sylvia schwartz – Likely Impossibilities

Figaro’s prenup at the Wiener Staatsoper

February 17, 2011 11 Comments

At least they didn’t have it on Valentine’s Day. Unless you’re Cherubino, you would have been disappointed. There are few operas that offer a more comprehensive overview of the intersection of love, sex, and class than Le nozze di Figaro, but Jean-Louis Martinoty’s “new”* Wiener Staatsoper production irons out this complex into a rush of pure teenage hormones. Everyone gets some, but what it means, I don’t know. Most of the music isn’t anything to remember either. How can Mozart be so boring? Let us investigate.

*First seen at the Théatre des Champs-Elysées, 2003. [Insert offensive cliché about French people and sex here.]

Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro. Wiener Staatsoper, 2/16/2011. New production premiere by Jean-Louis Martinoty with sets by Hans Schavernoch, costumes by Sylvie de Segonzac, lights by Fabrice Kebour. Conducted by Franz Welser-Möst with Luca Pisaroni (Figaro), Sylvia Schwartz (Susannah), Erwin Schrott (Count), Dorothea Röschmann (Countess), Anna Bonitatibus (Cherubino), Daniela Fally (Barbarina), Sorin Coliban (Don Bartolo).

After his fiasco of a Don Giovanni, director Jean-Louis Martinoty is back and not very welcome this time (there were many resounding boos at his curtain call). Like the Don, his Figaro aspires to detailed Personenregie but its overall effect is consistently blunted by his failure to conceive of characters or concepts beyond the level of small-scale gestures. It’s superficial interpretation that is happy to take Barbiere or La mère coupable into account, but won’t actually answer any important questions about what Figaro is about, and declines to approach its more serious themes. There are many trees, but there is no forest. There are notes, but no phrases. On the whole, it is a little better than the Don, because it is less ambitious–there are no random time-traveling missions–but what’s there is profoundly uninspiring and amazingly dull. Watch, this is my favorite opera, I’m about to get really really offended. Because I think this direction of this production is borderline-incompetent, certainly not worthy of a major opera house.

The stage is raked with the twisted proscenium arches familiar from Don Giovanni. The only explanation I can formulate of the set is that Martinoty had set designer Hans Schavernoch’s plans sitting on his desk next to the book of inspirational paintings sent by his dramaturg, and sent the latter to the shop by mistake. Each setting is a different background collage of vaguely relevant artwork of various sizes. We get lots of animal parts in Act 1 (hunting for something? trophies?), ladies’ desk objects and the lower half of a huge crucifix in Acts 2 and 3, and giant wheels of cheese at the start of Act 4. (I got really hungry at this point! Because, cheese. While all the characters were also busy being hungry. Hungry for LOVE.) Later, obviously we got paintings of flowers. Furniture is sparse and augmented by some out-of-period cushions, which jar with the rest of the design. Also, the Count keeps a skull on his desk, sitting on top of a large tortoise. Don’t ask me, I just watched the thing.

The paintings don’t do anything for the drama except distract, their symbolism alternating between too obtuse to do anything and too obvious to do anything. Oh, they cause acoustic problems, there’s that. The lighting by Fabrice Kebour is better than that of Don Giovanni, with fewer random changes. But it is still fussily complicated and leaves key spots of the stage too dark to make out the action at times, even in Acts 1 and 2.

The one uniform theme of the production is the juvenile quality, straight from the model of Slutty 18th Century. The costumes (by Sylvie de Segonzac) are plain, non-extravagant period jobs, but heavy on the cleavage, and everyone feels everyone else up indiscriminately. This makes differences in class, age and status disappear, as does the generally casual atmosphere of the action. I don’t think Figaro and Susannah’s relationship is the same as Cherubino and Barbarina’s, and certainly not as the Count and Countess’s or the Countess and Cherubino’s (which is here very touchy-feely, safe to say that Martinoty read a summary of La mère coupable), but here they all act basically the same way. It cheapens the importance Susannah and Figaro put on foiling the Count’s plan, AKA the key plot conflict of the whole opera. It’s just not interesting, and also not at all sexy. A little innuendo would have gone a lot further than this much groping.

The staging of “Deh vieni, non tardar” annoyed me in particular. Susannah begins it from upstage, behind one of the paintings (which are scrims in this act, here lit to be translucent) while the Countess mimes it for Figaro’s benefit. Conventionally, Figaro doesn’t see Susannah in this number, so he doesn’t wonder why she is wearing the Countess’s dress. Here, he is given the Countess in Susannah’s dress to look at. Obviously, Martinoty is thinking of another “Deh vieni,” Don Giovanni’s serenade mimed by Leporello. But Susannah is a much more honest character than the Don, and with this intermediary of the Countess, she never gets her personal moment of glory, and we never get that moment of genuine affection. It also fails to emphasize that Figaro recognizes Susannah by the sound of her voice, as is important later in the act. What do we gain? Nothing, so far as I can tell.

He is content to tinker in this way. I do not object to any of his ideas because they depart from convention, rather because due to a lack of a guiding theme they do more to confuse than advance the narrative. And, since this small-scale busy handwork is the most substantive thing in the production, I think it’s worth examining it closely to see if it holds up to scrutiny. Here’s another example. Like in the DVD of this production, the Act 1 unveiling of Cherubino is oddly complicated. Cherubino surreptitiously moves from the covered chair into a chest but leaves his boots sitting in front of the chair, and when the Count unveils the chair, apparently here not just describing the moment but seeing the boots and thinking that Cherubino is there, he then takes off the cloth and is surprised not that Cherubino is there as usual but rather is surprised that he is not there. Cherubino emerges from the chest shortly afterwards. But it’s the surprising collapse of the Count’s story and the actual presence of Cherubino that makes the moment work (I remember Simon Keenlyside as the Count doing a priceless double take upon seeing Cherubino at this point), and here one of the best revelations in opera is destroyed.

For the most part, Martinoty plays by the book. But, in what I suspect in an attempt to look casual, much of the comedy ends up too imprecisely timed to be funny (have you ever seen Susannah’s “senti questa” fail to get a laugh? welcome to this production). The biggest laugh was stuttering Don Curzio, which is not a good sign. Serious moments are also fluffed: “Contessa perdono” is sung by the Count staring straight out at the audience, not looking at the Countess at all, as the set opens up to a heavenly blue sky. This leads to a confusing final image that suggest the Countess might actually prefer Figaro over her husband, which would be interesting if it had been pursued anywhere else in the staging, but as far as I could tell it wasn’t. (Who’s betting Martinoty was thinking of “Dunque son” from Barbiere? He loves talking about these connections in interviews.)

Franz Welser-Möst’s conducting was OK. In the recap of the overture there were some surprising coordination issues between the various sides of the string section, and some stage-pit problems in Act 1 (particularly in Bartolo’s aria), which improved over the course of the evening. Generally things worked fairly effectively. But I wish he had taken command a little more, it was a little slack and more routine than brilliant, and some tempos were in my HIP-oriented mind lacking in verve. My HIP self greatly appreciated the presence of tasteful ornamentation in “Dove sono” and “Deh, vieni,” however. Recitative tilted heavily towards speaking, however I’m OK with this. I could do without the smartass continuo quoting bits of Marcellina’s Barbiere aria on her entrance. We get it.

The cast was not bad, but the overall level was disappointing and failed to catch fire somehow. Luca Pisaroni is a charming Figaro with a light, somewhat generic but technically secure voice, but didn’t really have the stature to command the evening (except in the literal sense, he is very tall), and neither did anyone else.

Dorothea Röschmann’s voice has darkened and lost some control and flexibility in the last few years, and her high notes can turn shrill, but she remains a elegant singer. As the Countess, she was the most glamorous voice onstage by a long shot. Unfortunately, the childish interpretation of the Countess prescribed by the production (including breaking her china at the opening of Act 2) didn’t seem to fit her personality, and while her flirtiness was sometimes charming, she lacked emotional depth. Her “Dove sono,” honest, involved that skull on the Count’s desk. At the end, she crossed center stage and planted herself with the steely determination of a Konstanze about to speed up at the end of “Marten aller Arten,” which did not feel right somehow. But she provided the best singing of the evening.

Erwin Schrott was making his role debut as the Count, and I think eventually he will be fine in the role. His voice is lower-pitched than most Counts’, but while the high parts didn’t exactly open out, the lower sections, of which there are many, sounded more solid than usual. The aria was not bad; he fluffed the coloratura, but who doesn’t? (Peter Mattei doesn’t, I guess, but he’s special.) His acting is on the fey side, and rather funny. Surprisingly, though, he doesn’t have the more violent and dangerous side yet, and was hard to take seriously. The production wasn’t exactly helping him there.

Like in Don Giovanni, there was a vocal reversal here by casting a lower-voiced Count than Figaro, but this didn’t bother me as much as it did there, somehow.

The Cherubino, Anna Bonitatibus, has an intriguing voice with a dark and kind of spicy sound, but her style is straight out of high drama seventeenth-century stuff and her phrasing lacks the musical purity for Mozart, with too many pauses and sighs. While a decent actress, she was not particularly individual. As Susannah, Sylvia Schwartz also failed to be memorable, with a flexible but somewhat unfocused and small voice and conventional acting. Daniela Fally’s strumpet Barbarina was finely sung, though I don’t understand the production’s idea here in making her a mini-Carmen with extensive boobage and very bright red lipstick. I’m not saying it couldn’t work, but here it was inexplicable.

One can hope that this production will get better in later performances and perhaps with other casts. There are four more performances: February 19, 21, 24, and 26.

I did see Anna Netrebko in the audience, back from New York already to see her man grab every woman onstage.

Photos except below copyright Wiener Staatsoper/Michael Pöhn.

Bows:

Review

Don Giovanni: Love in a boring climate

December 12, 2010 5 Comments

The Wiener Staatsoper’s new production of Don Giovanni was begging to be stolen all night. Had anyone shown a little initiative and done something exciting, they could have walked off with it in their pocket. But no, we had a balanced ensemble, and a milquetoast evening it remained to the end. From the scattered mess of a production to the respectable but not quite distinguished singing, it reminds you that there’s no Don worse than a boring Don. The orchestra was the best thing about it.

This is historically possibly the single most central work in the Staatsoper’s repertoire, and the disappointment among the premiere crowd was palpable. Watch out, Herr Meyer, the Stehplatz masses are restless.

Mozart-Da Ponte, Don Giovanni. Wiener Staatsoper, 12/11/2010. New production premiere by Jean-Louis Martinoty, sets by Hans Schavernoch, costumes by Yan Tx, lights by Fabrice Kebour. Conducted by Franz Welser-Möst with Ildebrando d’Arcangelo (Don Giovanni), Alex Esposito (Leporello), Sally Matthews (Donna Anna), Roxana Constantinescu (Donna Elvira), Sylvia Schwartz (Zerlina), Saimir Pirgu (Don Ottavio), Albert Dohmen (Commendatore), Adam Plachetka (Masetto)

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An article in the Staatsoper magazine trumpets the learned director Martinoty’s consultation of many other Don Giovanni tales (and he name-drops lots of them in the program book interview). I don’t know whether to suggest he should have spent more time with Mozart and Da Ponte’s text or just to note that he obviously hasn’t found his own version yet. Because this is a morally confused, interpretive black hole of an opera, and Martinoty does nothing to suggest who Don Giovanni is, or any of the other characters for that matter. He sticks in some novelties, but there’s no vision or concept to speak of in an opera that demands one.

The production is set in post-war Spain, for no perceptible reason (maybe 1950’s, but I’m not sure! sometimes it looks more recent). The stage is steeply raked, with a twisted series of proscenium arches. The sets by Hans Schavernoch consist of a few projected backdrops of Seville, something that looks like a wine cellar to meet Donna Elvira (?), a hotel lobby for Zerlina and Masetto’s wedding, Don Giovanni’s Baroque party room, a rather nice church in lieu of a cemetery, and Don Giovanni’s banquet hall. In the latter, the statue–a skeleton–confusingly remains from the cemetery, visible for the entire scene, making its dramatic vocal arrival somewhat anticlimactic. Finally, the Commendatore shows up in person, despite not having appeared except as bones in the previous scene (see the photo at the top of this post). The curtain frequently comes down for set changes, never for too long, but the interruption in the flow is unfortunate. So are the cast traffic jams at the too-small exits.

Fun fact: this is the second production of Don Giovanni I have seen in Vienna that is set in a hotel! But Keith Warner’s Theater an der Wien job was a sleazy, wild masterpiece, which this one isn’t.

The costumes by Yan Tax are blandly 1950’s-ish until everyone dresses up in period finery for the Act 2 finale, some retaining it for Act 2. The significance of this masquerade is unclear (because glittery suits are fun, and now there are men with ruffles, ARE YOU HAPPY NOW, traditionalists?). The armies of Mozart lookalikes in the stage bands are amusing, though. Of the lighting, by Fabrice Kebour, welch’ Dunkel hier! I understand a lot of this opera is supposed to take place in the dark, but, for example, shouldn’t we be able to see Donna Anna’s face for her crucial narration of her abduction by Giovanni? (Putting her far upstage didn’t help either.) There are a few scenes of highly designed painterly beauty, but the rest of the opera seems to have been forgotten. Some illumination is provided by a mysterious bare hanging fluorescent tube, which looks like it was a housewarming gift to Dominique Meyer from Achim Freyer. But no one took any pictures of it, because it looked weird!

While some of the direction is lively and physical, it doesn’t do a very good job of developing the plot or characters or their relationships. Sometimes logic fails. Why doesn’t Leporello react before noting the presence of people in the introduction? What happens in the confusing duel involving a sword umbrella and a flashlight? Why does Donna Elvira have a voodoo doll? Why doesn’t Zerlina look at Don Giovanni during “La cì darem la mano”? What the hell is going on with that statue? But in the big picture everyone seems to like Don Giovanni: he and Donna Anna apparently have a consensual S&M thing going on, Donna Elvira just wants him back (despite voodoo), and even Don Ottavio is a good buddy. And Ildebrando D’Arcangelo’s Don seems like a good guy. He’s friendly, maybe a little aggressive on the romantic side of things, but basically decent. And that doesn’t make for a very interesting show.

Donna Elvira (Roxana Constantinescu)

In the arias, Martinoty frequently brings in extra characters to give the singers someone to act against–Leporello has a girlfriend in the opening, Donna Elvira gets a priest in “Mi tradi,” and a random servant girl appears repeatedly. A commenter here already pointed out the concatenation of the Catalog Aria with Zerlina’s wedding, which is nicely done except for shorting out Donna Elvira. There’s a monk praying through all of the final sextet, who I was expecting to be a reincarnated Don (because the Don dresses up as a monk in the church scene earlier), but nothing so interesting, he was just a monk. Unfortunately I think this technique ended up being more a crutch than anything else. And the ending, with its everpresent statue, has none of the crazy intensity that it needs (though Donna Elvira has apparently become a nun), and the descent to hell passes so quickly as to have very little impact.

Sorry to say so much, but I feel like I had to to describe everything, because this production doesn’t organize itself into easily-summarized coherence. It doesn’t ever develop any direction or guiding idea. There’s stuff there, but what’s it all about? AAAHHHH! I DON’T KNOW!!!!

Musically, the highlight was the orchestra, which knows this score inside out and can play it without breaking a sweat. But there were some conducting issues. Franz Welser-Möst’s account was more shaped on the orchestral than vocal side, and had coordination issues with the stage. The tempos tended to be odd, and the pacing lacked drama. Unfortunately the singing was accomplished without being memorable. Many of the arias were loud and unsubtle, the ensembles were better. Appoggiaturas were in oddly short supply. I prefer baritone Dons to basses, and while D’Arcangelo was perfectly fine, with a darkish lyric tone, he failed to seduce me. Er, I mean, he’s no Erwin Schrott in the acting department, and didn’t show much in the way of seductive tendencies (and some of us may have found Leporello better-looking, sorry, I’m superficial). I could have also used more vocal floating in the serenade. It takes skills to sing the Champagne Aria and take your shirt off at the same time, though.

Donna Anna (Sally Matthews)

Alex Esposito was a vocally solid if not particularly outstanding Leporello, with a very good Catalog Aria and a lighter and higher-sounding tone than his master. Their relationship didn’t go anywhere, though Esposito was a sparkier presence than D’Arcangelo. The best of the women was Sally Matthews’s Donna Anna, whose cloudy, sometimes constrained soprano has a vaguely Gheorghiu-esque quality, though more pointed. She took some time to warm up but gave a committed, grand performance with good coloratura and long phrases. Roxana Constantinescu’s mezzo Donna Elvira was hindered by a wide vibrato and a lack of contrast and acting detail. Sylvia Schwartz’s Zerlina was lyric and sweet but understated. Saimir Pirgu sang Don Ottavio with attractive tone but phrasing right out of Puccini, wringing every bit of drama and sentiment out of his two (yes we got both) arias and blasting every “-te” of “morte” in “Dalla sua pace.” Albert Dohmen disappointed as the Commendatore, not sounding bass-like at all. Except him, none of the principals were weak, but none really remarkable.

I think a few more tech rehearsals would have done this show good. I wondered if someone was writing the lighting cues as they were giving them, because they were that bumpy and randomly timed. Lights would abruptly change in the middle of scenes for no reason, making me suspect a cue was pages late or early. The trip down to Hell went about three times too quickly and started a good two pages too late, severely screwing up the drama. If you’re not going to get this kind of thing right at a new production prima, when are you going to?

There was rather a lot of booing at the end, particularly by generally-friendly Vienna standards, though there was also some enthusiastic cheering. The consensus in the standing room was that it fell short of Wiener Staatsoper standards for both Mozart singing and staging. “It would be OK for Zurich,” one Stehplatz member said. “Or Germany. But in Vienna?” In my experience Zurich and Germany generally come up with something more interesting than this production-wise, but point taken.

We’re getting a full Da Ponte cycle from this production team. The Figaro, already seen in Paris and already considered via DVD here, will premiere in February, the Così in two years’ time.

Also, typo in the cast list! They misspelled “Masetto” as “Masseto”.

Bows–the statue is not THE statue, it is only A statue:

Production photos copyright Wiener Staatsoper, except the first one, copyright APA/Robert Jäger

Review

Elisir d’amore: I need a drink

October 30, 2010 14 Comments

Juan Diego Flórez is a very charming and accomplished guy, and not a good enough actor to disguise it. As moony dumbass Nemorino he doesn’t convince, no matter how many precisely timed pratfalls he pulls. This was a production that existed for one reason, and that was to hear him sing “Una furtiva lagrima.”

It got an endless ovation. It was an exceptionally fine piece of singing, but embedded as it was in a production with no other distractions, how could it not? This was your Platonic ideal of Wiener Staatsoper repertory performances: an adored star surrounded by solid but unexceptional ensemble costars, all engaging in well-worn dramatic shtick on a set that is older than any of them. The only exception was that your average rep night has rather fewer stage-orchestra train wrecks than this one did.

Donizetti, L’elisir d’amore. Wiener Staatsoper, 29/10/10. Production “after” Otto Schenk with sets by Jürgen Rose. Conducted by Yves Abel with Juan Diego Flórez (Nemorino), Sylvia Schwartz (Adina), Tae Joong Yang (Belcore), Lars Woldt (Dulcamara), Anita Hartig (Giannetta)

Otto Schenk’s Elisir d’amore is located in a sunny part of Italy where the peasants are remarkably clean and well-dressed. The set, though, has been going for 179 performances and resembles a pale beached whale, even conman Dulcamara’s wish-fulfillment wagon is faded. The blocking is steadfastly conventional and not polished enough to acquire wit beyond the most obvious drunk jokes. Also, re-stretch your damn backdrop, Staatsoper. The sky is wrinkly. But if you like this kind of thing, here it is.

So far, so repertory. The attraction here was the Nemorino of the Flórez. I’m usually nuts for him, but he really rubbed me the wrong way in this. Nemorino’s music gives him little space to display his virtuoso technique and high notes, leaving him to get by on his lyricism and charm alone. His singing is musically unimpeachable, but the tone is a bit narrow and nasal for the role. He can fill a performance with clever stage business, but it doesn’t really cohere into a character.

Absent his dazzling coloratura, I actually found him kind of smug and annoying. His charm is indeed plentiful, and bowled the rest of the audience over, but he seemed to know exactly how good he is, and that’s never attractive. It’s particularly not good when you’re playing a simple and sincere soul like Nemorino–tellingly, only Nemorino’s elixir-smashed confidence actually worked. What the hell am I asking for, I know! But the most sympathetic performances have a sort of generosity to them, and I found that absent here.

He did encore the aria, though. Of course.


Yes, that’s La Netrebka. Only picture I could find, sorry!

The rest of the cast was perfectly acceptable. New ensemble member Sylvia Schwartz as Adina missed the first two performances of the run due to illness. Maybe she had not entirely recovered; her tone wavered between sweet and focused and fluttery and squally. She improved as a the night went on, though, and made for a poised and accurate Adina of the lyric sort. She doesn’t have the easy coloratura or extension for a killer “Prendi” cabaletta, but her secure low notes bode well for her appearances as Susannah and Zerlina later this season.

Tae Joong Yang has a strong and noble baritone voice, but seemed to force unnecessarily both vocally and dramatically; his Belcore scored on pomposity but could have used more suavity. Lars Woldt was miscast as Dulcamara, with a fine voice but without the velocity to make the patter roll. Anita Hartig’s warm voice seemed overqualified for Giannetta.

Now for the biggest problem of the evening: the conducting. I have rarely heard such a messy performance. Yves Abel chose perfectly conventional tempos but nearly every number featured major coordination problems between orchestra and stage, including losing the entire soprano section in the Dulcamara entrance chorus, losing both tenor and soprano towards the end of the concertante Act 1 finale, and many, many places where the singers were a beat or two off from the orchestra. Recitatives featured odd pauses. It was BAD. That’s the only way to put it.

Lots of enthusiastic applause from everyone in the audience, though. Now I remember why I avoid these tourist-magnet repertory productions. I think I have discovered the proper place for that irritating word Startenor, though.

This was the final performance with Juan Diego but the opera marches on with various other casts later this season. This production can also be seen on DVD with Netrebko and Villazón in excellent form. However, my favorite Elisir remains the one with Alagna and Gheorghiu–cute 1920’s setting and he’s got that sweet stupidity, she’s got that bitchiness.

This was part 2.1 of my newly-discovered series Operas I See in Both Vienna and Munich that the Bayerische Staatsoper Does More Weirdly. Meaning I’m going to see the notorious “underpants Elisir” with Calleja in Munich in January.