baroque – Page 2 – Likely Impossibilities

Ich kann nicht sitzen: Standing Room at the Theater an der Wien

November 5, 2010 No Comments

In honor of next week’s new production of La finta giardiniera, let’s talk about Vienna’s most consistently interesting opera house.

The Theater an der Wien has a rich and varied history. It was built in 1801 by Emmanuel Schikaneder (of Zauberflöte fame, check out the statue of him as Papageno on the right side of the building) and at one time or another it has served as a venue for basically anything that can be put into a theater. Back then it was on the bank of the Wien, but the river was diverted underground in the 1890s and the theater now faces the Naschmarkt. Today it calls itself “Das neue Opernhaus” (the new* opera house) and for the last few years has been hosting an outstanding schedule of operas mixed with concerts and other events.

It is explicitly Staatsoper counter-programming: a selective rather than comprehensive group of carefully rehearsed modern opera and music-theater productions, usually focusing on repertoire the Staatsoper ignores (17th, 18th, and 20th centuries, mostly). It’s the most highbrow music-theater program in town, and also the most consistently excellent in quality.

And oh yeah, they have standing room!

The Theater an der Wien is located on the Linke Wienzeile in the fourth district. It seats around 1,000 and has good acoustics. They do not have a house orchestra or chorus, though the excellent Arnold Schoenberg Choir is the usual choice. The default modern orchestra is the ORF RSO Wien, and the Baroque and 18th-century events feature a first-rate assortment of local and imported historical performance groups (such as Les Arts Florissants, the Concentus Musicus Wien, and Les Talens Lyriques). They do about one opera per month in around six or so performances plus a few concerts or other events. This stagione system allows for productions with more technical polish than your average evening at the Staatsoper (nice if you’re a lighting cue snob like me). Last year The New York Times published a nice article about the theater’s history and current life, if you’d like to find out more.

Until this season they were really the only game in town for major-league staged Baroque opera (Jacobs, Christie, and such), but the Staatsoper has programmed Alcina this season with Les Musiciens de Louvre, and the buzz at the Semele standing room line in September was that Dominique Meyer, the new Staatsoper intendant, is trying to compete with the Theater an der Wien’s niche. Possibly, but let me know when the Staatsoper stages things like Rameau and Monteverdi and then we’ll talk. (And in a city like this there can be more than one big venue for Baroque opera!) Meyer has hinted at future collaboration between the two houses.

Unfortunately the theater’s relatively pricey and poorly-located standing room isn’t their best feature. Standing room costs 7 Euros, almost twice the Staatsoper, and is located in the sides of the third ring. If you manage to get one of the best spots it’s OK, but many of the spots closer to the stage are partial view. Closer to the middle (further to the back) is best. But at least it’s more comfortable than the Musikverein.

This picture was taken from the end of standing room closest to the stage; you can see the standing room on the other side on the upper left (decorated by a few scarves):

The cheapest seats can generally be had for under 20 Euros, for concerts as low as 11 Euros. These tickets sell out well in advance, though, and most of them have restricted views of the stage, some of them worse than those of standing room (any of the dark purple seats on the seating chart are trouble). You can buy these tickets on the theater’s website or at their box office in the theater, or in the Wien-Ticket office in the pavilion in front of the Staatsoper. Do specify what you want, though, because they also sell tickets for musicals and God forbid a Deutsch als Fremdsprache accident should land you with a ticket for Tanz der Vampiren.

If you’re going to do standing room, it’s close to the same deal as the Staatsoper with a few differences. The most important difference is that after claiming your spot you won’t have time to go anywhere between that and the performance, so bring something to eat if you need to (lots of food at the Naschmarkt across the street). Tickets go on sale one hour before the performance, the line forms in the lobby of the theater but you enter through the box office just past the lobby.

The Theater an der Wien’s standing room isn’t nearly as much of an institution/tourist attraction as the Staatsoper. Despite having many fewer places, you don’t have to wait nearly as long. Even for a total bonanza like Cecilia Bartoli’s extremely sold out turn in Semele I only arrived around 3.5 hours before the performance and was the fifth or sixth person there, the wait at the Staatsoper for something comparable would have been much longer. (I waited for roughly the same amount of time for Juan Diego Florez’s Nemorino at the Staatsoper, and was around 50th in line.)

After buying your ticket, you get in line to go into the theater, in two lines (one left, one right). Once they open the doors around 40 or so minutes before the performance, the ushers will let you up the stairs and eventually into the theater, where everyone rushes to claim a spot. The places aren’t individually marked, they’re just rows. Do mark your place with a scarf or something, though if you stay there it isn’t strictly necessary.

Now you have around half an hour, which might seem like enough for a bite in the theater’s nice but expensive café, but really it isn’t. Just hang out and enjoy the show!

I surprisingly don’t have any pictures of the stage taken from standing room, but I will try to get one soon and add it to this post.

*New? Yes, they were playing musicals in the 1990s and you can say that Beethoven’s Fidelio, whose three different versions all premiered here, isn’t really an opera, but outside the little theater in Schönbrunn this is the oldest opera house in town.

Photos: top copyright Theater an der Wien, lower copyright Cosmopolis.ch.

Review

Mass in B minor at the Musikverein: Neue Harnoncourt Ausgabe

October 18, 2010 1 Comment

Nikolaus Harnoncourt is never one to adopt the conventional wisdom about anything. Sometimes his interpretations seem to radically rethink a piece in a wonderful way, but sometimes they seem odd just for the sake of being different. This Mass in b minor had some of both and some dubious justification to go along with it, but overall was an austere and transparent interpretation with a lot of beauty. The Harnoncourt pictured above was not to be seen, we got a more meditative type.

Bach, Mass in b minor. Musikverein, 16/10/10. Conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt with the Concentus Musicus Wien, Arnold Schoenberg Chor, and soloists Genia Kühmeier and Elisabeth von Magnus, sopranos; Bernarda Fink, alto; Michael Schade, tenor; and Florian Boesch, bass-baritone.

I’m not overly familiar with sacred music, so this is going to be brief. This performance used a 2010 Neue Bach Ausgabe edition that is reputedly improved (I’m not disputing that it is better, I just don’t know the details), and also celebrated the uncovering of Bach-Archiv Leipzig evidence that suggests Bach may have been writing the piece for, yep, Vienna. The operative part of this theory (besides “ooooo, Vienna!”) is that Bach did envision a performance of this work in his lifetime, contrary to many accounts that he was just writing it as a private magnum opus. Since it’s a Catholic missa longa, this would have to have been somewhere other than his Protestant Leipzig post. Previous theories have proposed he was writing it for Dresden or Berlin, so this isn’t a wholly new idea. But, you know, Vienna wants a claim on one of the few great composers with whom they don’t already have an obvious connection. If you wish to read more about this, you can do so in German in the Musikverein’s September/October magazine here.

But Harnoncourt’s new thing for this performance was another matter. Periodically he gave material usually assigned to the chorus to the soloists. The program reproduced a handwritten note in which he detailed these changes, writing that he “believes that this is Bach’s intention.” Evidence? Anyone? No? For all you Bach nerds, here is the note with the details, click to enlarge:

I think it’s kind of funny that he believes he still has to justify this decision as Bach’s intention. Particularly when we’re talking about a piece that, whatever the intention, never was performed during its composer’s lifetime and today remains somewhat hypothetical. And we are presented with his handwritten note like a fragment of a manuscript; we should take it in trust that Harnoncourt has some open line of communication with Bach’s Intention. I’m open to new ways of performing anything, but to assert you know something that makes this a more “authentic” reading and then not offer any evidence is disingenuous. Also, in my opinion, unnecessary. If your version sounds better than it should justify itself. Truth is, the changes seemed relatively slight and I don’t have a strong enough view on this work to offer any kind of verdict. But there are your innovations, such that they are.

So onto the performance itself. The Concentus Musicus Wien, here around 25 musicians strong, produces a silky, glassy sort of string sound, less grainy and aggressive than your more recently-founded period music groups. The brass are remarkably in tune and have that delightfully buzzy quality I love about HIP instruments. It’s lovely, but except for the trumpets it isn’t very loud, and was frequently overpowered by the approximately 50-member Arnold Schoenberg Chor, singing with precision and clarity.

Harnoncourt’s interpretation seemed to take its cue from the Kyrie: funereal, stile-antico, static, intimate. Repeated details were emphasized: the precisely placed rising figure at the end of “eleison,” in the second Kyrie, the unequal eighth-note figures in the Laudamus te. The high point of the evening came in the majestic, solemn Credo’s Et incarnatus est and Crucifixus. Counterpoint never seemed thick or busy, everything sounded clearly. Even the most triumphant moments had a valedictory quality.

The quintet of soloists was also fantastic. Bernarda Fink was the standout on the alto part with a highly expressive and communicative account of her arias that never seemed overly dramatic or fussy. In the two soprano duet, Genia Kühmeier’s vocal purity was an odd match for Elisabeth von Magnus’s darker sound, but both were excellent. (Von Magnus was replacing the ill Dorothea Röschmann. As soon as Kühmeier started I could tell she and Röschmann would have been a match made in vocal heaven, but oh well, von Magnus’s Laudamus te was appropriately intricate.) Michael Schade and Florian Boesch both sounded similarly outstanding on the male parts.

I believe this performance is being recorded for CD, it’s not exactly your average imposingly grand Mass in b minor but is certainly worth a listen.

Note: The premiere of Cardillac at the Staatsoper last night was a big success for all concerned. More here tonight.

Review

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

April 4, 2010 2 Comments

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:

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!)

Review

Fantastic, fantastical Fairy Queen at BAM

March 25, 2010 3 Comments

Purcell, The Fairy Queen. Glyndebourne Festival Opera as presented by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, 3/23/2010. Les Arts Florissants, conducted by William Christie. Directed by Jonathan Kent.

Bless thee, Bottom! Thou art translated! This week’s desecration of the Bard is a particularly delightful one, Purcell’s exceedingly obscure semi-opera The Fairy Queen. It’s a spectacular, epic, and magical production from the Glyndebourne Festival, but leave the Glyndebourne dress code at home and find a plaid shirt, it’s at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

It’s an unusual piece, and BAM astonishingly does not provide any program notes (the Les Arts Florissants discography is nice, but a few paragraphs of history would be better). But luckily I did my homework so here are the basics. Semi-operas were popular in London in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, before Handel and Porpora moved in and converted the British to full-blown opera. They consist of a full spoken play performed by non-singing actors which is periodically interrupted by songs and extended masque-like interludes in which singers and dancers appear and do their thing, somehow prompted by the plot. The music and dance don’t advance the story, they add atmosphere. So these pieces are somewhat slow-moving and LONG. This one is more or less uncut, and runs around four hours, around 50/50 semi- and opera. If you saw Mark Morris’s production of Purcell’s King Arthur at the City Opera a few years ago, you just saw the music, the play was eliminated entirely.

The Fairy Queen, dating from 1692, despite all appearances, is not based on Spenser but a much more familiar source, Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream. The play, though, was rewritten by an anonymous late seventeenth-century playwright: the Greek references are removed, it is somewhat condensed (so long, Hippolyta), and somewhat rearranged. But most disconcertingly if you know that Shakespeare, many of the lines have been changed to regularize the meter, take out the obscure references, and sometimes un-Shakespearize it. If you know the play, it’s weird to hear familiar lines mixed with new ones. For example:

You spotted snakes with double tongue,
Thorny hedgehogs, be not seen.
Newts and blindworms, do not wrong.
Come not near our Fairy Queen.

becomes

Now joyn your Warbling Voices all,
Sing while we trip it on the Green;
But no ill Vapours rise or fall,
Nothing offend our Fairy Queen

As you may guess, a common criticism of semi-operas are that the plays aren’t any good, despite the delight of the music. That was what Mark Morris said when he cut Dryden’s play entirely from King Arthur. Also, that they don’t hold together. But a semi-opera is a complete work in some form, not just blocks of music alternating with blocks of text. Even though the two don’t interact in Rogers and Hammerstein fashion, they still comprise a whole of a sort–one that this production proves is theatrically viable. Seeing a semi-opera with both play and music in place is rare, and would be worth seeing even if this one weren’t so good in itself.

Another reason semi-operas died out was they were so expensive to produce. The Fairy Queen apparently was always quite an endeavor to put on, as the Prologue notes:

“But that this Play may in its Pomp appear
Pray let our Stage from thronging Beaux be clear.
For what e’re cost we’re at, what e’re we do,
In Scenes, Dress, Dances…”

The set descriptions show where some of this money went:

The Scene changes to a great Wood; a long row of large Trees on each side: A River in the middle: Two rows of lesser Trees of a different kind just on the side of the River, which meet in the middle, and make so many Arches: Two great Dragons make a Bridge over the River; their Bodies form two Arches, through which two Swans are seen in the River at a great distance.

Sorry, that was just an excuse to quote more 1693 English. Kent and Christie have swans, but no dragons.

Jonathan Kent and William Christie’s production isn’t relentlessly faithful to the original text (it Shakespeares it up somewhat, for one thing), but its liberties aren’t great. Its remarkable achievement is how it balances well-acted text and well-sung and danced music and creates something that is both coherent and entertaining. The lovers are initially period (17th-c), the Mechanicals out of Keeping Up Appearances, the fairies somewhat more current but with wings.

In the forest, the lovers lose their big clothes and, as in Midsummer, enter the world of irrationality–which, broadly speaking, is the world of music. The semi-opera doesn’t allow them to sing, but they do, masque-like, become part of the show. The role of the Drunken Poet in the First Masque is given to Bottom, making the First Masque almost a plot event marking the Mechanicals’ entrance into the forest. The Second Masque puts Titania to sleep, the Third Masque is on seduction, the Fourth on the new day and seasons (yeah, this one is the most tangential), the Fifth on marriage.

The masques are like a ballet in their plot, sometimes narrating a bit but mostly just on the way to the next delight. And the staging is endlessly inventive, steadily building in outrageousness and silliness from the relatively tame early masques to crowds of giant amorous rabbits, trailer trash couples (anti-masquers!), and more surprises that I should not ruin for you. The final Masque of Marriage contains a lament (“O let me weep”) that reminds ups how screwed up marriage was back then. FYI, Kent’s “Adam and Eve” was originally a Chinese couple (their Daphne was “Xansi”), who have apparently disappeared for a less offensive, more nekkid, more Cranach-y alternative.

So it’s a lot to take in, and occasionally overwhelming. The actors are all, as far as the program indicated, British, and very good, giving an entertaining, bawdy rendition of this somewhat crooked Dream with appropriately youthful lovers and most of the usual highlights–short jokes, chasing, etc. As any good Bottom, Desmond Barritt is a highlight, the Mechanicals in general a hilariously dim bunch, and their play a truly epic disaster. The play is good enough to not wish we get straight to the music, and that’s saying something.

The music. Les Arts Florissants are an institution, and this piece displays them to great advantage. The orchestra is large and amazingly colorful, and Christie’s tempos are quick. The soloists doubled various roles in various masques and were universally good (and stylistically accurate, of course), but my favorites were Emmanuelle de Negri as Night and the lamenter, and Andrew Foster-Williams in a variety of bass-baritone roles. There is also a lot of dancing, which I haven’t yet mentioned because I found it the least interesting part of the show, the choreography (by Kim Brandstrup) struck my uneducated eye as dully athletic. But you get lots of glorious dance music.

The set isn’t quite as extravagant as the above description, but it’s full of surprises. We start in a period study lined with cabinets of curiosities, this room expands to become the forest, the fairies emerging from the cabinets and through the windows and floor. The mini-dramas of the masques are staged like different strange things pulled out of the cabinets too, without adherence to any particular period or theme. It’s elegant and moves smoothly between play and music, and is technically very impressive (nice flying).

So does it tell a story? Eh, not quite, but that isn’t the point. It’s a spectacle, and is appropriate spectacular and diverting, and frequently delightful. Tommasini seems to think that the glam and current touches that make Christie’s productions so exciting is somewhat disreputable, tarting up (he says ”juicing up“) something which is perhaps more properly buttoned-up and without bunny orgies. Nonsense. This is supposed to be exciting stuff, we know people found it exciting then, and to frump it up today when we could be having fun is doing the material a disservice, not to mention the audience. So go enjoy without guilt!

Next: I don’t know! Partenope if I can make it, especially after the encouragement of the commenters below, or possibly nothing until second-cast Tosca on April 17–noch einmal with Luc Bondy. Yes, Armida will also be happening, but probably not until after that!

Jonathan Kent on the staging in the Guardian
William Christie on the music:

« Previous 1 2