Hoffmann was sadly similar to seeing Natalie Dessay in
La traviata. The hard-living,
slightly manic writer might seem to be a perfect character for Villazón, who
has been through a lot and has always been slightly manic. But alas, experiencing
artistic difficulties does not assist in rendering artistic difficulties vocally. His voice is barely recognizable. I’d actually only heard him live
once before, back in 2006, shortly before his vocal crisis started. But I
remember a vibrant tenor, tense and pushed but exciting. Now the lower register
is still tense and has some of the same tonal quality while the upper half is
weak and deployed only with extreme caution. I found moments of this performance
bordered on the grotesque, when he was putting in so much bodily
effort, overacting so much, but the voice simply failed to back him up.

Richard Jones sets
the entire opera as a flashback in what might be Stella’s dressing room. The
Muse is no more than a double for Hoffmann himself (poor mezzo Angela Brower
had to don Villazónian eyebrows). The bar emerges by magic, populated by
an identically-dressed chorus of pipe-puffing flaneurs, some of whom who follow
the action in every scene. The furniture of the room only slightly rearranges
itself for each tale, tying them together to show how Hoffmann finally got to
such a pessimistic state. (The loud wallpaper, however, does change, justifying
my nickname for him, Wallpaper Jones, yet again.) Hoffmann’s first love, when he is still in short pants, is a
crush on the Barbie-like Olympia (her blue dress seemingly based on Disney’s
Cinderella), decked out in bright colors and childlike décor. Antonia is the
victim of his teenaged romanticism run amok, with all her passion going towards
the wrong people. Giulietta wears a kind of transparent dress and inhabits a
surreal world of pure lust, her room equipped with a giant shaving mirror for
stealing men’s reflections. At the end, they unconvincingly surround Hoffmann
and salute, of course Twue Wuv the entertainment value of Hoffmann’s tales.

This production does some things well, best of all tying
together the different episodes. But it doesn’t do much with the villains at
all, and John Relyea didn’t have much stature in any of the roles. It moves
along, but in coherence and inventiveness falls below the standard I expect of
Jones. I’ve seen worse Hoffmanns, or rather Hoffmänner, for example at the Met, but it’s not the most exciting. (Edition notes: The ordering Olympia-Antonia-Giulietta is not universal
but I think is considered the more Urtext-adjacent one, and this production also
is for a coloratura Giulietta and does not include the big ensemble version of the
Barcarolle. The program says the score is “based” on the Kaye edition, but not
that it uses it exclusively.)

The production was designed for Diana Damrau playing all the
women (she’s in these photos), but here was performed with three different
sopranos. Personally, I prefer this option (I believe some academic opinions claim
Offenbach never envisioned a single-soprano version, FWIW), because few
sopranos can convince vocally in all three roles and I like the contrast. Here there
was a shift in the drama as well. With a weak Hoffmann and Jones’s flaneurs,
the focus switched from the icky “three women in one” thing to the way society
controls and oppresses the various women, from the admiration of Olympia’s
mechanical and yet feminine charms to the put-upon Antonia to the utterly
helpless Giulietta. Hoffmann is less a victim of feminine wiles than a witness
to patriarchy in action.

Fellow audience members seemed to find conductor Marc
Piollet a major improvement over fall’s apparently very slow Carydis, and he
did lead with zippiness. The chorus and orchestra, however, wasn’t quite
prepared to follow him. Many of the choruses were alarmingly scrappy and the
violins in the Olympia act were a mess. The soloists had an easier time. Villazón
had his best outing in the Antonia act, where some of his middle-voice phrases
had an appealing warmth. John Relyea as the villains did not make much of an
impression, sounding deep but exceedingly wobbly and making no real
distinctions between the roles—perhaps that was a dramatic point, but if so I
didn’t get it.
The real star of the show might have been Angela Brower as
the Muse. Her voice might not be very French—actually, no one in this
production’s was, so whatever—but it has a pure, clear strength that is even
through all the registers and fills the theater beautifully. I hadn’t heard any
of the three women replacing Damrau before and found them all promising and
interesting.  Brenda Rae as Olympia sang
with bell-like tone with a nice warmth up to the top. While her first aria had
a few slips of rhythm, her waltz was quite precise, had some impressive high
interpolations, and showed real spirit and humor. Olga Mykytenko might be a
lyric soprano, but as Antonia she wielded her strong, slightly steely
voice with a blunt force more reminiscent of La Gioconda. It’s a powerful instrument and she uses it excitingly, if not always with the greatest musical delicacy. As
pure voice goes the pick of the three was Anna Virolansky’s Giulietta, sung
with round and sweet tone as well as agility in the coloratura. Supporting
roles featured various Bay Staats regulars. I’m not sure if Frantz’s aria
really works if you sing it as nicely as Kevin Conners did, and I’ve seen it
much funnier. As Crespel, Chistoph Stephinger may have outsung Relyea.

Hoffmann is an
opera of almost Don Giovanni-like
complexity in the number of moving parts and dramatic problems. (By the way, I think it is also one of the most underrated of scores. Offenbach is an incredibly wonderful composer, and this one is a troublesome masterpiece, on a level with Carmen.) This one
was problematic in some big ways, but there were things to like too.

Excerpt (Kleinzach), where Villazon sounds more even than he did in person:


Documentary (featuring Rolando Villazon’s amusing German):

All photos copyright Wilfred Hösl.

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Review

Mitridate at the Prinzregententheater

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I went to see Mitridate, re di Ponto at the Prinzregententheater (as occupied by the Bayerische Staatsoper) and I wrote about it for Bachtrack:

Mozart wrote the opera seria Mitridate at the age of fifteen. The Bayerische Staatsoper’s clever and strangely beautiful production positions it as the work of a child, full of rebellious teenagers and projected scenery seemingly drawn from a primary school art class. But unfortunately even excellent singing and much directorial invention cannot disguise that this is a rather bland opera, and its four hours pass slowly.

Read the whole thing here. On second thought, closing out a busy week with four hours of Mozart seria juvenilia may not have been the best plan! But the production and singing were lovely, and I enjoyed them, which I think means I am not being unfair to find the opera itself dull. The score has charm but it doesn’t do much for the characters or plot. This is, of course, a stock complaint for the opera seria genre, but not one with which I agree, on the whole. But for this piece it applies.

It was also great to see Lisette Oropesa in a bigger role! She has a lovely voice and presence and is horribly underused by the Met. I’m not sure if this coloratura-heavy role was quite right for her talents, though. She can sing it just fine but it’s not her strongest point, and I would rather hear her as Ilia or Despina or Zerlina.

Director David Bösch was also responsible for the Bay Staats’s touching Elisir d’amore, which is in a similar style.

A bit about the theater: it’s a beautiful small space located in the eastern Munich neighborhood of Bogenhausen. The wide, raked arena auditorium was built to be a near-exact copy of Bayreuth. The only major differences are an open pit (currently, at least), more elaborate decoration, and more lobby space. I didn’t hear an acoustic similar to Bayreuth’s, either, but comparing Mozart and Wagner is really difficult. Today the Prinzregententheater hosts a variety of groups both theatrical and musical; unfortunately the theater is too small to make putting on Wagner practical, though it has been done in the past. (They still manage at Bayreuth, but that’s special.)

Continue to see a lot more pictures of this pretty pretty production.

These photos show last year’s Aspasia, Patricia Petibon. Petibon has the gift of Crazy, which this year’s Anja-Nina Bahrmann didn’t, and I could have seen her working a little better dramatically speaking. The rest of the cast is the same except for Marzio. Unfortunately the very nice projections aren’t really visible (I think projection scenery doesn’t photograph well?).

Photos copyright Wilfred Hösl.

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Review

La Bohème: Your hand is cold

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The Munich Opera Festival part of the Bayerische Staatsoper’s season rolled on with a shot at what is known in these parts as a Sternstunde–famous names being providing luxury singing to gratify your pleasure principle. But for this to work you need more than glamorous singing, there has to be a real connection among the cast and with the audience too. That wasn’t happening so much last night. Angela Gheorghiu and Joseph Calleja are a beautiful match in terms of pure sound, and both have the voices for these roles. But theatrically they are a disaster, encouraging each other’s worst qualities. Gheorghiu only loves Gheorghiu, and I saw few convincing signs of Calleja loving anything at all.
I remain an enormous fan of Gheorghiu’s sound, which has a uniquely beautiful silvery smokiness and sounds perfect in this music. Would that we could hear more of it. When she finally sung out in Act 3, it was glorious, but up to then she had maintained her characteristic 75%–never quite inaudible but not loud enough either. Her self-conscious diva persona would never work so well for Mimi, but she was at her most self-absorbed this evening, reacting only for her own and our benefit and never interacting with the cast around her. She apparently got some new dresses for this production, which seemed to be of the upper middle class rather than of a simple seamstress (which sticks out because the costumes of the rest of the cast are actually fairly faithful to class), but also followed her usual preference of displaying maximum cleavage during her death scene.

Joseph Calleja also has a beautiful sound, and sang the music with much more straightforward musicality than Gheorghiu, who tends to be capricious in regards to phrasing. On a CD, his “Che gelida manina” would be a real winner, with easy high notes, smooth legato, and that golden tone with its distinctive fast vibrato. But he never does anything to make it interesting. He did more to engage with his fellow Bohemians, but his acting remains a series of indications rather than a character, and in terms of chemistry he and Gheorghiu are not so happening.

The supporting cast was mostly drawn from house locals and sounded more Eastern European in style than Italian, but were great company and way more fun than our leads. I wondered if light soubrette Laura Tatulescu had been cast as Musetta as to present minimal competition to Gheorghiu (and their timbres do make a good vocal match–they’re both Romanian, if that means anything), but while her voice is small she projected consistently and effortlessly, and managed to be full of character without overacting, a rare thing in Musettas. The pick of the Bohemians was Levente Molnár’s big-voiced, lively Marcello, showing great life and warmth, but the others were fine as well. Alfred Kühn’s bio has the telling debut date of 1963, and I suspect he has been singing repertoire like Benoit the whole while. I will just say that he is a local favorite and at least he wasn’t cast as Mime.
Dan Ettinger conducted like someone who knows his way around this tricky score, managing the remarkable tasks of rarely covering up Gheorghiu and also staying with her wayward beat. The Act 2 chaos was reasonably clean and if the orchestra was, as I suspect, playing this on little to no rehearsal, I am very impressed. Ensembles were oddly balanced and scrappy but hey, this is the Festival, with Angela Gheorghiu.
Otto Schenk’s production is a traditional job with none of the opulence of the Met’s Zeffirelli extravaganza. I have to say I like it a lot more than that one. Like Ettinger, it doesn’t try anything fancy but it puts things where they need to be to give Angela Gheorghiu something to bounce her voice off. (We’ll leave the actual productions for another day.) Act 2 is busy without ever losing track of the protagonists, the garret could arguably use some sprucing up (how long has this production been going? a while, I’m guessing) but I guess looking like that is the point of a garret. The snow scene is the most artistic of the sets, but still doesn’t dwarf the main characters. The opening of Act 4 was unusually clearly directed. I do wish that opera houses would realize that their rubber fishes are all embarrassments, though.
Admittedly, this has never been one of my favorite operas (I’m not exactly sure why), but this one left me exceptionally dry-eyed. Considering the musical merits, a disappointment. In a few weeks I’ll be seeing the new Salzburg production with Netrebko and Beczala, which I hope will have more to offer.

Photos copyright Wilfred Hösl.


Puccini, La Bohème. Bayerische Staatsoper, 7.17.2012.
Musikalische Leitung Dan Ettinger
Inszenierung Otto Schenk
Bühne und Kostüme Rudolf Heinrich
Chor Stellario Fagone


Mimi Angela Gheorghiu
Musetta Laura Tatulescu
Rodolfo Joseph Calleja
Marcello Levente Molnár
Schaunard Christian Rieger
Colline Goran Jurić 
Parpignol Dean Power
Benoît Alfred Kuhn
Alcindoro Tareq Nazmi
Ein Zöllner Tim Kuypers
Sergeant der Zollwache Peter Mazalán

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Review

Götterdämmerung: Euro crash

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Andreas Kriegenburg’s Munich Ring is about society and community. How do people treat each other, how do large groups organize themselves, and how do we tell our own stories? The Ring, he suggests, is about what happens when people stop seeing each other as, well, people, and lose our connection with the natural world. Götterdämmerung is of a piece with this narrative, but in other ways weirdly unrepresentative, specific in its setting and clunky in its narrative where the others had been elegantly abstract. But fortunately this performance had a great cast, most of all Nina Stemme as Brünnhilde and Kriegenburg’s sure hand with the characters didn’t leave him, at least. Is that enough for a whole Ring?


Wagner, Götterdämmerung. Bayerische Staatsoper Ring-Zyklus B, 7/15/2012. 
Musikalische Leitung Kent Nagano
Inszenierung Andreas Kriegenburg
Bühne Harald B. Thor
Kostüme Andrea Schraad
Licht Stefan Bolliger
Choreographie Zenta Haerter
Dramaturgie Marion Tiedtke
Olaf A. Schmitt.
Chor Sören Eckhoff


Siegfried Stephen Gould
Gunther Iain Paterson
Hagen Eric Halfvarson
Alberich Wolfgang Koch
Brünnhilde Nina Stemme
Gutrune Anna Gabler
Waltraute Michaela Schuster
Woglinde Eri Nakamura
Wellgunde Angela Brower
Floßhilde Okka von der Damerau
2. Norn Jamie Barton
1. Norn Jill Grove
3. Norn Irmgard Vilsmaier

Dropping the mortals of Götterdämmerung into the world of decadent capitalism is nothing new (I think I may have even saw Peter Konwitschny in the audience). It’s also the logical continuation of the earlier installments—Rheingold’s pagan idyll interrupted, Walküre’s tribal combat, Siegfried’s Bildungsroman. But it is strikingly different in several respects. For one thing this Götterdämmerung is set in a very specific time period with a lot of specific references while the other installments worked with vague suggestion. For another, that time period is our own.
The use of the space is also very different. Instead of the beautifully irregular piles of supernumeraries we have a massive and severe modern edifice, a multilevel bank lobby of metal and glass with moving walkways and various office drones working in the background. One assumes that this is Frankfurt. Nature, in the form of a potted tree, a coat of amour and handy spear, and a Damien Hirst-like horse, is literally kept under glass. The people stare into their cellphones instead of at each other and spend the entire wedding taking pictures rather than watching.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. We open with a great Norn scene that might have been the highlight of the whole evening, theatrically speaking. First we see projected on the proscenium a garbled second of CNN-like news, none of the visuals or sounds decipherable. Then the score starts. In a small, plain room, sit a group of people who apparently are survivors of a nuclear catastrophe. (Terror over the possibility of nuclear disaster is something of a German national pastime.) Rescue workers in protective suits wave Geiger counters at them and confiscate their radioactive family photos. The Norns, in their robed blonde god-wear, weave in between this scene with a ball of red yarn (a play on the German “roter Faden,” literally “red thread” but meaning the through-line or continual thread of a plot). The people aren’t looking at each other, they’re looking at their photos. Their homes, their families, their communities have been lost. This is the closest we will, in fact, get to seeing the Götterdämmerung, right here.
The mountaintop scenes are problematic, taking place in this small barn-like room in the middle of the stage. The giant main multilevel set is too big to shift, and the previous elegant, fast scene changes are no more. The many people onstage file around awkwardly, and later bring in with pieces for the main set, through narrow doors and with little of the grace seen earlier. This clunkiness might be part of the point, thematically speaking, but theatrically it’s a major drawback. Once we’re in the scene it’s alright. Nina Stemme and Stephen Gould are a much more mature-acting couple than Naglestad and Ryan in Siegfried, and “Zu neuen Taten” was, appropriately, more conventionally romantic and less youthfully exuberant, though still directed with a fine sense of detail.
Then we move into the glitzy-sleazy world of the Gibichungs, complete with giant projected ads on the set. The big unit-ish set means that the action departs literal representation much more frequently than it had previously (where we got almost every written stage direction in recognizable fashion), most notably an out-of-nowhere “Zurück vom Ring!”, but Siegfried does row his way over the backs of some capitalist drones. Meanwhile, Gunther gets a blow job, Gutrune is a slutty slut (who may have a dubious relationship with her brother—but since they’re rich moderns this one isn’t romantic), and the chorus appears as identically addressed slaves to the Euro.
Siegfried arrives in olden time clothes and gets redressed (as he does in the similar Konwitschny production) and his first loving vision of Gutrune finds her astride a giant €-shaped rocking horse. Siegfried has traded love for money. This may be just a touch heavy-handed, but the overall concept still kind of works. I get tired of the Capitalists are Evil schtick when we fail to acknowledge that the world of opera is itself firmly enmeshed in this system (less so in Europe than in the US, but I still didn’t see any of the Bay Staats sponsor BMW’s ads being mocked during the Rhine Journey), particularly when the person proffering it offers no substantive Plan B. And Kriegenburg doesn’t. But considering recent financial events, it feels remarkably topical.
Back at chez Brünnhilde, Waltraute displays a variety of nervous twitches suggesting that Valhalla is beginning to resemble an insane asylum of shut-ins. Siegfried straightforwardly arrives in Gunther’s blue suit with the Tarnhelm draped over his face, and almost seems to remember Brünnhuilde and realize what he’s about to do. But he doesn’t, and proceeds. In Act Two, Alberich shows up to find Hagen asleep with some hookers (who he later pays, proving he is not quite as completely evil as previously supposed), and we remember that the dwarf was the first person in the cycle to wear a modern suit, way back in Rheingold when he started enslaving people. Maybe capitalism is his fault? Hagen gets his cell-phone-wielding guys together and the wedding  celebrations proceed around a giant Euro sign. Brünnhilde is the only one who seems aware of her surroundings and what is happening, yet is unable to stop it.
Act Three takes place not in the country but in the wreckage of the wedding. It’s here that the concept becomes surprisingly unclear, as previously Kriegenburg has never done something like fail to provide a reason for why Siegfried is talking about a hunt. I’m not saying he needs to all the time but consistency is nice and the production seems to run out of steam at this vital point, while the moment-to-moment Personenregie is still exemplary. The actual conflagration itself is at first treated in very literal manner (with the exception of raining paper suggesting that the era of stories is ending), with a pyre just in the back of the set. During much of Brünnhilde’s heavy-duty singing, Gutrune distractingly tries to tote Gunther’s corpse upstage. Siegfried’s arm-raising to shoo Hagen away from the Ring is treated absolutely straight, but with Siegfried positioned stage center, feet pointing downstage, and with a creepy lighting effect, this most dubious of moments actually felt totally convincing. The rest, though, is debateable. As previously mentioned “Zurück vom Ring!” comes from nowhere, with Hagen panicking stage right over nothing in particular. Flames rise around Brünnhilde, she hands the Ring off to the Rhinemaidens (I think–this was in the upstage corner of the stage I could see less well), and then we are left with the panicky Gutrune. She is surrounded by some of the white-dressed picnickers from Rheingold and Siegfried, who embrace her in an affirmative meditation circle. If we can rediscover each other, we can create a new and more promising world. I think?
Gutrune is an odd character. In this production she starts off as an irritating vamp, but then in her solo scene, maybe one of the weirdest bits of the whole Ring, she transforms into a figure of some stature and possibility. As one of the only characters to survive the thing (THE ONLY of the mortals? I mean, the Rhinemaidens don’t really count?) and also one of the only ones to really grow and change, maybe she’s a logical choice for this gesture. But on the other hand, the Ring is not about poor Gutrune! Brünnhilde and Siegfried are grand, larger-than-life heroes, their love saved the world.
Waltraute: wrong about the give
back the Ring thing
Except, maybe, it didn’t, because everything is still burning up. Wagner’s ending is tricky, isn’t it? There’s tragedy in the plot and there’s hope in the music, and there’s ambiguity in the actual causes and consequences of the depicted events. Most directors, thankfully, are resistant to putting Fukushima or, if you want to be local, Dachau onstage to be followed by the music’s rebirth and redemption. I’m not sure if that’s something you could manage in a morally acceptable way, even it’s the direction in which the Vorspiel led. But putting Gutrune in the center seems like dodging the issue.
The circle of supers surrounding her encapsulate many of this project’s strengths and weaknesses. They look inward, to a closed system that could just as easily be a circular firing squad. What makes the faceless supernumeraries good, when we have seen that so many of the actual characters in this cycle are bad, even when they remember their human loyalties? To see the main characters so totally stripped of their metaphysical baggage, as people rather than symbols, can be refreshing. But it gives them individuality without symbolic stature, and meanwhile the anonymous masses somehow get to stand in for Universal Goodness. While the cycle creates many beautiful small moments, it tends to come up short in the big ones and leave us with little to hold onto,and the tender signs of humanity become an apologia for the lack of a larger vision. Gutrune may be minor, but there has not been a lot to say why Brünnhilde and Siegfried and Wotan and Fricka and all of them matter more. In the end I found the cycle’s minimalism frustratingly coy. It suggests and provides atmosphere, but despite many intriguing ideas it doesn’t have a strong and consistent connection to the central plot. Maybe that’s the point, that life is an unsolved and undirected puzzle and our only consolation is in each other, but that’s really unsatisfying.
The ideological sign-waving of this final evening felt like an attempt to inject some dramatic weight into something that almost floated away, but it leaves the cycle oddly misshapen.  Even without the Euro signs this production would have felt topical. Not only does the army of extras provide employment for a large number of freelance Müncheners, but its austerity is a fitting gesture in the current austere economy where few want to see the German government paying to reinforce the Bay Staats’s stage (even if they are still underwriting the daily business). And it has integrity of a sort: the indictment of bankers would ring far more false had this production not been an obviously low-budget affair. As a bang-for-its-buck enterprise, it exceeds other Rings to an exponential degree. In a confusing time it doesn’t presume to know the future.
But isn’t that the artist’s job, to tell us where we should be going?
***
Now for the music, if you’re still reading or if you are skipping to where I write about how Nina Stemme is the best. She is, in fact, the best.  She began somewhat tentatively but was soon letting out phrases of devastating size and power with a bronze, dark tone that is simply big. She is an unusually sympathetic and nuanced actress with clear diction, a great fit for this production, and made Brünnhilde a figure first of real joy and then of tragic rage and despair. The greatest weight of her voice is in the middle, and she has a habit of pausing before firing off her high notes (which are clearly her least favorite part of her range—this role lies very high for her), which tripped her up in phrases like this big one in the trio
But mostly just adds to the thrill. Her immolation found her audibly reaching her vocal limits but just pushing beyond them and never failing to find more somewhere. It’s a very moving effort, the more so because we all know it won’t last forever. I cannot imagine there is a better Brünnhilde today, I certainly haven’t heard one.
Stephen Gould has a weighty sound that matches Stemme’s well, and he makes a good effort musically speaking. His greatest asset is his scrupulous pacing, which left him still singing decently by the end of this very long role. His tone sounded managed, more pinched than usual, and he struggled with the high notes and skipped the “Mut” C entirely, but as Siegfrieds go it was an excellent performance. He is not as vivid an actor as Lance Ryan was in Siegfried but followed the directions ably. I have found him better in less strenuous roles, which is perfectly understandable.
Iain Paterson seems to be the world’s Gunther of choice at the moment. He sings it with great nuance and attention to the text, and in this production a wimpy sort of character (rather different from his more heroic take at the Met—I believe he is the only person who was in both the Munich and Met Rings). Anna Gabler has a round and darkish sound for Gutrune that was an interesting choice but didn’t always project. Eric Halfvorsen was a late replacement as Hagen (he is actually the fourth bass this production has seen in this single role–I guess we know which part of this Ring seems to be cursed) and sounded authoritative if not bone-crushing. His solo scene was appropriately malevolent, though the scene with Wolfgang Koch’s again excellent Alberich was perhaps less tense than usual. The Norns were not tquite first-rate with the exception of the second, Jaime Barton, a voice that would like to hear again and I probably will. The Rhinemaidens were much better and blended very well. It was nice to finally hear the chorus, who made up for three operas of absence by chest-thumping through this one with enthusiasm.
Kent Nagano’s conducting worked in this installment. The pacing can be slack and he seems far too laid-back to make enough of an impression in big pieces like the Funeral March, but like Kriegenburg he found a certain groove. The orchestra had its best night of the cycle and played very well, particularly the strings and lower brass, both of whom have real dense substance to their sound when required. I enjoyed his elegiac, chamber music approach to the Norns’ and Rhinemaiden’s music, and though he could have milked the ending for a bit more the last 30 seconds were exquisite.*
This was in many ways an impressive and beautiful cycle, and one with a remarkably good cast with real dramatic imagination and committment. But modesty may not be a virtue when working with the Ring, and Nagano and Kriegenburg could have both stood to show a little more vision, however lovely their miniatures were. While Kriegenburg took small-scale stage directions directly, he showed little interest in the larger trajectory of the characters, nor did he create one of his own that incorporated them in a convincing way. I’m willing to believe that our fascination with technology is a gateway to the Apocalypse, but I wish I had a better idea of what Siegfried had to do with it.

***

*One unsung hero of this cycle is the curtain-puller (so to speak). Every sing act has ended with a curtain of absolutely impeccable timing and perfect speed. This is NOT an easy job. I also want to thank the audience for taking a nice few breaths of silence at the end before clapping. Maybe community isn’t dead after all!

Photos copyright Wilfred Hösl

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Review

Siegfried: Into the woods

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Some of this Siegfried is much more conventionally wacky Regietheater than the previous Ring installments. I mean, if you ever can call a very fake jogging bear, a lot of glitter, giant bellows, and some dancing inanimate objects conventional. (Hey, this is Germany.) But it’s of a piece with the earlier installments, with an element of fun energy that works with this exuberant score. The cast had this energy. Even the conducting was almost exuberant!


Wagner, Siegfried. Bayerische Staatsoper Ring-Zyklus B, 7.13.12 Musikalische Leitung Kent Nagano
Inszenierung Andreas Kriegenburg
Bühne Harald B. Thor
Kostüme Andrea Schraad
Licht Stefan Bolliger
Choreographie Zenta Haerter
Dramaturgie Marion Tiedtke
Olaf A. Schmitt.


Siegfried Lance Ryan
Mime Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke
Der Wanderer Thomas J. Mayer
Alberich Wolfgang Koch
Fafner Rafal Siwek
Erda Jill Grove
Brünnhilde Catherine Naglestad
Stimme eines Waldvogels Elena Tsallagova

After the feudalism of Walküre, we return in Siegfried to, at first, a happy egalitarian utopianism. Unlike anyone else, dumb Siegfried can see the extras as people, and as individuals. They start off waving around cotton clouds and spreading a grassy green carpet to establish a naïve, sunny setting (think of the Stuttgart Ring’s Siegfried). As Siegfried questions Mime, the grubby little hut repeatedly disassembles itself and we see some of the action enacted upstage. In many cases I have found this kind of illustration ineffective, redundant in a way that distracts from the live action of narration. But the twist here is that Siegfried is watching the events. We see him discover his past; it’s an active part of the drama rather than merely a filler of empty stage space.  Then the Wanderer arrives looking for all the world like Gandalf.

The sword forging is a real party, one of the first spectacles in this whole cycle. Siegfried invites all the supernumeraries over to help and they bring giant bellows and other forging equipment, some short segments of pipe are dancing around for no particular reason, and the strikes of the hammer are punctuated by glitter sparks.  It’s a bit much but so little of this production has gone for big effects that it was a fun change of pace.

Act Two starts with the Wanderer and Alberich meeting like vigilantes in a post-apocalyptic landscape. Then Siegfried’s wanderings take him to some very dark woods of adolescence. The bird is represented both by a bouncy girl in a white dress (the singer) and a super carrying a bird puppet, and the former gives Siegfried a tentative introduction to his libido. The pipe and horn moments are, as usual, played for laughs, with a very incompetent oboe cadenza and purposefully bad miming of the horn passages, provoking Siegfried’s ire at the unseen hornist (somewhat hilariously, the horn player is credited in the program but the oboe player is not). Eventually he comes to something that looks like a supersize version of the hoard’s vault from Rheingold, with extras hanging on walls replacing the blocks of gold. Fafner is a writhing mass of extras hanging on a frame, a striking if not particularly practical effect. The Alberich-Mime scene is even more noir than the Alberich-Wanderer one was, beginning with both pointing guns at each other.

Act Three I found to be the weakest of the cycle so far. The Erda section, again wreathed in mud, works well enough, but then the tempo of the staging slows to a standstill. With the help of a some enormous plastic drops the extras become a kind of fire or river or something, and basically stay there until Brünnhilde enters. Things were briefly made more interesting when half of the Wanderer’s broken spear rolled into the orchestra pit (luckily not the pointy end). The action had up to this point moved quickly, and this just sort of stops. The setting for the awakening involves a giant bed and an enormous amount of red fabric, and is not the most attractive, but the staging of the meeting itself is great. It’s a question: do you want to see two awkward virgins try to figure it out or do you want to see the world saved? If it’s the latter you might find this staging somewhat flippant but I thought it was unusually sweet and convincing. My favorite thing about this cycle may be how it never considers its charaters, mortal or not, as anything other than real people.

Also, had Kriegenburg staged the ending in a more conventionally grandiose and triumphant way it would have rung false. Because this isn’t a cycle where a ton seems to be at stake. It is, so far, a nice story with some beautiful moments but it has a modesty that is, depending on your perspective, either refreshing and disarming or possibly utterly infuriating. I am still leaning towards the former, because the chamber approach seems to reap large rewards (and not everything has to be apocalyptic, really), but I’m not entirely decided.

I enjoyed much of the orchestral contribution, this really is a first-rate group. Nagano I could live with this time around. Pacing and excitement certainly could be better, but this performance basically worked. The forging was genuinely loud, the dragons snarly, and the end taken with a meditative lightness.

Lance Ryan is a wonderfully animated Siegfried with a wide grin and endless energy both physical and vocal. He can get through the opera and still sound decent, well, as decent as he did at the start. His tone is not ingratiating, he does not do legato, intonation can be dicey and sometimes the sound is pretty ugly. But it’s a very large voice and his command of it, as well as his ease onstage, is complete. Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke as Mime also did not have a pleasant voice but as Mime who does and he made the character unusually complex, not as much pure villain as a kind of pathetic loser who, somehow, might actually care for Siegfried.

Thomas Mayer was less impressive as the Wanderer than he was as the Walküre-Wotan, somehow just not standing out as much and sounding a little more wooly than stentorian. His spear breaking was nicely done, however. (The spear heading into the pit is such a provocative bit of symbolism—the gods’ power shifting to the composer’s orchestra—that some director should do it on purpose.) Wolfgang Koch is a super Alberich, looking like a gangster and sounding monumental if sometimes vocally overacting.

Catherine Nagelstad’s soprano is less Brünnhilde than Puccini—I can’t imagine her singing any of the other ones at least—but she was interesting here, singing with all the legato and nuance that Ryan lacks. Her middle voice can be wiry but her high notes are effortless and big, and she was appropriately radiant. Elena Tsallagova was a late replacement as the Waldvogel but was charming and sweet-voiced, though among this cast her German stuck out as unclear. Rafal Siwek was very low and rumbly as Fafner, and Jill Grove was an actual contralto as Erda.

I am looking forward to Götterdämmerung later today!

Trailer:

More photos (all copyright Wilfred Hösl)

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Review

Die Walküre: Bring up the bodies

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This Munich Ring cycle seems to be
slowly moving through time, having started Rheingold
in a timeless prehistory with a communal pagan celebration of nature and Walküre attaching itself firmly to the European fin de siècle. This is a period beloved of many a Wagner
director (above all Chéreau), who map the powerful but declining gods onto the
fading aristocracy. Kriegenburg isn’t as specific as Chéreau when it comes to
filling in the details, and the whole thing works more by vague suggestion than
allegory. The crowds of people, in Rheingold
representatives of natural elements and then Alberich’s slaves, are now
servants in a world that has developed social hierarchies.

That wasn’t much of a lead-in, sorry, I wanted to get right to the point because this was an excellent Walküre!
First: if you’d like to see this cycle for yourself, you can watch Götterdämmerung live on the Internet (or on a giant screen in Max-Joseph-Platz, should you be in Munich), free, tomorrow 15 July at 17:00 Munich time. I highly recommend it! More information here.


Wagner, Die Walküre. Bayerische Staatsoper Ring Zyklus B, 7/11/2012.
Musikalische Leitung Kent Nagano
Inszenierung Andreas Kriegenburg
Bühne Harald B. Thor
Kostüme Andrea Schraad
Licht Stefan Bolliger
Choreographie Zenta Haerter
Siegmund Klaus Florian Vogt
Hunding Ain Anger
Wotan Thomas J. Mayer
Sieglinde Anja Kampe
Brünnhilde Iréne Theorin
Fricka Sophie Koch

Sorry to be getting behind with the writing but this cycle hasn’t been getting much attention in English so I wanted to find time to do my usual medium-long form thing. I wrote most of the staging portion before I saw Siegfried on Friday. I will try to get to writing about that before I go see Götterdämmerung on Sunday.

The wheel is not being reinvented in this cycle, or perhaps more accurately it isn’t rolling anywhere it hasn’t rolled before. But it has a dramatic honesty and nuance that just works very consistently and naturally.

We open to see a slightly weakly choreographed battle between Siegmund and a bunch of people (Siegmund has perhaps been too busy of late taking the next swan to Bayreuth [along with Wotan, apparently] to keep up with his fight rehearsals, but he was in fine vocal health), then switch via stage elevator to chez Hunding. The expected tree is decorated with hanging bodies and populated by a silent and mysterious handmaiden staff. Hunding takes “this house looks like a funeral parlor!” to a whole new level by having the ladies washing corpses on some tables as the action proceeds. All together, this made me think of it as a less immortal variation on Valhalla, complete with Wunschmädchen and dead heroes. Siegmund and Sieglinde aren’t able to get close to each other for a long time and tend to tell their stories more to us than to each other, but when they finally do look at each other they make it count.

Valhalla is, in contrast, orderly, with a male staff. Hanging on the wall is a murky 19th-century landscape—an ironic gesture to the sort of gloomy backdrop so often used for this piece as well as the natural world the gods have subjugated. Fricka seems to be the forgotten trophy wife trying to keep the house together, and both she and Wotan repeatedly break glasses of water in anger, again overpowering a natural element. In the next scene the servants become corpses or rocks littering the Wälsungs’ escape route, where they are watched by Brünnhilde well before the start of her scene. As Siegmund fights Hunding, the two rise on the rear stage elevator, heartbreakingly far from Sieglinde’s reach. The act ends with Wotan running to kneel over Siegmund’s body.

Act III begins with the now-notorious horse ballet, a troupe of silver-clad ladies (more like very determined flamenco dancers than tappers) stomping and gasping at length a capella, which you can see on video at the bottom of this post. So far it is just about the only thing in the production unusual enough to upset anyone, but it’s a big thing and a few minutes into it the audience started yelling, a few with a force that suggested they should audition for Siegfried. I could take it or leave it, myself, I’m not offended but didn’t think it added anything and it made me wonder if I should be thankful that Kriegenburg hadn’t been more creative elsewhere. The following Ride of the Valkyries is excellent in the scary rather than the hearty mode, with the dead heroes in the form of bodies on tall sticks. The rest proceeds as expected with actual flames (smallish ones) surrounding Brünnhilde at the end, whose flickering seems much more appropriate to the music than their more popular, smoother projected cousins.

Kent Nagano’s conducting was more assertive this time around, and while it was still short in terms of tension and energy the situation was not as dire as Rheingold. The orchestra, while sometimes a little sloppy in the details, has a great sound when they get going.

The cast was very strong. Anja Kampe’s Sieglinde was the highlight of the performance for me. Though I am just about always susceptible to Sieglinde, Kampe has an incredibly vivid and sympathetic presence, abused and downtrodden but emerging as tragically triumphant. She sang with real abandon and her edgy high notes are exciting, her less than opulent middle voice not as much but she lives the music. Klaus Florian Vogt’s Siegmund was the rest of the audience’s favorite. He’s an odd duck, with a clear, almost blank voice that projects effortlessly despite its featherweight tone. Some of the music works well form him, notably a sweetly lyrical Winterstürme (also on video at the bottom of this post) and the clarion higher phrases of the Todesverkündigung, but this is a very low-lying role and many of the deeper parts were completely inaudible. As Siegmund I would prefer to hear a voice with more heroic heft rather than a Lohengrin innocent, but he had some moments. His acting is nothing like Kampe’s but he’s natural enough.

Iréne Theorin stood in for the ill Katarina Dalayman as Brünnhilde (Dalayman appears in the photos). She made her energetic, fist-pumping entrance straight from another, less subtle production (and proceeded to let out an exceptionally good battle cry), but over the course of the evening toned it down to fit in a little better. She is vocally convincing, with a big attractive tone and good sense for the musical line sometimes impeded by a large vibrato and a tendency to go sharp. For a last-minute replacement, a very classy performance.

Thomas Mayer was a fine Wotan and an improvement over Rheingold’s Johan Reuter. His voice is not large but is well-projected enough to always be audible, and his declamation of the text is clear and strong. He tired and delivered a slightly wooly Farewell but was both magisterial and sympathetic–I really like how this production shows the gods on a human scale without histrionics. Sophie Koch was again an impressive Fricka, and a physically very energetic one. Ain Anger was a young and lyrical but appropriately nasty Hunding. The only real vocal hitch was the Valkyries; it is hard to believe that the Bavarians couldn’t get together a stronger, more convincingly dramatic bunch. When all were singing together it was alright, but individually many sounded underpowered or ragged.

While this production is somewhat quiet, I’m finding a lot to like in its subtlety and humanity. (The only thing that really escaped me in this evening was some V-Effekt business with water bottles during the final scene that seemed to come out of nowhere.) I’m not sure how it will revive—it is the detailed character work that largely makes it special—but right now there’s a lot to like.

Photos copyright Wilfred Hösl. (More photos appear below the videos.)

TRAILER.
 

The Horse Ballet (only a bit of the dance, then the Ride of the Valkyries)
Winterstürme

More photos:

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