michael schade – Likely Impossibilities

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.

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

Lulu: First farce, then tragedy

May 13, 2010 No Comments

Berg, Lulu (three act version). Metropolitan Opera, 5/12/10. Conducted by Fabio Luisi with Marlis Petersen (Lulu), James Morris (Dr. Schön/Jack the Ripper), Anne Sofie von Otter (Gräfin Geschwitz), Gary Lehman (Alwa), Michael Schade (Painter/African Prince), Gwynne Howell (Schigolch), Bradley Garvin (Athlete/Animal Trainer). Production by John Dexter.

I think it is reasonable to say that most audience members, directors, and conductors would identify Lulu as an unremittingly bleak and surreal blast of sex and violence. What we got at the Met last night was considerably more complex than that, and fascinatingly so.

Marlis Petersen is completely at ease in Berg’s musical world. She not only sings all of Lulu’s ridiculously demanding music without apparent effort but moves with an amazing sensitivity to the musical gesture, and not just the gestures she is singing. I would like to think that this is the kind of performance Berg was looking for when he wrote so many picky stage directions in his score. Petersen’s Lulu feels almost like a choreographic realization of the music.

Like her cousin Salome, Lulu is usually interpreted today as a passive creation of male desire rather than as an aggressor. Taking Lulu as a helpless victim of men, as Petersen does, makes us feel a little better about the gender politics of this piece, though I doubt Berg, much less his buddies Kraus and Weininger, would recognize this take on feminine nature. This approach makes her increased awareness in the second half something of a self-actualization, which again feels better to us now. (I think Petersen’s approach is entirely the right one for today, and I would probably be very uncomfortable with anything else, but I think we need to acknowledge that this piece has a shitload of gender trouble.)

Fabio Luisi’s conducting continues to be wonderful, finding brilliantly clear textures without ever losing forward motion. Tempos were on the fast side. This, combined with more lightness than usual, brought out a surprising amount of black comedy in the score. There are parts of Lulu that have a great deal of dark humor, but they are usually awkward. I’m never sure if I should laugh when Lulu somewhat offhandedly mentions to Alwa that she was the one who poisoned his mother. But they felt right here, and successfully tied together surreal and farcical elements of the opera together–the ritualistically echoing lines, the allusions to number opera–with the more expected lustful and violent ones.

This happened dramatically as well. John Dexter’s production is dully realistic and somewhat worn around the edges–the Met photographer avoided taking many photos that show much of the sets, perhaps understandably. The sets occupy only a small triangle of space center stage. It all feels hopelessly tame and frumpy for the goings-on, and sucked some blood from the piece, so to speak, that a more brilliant backdrop might have focused more. A certain amount of depraved zing was lost, but it had an interesting effect. The stodgy setting, and the ease and fluidity of Petersen’s Lulu contrasted with the stiff and much more static performances of her men (intentional or accident of casting? I don’t know), all of which pushed us towards a Schnitzler-like satire of bourgeois life. Sometimes in the schtickier moments it even suggested a middlebrow farce or comedy of manners that happened to involve a lot of violence (“the servant who is intentionally clattering those dishes is having an affair with my wife too? damnation!”). I think the production intended to be entirely straight, but something about such a resolutely concrete and staid staging of such a louche, surreal piece of work is radical in itself. To my convoluted mind, at least.

But at the turning point of the opera–that is to say, the Film Music linking the two scenes of Act II–things got a lot darker. (No film this time, which I missed but am not going to throw a fit over.) In the plot, this is where Lulu is in prison and then in the hospital, which she identifies as “when she came to know herself,” the semi-self-actualization I mentioned above. Dexter’s set for Act 3 Scene 1 is considerably less realistic than the ones before it (limited color palette, bigger contrasts). Everything begins to replay itself in Berg’s recapitulatory and palindromic fashion, only this time despite the ever-increasing ridiculousness of the plot it is in deadly earnest (a few jokes at the expense of some bankers aside). I wish the final London scene had been a bit grittier and grimier–Jack the Ripper, as you can see above, looks halfway respectable–but it was certainly creepy enough. Lulu seems aware that she can do little to control her fate.

As for the rest of the singing, it was good! James Morris redeemed some of his wobbles earlier in the season with an excellently sung though occasionally dramatically blank Dr. Schön–I can understand that Dr. Schön is a bit on the repressed side, though. Gary Lehman sang Alwa with heroic strength, particularly his impassioned and tireless rendition of the Act 2 Scene 2 duet, a highlight of the score. Bradley Gauvin was a maniacally animated Athlete and Animal Trainer, the latter more sung than Sprechstimme’d. The other supporting parts, particularly Gwynne Howell’s gentle Schigolch and Graham Clark’s scary character tenors, were all excellent.

The Countess Geschwitz is the most human character in the opera, to my mind, and Anne Sofie von Otter was touching. This was my first time hearing her live despite having a few of her CDs and considering myself a big fan. Her voice is in excellent condition, and she made this sometimes pathetic character gently sympathetic, and her end truly tragic.

I’m glad that I could end my Met season with such an amazing performance. Three cheers for all involved, but particularly Maestro Luisi. (Then, for Berg, those three cheers again in retrograde!)

Lest you think this is the nadir of sex and violence in opera, I will be reporting on the New York Philharmonic’s production of Le grand macabre in exactly two weeks. Perhaps some end-of-season fun before then.

Edited to add p.s. to people led here from Google Finance: I’m guessing that you’ve decided by now that I have nothing to say about the stock LULU. You are wrong, I do have an opinion. I think those yoga pants are really overpriced.

Video: There was a video here, but it apparently poses copyright issues. Removed at the request of the Chicago Lyric Opera, sigh. Don’t want to get anyone in trouble.