Review

Dissertation Completion Hiatus

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I have to finish up my dissertation and am going to put this blog on hold for a few months. I will be covering Opera Lafayette’s Mozart/Philidor program, The French Così, this week, and then I will return in the spring a PhD (or at least one waiting for her defense). I reserve the right to state my opinions on the new Met productions of Prince Igor and Werther, but probably nothing else. The timing is poor because there are many interesting events coming up but, alas, the semester is short and the dissertation is long.

I recently received a request for “more GIFs.” Here you go.

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Review

Maus Haus

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I spent last week in Vienna working on my research and avoiding the Wiener Staatsoper (you remember what happened at our last reunion?). So it was a little funny to return to New York only to go see that most echt-Viennese of works, Die Fledermaus, now in a new production at the Met. There was, however, very little Viennese about this performance–which isn’t a problem in and of itself. The problem is that it is boring, unfunny and musically not very good.


Strauss II, Die Fledermaus, dialogue by Douglas Carter Beane and song texts by Jeremy Sams. Conducted by Adam Fischer with Susanna Philips (Rosalinde), Christopher Maltman (Eisenstein), Michael Fabiano (Alfred), Jane Archibald (Adele), Paulo Szot (Falke), Anthony Roth Costanzo (Orlofsky), Danny Burstein (Frosch)

As you may be aware, my research deals with Viennese operetta. Die Fledermaus is earlier than most of what I write about (my dissertation is on the twentieth century while it dates from 1874), but I know the piece well. I do not intend to inveigh against this Met production on charges of historical authenticity and anachronism. While operetta was created for a very specific cultural milieu, it has also been rewritten and transposed and altered as long as it’s been around. I don’t even mind the very mainstream, commercial face of this production. Though it’s not really my cup of tea, and I think a non-profit like the Met should be devoted to more artistic endevours, it is what operetta has basically always been. (Even the careful display of luxurious clothes and furniture is true to style–many operettas would advertise in the program which dressmaker and tailor were responsible for the fashions onstage.)

The production is moved up from 1874 to New Year’s Eve 1899, to transmit a society on the brink of changing many digits in their date. The setting is also moved to Vienna.* This seems to be purely an aesthetic choice, because 1900 costumes are more glamorous than those of a few decades earlier. (If the date is actually supposed to mean something apocalyptic, I would suggest claiming that it is July 27, 1914.) It’s a visually striking Jugendstil production (designed by Robert Jones) that isn’t afraid to cut the Met’s vast stage into a living room size, features some fake Klimts in Act 1, an impressive Seccession dome in Act 2 (see above), and a vaguely Otto Wagner-like jail in Act 3. It’s opulent and, in the Met repertoire, unique in its look. Yet nothing in the performances and text are as classy as this design.

Because the new text is bad. Jeremy Sams’s English lyrics and Douglas Carter Beane’s new dialogue are long-winded–the dialogue goes on for ages, and the lyrics pack in way more syllables in than the music seems to want–and terribly confused in terms of tone and setting. They mix a casual, contemporary tone (“One pig’s head coming through!”) with second-rate Downton Abbey period style and lots and lots of Gilbert and Sullivan couplets. The lyrics’ rhyme schemes and repetition don’t respect the music’s phrase structure, and many of the best lines are completely left out (“Glücklich ist, wer vergißt, was doch nicht zu ändern ist”–Alfred’s toast, “Happy are those who forget that which cannot be changed”–is now “long ago and far away… [something else along the lines of ‘don’t you remember, dear’]”).

The end result is that the production, like Adam Fischer’s unfortunate conducting, doesn’t seem to be located in any place at all. The consistent disregard for fin de siècle tone and manners moves the text away from the period depicted visually, but nor are the contemporary bits strong enough to put it in our day either, and it ends up in the kind of no-place that exists solely onstage at a major opera house. The cast can’t even agree if “Eisenstein” is to be pronounced like it is in German or in English. Like Sams’s previous Met concoction, The Enchanted Island (returning to the Met this spring, God help us all), it is distant from any recognizable social world or human feelings, because apparently it’s more FUN when we forget about that kind of messy stuff. There’s no heart in any of the characters, and no creative impulse, only smug superficiality. The reconciliation at the end has no resonance whatsoever. I felt like someone was screaming at me, “You’re having fun! You’re having fun!” I wasn’t.

And nothing like a few jokes about prison rape to lighten things up, right? I didn’t take notes so I can’t quote much, but much of it is in rather poor taste, extremely dated (this week’s Colbert bit on François Hollande had better French jokes), or otherwise just dumb. The Eisensteins speak in Yiddish dialect, but making them assimilated Jews, um, slightly oversimplifies a rather complex cultural identity in fin-de-siècle Vienna and, particularly considering their subsequent fate, that seems rather questionable. (It does, however, semi-justify the script’s divorce references–divorce was legal for Jews but not for Catholics. Somehow I doubt that was a major factor in the decision.)

There is simutaneously a would-be subversive gay humor element in Orlofsky that ends up turning out as a cape-twirling caricature. One has to wonder how much subversion is going on when the stage is simlutaneously decorated with (fake?) unclothed chorus girls. (Similarly, the casting of a man as Orlofsky is much less disruptive than a woman would be.) This is a production that wants to be outrageous without offending anyone, which doesn’t really work.

(It occurred to me while writing this that the model might have been the musical version of The Producers, to which many references are made. The Viennese sense of humor, however, often depends on a decorously unspoken gap between what is being said and what we all know to be true [welcome to theater under the red pencil of a police censor]. Moving it into this kind of blatantly direct, brash, flashy quasi-New Yawkese doesn’t do either Johann Strauss II or Mel Brooks any favors.)

Anyway, all this might have been improved if the cast had been more adept at selling the weak text, but they’re opera singers and not actors and you can tell. Adam Fischer’s conducting never waltzed, lacking any idiomatic sense for Viennese dance rhythms and making the champagne more or less flat. Nor did the singers seem to be, mostly, well-cast. Susanna Philips has a sweet, winning presence, but she lacks the pizzazz and jaded diva quality for Rosalinde. While her silvery soprano is the right sound for the music, she struggled with the higher passages and particularly the csárdás. Christopher Maltman was a not particularly charismatic Eisenstein (with a British accent hiding just under the surface) and, like most baritones, found the role too high. Paulo Szot sounded growly as Falke, nor was he as naturally charming as he usually is. Patrick Carfizzi sang very well as Frank.

The cast’s brightest spot was Michael Fabiano’s ridiculous Alfred. Granted, it’s a character role and he probably had the easiest material to work with, but he was also by far the funniest and the best sung, easily turning out many high notes. When is the Met going to give him the leading role he so obviously deserves? Anthony Roth Costanzo knows how to say a punch line with a ridiculous Russian accent, but the music is too high for his countertenor and is far better sung by a mezzo and the campy characterization grated. Jane Archibald sang Adele well, with a pleasantly full voice for a coloratura, though she was not quite as adept in the spoken portions. Danny Burstein is a real comedian and his Frosch managed something much closer to funny that most of the show, though he still went on for a few minutes too long. (All of Act 3 was a slog except Adele’s aria, which Archibald sang gracefully.)

You might have a nice ‘Maus if you were to take this sets and costumes and restore Haffner and Genée’s original text and redo the Personenregie. Or you could even adopt David Pountney’s widely-used, mostly totally OK English translation. (It’s on this Glyndebourne DVD.) Maybe consider this for the first revival, Met?

Die Fledermaus continues through February. If you want a culturally perceptive Fledermaus on DVD you really should try Hans Neuenfels’s brilliant 2001 Salzburg deconstruction; if you want a stellar performance of the score you need the Carlos Kleiber DVD from Munich.

Appendix: Program Notes Smackdown
I do not wish to reproduce Chapter 1 of my dissertation in this space, but program notes author Jay Goodwin’s characterization of the source material’s French heritage as “ironic” and as its French background as needing to be “washed away” misdates the anti-French backlash in Viennese theater. For the Viennese in 1874 (when Fledermaus premiered), operetta was French and a French-ish source with the dramaturgy of French boulevard theater was only to be expected. While some anti-French sentiment had already been brewing, it didn’t really catch on in theater production until around a decade later. The founding text of the anti-French nationalist backlash, Adam Müller-Guttenbrunn’s “Wien war eine Theaterstadt,” wasn’t published until 1885. Godwin also oversimplifies his description of Offenbach, who was not a wholly novel foil for large-scale opera as stated but rather refreshed a pre-existing tradition of Volkstück, Schwank, and komische Oper. He also mistakenly states the operetta’s setting as Wien, when it is a “Badort in der Nähe einer großen Stadt,” as mentioned in my footnote below.

*You might also be interested to know that Fledermaus doesn’t originally take place in Vienna!  It’s set in a spa town “near a large city,” probably meaning Baden bei Wien. That’s why Orlofsky is there–he’s taking the waters to cure his ennui.

More photos, all copyright Ken Howard:

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Review

La forza della Bavaria

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Was it mere coincidence that both operas I saw during my holiday weekend in Germany both considered free will and fate? Or was it…. something more? Meh. There’s none of Hans Neuenfel’s ambiguity on the fate question in the Bayerische Staatsoper’s production of La forza del destino. For director Martin Kusej, fate as explication–particularly when wielded by organized religion–is a handy tool of oppression by the powerful. It’s an interesting production, and more notably this was an unusually excitingly sung production of an exceedingly tricky opera.


Verdi, La forza del destino, Bayerische Staatsoper, 5 January 2014. Production directed by Martin Kusej, set designer Martin Zehetgruber, costumes Heidi Hackl, lights Reinhard Traub. Conducted by Ascher Fisch with Anja Harteros (Leonora), Jonas Kaufmann (Alvaro), Ludovic Tézier (Carlo), Nadia Krasteva (Preziosilla), Vitalij Kowaljow (Marchese di Calatrava/Padre Guardiano), Renato Girolami (Melitone)

Let me start off by saying that my review of the production is a bit limited, because my view of the stage was a bit limited. I was not too badly put out by this, because I managed to snag a ticket to a ridiculously sold out production only two weeks ahead of time and it cost all of 15 Euros. But I recognize that it is not ideal for a review. (I didn’t watch the webstream.)

I love Forza; I think it’s a fascinating and ridiculously underrated piece that presents enormous musical and dramatic interest and possibilities. (I’ve written about it before.) The, er, “plot” is convoluted and sometimes seems to entirely disappear, as do major characters for acts at a time; the tone swings wildly between the most solemn late Verdi drama and La fille du régiment. It’s the biggest argument against Verdi as a dramatist who operates solely in simple and literal terms. He obviously has more abstract fish to fry here, and a staging that doesn’t reflect this complexity… well, maybe that’s why this opera’s reputation is so bad.

Martin Kusej’s production does make a real attempt at dealing with meaning, though in the end I found it to be something of a hedgehog at loose in a fox of an opera. Like the everpresent table onstage, everything comes down to the destructive effects of patriarchal and religious authority and control. We being with a solemn family dinner at that table, presided over by the Marchese with a prominently placed cross (above). In contrast, Leonora’s forbidden boyfriend Alvaro is quite disreputable-looking and seems to exist well outside the system.

Act 2 seems to be constructed of remanants of this first act in a dream-like way–Leonora’s maid Curra becomes Preziosilla, Carlo grows up (and eventually loses the dorky green sweater), the Marchese becomes the Padre Guardiano, and one of the mysterious dinner guests turns out to be Melitone. Leonora still can’t escape, it seems, and finally submits to the Church (as represented by her dead father, the Marchese/Padre Guardiano) in a baptismal dunking apparently lifted from an American church.

The Act 2 inn set evokes a 9/11 disaster photo, prefiguring the American tone of Act 3, which leaves Leonora for an Iraq-like war. This act begins with a startling tableau of images familiar from the US in Iraq. It’s an apt setting for a chaotic conflict that depends on personal trust. (For an American for whom such things remain open issues, the torture stuff felt underexamined and gratuitous–I don’t think I’m ready to see anything about this as a symbol yet. But it was gone fairly quickly.) The staging of the Alvaro and Carlo scenes, however, is strong and intense (what I saw of it).

The music of the following crowd scenes turns comic but the production remains grim, an orgy that seems ordered out of a Regietheater catalog. This made the production seem a bit deaf to the score’s change of tone, and besides I never got any good sense as to who these people represent or what they’re doing here. While their random appearance and manic energy—were the conductor to become a little more energetic, that is—could seemingly be mined for something grotesque and extreme, here it’s a bit generic and deflated. Even a striking scene of rows of dead bodies in the Rataplan is somehow less horrifying than it should be. (Honestly, after an Abu Gharib tableau, I’m not sure if you have anywhere to go.) The production’s low point comes in the opening of Act 4, which seems to have slipped Kusej’s mind entirely. (Act 3 is rearranged, with the Alvaro-Carlo duet moved after the Rataplan.)

Fortunately, the last act is more effective. Alvaro can’t talk Carlo into forgiveness and Leonore, adrift on a giant pile of white crosses, is not granted her wish for peace. While the Marchese/Padre Guardiano does his blessing duty, Alvaro is no longer convinced of the redemptive power of faith, and ends up throwing one of those crosses on the ground and leaving in despair.

While this production was interesting, the performance’s biggest reward was the singing, more glamorous, charismatic, and committed than you usually hear in this rep. If only the cast hadn’t been consistently counteracted by Asher Fisch’s uninspired conducting. While he and the orchestra got off to a strong prelude, elsewhere he proved too laid-back for his own good, failing to build to climaxes and lacking in energy. This particularly dogged the choral scenes, which tended towards the limp. The chorus, though, was excellent.

Anja Harteros deservedly received the largest ovation for her Leonora. The role suits both her big, dark, slightly grainy soprano and her introverted temperament: she always seems conscious and in control of everything she does, and Leonora here is someone who has never been able to express herself freely. While she doesn’t have the vocal warmth or round sound of a more Italinate soprano, she sounds absolutely like herself and is wonderfully musical. While she doesn’t always have the greatest high notes, the ending of her “Pace, pace” was terrific, and she doesn’t shy away from chest voice, either.

No one would accuse Jonas Kaufmann of being Italian either, but his muscular, forceful tenor and surprisingly bright upper range is perfect for Alvaro’s tortured character. He was also endlessly energetic compared to the more withdrawn Harteros (as well as far greasier-looking compared to her elegance). “Tu, che in seno agli angeli” featured some terrific high soft singing. As Carlo, though, Ludovic Tézier was somewhat overparted and sometimes resorted to barking, as well as struggling with the fioriture in “Urna fatale.” He did his best singing in the duets with Kaufmann, where they blended well.

The supporting cast was good: I kind of wondered what had happened to Vitalji Kowaljow after I heard him sing a pretty strong Wotan a few years ago, and it turns out he is a solid Verdi bass as well. This was the second time I heard Nadia Krasteva as Preziosilla, and while she has the right kind of spicy tone and sass for it and can hit all the notes loudly, she had an awkward break around the bottom of the staff that impeded her Rataplan. Renato Girolami did nothing to make Melitone seem very necessary, but nor was he annoying.

It’s a shame there isn’t going to be a DVD of this. I’m very glad I got to see it in person.


Trailer:

Photos (copyright Bayerische Staatsoper):

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Review

My eyes! My eyes! (Oedipe in Frankfurt)

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What’s a pessimistic old director to do when the opera he or she is directing has an ending that is just too damn redemptive? If you’re Hans Neuenfels and are dealing with George Enescu’s Oedipe, a production currently at the Oper Frankfurt, you chop off the optimistic last act. The result is a tight and well-paced tragedy, set to Enescu’s unique voice.


George Enescu, Oedipe. Oper Frankfurt, 1.3.2014, production by Hans Neuenfels, conducted by Alexander Liebreich with Simon Neal (Oedipus), Magnús Baldvinsson (Tiresias), Dietrich Volle (Creon), Michael McCown (Shepherd), Kihwan Sim (Phorbas), Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Jokaste), Katharina Magiera (Sphinx)

Enescu’s score (premiered 1936) is more contrapuntal and solid than many of its contemporaries (say, Szymanowski) and its vocabulary is too wide to easily describe. The chorus plays an important role, there are some colorful effects (whip, musical saw, thunder, etc.), some of it is influenced by folk music, sometimes it sounds like Strauss, and I think I heard some quarter tones. Sometimes there is so much going on that it’s hard to tell where to listen–the aural equivalent of Where’s Waldo. The vocal writing isn’t particularly grateful and the orchestra is the star attraction, but the music does keep the story moving inexorably forward. Enescu apparently specified that the opera should be performed in the local language, which was followed here. The German was fairly intelligible, though the writing can be thick. You can hear a little of the score in the video at the end of this review.

Neuenfels tends to be attracted to and do well with these ambiguously modern settings of ancient stories–see also both his Medea in Corintho and König Kandaules. While many people  say they would not like to encounter an unfamiliar opera in a production by a Regietheater director like Neuenfels, I don’t think that problem ever came up for me in any of these performances. (Enescu’s opera was probably familiar to a few not-me audience members, but in popularity terms all three are a long way from La traviata.) Neuenfels’s telling of the story is inextricable from his interpretation of it, and the result is elegant, insightful, and perfectly clear without being too obvious–particularly so in Oedipe, which I liked the most out of these three.

Rifail Ajdarpasic’s set frames the action in chalkboards full of physics equations and mathematical jottings, preparing the action’s portrayal of Oedipe as a kind of scientist or archeaologist. In the opening, he gets to watch himself being born–hatched from an egg, in fact. While he is, evidently, investigating the notion of free will, he seems quite suggestible himself: the revelation of his dire fate is enough for him to give his supposed mother a big kiss on the lips.

This should indicate that Edmund Fleg’s libretto is no normal Oedipus: it tells the title character’s whole biography, not just the last part (or, in this production, up to the eye-gouging). He goes to Corinth, he plays Twenty Questions with the Sphinx, and he returns to Thebes. The big cut gives the opera a strikingly symmetrical structure, with Oedipe’s final Act 3 denouement echoing the revelations of Act 1. Simultaneously, the gender ambiguity of the extravagant costumes (Tiresias seems to be heading towards feminity a little bit early, or late (?), but he is joined by the whole chorus) suggests Freudian paths–we are, after all, dealing with the ur-Complex. Neither opera nor production offers any pat lieto fine, but one suspects that Oedipe’s triumphant declaration to the Sphinx that man is greater than fate may have been off base.

I was very impressed by the overall level of the Oper Frankfurt’s orchestra and ensemble of singers, as well as Alexander Liebreich’s conducting. (I’d never visited this opera house before.) I was sitting right up in the front and heard a good deal of the orchestra, which (though I say this without any detailed knowledge of the score) sounded very accurate and balanced. Baritone Simon Neal made a suitably intense and tortured Oedipe, almost exacerbated by his outwardly normal appearance. I particularly liked Tanja Ariane Baumgartner (Jokaste), who has a very rich and even mezzo. The Sphinx’s crazy scene is really too low for Katharina Magiera, who sounded like she’d borrowed her lower notes from Marlene Dietrich, but she vamped with committment. Supporting roles were also strong.

I hope we can hear this opera more often. Has Leon Botstein seriously not done this one yet?

Video:

More photos (all copyright Monika Rittershaus): 

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Review

Best of 2013

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I saw some great stuff this year! Here are some of my favorites. This list was a little less exciting to put together than some of my previous year-end posts (2012, 2011), because I mostly was home in the US and for my tastes Europe is just more interesting.

But let’s look on the bright side: the Met certainly did better in 2013 than they did in 2012 or 2011. They played it safe with new productions, most of which were imported from elsewhere, but most of them proved more or less watchable and well-sung. And in Parsifal and Die Frau ohne Schatten (the former an import and the latter a revival of a Met original) they had two very special performances of challenging and unusual works. Let’s hope that this continues in the upcoming Prince Igor.

Best Performances
Parsifal (Met)
David et Jonathas (Les Arts Florissants/Brooklyn Academy of Music)
Don Carlo (Royal Opera)
Die Frau ohne Schatten (Met)

Best Individual Performances
Joyce DiDonato, La donna del lago (Royal Opera)
Antonio Pappano (conducting), Don Carlo (Royal Opera)
Peter Mattei, Parsifal (Met)

Rising Stars
Jamie Barton, Norma (second year running in this category! arguably should be promoted to the above category) (Met)
Lianna Hartounian, Don Carlo (Royal Opera)
Jacquelyn Wagner, Feuersnot (American Symphony Orchestra in concert)
Michael Spyres, La donna del lago (Royal Opera) (also has nearly outgrown this category)

Special Awards
Best Webcast: Così fan tutte, from the Teatro Real Madrid, in Michael Haneke’s superb production with a compelling cast. I also enjoyed Meistersinger from Salzburg, but was not very impressed by most of the cast or the conducting.

Most Extreme: Die Entführung aus dem Serail at the Komische Oper Berlin, which was more an act of catharsis than a performance one could enjoy in any conventional sense.

Saddest: The New York City Opera had been operating on borrowed time for some time now, but its demise is the end of a great institution.

Best Reinvention: Silent film might seem an odd inspiration for opera, but the Komische Oper Berlin’s production of Die Zauberflöte (seen later in Los Angeles and coming soon to Minnesota) was brilliant.

Unfulfilled Promise: Gotham Chamber Opera. Both Eliogabalo and Baden Baden 1927 seemed like terrific ideas on paper, but less so in live performance.

Biggest Contrast: When I saw the same production of Don Carlo in New York and London a few months apart. What had been dull and lifeless in New York (most of all due to Lorin Maazel’s limp conducting) was terrifically energetic in London. Even Ferruccio Furlanetto, who was the best thing in the New York performance, was way better in London.

Most Popular Posts
1. Parsifal (Met) (this post also got a remarkable 19 comments) (as someone who has found the introduction of Parsifal to undergraduate students to be something of a challenge on the enthusiasm front, this is both encouraging and surprising)
2. Die Entführung aus dem Serail (Komische Oper Berlin) (16 comments)
3. Rigoletto (Met)
4. Eugene Onegin (Met)
5. Maria Stuarda (Met)


See you in 2014! I will be seeing Die Fledermaus eventually, but am going on a research trip before that and won’t make it until midway through January.

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Review

Strauss’s Feuersnot at Carnegie Hall

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Jacquelyn Wagner and Leon Botstein

Feuersnot is like the Richard Strauss of the tone poems invading the opera house. It’s his second opera, from 1901, a short exercise in post-Wagnerian nose-thumbing that is more a series of picaresque adventures than a grand coherent drama. But it’s got some fun music and I’m glad that the American Symphony Orchestra dusted it off at Carnegie Hall on Sunday.

The plot would seem to offer a real playground for a creative director, though this presentation was in concert. On Midsummer’s Eve in medieval Munich, the sorcerer Kunrad is spurned (and mocked) by Dietmut, the maidenly object of his affection. In return, he extinguishes all of the town’s fires (“Feuersnot”–want of fire). Dietmut is persuaded to change her mind and her deflowering provides the most lyrical Straussian music of the opera (orchestral–but rather calmer than the Rosenkavalier prelude).

That doesn’t sound like much of a plot but there’s some congenial local color of Bavarian drinking songs and local citizenry and such, and a bit of backstory too–Kunrad (AKA Strauss) is taking the place of a departed, older sorcerer (identified musically as Wagner) and is trying to figure out a new way of going about things. The story amounts to a parody of Wagnerian metaphysics: a Tristan love duet parody complete with Stabreims just before Kunrad is left hanging midair in a basket (I tell you, a staging of this opera would be a good time) and, in the finale, a redemption by love that is abrupt and really more like a redemption by lust. Strauss–and, even more importantly, librettist Ernst von Wolzogen–seem to suggest the emptiness of these idealistic Romantic gestures. It’s unclear what their replacement would be—I guess you have to wait for Salome for that—but in one act of around 95 minutes, Feuersnot does not wear out its welcome.

Alfred Walker

This early twentieth-century satire is such a perfect fit for Leon Botstein that it’s kind of surprising he hadn’t conducted it long ago. He pretty much kept it together: it’s an uneven score but some of the loud bits are rousing and the love scene has authentic Straussian Schwung. The Singspiel-like bits that portray Old München are less interesting. Most impressive in this performance was the Manhattan Girls Chorus, whose part in the score was long and complex (often involving what I presume were either old Bavarian folk songs or verses intended to sound as such). The Collegiate Chorale was also excellent. While Strauss is, I think, criticizing much of Wagner, he did seem to enjoy writing Meistersinger-like crowd scenes, too.

The soloists were also very good. As Dietmut, Jacquelyn Wagner’s even, clear soprano is ideally suited to Strauss, and her high notes were particularly strong. This can’t be an easy role and she was consistent and rock-solid throughout. As Kunrad, Alfred Walker projected well with a bass-like sound (he’s credited as a bass-baritone) that sounds like it could be impressive in Wagner, though his monologue could have benefitted from a little more variety that’s also Strauss’s fault. There are a ton of supporting roles, none of whom are given a terribly distinct musical profile (as the army of Rosenkavalier supporters are, for instance). Dietmut has a trio of Rhinemaiden-like friends and most of the professions of München are represented. Most of the singers were on point if not particularly memorable, two exceptions were Branch Field’s gruff Innkeeper and Clay Hilley’s large-voiced Baliff (given the magnificent name of Schweiker von Gundelfingen). Despite a note proclaiming that Bavarian dialect would be in use, it mostly sounded like Hochdeutsch to me.

It’s not a masterpiece, but it’s an amusing work that I was glad to hear.


Strauss, Feuersnot. American Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, 12/15/13. Conducted by Leon Botstein with the Collegiate Chorale, Manhattan Girls Chorus, and many soloists.

Photos copyright Jito Lee

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Review

I’ll tickle your catastrophe

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I think it was W.C. Fields who said that sharing the stage with children and animals is a bad plan. The Met could well have listened. Their new Falstaff is nearly stolen by a placid, grass-eating horse, whose blithe equine indifference to his surroundings is a proper illustration of Falstaff’s character. The rest is, pace my Shakespearean headline, hardly catastrophic–Levine is Levine and this is one of his favorites, the hard-working cast sings pretty well, and Robert Carsen’s production is thoroughly professional–but the horse is the closest we get to the soul of wit. (I’m basically saying what Intermezzo already did. As usual, she’s right.)


Verdi, Falstaff. Met Opera, 12/6/2013. New production premiere directed by Robert Carsen, sets by Paul Steinberg, costumes by Brigitte Reiffenstuehl, lights by Carsen and Peter Van Praet. Conducted by James Levine with Ambrogio Maestri (Falstaff), Angela Meade (Alice), Stephanie Blythe (Quickly), Lisette Oropesa (Nanetta), Paolo Fanale (Fenton), Franco Vassallo (Ford)

Carsen is the ultimate internationalist; he’s everywhere and can be trusted to put on a “modern,” competent show that (with the exception of his Candide) won’t, um, startle the horses. He’s certainly a director with visual trademarks: he likes the 1950s, giant beds, dramatic shadows, lots of chairs, and carefully tailored costumes. (See this and this.) Some of his productions can be very beautiful and insightful, but this unfortunately isn’t one of them. The 1950s setting makes sense: Falstaff is a fallen, anachronistic aristocrat and the Fords and Pages are new money. Each scene contains food: the tavern, a chic restaurant for the ladies (where Fenton is a waiter), a men’s club, Alice’s giant kitchen, and finally a banquet in the woods. A wooden wall looms behind most of the scenes, and it’s in general a handsome production. But for an opera already weighted down by a lot of fat jokes, it’s unclear what this culinary focus really adds. It’s kind of one-note in a tiresome way, for an opera that is anything but. (There’s something about a gastro-centric postwar setting–feast after a time of famine, etc. Look at Albert Herring. But Falstaff isn’t Hänsel und Gretel.)

Fortunately, Carsen gets the giant bed out of the way in the first scene of this one. Falstaff starts the opera in it. Exactly what that bed is doing in the middle of a tavern escapes me, which points to the production’s larger problem of tone and setting. The opera turns on a dime between slapstick, romance, and poignancy, but the production, while good-natured, isn’t so agile. There are some funny bits–most notably when Ford leads in a giant crowd of men to search and trash Alice’s kitchen–but this is a production with surprisingly little wit or wisdom, unsure of what it is about. The characters have little shape and it’s just not that funny. Even obvious joke moments like Ford and Falstaff walking through the door together and Falstaff sneaking up on Alice don’t land as clear punch lines. (There’s also some bad blocking–Nanetta keeps having to get up from her seat in the restaurant and cross behind Alice so she can see the conductor.) There’s no magic in the bare wooden walls and stage of the forest, and it’s unclear why the chorus is an army of be-antlered Falstaff doubles. It ends with lighting the house for the fugue. Raising the house lights to go “YOU TOO!” is the cheapest Brechtian shortcut a director can pull, and here it’s too little too late. It moves along, but all the Carsen tropes are dressed up without anywhere to go.

(I must note that I vastly preferred Richard Jones’s Glyndebourne production, which I saw in May and unfortunately didn’t have time to write about. It’s also set in the 1950s, but is decidedly more surreal, inventive, and funnier, including things like a running joke involving a cat and a giant cabbage patch. The characters are given real personalities and the craft fair magic of the fairies is beautifully human.)

Falstaff is a James Levine signature piece and he brings a bounce and light to the music that was missing from the production (particularly in the last act). It’s quick, light, and transparent, but quiet when it needs to be. That being said, there were a few ensemble coordination issues in Act 1, particularly between the two sides of the stage (men on one side, women on the other). Things improved.

The cast is reasonably strong. Ambrogio Maestri, however, was not a particularly interesting Falstaff. He’s got the big round voice for it, and the round shape, but while musically fine it was a one-dimensional characterization, little more than a teddy bear.* He made little of the “una parola” section of the “Onore” monologue, and seemed reluctant to play the forrest scene for anything but laughs. This was definitely the first time I’ve seen Ford as the more interesting character. Franco Vassallo was genuinely funny in the Signor Fontana scene (wearing a cowboy outfit), and managed to make the final scene something of a Figaro-Count junior version. His singing was solid and warm-toned, but sometimes drowned out by the orchestra. As Fenton, Paolo Fanale had a very beautiful sound in the serenade in Act 3, but was completely drowned out in the ensembles.

As Alice Ford, Angela Meade put in a valiant effort, acting-wise, and this was by far the most animated performance I’ve seen from her. She doesn’t seem to have much in the way of comic timing–she needs to go way bigger in her reactions–but the production didn’t give her much to work with. Vocally, it’s kind of a thankless role and doesn’t show off all she can do, but she has a sweet and youthful tone and managed to punch out the staccato bits strongly. In contrast, Nanetta’s music is a gift to any light soprano, and the Met has fortunately cast Lisette Oropesa, possibly the best singer they have in this Fach. She sang “Sul fil d’un soffio etesio” with beautifully light, clear, crystalline tone, and her high notes hang in the air forever. On the low side, Stephanie Blythe as Mistress Quickly sounded like a very loud trombone. This role is her ideal Fach as well–she’s much better here than she is in higher Verdi stuff. The supporting roles were fine, with one of the tenors sounding really honking nasal loud in the fugue (I think it was Keith Jameson as Bardolfo, who was pretty loud the whole way through).

This production is an import from the ROH Covent Garden. This is the third new production this season and all three have been imported from London–Onegin and Two Boys both came from the English National Opera. This seems like a bit much. Why can’t the Met develop its own aesthetic rather than import another city’s wholesale? That being said, apparently Des McAnuff was originally slated to direct a new Falstaff, and this one was swapped after his disastrous Faust (which was itself an import form, yep, London). So I guess we dodged a bullet here.

See you at Feuersnot next week. I’ll add more photos to this post when I can find them, you can see photos of the London cast over at Intermezzo.

*[Insert Harold Bloom critique of Merry Wives here.] Someday I’m going to direct a production of Falstaff that is set in an academic department, with Falstaff as a Bloom-like figure, Alice a clever full professor, Nanetta as a grad student, and Mistress Quickly the stalwart department coordinator.

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Review

Und in dem “Wie” da liegt der ganze Unterschied

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On Friday night, most of the New York opera fanatics I know were at Peter Grimes at Carnegie Hall. Forgive me, but I enjoy Strauss far more than Britten and I went to Der Rosenkavalier instead, in its first performance at the Met this season. It’s an adequate but uneven revival, featuring a promising surprise debut by Erin Morley as Sophie but some miscasting elsewhere.

The biggest drag on the evening was Edward Gardner’s conducting, though drag isn’t really the right word. Because it was quite rushed, heavy, and thick, which is a bad combination for Strauss. There was little gradation of texture (particularly noticeable considering Vladimir Jurowski’s exemplary transparency in the Met’s current Die Frau ohne Schatten), and the orchestra was consistently too loud, often forcing the singers to belt when they probably were perfectly capable of doing something more subtle. Gardner seems to have little sense of Strauss’s rhythmic flow, either, and while fast, his conducting rarely danced, and when he slowed down (as he did for much of the solo music), it was just slower, without the sense of lingering on a thought. I wondered if he was shy of making it too sugary, but it didn’t seem like he’d found a plausible alternative. The orchestra played fairly cleanly, with a few clams in the horns and trumpets, but I missed the string sound of Munich and Vienna.

If Vienna was lacking in the strings, it was present in Martina Serafin’s regal Marschallin. She gave a classy, solid performance with beautifully clear diction and sense of the text. She’s sympathetic and natural onstage, and gives a good impression of spontaneity. Her voice is big enough to have won most of its fights with the orchestra, and it has an appealingly old-school grainy quality. But this was also a modest performance, lacking in some degree of magnetism. While the Marschallin might give up Octavian, she still is the most complex figure in the opera and often has the greatest command of the stage; Serafin seemed to have resigned that role as well. The only thing big about her Act 3 entrance was her dress.

Perhaps this was because the revival was planned around Elina Garanca’s Octavian, which is reputedly just such a major performance. But Garanca is pregnant, and was replaced here by Alice Coote. While I really like Coote, she is thoroughly miscast and we are left with something of a stardom lacuna. Coote’s solid, thick voice lacks the complex overtones and sheen that this role ideally demands, and its near-soprano range seems high for her. It also seems to be a bad match for her introverted, non-showy personality. She did best in Act 3, where her piping, shrill Mariandel had some funny moments. But in the straightforward ardor of Act 1 and the majesty of Act 2 she seemed out of her element.

The trio was completed by Erin Morley, a happy replacement for the “sick” Mojca Erdmann. Morley has been singing small roles at the Met for a while—things like Rhinemaidens and the Dew Fairy—as well as larger roles elsewhere. Her Sophie started off irrepressibly energetic, and her voice is a lovely high soprano, very well focused and controlled even in the highest reaches. She understandably spent a lot of the opera looking directly at Gardner, but this was an impressive role debut and I hope the Met gives her more good assignments.

There must not be too many Barons Ochs (Ochsen?) in the world of opera, because I’ve seen Peter Rose sing this thing a number of times in any number of very similar productions. His voice isn’t the largest, which was an issue here, and he had real trouble with the highest and lowest parts (the top note on the haystack line being a particular issue), but he certainly knows his way around the opera, gets the dialect, and can play the comedy without being as irritatingly crass as some.

The supporting cast was acceptable if not distinguished, with a pinched and high-note-challenged Italian Singer from Eric Cutler, an uneven but really funny Annina by Jane Henschel, a largely inaudible Valzacchi by Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, an unmemorable Faninal by Hans-Joachim Ketelsen, and a very shrill Marianne Leitmetzerin by Jennifer Check. As the Police Commissioner, Richard Bernstein did his usual thing of singing everyone else off the stage and making you wonder why he wasn’t singing Ochs or Faninal (he is doing the same as Zaretski in Onegin). Only James Courtney, as the Notary, was guilty of heinous overacting.

The production dates from 1969, as betrayed by the pastel carpet. It’s dated and dull. I am kind of amused at the enormous round of applause the Act 2 set (seen above) inevitably generates. I believe it is in fact intended to show the nouveau riche Faninal trying too hard in the interior decoration department, but that point may be impossible to convey at the Met, where too much is never enough. It is also tricky in an opera like this, which will never send one servant in to make an announcement when it can send in four who sing in counterpoint. (Also, you may have noticed that this opera is a bit long.) I was going to say, “you could make a production about that dynamic,” but then I remembered that Stefan Herheim already did, and I went to Stuttgart once to see it. (It was far and away the best Rosenkavalier production I’ve seen. You can watch a little bit of it here, somewhat NSFW.)

When I looked up this Met production’s age on the Met Archives database, I found a thoroughly entertaining review of its first performance by Irving Kolodin from the Saturday Review. He wrote:

Given such a variety of elements, a truly successful “Rosenkavalier” could emerge from only two sources: a powerful integrated dramatic supervision, or an overwhelmingly influential effort by the conductor. This “Rosenkavalier” was not blessed with either. Nathaniel Merrill’s direction solved, successfully, the primary problems of movement, displacement, and interchange of personnel on and off stage. But he had not, so far as I could determine, done much to stimulate characterization among those performers who had not brought a characterization with them, or achieve a totality among the characterizations that were offered.

I could not have put it better myself. He also notes, “Best of all, the [set designer] O’Hearn production gives every promise of durability.” Perhaps that virtue has carried this one a little further than it should have?

Let me say that my companion at this performance, who knew the score but had never seen the opera live, found it fairly satisfying. This is an opera impressive and multifaceted enough that any halfway decent performance offers considerable food for thought. (I catch something new every time, and I still regularly miss the point in Act 2 when Annina and Valzacchi switch sides.) But as an admitted Rosenkavalier addict (in my defense, I spent 2010, which was its 100th anniversary, in Austria and Germany, when everyone was producing it), this one is middle of the pack at best.

Der Rosenkavalier runs through December 13. Photo copyright Jonathan Tichler.

Strauss-Hofmannsthal, Der Rosenkavalier. Met Opera, 11/22/13. Production by Nathaniel Merrill (revival), conducted by Edward Gardner with Martina Serafin (Marschallin), Alice Coote (Octavian), Peter Rose (Ochs), Erin Morley (Sophie), etc., etc., etc.

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Review

Richard and Hugo’s Pregnancy Patrol (Die Frau ohne Schatten)

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Any sighting of the big and complicated Die Frau ohne Schatten at an opera house is an event. Strauss’s score is one of his most varied and exciting and unique (it’s not violent like Salome or Elektra, but nor is it hyper-romantic like Rosenkavalier or Arabella). The libretto is, shall we say, obscure, mixing spirits and mortals, symbols and talismans like a Zauberflöte without the proverbs, and even less logic. Where Die Frau ohne Schatten excels is majesty. This musically distinguished and beautifully designed Met revival captures that magic, and is definitely one of the must-sees of the fall season.


Strauss, Die Frau ohne Schatten. Met Opera, 11/12/13. Production by Herbert Wernicke, conducted by Vladimir Jurowski with Anne Schwanewilms (Empress), Ildikó Komlósi (Nurse), Christine Goerge (Dyer’s Wife), Johan Reuter (Barak), Torsten Kerl (Emperor), Richard Paul Fink (Messenger), Jennifer Check (Falcon).

Before this performance, I read Hugo von Hofmannsthal’s novella version of the story. It’s a beautifully written story and clears up some of the more immediate confusions of the libretto. But on the larger issues I can’t say I’m that much more enlightened. (It’s only available in German, unfortunately.) The story is about a spirit brought into the world of humans by marriage to the Emperor–thus she is made the Empress. To remain in the human world, she needs to acquire a shadow (also meaning become pregnant). Her Nurse decides to manipulate a poor dyer’s wife out of her shadow and thus fertility. This does not go too well.

The clearest message that can be extracted from the libretto—that the Empress and Dyer’s Wife need to stop thinking so much about themselves all the time and realize their essential function as baby-making factories—is, um, not my favorite conclusion in all of opera. (It, as well as the novella’s obsession with food, probably have something to do with the time of the opera’s composition right after World War I, though it was begun before that.) While the music seems to make it all make glittering sense, productions of Frau have struggled to find a visual realization for the spectacular and causally confusing events, e.g. the earthquake at the end of Act 2, the Fountain of Life, and even the titular shadow. The last production I saw, Christoph Loy’s in Salzburg, threw in the towel entirely and put the whole thing in a recording studio (weak sauce).

On that front, Herbert Wernicke’s Met production is a great success, and actually lives up to the music’s energy and atmosphere. First performed in 2001, it’s being revived for the first second time and first since 2003. Wernicke died at a tragically young age in 2002, and the direction here is credited to J. Knighten Smit. The design—all by Wernicke—is the primary attraction. The world of the Empress, Emperor, and Nurse is a mirrored box, whose transformations are seen in various dramatic flickering lighting effects. In contrast to this glamour, the Dyer’s house is in a gritty sewer or subway, located below the box and connected by a fire escape staircase (one of the best uses of the Met’s scenic elevator I’ve seen). The upper level is timeless and mythic, the lower contemporary and realistic (Act 1 ends with the dyer Barak poignantly staring into an open refrigerator). The implication is vaguely Marxist: the Empress (surrounded by narcissistic mirrors) is exploiting the literal underclass, for whom she gradually learns compassion. The finale is Brechtian–or lieto fine-ian—with the lighting scaffold descending to reveal the stage mechanism and the singers addressing the audience directly. Since the music does not follow suit in any way, I found this gesture a little ineffective, but overall this is a very strong and convincing production.

The larger problem was the distinct lack of direction of the singers. The images are strong enough that I trust Wernicke’s vision remained at least partially intact, but it would have been a lot more engaging and stronger with less park and bark. The singers seemed left to their own devices, with varying and dissonant results. Anne Schwanewilms was a blank, impassive Empress, intentionally so, and her slim, cutting soprano also sounds otherworldly. It’s a very German sort of sound, somewhat squeezed and instrumental. The highest notes were difficult for her, and her enunciation of the words was not very clear, particularly for a native speaker. Overall, I found her performance of this role in Salzburg a few years ago more satisfying.

In contrast, Christine Goerke’s Dyer’s Wife was earthy and personable. This has been a major career breakthrough for her, with the kind of singing where we ask where she has been for the last five years (the answer does not involve an Incongruous Former Profession like morning radio host or roller skate saleswoman, she’s been singing in Europe, plus the Foreign Princess at the Met a few years ago). Her voice has an all-encompassing size and dark, rich color, best in the middle and bottom. She can blast out the high notes, too, as in the end of Act 2, which was great. Her Dyer’s Wife is a shy, unsatisfied housewife–a drastically different interpretation from the high octane Evelyn Herlitzius in Salzburg. I must admit I found Herlitzius’s edgy, intense singing more viscerally exciting, but Goerke is sure a whole lot more accurate and reliable, as well as more likable. (They are a textbook example of Ethan Mordden’s typology of the “Stimmdiva”–Goerke–versus the “Kunstdiva”–Herlitzius.)

The other singers were less notable, though all were pretty good. Ildikó Komlósi sounded worn and shrill as the Nurse, but this role is not exactly a walk in the park. Torsten Kerl coped with the high-lying role of the Emperor capably and reasonably musically (he repeatedly gets the opera’s One Big Tune, representing his and the Empress’s first encounter and the choice of the postshow subway sax/flute player), but did nothing resembling acting and his voice sounds a little on the small side. Johan Reuter made a very human Barak, but also a very lyrical one, and was not ideally audible. Richard Paul Fink as the Spirit Messenger was rather better on the volume front, and countertenor (!) Andrey Nemzer was alarmingly loud as the other messenger. The Young Man and the Falcon were both amplified, and sounded quite artificial.

Of course the orchestra is one of the main stars of any Frau, so I’m sorry to have arrived here last. Vladimir Jurowski conducted a beautifully delineated, controlled, very vertical account of the score. I heard lots of details and the singers were only occasionally drowned out. He is restrained, saving the full Straussian power for a few big moments. I kind of wish he were less parsimonious? It was a very beautiful and elegant reading, but Strauss is not a composer who thrives on frugality, and I would have appreciated a bit more sonic extravagance. (Caveat: I was in the damn rear orchestra again, where acoustics are bad. If i didn’t have so much work, I’d go again and sit in the Family Circle.) I also missed the momentum of Christian Thielemann’s Salzburg rendition, which I preferred by a small margin.

But this is nonetheless a musically distinguished and scenically remarkable production; go see it.

Photos copyright Ken Howard/Met.

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Review

Norma again: Some Gaul

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Like any good New York opera fan, I heeded the calls of prominent persons and went to go see Angela Meade and Jamie Barton headline the second cast of Norma last week. (Sorry that I’m slow to write, but some people indicated they were still interested so I figured better late than never.) I arrived with high expectations, but I only saw one breakthrough, not two.

Angela Meade sounds like she finds Norma a more natural fit than Sondra Radvanovsky did. Perhaps her singing sounds easier, period. She’s got a sweet, silky tone that slides easily through the coloratura and still has the force to fill the house. She struggled with breath in “Casta diva,” cutting several phrases short, but improved over the course of the evening and showed real force in the final scene. She’s fairly musical and varied her vocal color more than I have heard from her before, but has a bit of a tic when it comes to high notes, singing many of them pp, a few ff, and few anywhere in between.

But if her singing appears effortless, her acting is anything but. She is trying, but it’s a matter of indicating rather than embodying, and was rarely convincing. Most problematic were the several times where she brandished her dagger at someone–her children, etc.–where I never believed in the least she could stab anyone. I was up in the very last row of the Family Circle (more on that in a little bit), which is a bad place to see acting at all, but I could still detect a severe charisma and conviction deficit. So while this was a vocally successful Norma, and that’s nothing to sneeze at, it was not a particularly moving one.

But Jamie Barton’s Adalgisa was a complete performance. Her voice is large, not Stephanie Blythe-giant but big for this role. She’s got a dense, voluptuous, viola-like mezzo and not only phrases elegantly but sings with genuine dramatic intent and direction, and from what I could tell from up in the rafters is an expressive actress as well. The tessitura of Act 2 seemed a little high for her, but she got out that high C just fine. It was an exciting performance and I think we can expect more great things from her very soon. (Watch a video of her singing at the end of this post.)

As Pollione, Aleksandrs Antonenko was a holdover from the first cast. He was rather better this time around–still blunt, but less clumsy. You can read my thoughts on the crappiness of the production here.

It had been months since I had been up in the back of the Family Circle. Student tickets have been available for almost everything recently and they are (counting fees) less expensive, plus you get to see and don’t have to plan far in advance. But those seats are often in the back corners of the orchestra, where the sound is drab. I kind of forgot how glorious the acoustic is up high: you trade visual presence for aural presence. The further away it looks, the closer it sounds. It makes me wonder to what extent the size of the Met has been a determining factor in the house’s production aesthetic, beyond the difficulties of filling the large stage. Some of the most noisy and devoted patrons—though probably not the richest ones—are sitting where the architecture renders the visual aspects secondary. (Unless you go for the scenic equivalent of carpet bombing, and, well, who is the house’s signature director?) There is a certain school of thought that defines creative production and acting primarily as compensation for less than distinguished singing. While I am sure they found this Norma overall more satisfying than I did, I think that’s a limiting view and really a shame.

I will be missing the first FroSch later this week because I will be in Pittsburgh at the American Musicological Society’s annual meeting (do say hi if you’re there, readers). I’ll catch up with the Empress, Barak, and the gang next week.

Bellini, Norma. Metropolitan Opera, 10/28/2013.

Here’s Jamie, from last year’s Tucker Gala (which I wrote about here):

Photo copyright Marty Sohl/Met.

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