Review

Jenůfa: Kindertotenlieder

1 Comment

The Bartered Bride taught us that Czech peasants are adorable. Janáček’s Jenůfa teaches us that they (or at least the Moravian variety if we want to be real precise) actually are evil. Neither of Jenůfa’s men seem like good catches, and her mother kills Jenůfa’s baby. This is not a happy opera. Like in some similar works, it is the angelic light emitted by the female protagonist and the glow of the music’s lyricism that makes it more than just an exercise in misery.

Some rough edges were still showing at Monday’s first performance at the Staatsoper this season, but the cast of Angela Denoke, Agnes Baltsa, and co. is good, the production simple and effective, and the conducting promising, so: worth seeing. Well, it’s Janáček, so of course it’s worth seeing. But that’s just my opinion.

Janáček, Jenůfa. Wiener Staatsoper, 5/9/2010. (In German.) Production by David Pountney (revival), conducted by Graeme Jenkins with Angela Denoke (Jenůfa), Agnes Baltsa (Kostelnička), Jorma Silvasti (Laca), Marian Talaba (Števa).

The biggest shock for me was when Jenůfa started singing and I could understand what she was saying. Somehow I missed that the Staatsoper performs this opera in a German translation. Janáček approved of it, but it’s still no good, in my opinion. The rhythm of the text feels entirely different from the original and much clunkier, no longer in tune with the musical line. Comprehensibility seems to come at too high a cost in this case. Luckily the new production of Kat’a Kabanová, coming in June, will be sung in Czech.

This Staatsoper run is going under the fancy name of a Wiederaufnahme, which means it got more rehearsal than a regular repertoire performance. The could be seen in the better-than-average direction of David Pountney’s straightforward production. It probably helped that three of the principals were back from the 2002 premiere as well. Musically, there were hiccups. I suspect some of the singers sounded better in 2002.

Graeme Jenkins’s conducting had some lovely poetic moments and a good general feel for the music’s pace, particularly in the start and end of the opera. This was more a lyrical reading than a folksy one. But a few sections sounded shaky or tentative, and the chorus and orchestra were separated a bit in Act 1. The end of Act 2, staged as a frozen tableau, needed more tension to convince. The orchestra, though, was on decent behavior and I suppose it will all get better later in the run.

Angela Denoke is an excellent Jenůfa. Her voice is well-controlled but not naturally beautiful (the white, straight-tone high notes in particular are an issue), but she is so wonderfully expressive that this does not seem to matter. She gives the impression of living in this music and role, her singing and acting always working as one. Her Jenůfa is never cloyingly naive, but pure goodness.

Agnes Baltsa is immensely popular here and her performance falls into the same general category as Denoke’s–more memorable as a whole theatrical experience than as a vocal one. Her Kostelnička is a formidable, and yet more sympathetic and less monstrous than many. But, and I’m in the minority here, I find her singing just too ugly. The lower half of her voice has a nasal tinge and the upper half is threadbare. I’m not sure why Denoke was so convincing to me and Baltsa ultimately was not, but that’s how it was.

The men were on the weaker side of things, with Jorma Silvasti as Laca sounding excellent and solid until he had to sing anything above the staff and then there was trouble. He is a fine actor, though. Marian Talaba, the only principal member of the cast not in the 2002 premiere, struggled through Števa with an effortful, forced tenor and self-conscious acting. In the smaller roles, Caroline Wenborne stood out as Karolka, producing what really were the most beautiful and healthy tones of the night.

David Pountney’s production is austere and generally effective. The unit set of dull gray walls is elaborated by a complex mill wheel in Act 1 (which turns with the woodblock’s ticking, whatever could that mean? better get the Subtle Symbolism Detectives on the case), lots of bags of grain in Act 2, and just a wedding feast in Act 3. It is very dreary and I missed the element of nature and the outdoors you associate with this sort of opera, but it works well enough. Personenregie was naturalistic, fairly detailed, and respectable. I am not sure, however, why the wedding guests started smashing dishes in Act 3, and it did seem to distract from Jenůfa. Costumes, like the sets, are monochromatic, except for Act 3, and show obvious but sensible characterization. The lighting design is nice, though sometimes the shifts were too quick.

Ultimately this didn’t have the cataclysmic payoff that Jenůfa can, but it’s still good. Look for it to improve over the course of the run. Standing room was deserted, so you wouldn’t even have to wait for long to get a good spot. Further performances on 12, 15, 19, 22 May.

Sorry for the crappiness of this review, I’ve been strung out on allergy medicine all week and can’t think straight. This was a singularly appropriate opera to see when part of my face was still a little puffy and weird, though.

Also, does anyone else want to see a Jenůfa set in the rural American South? Or maybe with Mormons? Creative American Opera House, make it happen.

Photos copyright Wiener Staatsoper.

Continue Reading

Review

Les Troyens: Decline and fall

6 Comments

Any performance of Les Troyens is automatically a Big Event. Its length, its awesomeness, and its strangeness are all on a grand scale. The Deutsche Oper Berlin’s new production is successful in a number of ways, and allow you to appreciate how wonderful a piece this really is. But it’s not an unqualified success, and while it boasts good conducting by Donald Runnicles, a good orchestra, a great chorus, and a super Troy staging with a fantastic Horse, some so-so principals and a wayward Carthage made it only partly unforgettable.

Berlioz, Les Troyens. Deutsche Oper Berlin, 12/5/2010. New production premiere, directed by David Pountney with sets by Johan Engels, costumes by Marie-Jeanne Lecca, lights by Davy Cunningham, choreography by Renato Zanella. Conducted by Donald Runnicles with Béatrice Uria-Mozon (Didon), Petra Lang (Cassandre), Ian Storey (Énée), Liane Keegan (Anna), Markus Brück (Chorèbe), many more, see the full cast list here.

David Pountney’s production is about the conflict between man (Troy) and woman (Carthage). This begins well. His Troy is set in dirty brown, rusty red, and gold, a large empty stage filled with teeming crowds. The costumes are those of timeless grungy warriors with much brown leather, grommets, and random incidents of facepaint. The Trojan Horse is a wonderful effect, seen only in terrifyingly enormous, living parts: kicking feet from above, a giant nose.

It’s good design, these people look like they’ve been besieged for ten years, and the tired, fragile, gilded grandeur of Priam (in a  wheelchair) is just right. Cassandre hovers around a red, glowing crack in the brown stage, opposite Hector’s grave, and frantically knits. She is making something that looks like the head of a horse. I can appreciate this on a mythological level–Cassandra’s story is rather similar to Philomela’s–but this craft project looks like something that shows up every year at the church rummage sale (and made me think of The Godfather).

In Act 2, we see a a large metal circle, ringed with bare bedframes with a vortex in the middle. The ghost of Hector rises out of this center hole, and it is where Cassandre kills herself, along with an army of white-veiled women (their veils a foreshadowing of the women’s world of Carthage, a world they can’t create in Troy). The symbolism of the empty beds eludes me, but, like many other tableaux in this act, it’s a striking image. The Personenregie is simple but good, particularly that of the chorus. They move as a convincing crowd, in Troy alternately a steadily advancing, organized mass and a frantic flowing mob. Chorèbe and Cassandre’s scene is touching.

Unfortunately, things go downhill once we get to Carthage in the second part of the opera. While Pountney’s Troy was ruled by supposedly masculine might and ferocity, Carthage is a sensual woman’s utopia, decorated in white, yellow, and green and featuring curved lines instead of angles, pillows and lounging instead of armor, and many filmy curtains. The costumes go from warrior to cult, complete with turbans.

As a concept it makes sense, but everything stays too static, and particularly Didon is not given a chance to make any journey as a character. Les Troyens has a lot of static scenes to start with, and this kind of oppositional staging, without close attention to the characters, only makes things more flat. The calls of “ITALIE! ITALIE!” feel like no more than a bothersome interruption. And Didon also never shows much in the way of grandeur or power, only the serenity of a guru. (If you’ll forgive me a Lord of the Rings metaphor, Troy in this production is Rohan while Didon is Galadriel.) At the end of the opera, Cassandre guides Didon to her suicide in the middle of the bedframes again, but other than killing themselves in the middle of the same set piece, it’s not clear what they have in common.

The score was performed without any large cuts. But while it’s wonderful to hear all the great dance music, the choreography by Renato Zanella is weak, sometimes unintentionally comic (the matelots doing the wave, for example), and generally uninteresting as dance, resembling some sort of aerobics. Narratively speaking, I think Pountney and Zanella really erred with the staging of the Chasse royale. Instead of narrating the awakening love of Didon and Enée, we get a generic ballet of seduction that does not directly relate to the plot, and then we see Didon and Énée in full-fledged embrace right afterwards. We never see them fall in love, we just see them in love, and it feels tremendously abrupt and wrong for Didon’s character.  The entire fourth act is treated like an interlude–but plot-wise, without it the fifth act wouldn’t be much, so this other-worldliness feels off.

(Also, at the end of the ballet, the women become pregnant and proceed to birth enormous clear plastic spheres in something I have already heard referred to as the “placenta ballet.” These spheres make a reappearance in the following scene, and eventually Didon and Énée float above the stage in their own circles. I’m sure they symbolize something circular or insular, but, hey, Cassandre did herself in in the middle of a circle, too.)

Musically there was more to be enthusiastic about. Donald Runnicles’s conducting did not have the neurotic tension nor the sheer strangeness of Colin Davis’s, but it had a light energy and forward momentum that kept things going a lot better than the staging did, with an excellent sense for the large-scale pacing of this long score. The offstage groups and otherwise enormous forces were excellently coordinated. He did not emphasize the crashing dissonances or eerie sounds, this was Berlioz that sounded remarkably normal, yet still like Berlioz. The orchestra sounded good but not great, with some scrappy wind sections and slackening towards the end of the evening.

The Deutsche Oper Berlin’s chorus is famously good, and they were one of the best things about this performance, singing with amazing nuance, homogeneity and balance. The chorus music seemed every bit as directed and musical as any other section of the score (more than some of the principals, actually), and that’s a rare thing. They also moved very well, and from my customary back-of-the-house seat looked like a convincing crowd even while singing so well.

Petra Lang’s towering Cassandre was by far the best of the leads. Her portrayal has grown since her excellent 2001 recording of the role (get that CD, it’s awesome!), and her Cassandre has fatal, desperate gravity, sung with an imposingly large voice yet great detail and attention to the text. She knows how to hold back until the biggest moments, she can be gentle as well as ferocious, and while I was sitting too far away to be a great judge of detailed acting, she has charisma, even while wearing someone’s grandmother’s afghan and maniacally knitting part of a hobby horse.

Béatrice Uria-Mozon was a tastefully sung and gracefully acted Didon, but until her intense final scene she failed to win me over for some reason. I found her portrayal somewhat small-scaled, and both the production’s simplicity and her dark-hued and spicy but very lyric voice didn’t help her out. I think from the front of the house she probably made a much better impression, but to have a Troyens without a heartbreakingly grand Didon was a problem for me. (I would have loved to hear originally cast Kate Aldrich, who canceled a while ago due to being busy having an actual baby, rather than a big plastic globe.)

I don’t quite understand why Énée is often sung by a Heldentenor, but whatever your volume it certainly requires more finesse and sense of French style than dark-voiced, baritonal tenor Ian Storey has, and from a clumsy opening aria onwards he sounded loud but completely wrong for the part. He can certainly blast out the notes, but Berlioz requires sensitivity. As Heldentenors go he is an OK actor, but that’s not a very high standard. (This blog would like to endorse the idea of a Roberto Alagna Énée, and I realize I might live to regret that. Kaufmann would be nifty too.)

The many supporting roles were more satisfyingly filled, with Markus Brück’s thuggish-looking but sweetly lyrical-sounding Chorèbe and Liane Keegan’s big-voiced Anna particular standouts. Ex-NYCO’er Heidi Stober sounded excellent as Ascagne and Gregory Warren was a pure Iopas. Technical values were mostly good except for some mysterious offstage clunks and a few poorly blended follow spots.

Was it worth it? Of course, its Les frickin’ Troyens! In case you haven’t noticed, I love this score.  But I hope I’ll run into a more rounded production soon.  The reception involved lots of cheering for everyone except lots of booing for the production folks.  There were also an dismaying number of unsold seats.  At a premiere of a major work, Berlin?  Really?  Is this normal?

I’m back in Vienna and tired, but will be off to Reimann’s Medea at the Staatsoper tonight anyways! I still owe y’all words on the Royal College of Music’s excellent Orpheus aux enfers, I am working on that!

Bows:

Production photos copyright Matthias Horn/Deutsche Oper Berlin

Continue Reading

Review

La forza del destino: Showdown at the Staatsoper corral

8 Comments
Preziosilla is onto Carlos’s game.
(Note: picture is a different cast, though same Preziosilla.)
(Photo: Opera Chic)

Of all the caves in the world, you had to walk into mine.  La forza del destino might not be the most outwardly coherent of operas, but Verdi didn’t call it an “opera of ideas” for nothing, and it has an agenda under all that shaggy discursiveness.  Unfortunately David Pountney’s Wiener Staatsoper production, shorn of almost half an hour of music, has the ideas underlined and highlighted and little of the dark chaos.  This messily-staged revival and Philippe Auguin’s conducting went unstoppably forward like the plot’s bullet fired by mistake, and despite four strong singers it all felt rather off.  And the cowboys, well, they were a mistake too.  Giddyap, pardner.

Verdi, La forza del destino.  Production by David Pountney, conducted by Philippe Auguin.  With Eva-Maria Westbroek (Leonora), Fabio Armiliato (Alvaro), Zeljko Lucic (Don Carlos), Ferruccio Furlanetto (Padre Guardiano), Tomasz Konieczny (Fra Melitone), Nadia Krasteva (Preziosilla)

If you’ve ever met me, I’ve probably told you how you have to read War and Peace.  (Because you do.  It’s wonderful in every way.  It’s my favorite novel.)  La forza del destino is kind of like War and Peace.  Shit happens, some personal and some global-historical, and sometimes there’s little the characters can do to control it.  They wander through things that are larger then themselves.  Some glory in the chaos (Preziosilla) , others try to hide from it (Leonora, eventually Alvaro).  In the opera, you don’t have Tolstoy’s narrative voice telling you all the fateful stuff.  But if you’re at the Staatsoper, you have David Pountney, who’s even more pedantic.

As suggested by the opening video of a butterfly starting an enormous wheel, the production is about coincidences and unintended consequences (I was sadly distracted through the whole overture).  Christianity provides a kind of anchor for these characters adrift, who finally all end up assailing the monastery for help and guidance.  The inn is a place of momentary respite, where many Bibles seem to provide a veneer of security.  The period is sometime during the twentieth century, but only vaguely so (there are still swords for dueling).  As an interpretation it makes sense, but it hits you over the head a few times too often.  Moreover, its extreme minimalism and attendant demurral to create a world outside the principal characters undermine the portrayal of larger forces (of DESTINY) at work.  When we’re suddenly at war in Act 3 the means are not great enough to give us any real atmosphere, just some halfhearted projections.  Destiny’s force never seems adequately cataclysmic.

Crosses, crosses everywhere (Photo: Wiener Staatsoper)

The sets are simple and OK enough, but the chorus in the inn scene is a somewhat inexplicable band of sexy dancing cowboys, including also sexy dancing cowgirls, and later at war we gets sexy dancing nurse nuns.  I think most opera suffers from an excess of good taste but I’m going to make an exception here.  We have lost any opportunity to establish who these people are in favor of sexy dancing cowgirls.   If the dancing had been fun or meaningful, it would have been alright, but it was just awkwardly bad.  The execution as a whole was so messy that I really can’t say how good or bad the production as originally conceived was.  The buttons in particular were hopelessly off, with some awkward silences and interruptions–the audience had no clue when they should clap and it made the reception feel tepid just because it was unclear.  (The lights, blocking, and conductor should always signal when we should applaud.)

The score suffered from some major cuts, particularly in the choral and minor character material of Act 3.  Not that I really miss Preziosilla’s “Al suon del tamburo” and Trabuco’s aria as such, but they give this opera its texture, its wildly incoherent patchwork of random events and moments that confuses the characters as much as it does me.  Making Forza neater seems to go against its spirit.  And the one major rearrangement–reordering some scenes in Act 3 so the tenor and baritone get a break between their duets and then cutting directly to the Rataplan–destroys the wonderful sequence of the Act 3 finale entirely.

Opening scene (Photo: Wiener Staatsoper)

Conductor Philippe Auguin favored a fast and loud account of the score that, while sometimes exciting, similarly allowed for few excursions into anything.  We’re getting this sucker done in under three hours or else, he seemed to say (my recording [Levine] is two hours fifty-six minutes total and the intermission was 20-25 minutes).  By the time Leonora pled for pace, pace, I was thinking, you and me both, sister.

The singing was mostly very good, though not transcendental enough to overrule these production and conductor-ly deficiencies.  Fabio Armiliato offered solid and admirable Italian tenoring with good phrasing and intonation, fine coloring and very loud and rich high notes, faulted by a muscley and dry tone at the passaggio and below.  I feel kind of bad for never warming to him, but he failed to grab me somehow.  His acting is generic but he does manage to look impressively Jesus-like in Act 4 in a long white robe with his short beard and longish hair.  I think this was unintentional.  If it wasn’t, I have no idea what it was supposed to signify.

Act 3.  Several of the upper parts of this set were MIA last night.
Photo: Der Standard

Eva-Maria Westbroek has a fabulous soprano, lush and creamy and even right up to the top of the staff.  Above that it gets steelier, but not unpleasantly so (that is to say, her first two “malediziones” were better than the last one).  I would liked to have heard more rhythmic flexibility and Italianate phrasing from her, but Augiun was conducting like he would slow down for no woman or man, so I’m not going to say she couldn’t do it elsewhere.  She did some marvelous acting when onstage alone.  And as for her future role as Anna-Nicole Smith, well, if Anna-Nicole had had better taste she would have wished she could look that good in a pantsuit.

Zeljko Lucic has plenty of volume for Don Carlos and sang his aria with real beauty and musicality, but he seems too fundamentally decent and his voice too lyrically gentle for a villain who kills his own sister.  I would love to hear him as Boccanegra, but am not convinced of his Verdi-villain status.  Tomasz Konieczny, as Melitone, had a metallic edge to his voice that made me think he would have been more suitable, if less opulent.  Ferruccio Furlanetto is not the type to be confined to near-last in a cast list and I’m rather surprised to see him singing such a small role as Padre Guardiano.  It was lovely, and his duet with Westbroek had, along with Lucic’s aria, the best singing of the night, but, still.  It’s minor.  Nadia Krasteva as Preziosilla had the misfortune to get totally lost in Auguin’s manical tempo for the Rataplan, but otherwise didn’t sound bad and, hey, she can do both a split and a backbend.

Finally, a Great Moment in Opera Titles: “The bullet in his chest worries me.”  (“La palla che ha nel petto mi spaventa.”)  (Even in Italian it is somewhat dry, but “mi spaventa” is more properly “scares me.”)

Bows, another lousy in-house photo from me:

Next: The Semele prima is tomorrow but I need a break and think I’ll go on Friday.

Continue Reading