Maus Haus

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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Le Grand Macabre: Apocalypse whenever

Ligeti, Le Grand Macabre (1996 revised version).  New York Philharmonic, 5/27/10.  Conducted by Alan Gilbert; directed and designed by Doug Fitch with Eric Owens (Nekrotzar) Mark Schowalter (Piet the Pot), Barbara Hannigan (Gepopo), and many others.

Absurdism doesn’t take well to half-assing.  If it isn’t totally over-the-top, it’s just dumb.  Which is to say that I’m not sure if presenting Ligeti’s Le Grand Macabre semi-staged is a very good idea.

Nekrotzar with, uh, you know.  There’s the screen, anyways.
 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad this piece could finally get its badly overdue New York premiere.  But the logistical limitations of this production, designed and directed by Doug Fitch, frequently reminded me of the piece’s weaknesses rather than the reasons why it’s one of the most popular operas composed in the last 50 years.

This is a considerable musical achievement for the Philharmonic: the orchestra sounded fantastic, the singing was on a high level.  But I’m not so sure about the staging, or really the opera itself.

Avery Fisher Hall has been pushed to its technical limits, with a stage extending far out into the hall, placing the action in front of the orchestra.  There are elaborate costumes but there is no set; atmosphere is added not only by the credited “Atmosphericist” (AKA flashy set-mover [such that there is] and Bono lookalike) but by video on a large oval screen above the stage.  The video is a live projection of the actions of a team of puppeteers who are camped out in full view stage left, pointing a camera at a wide variety of miniature landscapes, comic book-style speech bubbles, and so on.

The plot, taking place in the grotesque Bruegelland (which according to the video resembles Tantooine, Luke Skywalker’s home planet) is a ridiculous episodic story of Nekrotzar, who may or may not be Death.  Apparently it’s time for the Apocalypse, which means he has to go around letting people know about this or something. These people include the court astronomer, Astradamors, tortured by his whip-wielding wife Mescalina, and Prince Go-Go and his two ministers and Gepopo, the head of his Secret Service.  Nekrotzar is accompanied by a drunken sidekick, Piet, and occasionally interrupted by a euphoric couple singing duets about how much they love each other.  Finally, midnight comes, and apparently it was all a mistake because everyone is pretty sure they’re still alive.  Or are they?  Whatever.

“Whatever” is kind of my attitude towards this piece, honestly.  Ligeti’s music is jaggedly brilliant, exciting, and occasionally exceptionally beautiful (particularly the music for the lovers, gorgeously sung by Jennifer Black and Renée Tatum in grass skirts and sequins, they could benefit from a staging that actually reflects the slinkiness of their music).  The orchestration is absurdly excessive and wonderful, including giant drum beats, many trombones, confusingly repetitive motifs, and anything else fun you can do with apocalyptic sounds.

Astradamors and Mescalina

But, despite all the action, things seem to drag, particularly in the first half.  The piece’s politics remain firmly stuck in the 1970s, and Macabre‘s absurdist, anti-bourgeois operatic stance was presumably more timely then.  Now it feels a bit old hat.  The characters are caricatures, but the production did not do justice to their ridiculousness.  The Mescalina stuff was blessedly underplayed (call me a humorless feminist but I find the character offensive), but the result was it was just annoying and slow.  Humanizing anyone is not on Ligeti’s agenda, and the (lack of) set combined with the lack of definition of the characters only called attention to the lack of dramatic development without putting enough dramatic color or contrast in its place.

Come on, naming a character Gepopo is just asking for Gaga-ness.

The second half was much better.  Things don’t really get any more action-oriented, but the action becomes even less sequential.  The production seemed inspired to greater heights of lunacy, which was exactly what it needed.  Prince Go-Go is stuck in a giant foam globe.  Why?  Is it his kingdom?  No idea, but that’s kind of the wrong question to ask.  It was funny, and Anthony Roth Costanzo (last seen in Partenope) sang with impressive power and great comic timing.  The Black and White Ministers (Peter Tantsits and Joshua Bloom) pulled off a lot of joint comedy, and as Gepopo we witnessed Lady Gaga’s long-anticipated operatic debut.  Meaning, Barbara Hannigan was truly amazing in the part, singing the Lulu-like music with a performance that was 25% Olympia and 75% the “Paparazzi” video, robotics and hair included.  Unlike the first half, it was delightful enough to never ask why and just go with it.

Unfortunately when we returned to Astradamors and Piet and co., things slowed down again, though Nekrotzar’s entrance through the hall with the accompaniment of a twisted klezmer band was one of the most memorable musical moments of the evening.  Eric Owens was an imposing Nekrotzar somewhat lacking in dark humor, Michael Schowalter an energetic Piet who sang the demanding music very well, though his pleasant lyric voice lacks a certain ugly cutting Mime quality this part seems to require, with all its drunken yelling.

There is so much going on here that it was sometimes hard to appreciate the fabulous playing of the New York Philharmonic and conducting of Alan Gilbert (one of, at some points, THREE conductors–joined by one in front of the singers and sometimes another for the chorus in the second tier boxes). But it sounded fantastic, much more delicate than the Salonen recording though not lacking in volume in the loud passages, and very well balanced through the most complicated sections.

Piet the Pot

The videos were fun, but sitting extreme house right orchestra the puppeteers were right in front of me, and it was hard (especially for a stage techie like me) to not watch their carefully-choreographed swapping of miniature sets rather than what was happening center stage or even on the actual screen.  It gave everything a nice handmade quality, but perhaps they could be in the back on a raised platform or somewhere where it would be less distracting?  However, I’m guessing there were already enough logistical challenges in this performance to worry about something like this.

The score has some fantastic moments: the preludes and interludes for car horns and door bells (are we thinking of anvils by any chance?), Gepopo’s stratospheric coloratura, Nekrotzar’s various apocalyptic proclamations, moments of eighteenth-century pastiche, the final passacaglia.  But it’s an opera that, completely intentionally, is lacking in a soul.  When you tire of its assertions that it is the most amusingly cheeky thing to ever happen, it is insufferably smug.  And when it is presented in an elaborate but nonetheless limited production like this one, it is hard to stay with it the whole time.

Edited to add: Anne Midgette makes a great point in her review:

The problem with this kind of Contemporary Cultural Event is that it still tends to be depicted in black and white: either you’re a Philistine who doesn’t like atonality and takes umbrage at graffiti of male genitalia on the Avery Fisher stage, or you are an insider who embraces the whole thing as a consummate masterpiece.

I admit to feeling strangely guilty for not flipping out for this one, because it’s the kind of thing that forward-thinking people like me are supposed to adore.  But, I’m sorry, I would be lying if I said I was overwhelmed.  I enjoyed it.  I’m glad the Phil put it on.  I’m sorry if I am a renegade member of the New Music Cult (I’m experienced enough with new music to know what’s going on here, but it’s hardly my specialty). This is what I thought about it, take it or leave it.

Next: T-minus less than two weeks on the LA Ring.

Photos: Chris Lee

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Partenope: It’s raining (counter)tenors, part one

Handel, Partenope.  New York City Opera, 4/3/2010.  Conducted by Christian Curnyn with Cyndia Sieden (Partenope), Iestyn Davies (Arsace), Anthony Roth Costanzo (Armindo), Stephanie Houtzeel (Rosmira), Nicholas Coppolo (Emilio).  Production by Francisco Negrin, directed by Andrew Chown.

Now that we have finished our Shakespeare unit we are starting the reverse-Blumenmädchen part, that is some ladies who have entranced–either by their natural charms or their magical charms–a large number of hapless high-voiced men.  Most of these ladies are named Armida, and we will soon encounter the Met’s example of this, but today we will be discussing the all-natural, no magic required Partenope, in Handel’s opera of the same title.*

This is a somewhat obscure opera, though this isn’t its first time at City Opera, and this production is a revival.  NPR World of Opera has a nice plot summary and introduction here.   Partenope is a comedy, more or less, which means that the constant comedy applied by directors to most Handel opera actually is appropriate this time.  Francisco Negrin’s production, revived by Andrew Chown, however, doesn’t push the outrageous button very many times, and manages to impart a good deal of humanity to the characters.

The orchestra was modern, and since I mostly listen to Handel as performed by period orchestras, this was a bit different (not in a good way in my opinion, I love my HIP). The result is fleet rather than springy, and in the first act I felt like conductor Christian Curnyn’s tempos were far too fast to allow the music to breathe or have any shape.  But either he calmed down or I got used to it because the second two acts seemed much better.

Francisco Negrin’s setting is modern abstract, and like L’Étoile, the characters kind of color-coded.  The single set is a set of moving white and turquoise walls that resemble a less run-down version of wherever the Met’s Hamlet was set, and appear to be built for a smaller stage than the one on which they currently reside.  However in Personenregie it is mostly naturalistic, no choreography for the arias, the fanciful elements are limited to the costumes and occasional ambiguously symbolic objects appearing onstage.

Sometimes Negrin (Chown?) stages a da capo aria as a single continuous narrative, sometimes the da capo (the A’ of the ABA’ structure) as a variation of the first A, echoing the musical structure.  Particularly considering the realistic staging of most of the other action, I thought the first strategy considerably more effective. The lighting design also acknowledges the structure of the music, mostly very effectively–a shame there was so much ugly pink light.

Most of the singers had no trouble with the quick tempos.  Cyndia Sieden as Partenope zips through everything at warp speed with her laser-bright soprano, and also float nicely on the slow stuff.  She may lack a certain degree of charisma or glamor or something, she seemed a bit too nice, but was always a pleasure to hear.

As Rosmira, a woman disguised as a man who sings in the same range of the countertenors (oh, Handel, you trickster!), Stephanie Houtzeel was very good, with a rich and warm sound and excellent high notes, and was fun onstage.  Her coloratura is excellent but her low notes didn’t seem that big, I see in her bio she’s headed to Strauss repertoire, where she’ll probably sound great.

The two countertenors were both excellent and a study in contrasts, which is good when you have two major characters in the same fach.  Iestyn Davies has a clear, bell-like sound with a lot of pure beauty, but also of considerable virtuosity, particularly in the ridiculous “Furibondo spira il vento” (see video below).  Anthony Roth Costanzo as Armindo is more nasal and heavier on the vibrato (also sounded best on his high notes, I wonder if this role is low for him?).  Nicholas Coppolo as lesser suitor Emilio (tenors not enjoying the starry status of castrati in Handel’s day) sang just as much coloratura with a pleasant Mozart-tenor ish sound.

The production ended up being a nice break from the madcap and the wacky, there was none of the sensory overload that some Handel stagings can produce, the plot was easy to follow, it was funny when it should be funny, and we got to concentrate on the virtuosity of the singing.  Could it have been a little sexier?  Yeah, probably, but sometimes moderation is a good thing.

City Opera has declined to provide any photos of the current cast, so I attempt to evoke the glory of Handel’s London period below:

Cool Handel

Next:  I may drag myself to the Armida prima if I can find companionship, because I hear there are going to be GIANT SPIDERS and as someone who has read and watched Lord of the Rings an unseemly number of times I do love a giant spider.  Can’t wait for Tosca because OMG Patricia Racette and Fabio Luisi!  This ticket’s value seems to be increasing rather than decreasing with the substitutions.  Just don’t mess with my tenor and we’re good.

*Yes, this is one of the many things in opera that pisses off a feminist.  These lady-learns-a-lesson operas always grate.  Lady is always so much more boring after she is reformed and married off.  But I can usually ignore it and deal.  (My gender politics are always up for a good Fidelio, though.  ALWAYS.)

“Furibondo spira il vento,” Philippe Jaroussky (sorry, Iestyn, you aren’t on the YouTube!)

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