nadia krasteva – Likely Impossibilities

Yevgeny Onegin: Love in a cold climate

June 8, 2011 2 Comments

There’s a chance that this was my last rep performance at the Staatsoper this season, so it’s a shame I have to go out on a mediocre note. This revival of Falk Richter’s dire production is notable and perhaps worth seeing for Peter Mattei’s stellar assumption of the title role. But this isn’t really a star vehicle opera. I guess some people can overlook the incoherence in rest of it more easily than I can, but I didn’t find it a satisfying experience. Maija Kovalevska’s Tatiana isn’t that bad, though.

Chaikovsky, Eugen Onegin. Wiener Staatsoper, 6/11/2011. Production by Falk Richter (revival), conducted by Michael Güttler with Maija Kovalevska (Tatiana), Peter Mattei (Onegin), Marius Benciu (Lensky), Ain Anger (Gremin), Nadia Krasteva (Olga), Zoryana Kushpler (Larina), Aura Twarowska (Filipjewna).

Falk Richter’s production is a grab bag of clichés that come and go. The one constant is an awful lot of falling snow in nearly every scene. Dress is modern, set is minimal, and blocking is static. Color symbolism, imaginary characters and doublings, and really annoying acrobats are combined into a static, chilly mix that shows little interest in the story and characters, or any sensitivity to the music at all. At first, we see doubles of Tatiana with a mystery man as frozen couples in the background, and the happy peasants also seem to belong to her fantasy world, identifiably by its, um, romantic navy blue business suits. The more practical characters wear red. If anyone wants to make this red mean something obviously significant and Communist, I would first caution you that this production doesn’t seem to have anything to do with Russia at all. The blue plus red plus white snow does look like a Russian flag, though (after my Italian flag the other week). Also, he forgets about all this after Act 1.

Letter Scene

Act 2 features a truly dreadful party scene that includes awkwardly enthusiastic attempts at current dance styles by the chorus, further flips by said acrobats, and, because we’re in Austria, some people in puffy shiny dresses waltzing (Tatiana incongruously wearing diva-approved long sleeves). I kind of liked Monsieur Triquet as a faded rock star, but like everything else he doesn’t have a point. Act 3 involves lots of people in black walking up and down stairs quite slowly. I was hoping Tatiana or Onegin would rip off her bedazzled shower cap, but they didn’t. That would have made everything a little more exciting and less Norma Desmond-looking. I could go on, but I’ll try not to, because the main sin of this production is that it is not interesting. The lighting design is also far too dark at times, including a Letter Scene that while not too dark is lit entirely from the back (see above), the lack of front light means you can’t see Tatiana’s face clearly. OK, I’ll stop.

For two lead singers, both new to this production and in fact making their house debuts, the staging offered little help in terms of characterization, and while both showed good acting skills they ended up a little underdeveloped and generic. Maija Kovalevska cuts a pretty figure as Tatiana and is a good actress, within the unfortunate strictures of this production. I never warmed to her metallic, tense sound and fast vibrato, but her singing was musical and rock solid secure, and she can manage impressive power in her upper register. On the other hand, Peter Mattei is seemingly incapable of making a less than beautiful sound, with a chocolately baritone that he never forces (his voice is not large but it is well-projected). His Onegin went on a clear journey from arrogance (Act 1) to boredom (Act 2) to despondency (Act 3), but I think he was much better in this Salzburg production available on DVD.

Act 3

Michael Güttler conducted a rushed account of the prelude followed by an ensemble in which the sisters’ offstage singing had little to do with whatever the harp was playing in the pit. It got a little better. Being too tough on Güttler would be cruel since he probably didn’t get any rehearsal, but this was not good and the orchestra was not trying very hard. In the rest of the cast, Marius Brenciu was a thin-toned, underacted Lensky, though his pp account of the aria’s second strophe was nice. Ain Anger is the youngest and least crusty Gremin this side of René Pape and sang lyrically and not so giant Russian-ly but well. As Olga, Madame Larina, and Filipjewa, Nadia Krasteva, Zoryana Kushpler, and Aura Twarowska showed that the Staatsoper ensemble has a smashing group of Slavic mezzos and altos, all three of them outstanding. Somewhere there’s got to be an opera by Cui or Dargomyzhsky or somebody that has three lading mezzo/alto roles for these impressive ladies.

If you want to go hear them in Onegin, well, you can do that too. Performances remain on June 10 and 13.

Video: Peter Mattei in said Salzburg production

Photos copyright Wiener Staatsoper.

Review

Rigoletto: Puffy shorts brigade

November 17, 2010 7 Comments

Take three first-rate voices (Dmitri Hvorostovsky, Ramón Vargas, and Patrizia Ciofi), one of which might not be quite ideally cast (guess), add a psssshhhht, and you have Rigoletto. That last bit is the sweet song of separating Velcro on the Gilda-containing sack in the last scene. Just another rep night at the Staatsoper.

Verdi, Rigoletto. Wiener Staatsoper, 16/11/10. Production by Sandro Sequi, conducted by Michael Güttler with Ramón Vargas (Duca), Dmitri Hvorostovsky (Rigoletto), Patrizia Ciofi (Gilda), Kurt Rydl (Sparafucile), Nadia Krasteva (Maddalena)

Dmitri Hvorostovsky is no more a pathetic loser than Juan Diego Flórez is. Hvorostovsky’s carelessly sprightly Rigoletto wasn’t annoyingly smug like Flórez’s Nemorino, but he was even less plausible on a theatrical level. Looking only mildly bedraggled, hunching over roughly half the time, and giving one or two rakish smiles too many, he was closer to being the drunken life of the party than an outsider from it. Rigoletto flirting with the Countess Ceprano seems a little wrong somehow, or at least it does in a production as utterly conventional as this one. I’m sure Hvorostovsky has a more convincing Rigoletto in him, but he’s not the best actor and is so naturally unsuited for the part that it would require more rehearsal than a Staatsoper rep performance gets to bring it out.

Vocally there were some weird things going on. His tone sounded much darker than I remember from the last time I heard him (around a year and a half ago, Trovatore at the Met), and I wonder if he’s doing something odd to get the volume. He was perfectly audible for the Staatsoper’s size, but the tone lacked brilliance. It’s still a deluxe voice, but I liked the moments when he lightened up a bit to a rounder, more resonant sound best. It wasn’t bad at all, but based on this outing Rigoletto is not a role that plays to his strengths.

He smartly positioned himself in one of the stage’s hot spots downstage left for “Pari siamo.” It’s always interesting to see which singers manage to gravitate towards the acoustically best locations on the stage (Flórez is also adept at this). Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to interest the lighting folks, and he was completely in the dark for the entire monologue. Better unseen than unheard, though, especially when suffering from an excess of hotttness.

Ramón Vargas was an undercharacterized but stylishly and assuredly sung Duke. His ease and comfort with the notes and the style were impressive, however I wish they had led him to a more dynamic portrayal. I think the years of heavier rep are beginning to take a toll on his voice, which has the traces of a beat and can be kind of spread and unfocused, but the sound is still pleasant. ~~No high C, which I think was wise;~~ the high Bs sounded excellent. (OOPS, I mean high D, not that either, even better that he skipped it.) Experienced Maddalena Nadia Krasteva (last seen feeling up a different tenor as the Foreign Princess in Munich’s Rusalka) managed to light up her short scene, getting more life out of Vargas than he had shown in the rest of the opera.

Patrizia Ciofi as Gilda was the most unqualified vocal success of the evening, with a clear yet full sound that sounded bell-like in the coloratura. Her very top notes turned shrill, and she rushed through the “Caro nome” cadenza, singing the highest section legato. However, for the most part this was really lovely and vibrant singing. Gildas often sound generically angelic, but she was nicely distinctive. Acting-wise she did the best she could, somewhat more engaged than Vargas but nothing particularly innovative.

Smaller roles were fine. Kurt Rydl sounded ancient and wobbly as Sparafucile but he sure was loud. Janusz Monarcha as Monterone could graduate to Sparafucile should Rydl ever retire. Michael Güttler led a conventional but tight account of the score with good control over the tempos and only a few coordination hitches with the chorus and offstage bands. The orchestra sounded slightly below their usual standard, the brass particularly out to lunch. Everyone sang their lungs out in a shapeless “Bella figlia dell’ amore,” leading to a most graceless effect.

I believe this production has received a sprucing-up since I last saw it in 2006. The new costumes are rather loud and fussy. Rigoletto’s jester’s suit looks like a tribute to the German flag via the Italian Renaissance, there are more men in tights than there should be when the men are not ballet dancers, and even Gilda’s man costume has puffy slashed sleeves. Their brightness clashes badly with the same old, faded set. It’s all by-the-numbers, though some things could be improved: why does Giovanna enter with the music obviously portraying Gilda? And that Velcro is just a crime. Shame on you, Staatsoper tech. I have been there–I believe it was around “Venite, inginocchiatevi”–and I have chosen not to do that.

Bows. I got one at the end of Act 2, the other is from the actual end:


Vargas, Ciofi, Güttler, Krasteva, Hvotostovsky, Rydl

Scenic photos copyright Wiener Staatsoper (first one credited to Axel Zeiniger), bows photos by me.

Next: I got a ticket to hear Thielemann and the Philharmoniker’s Beethoven show on Saturday.

Review

Rusalka in Munich: Not part of this world

October 28, 2010 4 Comments

Martin Kušej’s new Bayerische Staatsoper production of Rusalka is not a happily tragic fairy tale. Rusalka’s lake is a dark, damp cellar, where she is imprisoned with her sisters by her abusive father. But once she finally escapes, she is thrown mute and alone into an equally brutal world where she is utterly unequipped to survive, and he increasingly looks like a protector. It is a deeply unsettling and, for the most part, enormously effective production.

Dvořák, Rusalka, Bayerische Staatsoper, 10/26/2010. New production by Martin Kušej, sets by Martin Zehetgruber, costumes by Heidi Hackl, lights by Reinhard Traub. Conducted by Tomáš Hanus with Kristine Opolais (Rusalka), Klaus Florian Vogt (The Prince), Günther Groissböck (The Water Goblin), Nadia Krasteva (The Foreign Princess), Janina Baechle (The Witch).

We open to see a giant photographic cyclorama of an idealized alpine vista, flat and fake. In front of this is are the accoutrements of a run-down living room and the house’s occupants, a man in track pants and a bath robe and an indifferently caftaned woman with long curly hair. Wait, what? Then this room rises to reveal a wet, dark, filthy cellar below, populated by a group of imprisoned girls of various ages.

Yes, the concept is based on the Fritzl and Kampusch cases. The light on the water of the opening is the man above (for he is the Water Goblin, their father) shining a flashlight down through a trapdoor from the room above, before he climbs a ladder into the cellar to abuse them. Rusalka’s moon is a bare neon globe; how she has spotted the Prince is left unsolved. She begs her mother–Jezibaba–for freedom, but when she finally gets it she’s given a pair of Dorothy-like red heels that she can’t even walk in, deprived not only of her voice but also her grace. Unsurprisingly, she attaches herself to the first person who happens upon her, the Prince, even if he meets her while pointing a gun at her.

The second act opens with the Gamekeeper systematically dismembering a deer with occasional breaks to grope his niece, the Kitchen, um, Girl (usually a pants role). So, you know, not that much of an improvement for Rusalka. She’s tottering around mute and lost and utterly helpless, confronted by wedding guests in tacky Alpine Tracht that recall nothing so much as the mural of Act 1. Rusalka discovers the Prince enjoying a pre-marriage bump with the Foreign Princess against a wall and runs back to her abuser/guardian.

For the first two acts, it’s a brutal but rather brilliant exploration of Rusalka’s battered outsider status, and her twisted relationship with her father. But like in many of these sorts of productions, in Act 3 things get a little too complicated. The Gamekeeper and the Kitchen Girl corner the Water Goblin, who unexpectedly stabs the Gamekeeper to death, but it seems that this was some kind of sting operation as police officers jump out to catch the Water Goblin (their timing is a little off). The daughters are all put into a mental institution that, while a plausible consequence, in the plot resembles a deadly serious version of the jail in Act 3 of Fledermaus: everyone keeps inexplicably showing up there. The Prince reveals unexpected and implausible depths of guilt and kills himself, Rusalka is left broken and alone with her similarly insane sisters.

The visual vocabulary of this production could be a winner in any game of Regie bingo: the icky father figure in a bathrobe toting Aldi bags, the Prince’s wallpaper almost matching that of the opera house, the dead animals (more dead deers are wielded by a crowd of brides in a horrific wedding ballet), the deflation of Alpine kitsch. (I know by now that as soon as anyone steps onto a German opera stage wearing lederhosen that they’re about to do something horrific.)

But for all its occasional reliance on cliche and its unrelenting darkness, I loved this reinterpretation of Rusalka’s character. The nymph is usually a spirit of longing, not a character but a collection of romantic desires in passive feminine form. Kušej is usually described as a total misanthrope (his productions of Don Giovanni and Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk bear this out), but I thought he gave her, for once, a revelatory humanity. This soul adrift is not pretty in her yearning, she’s a woman who has been destroyed by total alienation and abuse and has only instinct left. You can read this (and I would like to) as an implicit critique of the tradition that has given us all these beautifully longing spirits in the first place, and as a challenge to an art form that still often stages female objectification without thinking twice. Like many operatic characters, Rusalka cannot control her own fate or even or own body, but for once we can’t miss the inhumanity of that loss.

Kristine Opolais had a theatrical triumph in the title role, acting with raw commitment and an utter lack of diva vanity, stumbling and trembling the entire evening. Her voice is also raw and pushed, and her senses of rhythm and pitch sometimes approximate. But while this is not a lusciously sung Rusalka, it’s a heartbreakingly vivid one. Less earthy was Klaus Florian Vogt’s Prince, sung with exquisitely crystalline tone that effortlessly fills the theater. For all its beauty it can be a somewhat bloodless, unvarying sound, though he acts with a passion his voice can’t really command. His unearthly Prince and Opolais’s tough Rusalka were a fascinating reversal of the usual sounds in these roles.

All the musical values were top-notch and Tomáš Hanus conducted a beautifully contained performance with great lyricism and transparency. He never lapsed into sappy sentimentality, but found the kind of romantic sweep you need in the big moments. And the orchestra was excellent. But this was a performance more memorable for its production than its music. The Personenregie was detailed and across-the-board convincing to a rare degree down to the small roles (particularly the haunting nymphs, who also all sang wonderfully). Günther Groissbock sang the Water Goblin with a medium-sized, very secure bass, and gave a creepy but, even creepier, never overacted portrayal, defined by his extremely ambivalent relationship with Rusalka. Nadia Krasteva was a glamorous Foreign Princess and sang well, though it is odd to hear a mezzo in this role. Janina Baechel’s Jezibaba had no magic, but was another fascinatingly conflicted, ambiguous character, and sung with authority and precision.

There’s a place for fairy tales, but to see something that dismantles them so thoroughly and devastatingly is not to be missed. Leave the kids at home, though.

N.B.: I had a restricted-view seat for the first two acts (found something slightly better for Act III) and missed some of the things happening on stage left. This production is being filmed for DVD, there were cameras all over the place, so I’m looking forward to seeing it again with more complete visuals.

And I saw someone who looked like Katharina Wagner, but I’m not sure if it was her or not.

Next: What’s this mermaid opera I’m seeing tonight? Oh, yeah, Rusalka again! This time at the Volksoper.
Photos copyright Bayerische Staatsoper except the two below.
Edited because diacriticals are critical.
My most successful bows photo yet:

Nationaltheater under a very Bavarian sky:

Review

La forza del destino: Showdown at the Staatsoper corral

September 15, 2010 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.