fledermaus – Likely Impossibilities

Maus Haus

January 17, 2014 3 Comments

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:

Review

Die Fledermaus in Stuttgart: Old Champagne in new bottles

January 11, 2011 No Comments

Time for the laced-up bourgeoisie to take another field trip into the wild forest of their collective id. Like any self-respecting piece of provocation, Philipp Stölzl’s Staatsoper Stuttgart Fledermaus is equipped with an orgy in Act 2 and a set that turns upside down, as well as that obligatory dark forest. But under the fancy dress–or rather undress–there’s a lot of traditional Fledermaus schtick struggling to get out. The concept might be superficial and none too original, but it’s visually nifty and that traditional Fledermaus is not bad at all.

Strauß, Die Fledermaus, version adapted by Philipp Stölzl and Xaver Zuber. Staatsoper Stuttgart, 1/8/2011. Production by Philipp Stölzl with sets by Stölzl and Conrad Reinhard, costumes by Ursula Kudra, lights by Volker von Schwanenflügel, choreography by Mara Kurotschka. Conducted by Timo Handschuh with Paul Armin Edelmann (Eisenstein), Adriane Queiroz (Rosalinde), Franziska Gottwald (Orlofsky), Robin Johannsen (Adele), César Gutiérrez (Alfred), Miljenko Turk (Falke) Georg Reiter (Frosch).

Stölzl’s production features a frame narrative in spoken dialogue. Appearing downstage is the aforementioned wild forest, realm of primal stuff and of Prinz Orlofsky, an androgynous raver in blond pigtails, tiny Lady Gaga-esque top hat, and silver tutu. At the beginning of the show, Orlofsky is hanging with sidekick Frosch, an old (judging by accent) Austrian man in Lederhosen. Frosch is the spirit of folk humor, Orlofsky of modern debauchery, and together they watch some tired strippers cavort. But with such hard partying comes ennui. “When was the last time I laughed?” Orlowsky asks. Of course the only solution is to again tell the story of the Fledermaus.

Behind the forest is a white box representing a 19th-century room, where Act 1 begins. Rosalinde is already having an affair with Alfred, but other than that it is an astonishingly by-the-book staging, in pale, mostly monochromic period dress. It even shows some amazing similarities in blocking with Otto Schenk’s Wiener Staatsoper production (the dancing happens in exactly the same places, and I suppose there is no other option but for Eisenstein and Falke to link arms and skip around in circles during the “La la la la” coda of their duet).

In Act 2, the (here masked) ball provides a space for the characters to let out their repressed inner urges, which means more cavorting with strippers (Ida and her ballet colleagues). The upstage room first appears upside down, the chandelier emerging from the floor and the chairs stuck to the ceiling. Then, during Rosalinde and Eisenstein’s duet, it begins to literally spin around to right itself, then back to upside down, slowly but constantly, giving space for a unusual Unter Donner und Blitz by the strippers (probably more accurately called burlesque dancers?). Whatever could this upside down world mean? It’s not like the servants are the masters and the masters are the servants or anything! Or like it is spinning through a duet about a clock! Or like there are waltzes in this work! But despite the heavy-handedness, it’s a pretty nifty visual and technical trick.

In Act 3, the room is skewed on its side, and the furniture has submitted to gravity, piling up in fragments on the bottom. Frosch turns into a Falstaffian drunken philosopher, the chiming-at-midnight grandfather clock has spilled into the forest, and it is Alfred and Eisenstein’s cell (imprisoned in a symbol of bourgeois regularity, natch). Yes, this was my second non-literal prison in an opera staging in a week. Here, prison is having to deal with the consequences of your id in the next morning’s daylight, though the stakes don’t seem to be too dire. Blame the champagne.

While a decent concept, with good images, it remains generalized and superficial, more the product of someone who has read some Freud and Schnitzler and maybe seen Eyes Wide Shut a few times than put in any real thought about Fledermaus–or at least about Fledermaus as a text rather than as a symbol. Something similar but far more potent and brutal was done by Hans Neuenfels in his 2001 Salzburg Festival production (which is available on DVD). Except Orlofsky, Stölzl’s characters don’t acquire much in the way of individual profiles. But while it isn’t revelatory, the direction is sharp, the interaction between the characters engaging, and the balance between dark comedy and parody rather good. The evening passed quickly and entertainingly, and while it might be Schenk-ish with a facelift and a frame narrative, it works.

Musical values were good. Unfortunately, the set seemed to be doing weird acoustic things (I’m not sure, because this was my first time in this theater), and all the singing and talking from the upstage center room sounded echo-ey and unclear. It also must have reflected sound, because everything was very very loud. While the orchestra has nothing like sheen or brilliance of Vienna’s, Timo Handschuh led a well-differentiated performance with lots of detail and good ensemble.

The cast did an excellent job maintaining the tone, which was far more consistent and defined than the Vienna production I saw last week. Singing was universally good, though the words from most of the female cast members were incomprehensible–I’m not sure if iffy German or the acoustic was at fault here. Paul Armin Edelmann made a suitably middle class, solidly sung Eisenstein (and the only member who sounded Viennese), Adriane Quieroz sang Rosalinde with smoky tone and very good coloratura, and Franziska Gottwald sang Orlofsky with dark tone and mopey acting. Standouts were Robin Johannsen’s impeccably accurate Adele, and César Gutiérrez’s boisterous, overflowing Alfred, a virtuosic piece of tenor parody in both voice and acting.

Orlofsky was laughing by the end, at least. I was somewhat less. It’s a refreshingly unfusty production, but I wish it had dug a little deeper.

Speaking of digging, I have some (OK, a lot of) words about Herheim’s Rosenkavalier, also from Stuttgart, that I will hopefully be able to post soon.

Photos copyright Martin Sigmund/Staatsoper Stuttgart

Video:

Review

Die Fledermaus: Bring your own fizz

January 2, 2011 1 Comment

Appreciation of the Wiener Staatsoper’s ritual New Year’s Fledermaus depends on your appreciation of Viennese rituals in general, of jokes about current Austrian politics in particular, of the simple joy of watching a tenor fall on his ass, and most of all on the amount of Champagne you have drunk. I missed the legendary special-guests New Year’s Eve showing (this year: Netrebko and Schrott) and went to the hangover special the next day instead. Once you get past the sociological aspects, this was a mostly first-rate cast threading their way through the greasy cogs of an ancient schticky Otto Schenk production with varying degrees of aplomb. Not bad, but magic only in a Viennese imagination.

Johann Strauss, Die Fledermaus. Wiener Staatsoper, 1/1/2011. Production by Otto Schenk, conducted by Patrick Lange with Markus Werba (Eisenstein), Camilla Nylund (Rosalinde), Angelika Kirchschlager (Prinz Orlofsky), Michael Schade (Alfred), Daniela Fally (Adele), Adrian Eröd (Falke), Helmuth Lohner (Frosch)

The sets and the tragic hair on the heads of the women suggest that this Otto Schenk production dates from the mid- to late-1970’s. It’s impressively lavish but rather cluttered and visually speaking strictly by-the-book realist (documented on this 1980 DVD with Gruberova, Popp, and Weikl). The turntable that took us to Prinz Orlowsky’s dining room got applauded, which tells you all you need to know. The direction features quite a lot of silly choreography in the ensemble numbers. But this two-performance run did not seem to be well-rehearsed, and this kind of thing requires very good ensemble timing to pull off with flair. The dramatic beats were signposted and underlined by the cast as they all tried to get into position for the next moment, and interaction was minimal. It seemed more sketched than realized, and some moments, like the Unter Donner und Blitz ballet, were just clumsy. This is too bad, because most of the cast was excellent and I’m sure they could have had an outstanding Fledermaus in them, even in this dated production. When they were able to loosen up in their solo moments, they were universally better.

Fally, Werba, and Nylund

Unfortunately the cast had a weakness at its center, and that was Markus Werba’s Eisenstein. This seemed to be a case of a Leporello being cast as Don Giovanni: too young, not sufficiently bourgeois, and vocally not authoritative. He was completely overshadowed by Adrian Eröd’s arch and polished Dr. Falke, probably the best overall role portrait of the evening (does he sing Eisenstein? also, nice handstand). Almost as good was Daniela Fally’s Adele. Unlike her Sophie of last week, her singing was precise, light, and full of humor, and her acting again very good (spoken with what sounded to me like credible Viennese dialect). Angelika Kirchschlager’s Orlowsky was similarly accomplished, with some of the best singing of the evening and appropriately off-kilter acting in this unfortunately short role. Alfred Sramek was similarly amiable as Frank, particularly in the third act’s drunken extravaganza.

Camille Nylund has a large voice for Rosalinde, but navigated the acrobatics quite well, though the end of the Csardas was not her best moment. While a good actress, she did not have quite the touch for comedy as some of the rest of the cast, and emerged as the straight woman of the production. Michael Schade as Alfred was willingly the simple buffoon, with gleefully parodic singing, many pratfalls, and tenorial in-jokes and references (I believe these are attached to the production rather than him, but I counted La Bohème, Parsifal, Lohengrin, Die Walküre, and Fidelio, I’m probably forgetting a few).

Particularly in Vienna, Act 3 of Fledermaus is a drawn-out affair, with sparse music and plot development and lots of unrelated stand-up comedy (much of which is not explained in the English titles, by the way). Last night our Frosch was veteran actor Helmuth Lohner, and while I could understand almost all of what he was saying, my grasp of current Austrian politics was not sufficient to appreciate many of the jokes. While drunken physical comedy doesn’t depend on cultural knowledge, I still thought it was far too long, and I wanted to return to the plot.

I’m still sad they cut Murray the Comic Canadian in Act 2, though. (I realize that everyone does this, but come on, guys, he’s a comic Canadian! Michael Schade could do it, Alfred isn’t in Act 2!)

Up-and-coming stick-waver Patrick Lange boasts an impressive head of Conductor Hair but led unobtrusively, and while his account was well-judged and phrased, it lacked the headlong rush and brilliance this opera can reach. I appreciated that he was not a young conductor speed demon, but it could have been more exciting. The post-Neujahrskonzert orchestra sounded suitably sparkling in the overture and perfectly fine elsewhere (though it was more Donner and less Blitz in the ballet). Strings better than the occasionally bumpy winds, as usual.

Had things managed to gel a little better, this could have been an outstanding performance, but it was something less than the sum of its parts. Alas, such is the repertory norm.

This post concludes for now my survey of Otto Schenk at the Wiener Staatsoper; soon I will turn to productions of these same operas by some modern enfants terribles (some not so jeunes) for comparison. I am posting from Munich, where I just saw Claus Guth’s brain-teaser of a Luisa Miller at the Bayerische Staatsoper. It required more thought than all the Otto Schenk productions put together. I didn’t like everything about it but it felt like a giant relief to have something to chew on after all this literalism. Singing was also excellent. Turntable used a lot but not applauded once. No Schenk comparison for this one but I didn’t want to skip it. More on all of this in coming days.