Review

Die Walküre: Put a Ring on it

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After a very disappointing Rheingold, the Wiener Staatsoper’s Ring picked up a bit for last night’s Walküre. Adam Fischer’s conducting was more exciting, and Edith Haller and Christopher Ventris made an acceptable pair of Wälsungs. The rest, uh, I’m still worried.

Wagner, Die Walküre. Wiener Staatsoper, 3/7/2011. Production by Sven-Eric Bechtolf, conducted by Adam Fischer with Juha Uusitalo (Wotan), Eva Johansson (Brünnhilde), Edith Haller (Sieglinde), Christopher Ventris (Siegmund), Michaela Schuster (Fricka), Günther Groissböck (Hunding).

Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s Walküre isn’t quite so bare-bones as the Rheingold, with a few more enigmatic symbols scattered about, but it still doesn’t work. The Ring is too complex and epic to reduce to minimal character work, particularly when the direction is as generic and unilluminating as it is here. I’ve seen many productions at the Staatsoper that have been more desperately static than this one–actually, the blocking keeps things moving pretty well. But the determined lack of vision and meaning is fatal. It’s not a political Ring, it’s not a mythic Ring, it’s not even a look-at-this-fancy-stage-tech-shit Ring. It’s not an anything Ring. Seriously, if you’re not going to be ambitious when you put on the Ring, when the hell are you going to be?

The unit set is slightly different from that of Rheingold, this time consisting of looming white art deco-ish walls. These eventually serve as a giant projection screen for the expected leaping flames. Chez Hunding is adorned with a single ash tree trunk going through the simple dining room table; these trees multiply for the second act (which otherwise features the same styrofoam rocks as the mountaintop of Rheingold). For Act Three, we get a lot of horse statues. Dress continues to be vaguely early-twentieth century, but not strong enough to make a point. The Valkyries are wrapped in tinfoil prom dresses as they manhandle various heroes, and Brünnhilde’s glittery taffeta gown–with a drop waist and pleats, words cannot do this dress justice–recalls the faded fashions of Viennese ballgoers. Between this and Anna Bolena, I suspect some fabric baron left a giant bequest of iridescent taffeta to the Staatsoper.

Beyond the looks, there’s not a lot to talk about, staging-wise. A dead wolf is hanging out in Act Two and the scattered golden heads seem to suggest bits of the remaining Rheingold (huh?). The Valkyries’ excited swarming around Sieglinde as soon as her pregnancy was announced (OMG babyz!) really ticked me off. Much of the action is too dimly lit, particularly the end of Act Two, where we can barely see the Todesverkündigung and fight (the latter is also placed awkwardly far upstage). Also, note to Siegmunds who wish to dramatically reach over their heads and behind them to pull swords from trees: it kind of ruins the effect when you look up.

I’m sorry about the shortage of pictures in this post, but the Staatsoper website didn’t provide any others. I assure you that you aren’t missing much.

Adam Fischer again stood in for ill music director Franz Welser-Möst, and his conducting had greater tension and more drama this time around. Unfortunately, a lot of ensemble problems remained, and the clarity was still less than optimal. Putting the two halves of the brass section on the extreme opposite ends of the pit (horns are house left, trumpets and trombone and tuba house right) can produce a great enveloping effect, but they seemed to have issues playing together, particularly in the prelude. But pit-wise it was adequate, if not top rank.

Edith Haller was a bit of a puzzle as Sieglinde. She has a white, old-fashioned sort of sound that is interesting and distinctive, but can turn opaque and seem short on overtones, particularly on her thin high notes. Her production was uneven and nervous at times, but she’s a good and natural actress in this most impassioned of Wagner roles. Christopher Ventris made an alright Siegmund, with consistent, clear tone that while powerful was short on heroic weight. I can imagine why he is better known for singing Parsifal, which he will be doing at the Staatsoper later this month. His performance was also marred by a number of pronunciation mistakes. His first “Wälse!” seemed to acquire an “r” at the end, leading my companion in the peanut gallery to quip, “I was sure he was going to add ‘-Möst.’”

Among the godly, things were shakier. Eva Johansson’s Brünnhilde suffered from faulty intonation, a giant wobble and screamed high notes. She did seem to be giving it her best, and was physically convincing onstage (though her collapse at the end was cringe-inducing), but the singing was often painful to hear. Juha Uusitalo’s Wotan ran out of gas before the end of some of the long monologues and was often overpowered by the orchestra, and he remains a blank as an interpreter. Yet this was still a more alert and nuanced performance than is his norm.

The supporting singers suggested a higher standard than was sustained by the leads, as can happen at the Staatsoper. The Valkyries were a solid, wobble-free yet loud bunch. Günther Groissböck again stood in for Ain Anger, this time as Hunding, and while healthy of voice he read a bit youthful and vocally compact for the role. Michaela Schuster’s vicious Fricka was again great fun, despite her sometimes blowsy singing.

Without great conducting and a more coherent production, this Ring continues to be less than the sum of its not very impressive parts.

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Review

There’s gold in that Rhein

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Like a tired god who hasn’t had his apple a day, Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s bargain-basement Ring trudged back onto the Wiener Staatsoper’s stage last night. You could say it’s devoid of cheap effects, but the problem is that it’s basically devoid of any other kind of effect as well. A last-minute conductor swap from ailing music director Franz Welser-Möst to Adam Fischer also did the evening no favors, and a few overacting singers couldn’t salvage it single-handedly. This is the start of a cycle I’m planning on going to all of. I’m worried.

Wagner, Das Rheingold. Wiener Staatsoper, 4/6/2011. Production by Sven-Erik Bechtolf (revival), conducted by Adam Fischer with Juha Uusitalo (Wotan), Adrian Eröd (Loge), Tomasz Konieczny (Alberich), Michaela Schuster (Fricka), Anna Larsson (Erda), Günter Groissböck (Fafner)

This Ring got off to an inauspicious start, with loud and out-of-tune horn entrances in a heavy-handed Vorspiel. More like the Donaukanal than the Rhine. Despite the orchestra’s ever-impressive sound, the mushy textures, poor balance, and general shapelessness made this evening a trial. Things improved a bit over the course of the performance but this was really uninspiring stuff. I don’t want to blame last-minute substitute Fischer too harshly; it was surely the orchestra’s fault as well. Some individual moments worked, but just as many fell flat, and momentum was lacking. Earth to the anvil folks doing the dotted rhythm part: you were totally out of sync with the others.

Sven-Eric Bechtolf’s production, designed by Rolf and Maria [sic in the program, it’s Marianne] Glittenberg, is minimalist to the point of being a void. Some static images are starkly striking, but there is no vision of the drama. A bare stage is adorned with some styrofoam rocks, and at least at this revived point there’s little characterization to fill in the story. This production caused conflict between Bechtolf and former intendant Ioan Holender, and Bechtolf at one point asked his name be removed from a revival due to the amount of rehearsals it was getting. His name did appear on the program last night, but I don’t think a whole lot of rehearsals were a factor now, either.

 

The dress is Bechtolf’s pet early twentieth-century period, though what this means is never clear. A few other Bechtolf trademarks are present: Fricka’s glittery art deco gown, scattered female body parts (this time the Rheingold itself, previously he stuck these into Lulu). Alberich’s um, action with the gold and later casting of it into said female body parts suggests that his renouncing of love thing had major Freudian effects, but that’s all I got for meaning. The big set pieces are disappointing and anticlimactic, with only vague video projections providing Alberich as a serpent and a rainbow bridge. The interpersonal stuff comes across a little better. Though the interpretation is all utterly conventional, it is at least less static than last week’s Anna Bolena. The white suits and occasionally unintentionally comic blocking give it the feeling of a fin-de-siècle sitcom, which I’m going to dub Oh My Gods!. Also, Donner carries his hammer in a glittery hammer-shaped case. Just saying.

As often happens in these sorts of evenings, a few canny singers noted the vacuum and attempted to fill it. Most notable was Adrian Eröd as Loge in the required Oh My Gods! sitcom role of Wotan’s Gay Best Friend, a shamelessly campy and over the top performance but still the most fun thing going on. Hearing his light baritone in this role was strange and while he managed it well I think I prefer a brighter tenor sound. Michaela Schuster is not vocally memorable but made an interesting Fricka with great attention to the text and acting details.

Günther Groissböck was a last-minute substitute for ill Ain Anger as Fafner and while the two identical giants covered in black foam balls do not allow for much in the way of charismatic performance, he sounded excellent. Tomasz Konieczny offered a solid, loud, reliable Alberich with an excellent Curse. He tore into the role with gusto (including his Rhine swimming, which seemed to involve an invisible Hula Hoop), more sleazy than sinister but vocally more commanding than Juha Uusitalo’s bland and underpowered Wotan. Nevertheless, Uusitalo gave a somewhat more dynamic and insightful portrayal than I have seen from him in the past. Anna Larsson sounded good in her signature role of Erda, and the supporting roles were filled well enough. However, a general musical slackness pervaded the evening.

I hope things improve for tonight’s Walküre, which is my favorite of the Ring operas music dramas.

Photos copyright Alex Zenninger/Wiener Staatsoper

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Review

The ENO’s Parsifal: Knights of the living dead

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Regietheater is by definition non-canonical but Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s well-travelled 1999 staging of Parsifal is one of the few productions that can be said to have achieved iconic status. Last Sunday I caught its current revival at the English National Opera. It’s still worth seeing. The cast is almost universally fantastic, and the orchestra and conducting are good too. There was only one hitch, and that was that it is in English. (Maybe this wouldn’t be a big deal for you, but it turns out that I hate Wagner in English, or at least I can’t stand this translation.)

Wagner, Parsifal, English National Opera, 2/27/2011. Production by Nikolaus Lehnhoff, conducted by Mark Wigglesworth with Stuart Skelton (Parsifal), John Tomlinson (Gurnemanz), Jane Dutton (Kundry), Iain Patterson (Amfortas), Tom Fox (Klingsor). English translation by Richard Stokes.

As well as in London, this production has been seen in Baden-Baden, San Francisco, Barcelona, and Chicago, supposedly making it the most-seen Parsifal production ever. This is supposedly its last appearance in London. It is also on DVD (from Baden-Baden). This was my first time seeing it and I can understand its popularity. While it looks a little dated today, it mixes a clear basic idea with a collection of more elusive (and allusive) images that illuminate this challenging work without oversimplifying it. It’s good, and I can handle some ambiguity in Parsifal, but yeah, it beats me as to what Lehnhoff is saying some of the time.

The setting is your basic post-apocalyptic wasteland, of the indoors sort. The knights of the Grail are already encased in their own cement tomb, a decaying order (whose first appearance alludes to the terracotta army of ancient China. The Grail is a beam of blinding light, an empty signifier of a religious cult of devotion without purpose. Parsifal enters through a meteor hole in the fortress; he and Kundry, the only outsiders in the first act, are both wild creatures dressed in reddish brown, contrasting with the grayish white robes of the knights. Amfortas is almost a mummy already, and we actually see Titurel this time around, looking like a zombie.

Act 2 is basically the same set, which is a problem. Klingsor, looking like a Japanese warrior, hovers in the sensitive area of a giant pelvic x-ray (castration, we get it, OK). Kundry gets a succession of ruffly and colorful costumes whose shedding may suggest a butterfly, but whose first shell was obviously a giant vagina (perhaps this interpretation is a sign of Anna Nicole’s lingering influence on my mind). The staging of the seduction is a little on the routine side, and the buttoned-up flower maidens are more like nuns behaving badly than seductresses (albeit with, um, balls on their heads).

Act 3 is the most enigmatic. The knights have disintegrated into a disorderly mess, all now dressed in rags, and the curved train tracks and mass grave suggest a famous image of Auschwitz. But I’m not sure exactly what Lehnhoff is getting at here. The lack of a scenic transformation with the Karfreitagszauber and Parsifal’s departure from the group at the very end of the opera don’t quite add up. Amfortas dies, Kundry leaves with Parsifal and a few of the knights, and the rest seem to hail Gurnemanz as their leader and start worshipping the spear instead. This group doesn’t seem to be saved at all, but Parsifal’s retreat confuses me.

This is an addition to my growing collection of Christian God-free Wagner productions (see also this one and this one), but a non-Christian Parsifal is rather a larger challenge than a Tannhäuser or Lohengrin. As someone with limited interest in religion in general I thought it worked surprisingly well. However, this does add complexity to the reading of the libretto, and I’m afraid that this was already dealt a severe blow by the English singing text. The dense network of allusions and rhythms of Parsifal are impossible to translate. Beyond this, this translation simply suffers from many problems of tone, sounding too often like low doggerel (and I believe it contains many more rhymes than the German). For example, and I may be paraphrasing in word order:

Du siehst, mein Sohn,
zum Raum wird hier die Zeit.

You see here, my son
Time and space are one

It’s close to literal, but still presents problems of meaning–the Verwandlung from time to space is made into an equivalence–as well as adding a rhyme where one is really not called for. I can’t say I find “A single weapon serves” a satisfactory translation of “Nur eine Waffe taugt,” either. The emphasis is right, but “taugen” is so much more noble than the utilitarian “serve.” (It also creates a connection with Kundry’s “Dienen, dienen,” translated here as “to serve, to serve,” which is something different.) The obvious solution is to forget about it and do it in German, if you ask me. The enunciation of words was done with a conscious correctness that was not always musical, but I could always understand it. Unfortunately.

I’m sorry that the translation interfered with my enjoyment of the music so much, and hope this isn’t true for everyone else. Because the musical performance was really good! The orchestra sounded thoroughly excellent and well-rehearsed if a smidgen less than world-class in sound. Mark Wigglesworth proved an able conductor with beautiful balance and coloring, though I sometimes missed the larger sweep of the score. It didn’t do anything so crass as drag or rush but it didn’t quite hover in timelessness either.

Stuart Skelton is a fantastic Parsifal, with a large, forceful, yet still beautiful and clear Heldentenor. I missed a certain fragility at first, but it is lovely to hear a role like this sung with such security and passion the whole way through, and acted with both naïveté and dignity. John Tomlinson’s august Gurnemanz got the largest share of the applause, and his wisdom and authority pays great dividends despite some severe wobbles in Act 3. Iain Paterson threw himself into Amfortas’s tortures with mostly touching and occasionally awkward results, and sang with nobility and Textdeutlichkeit. (OK, screw it, I’m going to throw in as much German here as possible to make up for the lack of it onstage.) Jane Dutton was the biggest disappointment as Kundry, with blowsy, scharf tone. Tom Fox sounded at times recht ausgesungen. Chorus and small roles all solid.

More than worth seeing. Especially if you have a greater tolerance for Wagner auf Englisch than I.

Photos copyright Richard Hubert Smith.

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Review

The return of the Freyer Ring

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Rejoice, fans of Wagner, clowns, and the eternal mysteries of Time. Achim Freyer’s marvelous Der Ring des Nibelungen, originally seen at the Los Angeles Opera, will live again. It will be seen at the Hungarian State Opera in Budapest in the coming four seasons, starting with Das Rheingold in 2011/12. You can read my enthusing on the whole cycle here. Really, you should go. It is great.

But, as you may know, there has been much turmoil at the Hungarian State Opera recently, so don’t book those plane tickets quite yet.

(The image above is adapted from Freyer’s Siegfried, BTW.)

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Review

Der fliegende Holländer: Red scare

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I would put last night’s Der fliegende Holländer into the third quintile of Wiener Staatsoper revivals. Christine Mielitz’s production has been sketchily and statically staged and was plagued with technical calamities, but it’s still interesting. Peter Schneider’s conducting was reasonably exciting and Adrianne Pieczonka’s Senta and Stephen Gould’s Erik are both good. And none of the rest is that bad.

“Richard Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer, romantic opera in three acts by Richard Wagner [sic, that’s what it says in the program–except in German].” Wiener Staatsoper, 2/12/2011. Production by Christine Mieilitz (revival) conducted by Peter Schneider with Albert Dohmen (Dutchman), Adrianne Pieczonka (Senta), Stephen Gould (Erik), Walter Fink (Daland).

This production was one of the more controversial efforts of the Staatsoper’s verfliegende Holender, former intendant Ioan Holender. Vienna gets its panties in a twist easily; this is not exactly high-level provocation.

Mielitz’s work here is interesting, but in this revival it came across as scattered. As is the norm for Staatsoper revivals, the direction of the singers was non-existent, the production reduced to the visual elements and a few static stage images. The numerous technical issues–mistimed (I think) lighting cues, creaky set changes, stuck curtains–didn’t help either. I want to be generous, because who knows what resemblance this performance bore to her original vision. I know I say something to this effect in almost review I write of rep performances, but it really bears remembering.

Some technical frailty was understandable, because Stefan Mayer’s set is complex (and not easy to make out in either of these photos, both of which are from the beginning of Act 2). A boat-like curved floor is contained in a bourgeois room, with a moving ramp, various appearing and disappearing walkways, and a catwalk above where Daland apparently keeps his birds (in cages). The red sails of the Dutchman’s ship approach from upstage center. It owes something to Harry Kupfer’s Bayreuth Holländer. The dress is ambiguous twentieth-century.

Daland and the society of the village are good capitalists (Daland reads the Financial Times), while the Dutchman and his crew are outcast radicals who dress like Goths circa 1991 in long leather trenchcoats with red bits. Senta longs to escape the strictures of bourgeois life (also the rapey drunken sailors), where she is nothing more than a commodity to her wealth-seeking father. The portrait she fixates on depicts not the Dutchman but a quartet of revolutionaries–Marx, Engels, Che, and one I couldn’t identify. Ha, that’s what kind of red those sails are. The world of the Dutchman is dark, lit by bits of yellow and red light, the bourgeois world is bright (though the switches between the two were awkwardly executed). Erik seems to represent a middle ground between the two worlds, as indicated by his brown leather jacket. I think. Maybe you see why this concept was a little unclear.

Mielitz’s most controversial gesture (judging by standing line gossip) is staging Senta’s death not as the usual jump into the sea but rather as a Brünnhilde-style immolation. This departure from the world of sea and water is unfortunate, but the redemption by fire thing is apt, no? The production takes Senta very seriously, and this is a more dramatic way of going out.

Peter Schneider conducted with the kind of energy and excitement that makes some reference to sea foam necessary. There wasn’t a lot of nuance but it was competent, effective, and that’s not bad. The brass overpowered the strings at times, particularly at the start of the overture, and the timing at the end of the development didn’t come off quite right, but in general the orchestra sounded good. The cast was respectable if not electrifying. Albert Dohmen was a passable Dutchman, certainly more imposing than Juha Uusitalo at the Met last April. He is loud and declaims effectively, but the sound is harsh, dull and lacks resonance, as well as genuine stage presence or a unique take on the character. Adrianne Pieczonka’s clear, feminine soprano (more a big lyric sound than a dramatic) is a good fit for Senta, and her accuracy and musicality are always appreciated. She acts well enough.

This was my second time hearing Met Siegfried-to-be Stephen Gould, and the second time as Erik. Fortunately he impressed me much more this time than he did at the Met last April. He’s got a big, somewhat unwieldy Heldentenor (with a dull spot around the top of his range), but the tone is genuinely heroic and he did his best to sing the music with finesse and Textdeutlichkeit. And he was a considerably more engaging actor than I remembered. He is also singing Siegfried in Vienna’s Ring this April, and now I am looking forward to hearing him in a bigger role.

Supporting characters were the usual Staatsoper crowd, including Walter Fink as an unfocused and underpowered Daland and Norbert Ernst as an ardent, somewhat pushed Steuermann. The male chorus really sold their music, sounding hearty to an almost absurd HMS Pinafore chest-thumping degree. I did wonder about the male choral division; perhaps due to the set design the Dutchman’s chorus sounded wimpy in comparison to Daland’s.

Short ovation at the end, loudest for Pieczonka and Gould, lukewarm for Dohmen. Not amazing, but a step up from the Met’s effort last spring.

Four performances remain, February 15, 18, 22, and 25.

Bows–you can almost make out Senta’s portraits at the top of the first photo:

Performance photos copyright Wiener Staatsoper, bows photos my own.

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Review

Tristan und Isolde im Opernhaus Zürich (10.10.10)–Kurzfassung auf Deutsch

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 Claus Guths Inszenierung von Tristan und Isolde im Opernhaus Zürich verarbeitet Wagners Affäre mit Mathilde Wesendonck, einer Amateur Dichterin und Frau eines Bankers aus Zürich (wo sowohl die Affäre als auch die Inszenierung statt fanden).  Tristan und Isolde entfliehen den steifen Sittlichkeiten der Spießbürgergesellschaft des 19ten Jahrhunderts, hinein in eine private Welt in der sich Vergangenheit und Zukunft sowie Fantasie und Realität beständig vermischen.  Es handelt sich hier nicht um ein Gesamtkunstwerk, sondern ehe eine komplizierte und intelligente Interpretation.  Es ist mehr ein verworrener, komplizierter Thriller, als eine Reise in das zeitlose Unbewusste.

Bernard Haitink leitete das ausgezeichnete Orchester des Züricher Opernhauses bei einem aufregenden und schönen, jedoch sehr lautem Auftritt.  Man konnte viele Feinheiten hören, aber nicht immer die Sänger.  Barbara Schneider-Hofstetter, als Ersatz für Waltraud Meier, zeigte zwar eine unermüdliche Isolde mit einer exzellenten Mittelstimme und guten Diktion, besitzt jedoch einfach nicht Meiers Charisma.  Der gesundheitlich angeschlagene Peter Seiffert sang Tristan mit einer unfeinen aber doch effektiven Deklamation in den ersten zwei Akten, scheiterte allerdings am dritten Akt mit fünfzehn Minuten stimmlosen Gekrächze.  Michelle Breedt als Brangäne, Matti Salminen als König Marke und besonders Martin Gantner als Kurwenal waren alle erstklassig.

Hier können Sie meine längere Kritik lesen (auf Englisch).  Danke an Christiane!
Bild: Michelle Breedt als Brangäne (Photo Suzanne Schwiertz/Opernhaus Zürich)

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Review

Tristan und Isolde in Zürich: Neither mild nor leise

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Claus Guth’s Opernhaus Zürich production of Tristan und Isolde is inspired by the events that inspired the opera: Wagner’s 1850s affair with Mathilde Wesendonck, which happened in, you guessed it, Zürich.  The result is a twisty journey through fantasy and memory, all wound up with 19th-century morality, and a worthy companion piece to Guth’s great Vienna Tannhäuser.  It’s totally fascinating, and a very different experience than your usual dreamy abstract Gesamtkunstwerk.

Bernard Haitink was also apparently inspired by Zürich for his conducting.  Apparently he took one walk around, decided it was too damn quiet, and what the city needed was a Tristan that was excellent and yet most notable for being tremendously loud.

Wagner, Tristan und Isolde.  Opernhaus Zürich, 10/10/10.  Production by Claus Guth (revival), sets and costumes by Christian Schmidt, lighting by Jürgen Hoffmann.  Conducted by Bernard Haitink with Barbara Schneider-Hofstetter (Isolde), Peter Seiffert (Tristan), Michelle Breedt (Brangäne), Martin Gantner (Kurwenal), Matti Salminen (König Marke)

Claus Guth’s production is set in a seemingly concrete 19th-century bourgeois world, its elegant furnishings and garden modeled on those of Zürich’s Villa Wesendonck (today an art museum), its situation loosely analogous to that of Mathilde Wesendonck’s affair with Wagner with her banker husband Otto in the König Marke role.  But Guth doesn’t push this parallel too far (and the premiere cast, pictured above, bears a much closer resemblance to the historical figures than the current one, pictured elsewhere in this post–though no photos involving Isolde have surfaced), and besides, he has other things on his mind as well.

It becomes apparent that this tidy world is not as literally realistic as it appears.  Brangäne and Isolde are visual doubles, with Brangäne seeming to represent the socially acceptable half of Isolde’s self, while the soprano half escapes into another world with Tristan.  In Act 1, as Isolde describes healing Tristan, Brangäne physically relives it, in the second act Brangäne wears a black dress to Isolde’s identical white one, and at the very end of the opera, Marke slowly takes Brangäne’s hand, as if Isolde had not just expired in front of them.  The characters wander through mirror-image and double rooms on a relatively simple turntable set used to effectively dizzying effect.

As Tristan and Isolde narrate Isolde’s earlier healing, Tristan relives it, lying bloody on Isolde’s bed, a position he will return to near the end of the opera.  Their dream life is recursive and ill-defined, an attempt to leave reality that inevitably fails.  The second act explores further alternate and parallel realities, as Tristan and Isolde chase each other through Isolde’s house, seemingly in the midst of a dinner party.  They sweep the place settings off a formal dining table, to collapse on top of it.  It is unclear what really happens and what is imagined as they wander through crowded rooms, unconscious of others, but then something breaks, and they are exposed, and Tristan forces Melot to stab him.  In Act 3, Tristan languishes with Kurwenal in a desolate, deserted streetscape, eventually managing to return to the dream world with Isolde.

It’s an immensely interesting and remarkably exciting production.  “Exciting” as in you genuinely can’t wait to see what is going to happen next.  Suspenseful, even.  This isn’t really a concept you often associate with Tristan stagings, I know.  They are supposed to help you submerge yourself in the well of the music, to forget the boundaries of sound and vision.  This one doesn’t do that, or at least it didn’t for me.  It isn’t a Gesamtkunstwerk, it’s an intricate reading of a text we already know.  There is friction between the text and the production; you can’t get upset because Act 1 doesn’t take place on a boat.  But Guth makes you rethink things you’ve seen many times before, possibly a textbook example of Regietheater.  As a Tristan I don’t think it’s for everyone.  But that’s the beauty of Regietheater, isn’t it?  It doesn’t presume to be for everyone, or for all time.

**

The focus of this performance was on an absence, that of erstwhile star Waltraud Meier, who walked out after a dispute with Bernard Haitink.  I can see why.  I thought that the tiny Zürich opera house would be a great place to hear an intimate account of the score (and excellent for Meier, whose voice is not of Nilssonian dimensions).  But I forgot to send the management an email about this and Haitink did just about the exact opposite, leading a very loud, exciting, yet fantastically detailed interpretation with this top-notch orchestra.  I’m not sure if he looked up at the stage once over the whole course of the evening.  He often drowned out the singers and was clearly more interested in making sure the viola arpeggios were sufficiently turbulent than anything to do with the dramatic action.  (Considering his number of vocal cues, I suspect the invisible prompter had a busy night.)  It sounded great, the orchestra did at least, but it isn’t my preferred style.

Barbara Hofstetter-Schneider was Meier’s short-notice replacement as Isolde, and a very good Isolde she was, too.*  She bravely took on Haitink’s super-orchestra and, most of the time, won, with an excellent dark-hued middle voice, somewhat less luxuriant top notes, and super diction at consistently high volume.  At the beginning of Act 1, I thought, she can’t do this all night.  But she did, with amazing stamina, right up to an on-pitch if short final note.  It was not subtle but that we wouldn’t have been able to hear that.  Her Isolde doesn’t have Meier’s charisma or heartbreaking intensity, but it was wonderfully sung and acted with honesty and dignity.  If this is what Wagner singing is like at regional German houses (her usual haunts), we’re missing out in the US.  (Zürich is a very small house, though, presenting different challenges.)

Peter Seiffert was announced as ill but sang anyways.  This was my second time around with his Tristan. The first, at the Met under Barenboim in 2008, was a shaky experience (I believe it was his role debut).  For the first act in Zürich, I thought he his interpretation had greatly grown.  While not the Heldentenor of one’s dreams his tone is alright, he fit into the production well enough and sang with confidence and expression, as much as he could under the orchestral circumstances.  In Act 2, his pitch and support began to falter and I began to dread Act 3.  With good reason, because sick or not, no one should be onstage sounding like that.  His vocal death preceded his character’s death by about 15 uncomfortable minutes and I hope he didn’t do any damage.

The supporting cast was uniformly strong.  Matti Salminen is as old as dirt and nothing needs to be said about his wise König Marke other than he sounded as amazing as ever.  Martin Gantner was almost unfair luxury casting as Kurwenal, terrifically sung and touchingly acted (during the opening of Act 3, he spent a long time despondently throwing beer caps into a boot).  Michelle Breedt was a lyrical but lovely Brangäne, sometimes covered by the mighty Haitink but floating her “Habet acht” perfectly.  The English horn player deserves specific mention here as well for a great solo, but the program did not identify him or her by name.

So not a definitive Tristan, but an awesome one, even without the reason I bought my ticket.  I do hope a tenor other than Seiffert will be singing the next time I see this opera, though.  And I think we should hope for a WWI Parsifal from Guth next.

All photos copyright Suzanne Schwiertz/Opernhaus Zürich

*Doesn’t the Isolde from this production premiere, Nina Stemme, currently have some time on her hands?  I know she does because I have a ticket for the Rusalka she canceled.  ‘Tis a shame we didn’t get her.  Not a spot on excellent Schneider-Hofstetter, but Stemme and Meier are together currently the last word in Isoldes as far as I’m concerned.

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Review

Tannhäuser: Crazy in love

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This looks familiar, I’m not sure why.

Dich, teure Halle, grüss’ ich wieder!  After four years with no Wiener Staatsoper in my life, I returned last night, and if this Tannhäuser is any kind of omen I’m glad I did, because it was awesome.  Welser-Möst is doing great things with the orchestra, there’s some fantastic singing, and well, if the virgin-whore complex is getting you down (it certainly gets old for me), Claus Guth has a production for you.

Wagner, Tannhäuser (Dresden version).  Wiener Staatsoper, 8.9.2010.  Conducted by Franz Welser-Möst with Johan Botha (Tanhäuser), Anja Kampe (Elisabeth), Matthias Goerne (Wolfram von Eschenbach), Michaela Schuster (Venus), Ain Anger (Hermann).  Production by Claus Guth.

Guth sets the opera in fin-de-siècle Vienna in the early days of Freud and Schnitzler.  Venus is a figment of Tannhäuser’s imagination, his attempt to live with emotional truth and unearth his unconscious mind rather than the live with social hypocrisy of his comrades (who keep their sex lives more neatly compartmentalized).  Unfortunately, this obsession results in ostracism and (socially induced?) mental illness.  The self-harming pilgrims are, post-pardon, confined to a psych ward, Tannhäuser’s voyage to Rome seems to be in the mind only, and Elisabeth kills herself with an overdose of Tannhäuser’s pills.

We open to see… not the usual orgy but another curtain, exactly like the one that just parted (no ballet, it’s the Dresden version).  For a second I thought I had stepped into a Robert Carsen production by mistake.  But no, it is the stage on which Tannhäuser imagines a double of himself cavorting with Venus, a fantasy he finally leaves.  But even afterwards, the oddly stopping and starting action, rooms that fall apart, and surreal moments suggest that large sections of what we see are through Tannhäuser’s unstable eyes.

I liked this production a lot.  It’s arguably an indirect interpretation, avoiding much of what Wagner would have thought the opera is about (the artist-opera aspects are solely metaphoric), but Guth wants to show that Wagner’s good woman/bad woman and redemption thing aren’t unearthly matters at all, they are just means of social control (we’re still in pre-Tristan land, remember).  Virtue and Christianity are all social constructions, ones which Tannhäuser attempts to defy at his peril.  In Act 3, this gets a little on the convoluted side–I was not always sure where Tannhäuser’s social outcast status stops and his apparent actual madness starts–but it mostly works.  The program claims this is the Dresden version, but Venus does come back at the end so I think it’s a Paris-Dresden combo.

The production speaks largely through images and tableux rather than acting.  Much of the blocking is stylized and static.  Maybe this is because it’s an underrehearsed revival, maybe it’s because many of the singers don’t seem to be able to act, but it seems like it’s a part of the production.  (According to a woman I spoke with during intermission, the June premiere of this production was a lot more detailed on the Personenregie end.)  The sets are gorgeous, the prologue and pilgrims wandering through a mostly-empty stage (the shepherd is a junior-sized Tannhäuser double), the more concrete places all reproductions of actual places in Vienna. 

Tannhäuser reenters the world via the seedy, faux-exotic Hotel Oriental (which still exists), where his comrades relieve their unconsciouses by discreetly renting by the hour, unlike Tannhäuser’s more prolonged and indiscreet escapades.  The hall of song is nothing other than part of the Staatsoper itself (the room with the composer’s busts that faces the balcony looking out over the Ring).  Setting the opera in the opera house itself is kind of an overused trick but it never stops working.  This room is a Baroque imitation and social space, here representing a stiff and self-conscious society with the outdated custom of the song contest.   Finally, Act 3 takes place in Otto Wagner’s asylum in Steinhof, this era’s attempt to deal more rationally with its outcasts.  The costumes are all realistic fin-de-siècle, and it looks very good as well as being functional and unfussy.

The Staatsoper’s orchestra was in excellent form.  Franz Welser-Möst’s conducting was grand, losing a bit of impetuosity but making up for it with nobility.  Tempos were moderately quick but never rushed (though the violins came to grief on one or two of those many long downward runs).  Ensembles were mostly clear and balanced. At the loudest moments the orchestra occasionally overpowered the soloists, but for Wagner this was very singer-friendly conducting.  The chorus sounded super.

Johan Botha sang Tannhäuser with astonishing ease, beauty, and tireless power.  After what usually passes for Heldentenor singing to hear something like this is balm for the ears.  But with that amazing ease seemed to come a lack of dramatic involvement, musical shaping, and variations of color for most of the score.  You felt he might as well be reading the phone book, and while him reading the phone book would be pretty and loud it would not be interesting.  His singing is impressive, but rarely affecting.  And the man cannot act his way out of a paper bag (it must be said, a very large paper bag).  So an incredible and memorable performance in some ways, but lacking in others.

At the end, Tannhäuser finally sees Venus in the guise of Elisabeth.

Anja Kampe as Elisabeth was new to me, and I thought she was fantastic.  She’s got a big, silvery, bright voice that seems destined for bigger and less lyrical roles than this one, but did a good job with the delicate parts of the score as well as raising the roof with the loud ones.  She was also the best actor in the production, making the cardboard Saint Elisabeth close to a real and confused young woman.  (If the ticket gods of Bavaria are generous, I should be seeing her as Leonore in Fidelio in Munich later this season, and I really hope I will.)

Michaela Schuster sounded shrill as Venus, but put everything into it and vamped convincingly.  Matthias Goerne sang Wolfram von Eschenbach with velvety tone (excluding some weak top notes) and great musicality, but was quite stiff onstage.  His Evening Star song was lovely, but, staged as a contemplation of suicide, rarely has someone pointing a gun at their own head been so dull.  The action’s all vocal here.

A great start to the season, I hope this is representative.  Forza del Destino and possibly also Semele next week.

Bows (sorry, hopefully my in-house photography will improve soon, the one with flash was even worse):

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