Review

Parsifal from Bayreuth–watch online

4 Comments

This year Stefan Herheim’s revelatory Bayreuth production of Parsifal was taped and broadcast on TV. You can now watch it online. Don’t miss this one.

Herheim takes the story of Parsifal as the story of Wagner and Bayreuth
themselves, a journey from isolation to disaster to the possibility of
redemption. It’s challenging but will make you see the piece and hear
the music in many new ways. I saw this production live last year, with a slightly different cast and, from what I hear, slightly different production (I am watching this video tonight, so I can’t yet say how different). Here is what I wrote about it then. I also recommend Wagneroperas.net’s short introduction, which has links to many more reviews.

To be a ridiculous elitist, I expect the video is a poor substitute for the live experience. Camera direction is a problem with filmed Herheim–there’s always a lot going on and the camera strictly controls what you see, including some things and excluding others and governing when you move from one part of the stage to another. (I think Rusalka in particular was far more exciting live.) But this production is also about the journey you took to get to Bayreuth, and why you made that not uncomplicated trip.

That’s not meant to discourage you from watching this, indeed it would have been a travesty had this production not been filmed. (This is the last year it will be seen in Bayreuth before being replaced.)

The videos are on YouTube; I recommend downloading them because who knows how long they will stick around.

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Postscript: I warn you against listening to Parsifal and Bohème in close proximity. At some point you will hear, in your head only, Rodolfo crying out “Mimì!” followed by the Heilesbuße-Motiv (the descending arpeggio), and it will be really weird.

Continue Reading

Review

Met Opera 2012-13 Preview

11 Comments
Luxury! Opulence! Sarongs!

Single tickets for the Met 2012-13 season go on sale tomorrow, August 12. I can’t say it looks like a very exciting season, it is conservative and draws on repeat Met offenders whose past work hardly inspires confidence, but here’s the deal as I see it. Meaning, these are the questions I would like to ask the people who scheduled the thing.

New Productions
L’elisir d’amore. Why did you pick a charming but extremely modest opera for the grandeur of opening night? What makes you think Anna Netrebko still has the coloratura facility and endearing but, well, modest Matthew Polenzani has acquired enough star power to carry this thing? Why another production from the twee, superficial Bartlett Sher? WHY? (Opening night September 24, HD October 13)

The Tempest. Why did you let Robert Lepage direct again, after how it turned out last time? Why do you think “recreating the interior of the 18th-century La Scala” is a remotely original idea and what does it have to do with The Tempest? What does living composer Thomas Adès have to say about this, as I see he doesn’t actually say anything about his own opera in the publicity despite being the person conducting it and having, um, written it? (Opening October 23, HD November 10)

Un Ballo in Maschera. Wow, who around here found the nerve to hire David Alden to direct? Well done, person. Also a big thanks to the person who already convinced Karita Mattila that this role is not for her and hired Sondra Radvanovsky instead, who despite intonation issues is correct that this role is for her. Will Alden find the elusive key to Marcelo Alvarez’s inner actor? (Opening November 8, HD December 8)

Maria Stuarda. Who thought “nothing like a New Year’s Eve Gala that ends with a beheading”? You may be my people. Will someone pleaaaase get the old, interesting David McVicar back, who might even inspire Joyce DiDonato to forego the perky, and put the one who directed Anna Bolena and Les Troyens out to pasture? Also will you kindly tell me if Elza van den Heever is good, because I have not heard her? (Opening November 31, HD January 19)

“I could be in Paris right now”

Rigoletto. OK, I realize that this was supposed to be this other production from Vienna, which turned out to be dreadful, but why did you think that the keywords of “debut by a Broadway director,” “Las Vegas,” “antics,” and “tragic sidekick” were necessarily more promising? Meaning that I think this is the best opportunity for pure production filth in the season (except possibly the Faust revival). Also, who is conductor Michele Mariotti? Will Diana Damrau’s Babypause interfere with this one? And who will send Piotr Beczala a big bottle of vodka in sympathy? (Opening January 28, HD February 16)

Parsifal. Have you heard that this production by François Girard was outsourced to the arty Europeans for its first run and is rumored to be good? Have you thought about how the Met’s “Pick Your Pleasure” ad campaign is going to work with an opera that basically has no plot and when conducted by Daniele Gatti takes about a week? You know that this is the only thing except maybe Ballo that I am buying a ticket for at noon tomorrow on the dot? (Yes, you could have guessed that.) (Opening February 15, HD March 2)

Giulio Cesare. Do you realize that the Met is about the last house in the world to get this Bollywood-inspired all-singing all-dancing production, which hails from the glorious end of David McVicar’s Goofy Period? Oh well, I’m not sure what makes you think Natalie Dessay is a good choice for Cleopatra, and David Daniels is aging for Cesare, but Alice Coote and Christophe Dumaux will be lovely, right? (Opening April 4, HD April 27)

On to repertory!

Repertory
Der Ring des Nibelungen: It was so great with the big-name cast that with many fewer famous names and keeping Fabio Luisi’s brutally efficient conducting it will be even better, right?

The voice is variable but the abs are golden
Roberto Alagna in Aida

Aida: Apparently I have forgotten a production deemed by the PR to be “unforgettable,” but I hear soprano Liudmyla Monastyrska is someone to get to know. (HD December 13)

La Clemenza di Tito: This quiet production should suit Elina Garanca’s elegant singing and legendary dramatic temperament as Sesto. Lucy Crowe is also good. (HD December 1)

Carmen. Their names are hard to pronounce, but you should maybe go hear Anita Rachvelishvili as Carmen and Ekaterina Scherbachenko as Micaela?

Le Comte Ory. I missed this Bartlett Sher high jinks-fest when it premiered but have been warned. Juan Diego Florez is back, rest of the major cast is new.

Dialogues des Carmélites. Ding ding ding! Here is our token semi-recent opera to appease the arty crowd! AKA “me.” Felicity Palmer is an excellent idea as Madame de Croissy. Only three performances, Met? Lame. It probably will be less naked than this Berlin production, FWIW.

Don Giovanni. Erwin Schrott is a delight as Leporello and Edward Gardner is a fine conductor but this is a production to skip.

Don Carlo. I am unpersuaded by Ramon Vargas as Carlo but will go because I haven’t seen this production yet. Lorin Maazel? Lorin Maazel.

Faust. Nooooo! Sorry you got stuck with this one, Piotr. You deserve better.

Wikipedia claims this is Francesca da Rimini

Francesca da Rimini. Token verismo obscurity to be ignited by the fiery baton of Marco Armiliato. Probably a must only for Eva-Maria Westbroek superfans? And Marcello Giordani superfans, should they a) exist b) not be too exhausted after Les Troyens. (HD March 16)

Otello. Can you tell me who persuaded Placido Domingo to withdraw from conducting this so I can send them some #@*ing flowers? Also y’all should go see Krassimira Stoyanova in the second cast because she is the best. (HD October 13)

Le Nozze di Figaro. Blah blah blah it’s a Figaro so I would end up there even if the cast included Wolfgang Schmidt. Thankfully it does not though Mojca Erdmann as Susanna inspires great skepticism. Gerald Finley’s Count should make up for that.

La Rondine. What an unfortunate debut role for the exciting, dramatic Kristine Opolais. This role requires placid prettiness and that would not be one of La Opolais’s strengths. Filianoti should be right for Ruggero, though.

La Traviata. Diana Damrau’s Babypause again makes this one questionable, but whoever ends up signing Violetta, it will almost be worth it solely for the novelty value of Placido as Papa Germont.

Les Troyens. It’s a big opera, possibly the Biggest opera. The casting and the Luisi conducting is not the most reassuring, but Karen Cargill as Anna! She’s good. Graham should be good in this too. And we could always hope that this happens at some point. (HD January 5)

Il Trovatore. Throw another baby on the fire. Who is conductor Daniele Callegari?

Turandot. Timur is double-cast with James Morris and Samuel Ramey. Whose wobble will be bigger?

I welcome your company as we all try to make the website crash at noon tomorrow!

Rigoletto photo copyright Nick Heavican, Tempest costume by Kym Barrett, no credit listed for Alagna.

Continue Reading

Review

Jonas Kaufmann crashes Anna Netrebko’s Bohemian party in Salzburg

8 Comments
I went to a
Very Special Performance of La Bohème
at the Salzburg Festival and I wrote about it for Bachtrack:

When Salzburg Festival intendant Alexander Pereira stepped onto the stage of the Großes Festspielhaus last night to announce that one of the cast members of La bohème was sick and unable to sing, he faced a chorus of hisses from the audience… Piotr Beczala had decided a mere ten minutes earlier that his vocal cords would not be up to singing Rodolfo that night. We would have to wait forty minutes for a replacement. Further hisses. Fortunately Pereira had an ace up his sleeve: the replacement would be another star, Jonas Kaufmann.

You can read the rest here. This review
has everything: Anna Netrebko. Special surprise Rodolfo Jonas Kaufmann. Me
saying nice things about the Wiener Philharmoniker. You’re not going to believe
it.

A few more thoughts and photos below.

If you go to
as many performances as I do eventually you’ll see something crazy like this. As
I said in July when I wrote about a very different Bohème, this opera has never been one of my particular favorites.
That performance didn’t change my mind. But this one may have. The set design isn’t
great and doesn’t do much for the drama, but the Personenregie is remarkably nuanced. The characters were less idealized than usual, but for me that made them much more sympathetic, because they seemed real. As for the big cast change,
the singer/actor split is never a good thing but this staging is never static
and there would have been no way in hell to work anyone new into it on short
notice without severe damage. And I’m glad that they didn’t do that.

The scene at
this performance was incredibly glitzy. It’s a Salzburg irony: the festival
glories in the red carpets and paparazzi, yet many of the productions that draw
this crowd (before we even consider the smaller or more niche events) are far from
a Zeffirellian celebration of opulence for its own sake. (Think of the Decker Traviata. Or Frau ohne Schatten.) This was a case in point: the audience looked
far more glamorous than anyone onstage, except maybe Musetta.* (Including, however, Kaufmann, who really did
look like they had pulled him off the street, though not the same street these
Bohemians were occupying.)

And this
ridiculously last-minute slapped together substitution added a further human
touch and charm to something almost too fancy to bear.  There was widespread hissing when Pereira
announced the delay, because these are people who don’t like to wait, and then not
long after we’re all happily watching Jonas Kaufmann emerge stage left with his
shirt untucked, look slightly confused, disappear again, and return dragging a
very large chair. Getting a big-name replacement is a Salzburg sort of luxury, and the
singing was certainly of that class, but I loved how the trappings were pure
Baurentheater.
(Though if
Beczala was feeling ill all day, as Pereira said, shouldn’t they have started
scouting for a replacement Rodolfo a little earlier? Or at least given Kaufmann
a chance to be warned that with Gatti “Che gelida manina” was going to be a special preview of the Parsifal they’re doing together at the Met next year? Seriously, doing
this without rehearsal must have required nerves of steel in the first place
but when one of the weirdest conductors in the business is involved it’s even
worse. On an absolute scale there were coordination issues but under the circumstances I’m going to say it was damn good.)
This was far
from the Bohème that I expected but
it was certainly a Bohème to
remember. That’s all for me in Europe this summer, but this was an excellent finale.
*Except for
me. It had been raining buckets and while it everyone else had seemingly arrived
by helicopter, their outfits perfectly intact (not really, but as press
I got a nice seat), I had walked from the Neustadt and despite having an
umbrella resembled a drowned rat.

Curtain call:

Spot the non-Bohemian

Production photos, copyright Silvia Lelli

Continue Reading

Review

Ariadne auf Naxos: Ur-iadne auf Salzburg

6 Comments

I went to see Ariadne auf Naxos at the Salzburg Festival and wrote about it for Bachtrack:

Richard Strauss and Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s Ariadne auf Naxos was first performed in 1912, in a production directed by Max Reinhardt. Unlike the version usually seen today, this first Ariadne was a long-winded play-opera-ballet hybrid, incorporating a full production of Molière’s Le bourgeois gentilhomme with dances to incidental music by Strauss followed by the short opera. Less than a decade later these three men would found the Salzburg Festival, so it seems only appropriate that the festival is celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Ariadne. While this convoluted production doesn’t make a good case for the piece, strong performances by Emily Magee and Elena Mosuc in the opera’s main roles and a fantastic deus ex machina by Jonas Kaufmann as Bacchus make it worthwhile.

You can read the whole thing here. You can also watch this production live on the internet tonight (August 5) at 20:15 Austrian time from Medici.

While this production was disappointing in a number of ways I’m still very glad I saw it. As you’d guess from my blog name I’ve been obsessed with this opera for ages.

Some more thoughts and photos below.
This was advertised as the 1912 version and in the opera half that is the case (the differences from the standard 1916 version are relatively minor: Zerbinetta’s aria is even more complicated, the commedia characters get some more ensemble material, and Zerbinetta returns to sing more at the end). But the play is radically changed, as I describe in the review. I was disappointed in this first and foremost because Bechtolf is no playwright and the text for the new sections is leaden and directionless, but because it is disingenuous to advertise one thing and then provide something very different.

Ariadne is an intellectual, abstract piece, and staging such a work against its grain (as Bechtolf does) requires squarely confronting the aesthetic argument that is already there (as Bechtolf does not). Ariadne is the rare opera that presents a creation myth for itself (Capriccio and Lulu being two others). That myth, that Ariadne and Unfaithful Zerbinetta have been smashed together only by happenstance, is an important factor. To supersede this myth with another one, that Ariadne is Hofmannsthal’s way of getting under Countess Ottonie’s skirt, creates less a mise-en-abyme than a mise-en-confuse.  I thought it might make more sense if Bacchus appeared as a double for Hofmannsthal, but that’s not quite right either, being ungodly. That’s the problem with these historical interpretations: taking something abstract and making it so historically specific runs the risk of reducing and constraining it.

The commedia players, given an extended role in this version, seem pointless. The drama of the opera seria Ariadne story is alienated by the interruptions by Zerbinetta as well as M. Jourdain, but the autobiographical angle on Hofmannsthal presents Ariadne as a work of Romantic-style artistic inspiration. The result is tangled. Arguably the actual 1912 Ariadne is also a diffuse work, but I see it operating in the manner of the opéra-ballets of Lully and Molière’s time, presenting a succession of delights loosely tied together. Unfortunately Bechtolf’s version is not so delightful.

One scene I left out: in the long dressing-room scene, we are presented with a succession of characters from various Hofmannsthal works–Octavian, the Marschallin, Elektra, the Kaiserin, and several characters from Jedermann (Salzburg!). Why? I’m not sure. It’s Herheim without the dramatic purpose.*

Finally, about that last scene. As a true Zerbinetta, I must admit I’ve never really understood what happens at the end of Ariadne. I mean, I know what they say happens, but how does one become a god, anyway? Is there a flash of lightning? Staging a metaphysical transformation is difficult; usually it’s park and bark wearing togas. This was, well, I don’t know what it really was, with Bacchus creeping around** and Ariadne running away and the awful shiny leopard (panther? I don’t even know) suit and the chandeliers and the wreckage of the pianos and it is tacky and bizarre in the extreme but then again so is the music and the key word here is “extreme” and it actually seemed kind of electric and convincing in a weird way? That might just because Jonas Kaufmann is awesome in this, though. I’m not sure.

Speaking of, I saw Boheme last night and Beczala was ailing and guess who sang Rodolfo from the side of the stage? More on that soon. It was fun.

Thanks to the Zwölftöner for the Kofferwort “Ur-iadne.”

*Herheim is reportedly directing Meistersinger here next year.
**Scene will have to be reblocked for any tenor who is not, um, flexible.

Photos copyright Ruth Walz.
PLAY:

OPERA:

Continue Reading