Review

Debut CD by Aleksandra Kurzak

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Few singers get solo CD contracts these days, but Polish lyric-coloratura soprano Aleksandra Kurzak has nabbed one with Decca and her first CD, Gioia! is out now in Europe and on September 13 in the US. I’ve seen Kurzak sing Gilda and Blonde in the Met (perfectly good) and Donna Anna at the Theater an der Wien (excellent) and while she is a good artist with an attractive voice and solid technique (and a committed and smart actress), I didn’t note her as a big star in the making. But the CD and a September Opera News article (not online yet) suggest she is Happening. Is she?

Kurzak began as a Olympia/Queen of the Night coloratura but is taking a turn towards more lyric territory. The repertoire here spans both categories. It’s your standard “calling card”-type album of wildly assorted arias from “Mein Herr Marquis” to Mozart to Puccini. Kurzak has a pretty, light voice with a soft-grained, airy quality and wide, relaxed vibrato. Her coloratura is spotless and intonation excellent. But the exclamation point in the album’s title seems misplaced, she’s more poised and polished than expressive or exciting or varied. It is fine singing, but there are few signs of anything as spontaneous or exciting as “Gioia!” “Una voce poco fa” and “Mein Herr Marquis” both have dazzling passagework but are short on humor and personality. The sole Mozart aria, “Deh vini, non tardar,” suffers from excessive portamenti and awkward leaning into some notes. She fares better in Lucia’s “Regnava nel silenzio,” where her cool temperament is more of an asset, and her “Son vergin vezzosa” (from I puritani) is admirably fluid, but it doesn’t work terribly well without context. Was it chosen because it’s a polonaise?

Her attention to the words is spotty and Italian indistinct (is that a “babbino caro” or a “bambino caro”? it almost sounds like the second), but she turns out to be a surprisingly good Violetta, with a dreamy, floating “È strano” and “Ah fors’è lui” and a “Sempre libera” that is maybe not intense but is certainly more precise and easy than most. Tenor Francesco Demuro appears for the first Nemorino-Adina duet from Elisir d’amore, and sounds jolly if unevenly supported, and Kurzak is almost animated. The final track is the only rarity, an aria from the Polish national opera Straszny dwór (The Haunted Manor) by Stanislaw Moniuzko, an interesting piece that sounds like early Verdi with a Wieniawski-esque violin obligato. The conducting by Omar Meir Welber and the playing of the Orchestra de la Comunitat Valenciana are unobtrusively fine.

I have to wonder about the purpose of these sampler quilt albums–so few singers have the range to be equally good in such a wide breadth of repertoire, and it seems like it would be smarter for them to play more to their strengths. I think it would also make for more enjoyable listening.* Besides, who is just dying to buy another recording of “Caro nome” when you could get something new? (I know. Some people are. Not me.) The press material says this was originally planned as an all-Rossini album, and I have to think that would have been better.

Based on this, Kurzak is a promising artist still finding her footing. But between the dull selection of music and lack of temperament, this isn’t a CD I picture myself listening to many times. Here it is on US Amazon, if you are so inclined.
Trailer (is anyone surprised by the choice of freeze frame?):

*Does anyone else remember Elina Garanca’s Aria cantilena, which memorably juxtaposed Cenerentola with Villa-Lobos and followed them with Offenbach’s “J’aime les militaires”?

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Review

Cherubini’s Medea at the Glimmerglass Festival

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Yesterday I took a long drive to the scenic middle of nowhere that is home to the Glimmerglass Festival to see Cherubini’s Medea. This being the US, it was the Italian version. This is basically a diva vehicle, and on that front it was a reasonable success thanks to Alexandra Deshorties as Maria Callas Medea, and the conducting by Daniele Rustioni was surprisingly excellent. Unfortunately this isn’t quite my style of opera, and wasn’t enough to balance out a poor supporting cast and a blah production.

Cherubini Medea (Italian version by Carlo Zangarini). Glimmerglass Festival, 8/16/2011. Production by Michael Barker-Caven, conducted by Daniele Rustioni with Alexandra Deshorties (Medea), Jeffrey Gwaltney (Jason), David Pittsinger (Creon), Jessica Stavros (Glauce), Sarah Larsen (Neris).

This was the last performance of Medea of the festival. Two of the originally leading roles (Glauce and Jason) were sung by covers, which made me a little mad. Based on the lack of “[original singer] is ill” in the announcement), I darkly suspected that this was planned well in advance, because this was the last performance and the covers were being given a chance to go on. Something mysterious might have happened tenor-wise, considering original cast Jason Collins has disappeared from the company website (though not the printed program). But there was no mention on the website of the absence of Wendy Bryn Harmer, whom, after admiring her singing in many small roles at the Met, I was really looking forward to seeing in a larger part. Either this was in fact a “cover show” that should have been marked as such (I would have bought a ticket for a different performance), or people were sick (and/or fired, quit, something) and the replacements were not clearly announced.

Sorry to waste so many words on that, but I was disappointed and thought it was handled somewhat dishonestly.

The Golden Fleece is hovering

Fortunately soprano Alexandra Deshorties remained as the titular child-killer. Her voice has been around the block, and sounds uneven and acidulous (and not that big), but it’s got a lot of character and she wields it with conviction. (Her career has had a lot of ups and downs as well.) It wasn’t pristine singing by a long shot but she’s got temperament, which in this role might be more important. The Personenregie consisted primarily of arm gestures (more on that in a minute), among the cast she alone managed to make a character from this by deploying them in a way that was not semaphoric but rather crazed and random, and she was charismatically deranged the whole way through. There wasn’t a whole lot of dramatic shape or progression, but that was a problem of everyone in this production.

The musical highlight of the performance was Daniele Rustioni’s conducting, which had excellent pacing and drama and heat in a way that is too rare in this kind of repertoire. His is definitely a name to watch, and he already has an impressive CV. The orchestra wasn’t that great, but they followed him well, and the coordination was excellent. Unfortunately the small chorus was unbalanced and unblended, a few voices dominating (it seems to consist mostly of members of the Young Artists Program, who probably have soloistic rather than choral ambitions).

Gwaltney, Pittsinger, and Stavros

It is too bad that none of the other members of the cast reached Rustioni’s or Deshorties’s level. David Pittsinger was sonorous but unimposing as Creon, and Sarah Larsen sounded slightly covered as Néris but gave a beautifully musical account of her aria, one of the highlights of the score. That leaves the two covers, both of whom are in “Young Artist” programs and sound like works in progress, possibly rather uncertain with their parts. Jessica Stavros has a large and powerful voice, but as Glauce (the character you might know as Creusa) her tone was often harsh and shrill, and her singing lacked phrasing and rhythmic pulse. Jeffrey Gwaltney sounds like he has a fine medium-sized Italiante tenor somewhere, but it came out cloudily and he seemed unsure onstage, with no connection to Medea to speak of.

The production, by Michael Barker-Caven (with sets and costumes by Joe Vanek and lighting by Robert Wierzel), struck me as rather similar to Stephen Wadsworth’s Met Iphigénie en Tauride: a dark color palette, armor, robes. It’s a unit interior set of looming walls but relatively little atmosphere, and the generic visuals plus static, stiff direction never established a sense of atmosphere. The only mode of expression seemed to be formulaic, vaguely vase-like hand gestures. Except Deshorties (given unfortunate henna tattoos and a succession of bedraggled outfits moving from Goth hippie to Corpse Bride to intergalactic wench to an unfortunate bloody little black number), none of the singers managed to do much to create living characters. The plot doesn’t move quickly, but the direction only exacerbated the problems. Some hovering sidekicks for Medea didn’t do that much, and in general the production lacked an interesting point of view on the piece.

This performance unfortunately never really grabbed me, which may have been partly because I kept thinking of Aribert Reimann’s fantastic Medea setting, which I saw last December. Reimann’s spiky atonality is more my style (Cherubini sounds a little dinky to me, to be honest, I’ve been listening to too much Wagner), the Grillparzer-based libretto has a lot more action, and the production was much better. Your tastes, of course, may vary.

For another view, I highly recommend you read Opera Obsession’s take, with a much more detailed look at the drama than my more musical take. Disclaimer: We went together, and had a really great time. We did not consult on our reviews, but if we had it would have looked something like this.

Trailer:

Photos copyright Julieta Cervantes/Glimmerglass Festival.

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Review

Scenes from Bayreuth (2)

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Here are more photos from Bayreuth.

The Festspielhaus is located about a 20-minute walk north from the center of Bayreuth. The approach is dramatic:

My first visit was without a ticket. I went to see the red carpet notables at the premiere of Tannhäuser.

Well, attempted to see. I didn’t get there quite early enough.

Some people took extreme measures for a better view.

But honestly, every person on the carpet had to be identified for me with the exceptions of Angela Merkel and Guido Westerwelle. The guy next to me would say, “That’s the minister of the environment!” and I would say, “toll!” and he would add, “…of Bavaria,” and I would think, “…oh.” I was reassured that a lot of the Germans needed to have the notables identified for them as well. One of the photographers said as he was folding up his tripod that the crowd was pretty B-list compared to previous years.

Merkel stayed the whole week, spending the other nights incognito and unbothered by everyone else (though it’s not like she wasn’t noticed). Her security was very discreet but she’s been coming every year for years and I’m told they have it down to a science.

Here are people milling around during intermissions. As you can see, the dress code is formal compared to anywhere in the US but casual-ish compared to Salzburg. I can endorse Intermezzo’s dress advice as accurate with one exception: I did see at least a half-dozen drindls dirndls each night.

Before the end of each of the very long intermissions, these guys play a fanfare consisting of some music from the next act. Fifteen minutes before they play it once, ten minutes twice, five minutes three times.

I didn’t take any pictures inside because I suspected it was not allowed. I will say that the seats are uncomfortable, but not for the reason I expected. The seat is indeed unpadded, but the only thing that bothered me was how the seat back hit my lower back at an awkward spot.

But other people were taking photos of the Parsifal curtain call so I took one too. The women’s chorus doesn’t appear onstage so they’re just wearing street clothes.

One thing I really liked about the atmosphere was how unpretentious and unritzy it is. People are really there for the music (sometimes in a terrifyingly intense way!), also unlike Salzburg. Even the food tends towards the casual:

I promise I do have a few other things to blog about before the fall season starts, but if it seems like I’m trying to stretch my material out, well, I am.

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Review

Scenes from Bayreuth (1)

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Here are some photos I took around Bayreuth.

Above is Wahnfried, Wagner’s house. Unfortunately it’s closed at present, undergoing restoration for the big anniversary year in 2013. The back may look more familiar:

  

The town is quite Baroque:

But also sports a Bavarian totem pole:

One of the older festival visitors:

Intermezzo did a wonderful series of Wagner windows from Bayreuth last year. I saw many of the same ones (I’m sure they haul out the same Wagneriana every year), but I also saw this, in case you have a wound that just will not heal:

(They must have a required Wagner course in pharmacist school, because this is my third Wagnerian pharmacy. There’s this one in Munich, near the Schloss Nymphenburg. I wouldn’t trust the healing powers of the Nibelungs:

Then there’s this one in Berlin, off Savignyplatz in Charlottenburg. I can’t remember Wotan healing anything either. Where is the Isolde Apotheke?:)

Back in Bayreuth. Is your ass bothering you due to those uncushioned seats?

The tourist office’s slogan is “We always have the best tickets!” (in white on green on the windows):

(*except for any for the one venue you really care about.)

While in town, don’t miss the other opera house, the spectacular 18th-century Markgräfliches Opernhaus.

Photography isn’t allowed inside, so here’s a stock image:

It may look familiar from the ROH production of Adriana Lecouvreur.

But it’s mostly a Wagner town, as evidenced by the street names.

I think my copy of the Parsifal libretto, which I got in Berlin, came with the perfect bookmark.

Finally, the Bayreuth Jugendherberge (youth hostel), where I stayed. I got my tickets kind of late and it was the only thing in town that was available. And it is very, very cheap. But it’s a 2.5 mile walk to the Festspielhaus, almost that far to the train station, and isn’t exactly warm and comfy. Only for the desperate.

In part two, we’ll climb the Green Hill itself.

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Review

Parsifal in Bayreuth

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That this production is the last performance I will be writing about in this European year is more or less accidental–I saw Die Frau ohne Schatten afterward but was obliged to file quickly on that one–but it is fitting, because I’m not sure if anything could top this.

Wagner, Parsifal. Bayreuther Festspiele, 7/28/2011. Production by Stefan Herheim (revival), conducted by Daniele Gatti with Simon O’Neill (Parsifal), Susan Maclean (Kundry), Kwangchul Youn (Gurnemanz), Detlef Roth (Amfortas), Thomas Jesatko (Klingsor)

The current Parsifal in Bayreuth, directed by Stefan Herheim and conducted by Daniele Gatti, premiered in 2008 and has since become the festival’s most acclaimed production (and one of its tougher tickets). Parsifal in Bayrueth has a special meaning like few other musical works–the theater and the opera were designed for each other and for decades this theater was the only place the Bühnenweihfestspiel could be seen. Herheim’s production is geared towards Bayreuth, too. Along with telling the story of Parsifal, Herheim traces the history of the opera’s reception and its place in Bayreuth in particular, including the issues that confront the festival today (this is a festival that considers its legacy sufficiently important that a brief production history is printed not in the program book but the paper casting pamphlet). Additionally, the production’s complexity enables the many Bayreuth regulars to see something new each year.

It’s a beautiful production of many striking and haunting images and seamless stagecraft. As in other Herheim productions, we shift cinematically through time and space (so to speak). There is no ready key to the profusion of images and narrative; their well of associations and interconnections, keyed more to the music than the libretto, multiplies and gradually comes into focus. And everything moves with the music in a natural, truly Gesamtkunstwerk way. It’s difficult to summarize or describe, because described literally the production would sound chaotic and scattered. And it is. It’s in your head where everything comes together. Not instantly, either–I felt quite confused up to Act 3, but then everything that came before somehow began to make sense, and in the next few days it was still changing shape. I guess I’m saying that summarizing what happened onstage in my usual fashion is very different from describing my experience.

But the thematic material itself does demand description, because it’s fascinating and brilliant. There are several plot threads. Simultaneously, we watch the story of Parsifal, sometimes seen quite literally, along with the reception history of Parsifal the work in the context of the Bayreuth Festival (from its premiere to sometime in the 1950s), and the path of German history itself from Bavaria’s entrance into the unified Germany through both world wars. All go through interconnected journeys of discovery, seduction, maturation and an ambiguous kind of redemption (or more accurately Erlösung). Parsifal and Parisfal grow through history.

The main set replicates the backyard of Wagner’s Bayreuth house Wahnfried. The prompter’s box is transformed into Wagner and Cosima’s grave, the center of the stage is taken up by a (functional) fountain, the house is in the back. Here is the set (the bed, site of birth, death, sleep and seduction, is where the fountain will appear) and below a picture I took myself of the house:

In the staged Vorspiel, we see Parsifal’s mother Herzeleide in a bed in the center of the stage. This red-haired woman resembles the militant figure of Germania in the painting hanging above the fireplace (where the mirror is in the picture above), Friedrich-August von Kaulbach’s “Deutschland–1914.”:

This gives you an idea of the kind of cultural references that go through this whole production. The women are all variations on the Germania figure, with Herzeleide and Kundry (considering their relationships to Parsifal, rather disturbingly) morphing into each other. In the prelude, Parsifal builds a small wall on Wagner’s grave. This is the theme that will dominate Act 1: repression and shelter. Parsifal is sheltered by Herzeleide, Parsifal is sheltered in Bayreuth by Cosima. There is even an allusion to the work’s anti-Semitic elements when Kundry in the form of a maid threatens to steal Herzeleide’s baby. (That’s in the transformation scene, in which we see Parsifal born. I’m sorry. I warned you that this summary would probably not make any sense. And I feel kind of dishonest writing this because it’s only the tip of the iceberg.)

At the end of Act 1, the boy Parsifal wakes in his bed and his guardian Gurnemanz and asks if he understands (at this point I would have agreed with him: no). Was this all a dream? The dreamlike quality is further emphasized by the giant black wings worn by most of the characters (but not the Christ-like Amfortas, who also carries echos of Wagner’s insane patron Ludwig II). They also prefigure the swan and (German) eagle that will dominate the work. The adult Parsifal shoots the boy Parsifal with his bow (a [Bavarian] swan crest simultaneously falls from the proscenium), ending his childhood and beginning his journey into the world. The Grail temple is a replica of the one from the opera’s premiere (see photo at top of this post), the dead boy Parsifal, symbol of sheltered, traumatized innocence, momentarily plays the part of the Grail. The knights are a collection of ordinary people, both men and women.

In Act 2, Germany and Parsifal have gone out into the world, and started a jolly tragic war. The scene is a World War 1 hospital (one also thinks of The Magic Mountain or of Freud), and Klingsor is a cabaret transvestite, an outcast of a decidedly fin-de-siècle/Weimar sort. The flower maidens are both nurses to comfort the dying war victims and a succession of showgirls. Parsifal is seduced by them and finally by a Marlene Dietrich-like tuxedo’ed Kundry, who envelops him in her wings. Then comes the biggest coup de théâtre of the production. Amid a crowd of suitcase-carrying refugees, Parsifal realizes he must purify the world and heal Amfortas, and enormous swastika flags unfurl and the hospital/castle collapses around him in a giant crash. A boy (the young Parsifal again?) appears in a brown uniform, surrounded by SS officers and bearing Amortas’s spear (the Nazi’s Wunderwaffe?). Parsifal points the spear at Wagner’s grave.

Act 3 opens with my favorite theater-in-theater effect, showing a miniature version of the Festspielhaus proscenium behind the main one (above). But this is a wonderful use of this device, because this is a deconstructive staging, and the history of Parsifal is bound up with the history of this theater itself. Wahnfried has now collapsed, the Wagner regime, German nation and Grail order are in ruins. Parsifal arrives in a heavy medieval outfit like a refugee from a traditional production, but is transformed into a red-haired Germania figure identical to Kundry. The staging, which up to this point had been tremendously busy, suddenly is almost drained of all activity. The work has stopped signifying anything outside itself; we seem to be inside a giant Wieland Wagner tribute scene. With the return of the spear, the Wahnfried fountain begins to bubble, an attempt to wash away the past. Parsifal, Kundry, and Gurnemanz sing This is finished off with another tribute: the Wirtschaftswunder in the form of a procession of workers in front of the stage (a reference to Götz Friedrich’s 1972 Bayreuth Tannhäuser).

As we move to the last scene, in a nod towards Syberberg’s Parsifal film, Titurel’s motive prompts a giant projection of Wagner’s death mask. He is still haunting the festival, but it, like the boy Parsifal in the prelude, is soon blocked by a wall. And we see a 1951 proclamation from then-Festspiel leaders Wolfgang and Wieland Wagner, requesting that audience members refrain from political discussion in the Festspielhaus. But politics, obviously, remain. In the last scene, we are in the West German Bonn Bundestag. The wings are gone by now, but the giant mirror reflects the West German eagle in the floor. Amfortas speaks at a podium where the Grail once stood. But Parsifal’s arrival is ambiguous. The giant reflected eagle, first turning red, is washed of its blood by the appearance of the grail, as water from the fountain washes over it and is seen in the reflection. But, the mirror finally shows the audience and, rather shockingly, the normally concealed conductor and orchestra. The magic veil of the temple of Bayreuth has been lifted. This isn’t a mythic, holy object, it’s something we create and participate in, and also have the power to renew. Or is it just something that we’ve made, our own neuroses?

Musically, the highlight was as expected the Klang of the orchestra, beautifully played and clear and balanced, and never overpowering the singers despite being by any measure pretty loud. Daniele Gatti took slow tempos judging by numbers (around 4 hours 10 minutes, I think Metzmacher in Vienna back in April was around 3:45), but it never felt slow. This was in part because there was so much going on onstage, but the pacing was excellent and variety in color and phrasing fantastic.

The cast was, for the most part, good. Simon O’Neill (above) as Parsifal was the weakest link. He has a fine upper range, with powerful and clear high notes, but his lower range has an unfortunate tinny and nasal tinge, and his singing was neither very musical nor idiomatic in its treatment of the text. His acting did not detract from the production but nor did it help–yes, Parsifal is largely a passive character, so this was OK, but it was not ideal. Susan Maclean’s Kundry was not beautifully sung either, but this is Kundry we’re talking about. It isn’t bel canto, it’s more important that she have scary intensity and shriek well, and for that Maclean was great, with spontaneous and clear singing and hair-raising moments of Crazy. Her Marlene Dietrich impression is really very good, so it seemed a shame she almost seemed to adopt a Dietrich tinge to her voice at that point as well.

While O’Neill and Maclean were new this year, the rest of the main cast remained from the premiere. Kwangchul Youn was a resonant and warm-toned Gurnemanz, but lacked something in gravitas and personality. Detlef Roth has a small voice for Amfortas, but in the favorable Bayreuth acoustic could still be heard, and offered a wonderful singer-actor type integrated performance with extremely physical acting. Thomas Jesatko was a Klingsor also more memorable for acting than singing, but likewise excellent. The chorus, flower maidens, and acting of the supernumeraries (particularly the unnamed Act 1 boy) were all great.

PREVIOUSLY REVIEWED
Herheim’s Yevgeny Onegin in Amsterdam
Katharina Wagner’s Meistersinger in Bayreuth
Nikolaus Lehnhoff’sParsifal in London
Christine Mielitz’sParsifal in Vienna

Despite the above being mostly about Herheim’s vision, this is a great production because it is such a Gesamtkunstwerk, a model not of artistic megalomania but of collaboration. And how wonderful to see everyone working together to create something so intellectually challenging, beautiful, and unique!

Per-Erik Skramstad at Wagneropera.net has a good essay about this production with a compilation of reviews from the premiere year.

The best way to get a taste of this production without going to Bayreuth is in these videos, first a longish story from German TV and then two short intros from dramaturg Alexander Meier-Dörzenbach. They’re only in German, sorry:




Photos copyright Enrico Nawrath/Bayreuther Festspiele (some from previous years)

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Review

Die Frau ohne Schatten at the Salzburg Festival

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I went to Die Frau ohne Schatten in Salzburg, and I wrote about it for Bachtrack.

This year’s festival brings a third complete Frau
to Salzburg, conducted by Christian Thielemann and directed by Christof
Loy. The Wiener Philharmoniker, the orchestra of the premiere, is in
the pit, and they and Thielemann were unquestionably the highlight of
this performance.

You can read the rest here. A few more comments and more pictures right ahead.

First of all, the PR made out like Christof Loy based his production off a historical event–a recording in the legendary Sofiensaal–but that recording took place in the Musikverein. Details, details.

I was excited to see a big new production of Die Frau ohne Schatten, because of the music but also because it’s both a very difficult work to stage and one that presents a lot of opportunities for cool stuff. As the woman sitting behind me said, in English, “they have this fantastic production in LA, when the Empress talks about fish, there are the fish!” Well, maybe that’s not quite what I was thinking of. Actually this opera has a lot of problems, like how women’s sole purpose in life is baby-making and if they do not devote their full attentions to baby-making they are BAD.  Director Loy even points out that this should not fly today in his program book interview. I agree! But I don’t think his solution of simply declining to stage most of the opera in favor of yet another theater-in-theater setting is any kind of solution at all. He doesn’t even seem interested in the piece, and there’s nothing really to make us interested in it. I found this vaguely offensive, like he had just refused to do the job which he had been assigned.

But the music was, indeed, fantastic.

When is Herheim going to get around to directing this one? Just a suggestion, opera houses of the world.

More pictures:

Theater-in-theater business (Empress)
Don’t ask. I can’t explain. (Dyer’s Wife)
Business
The score DID sound vaguely Elektra-like upon the axe’s first appearance.
Michaela Schuster makes the awesomest facial expressions.
There is perhaps something interesting being said in this stage image, but what it is beats me.

 Photos copyright Monika Rittershaus/Salzburg Festival

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Review

Tristan! Isolde! in Munich!

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This performance was a wonderful surprise. I went to see Nina Stemme’s Isolde, expecting not much more than the usual Festival mishmash out of the rest and worried about the prospects of Ben Heppner as Tristan. But we got a real, properly put together Tristan, and a damn good one at that.

Wagner, Tristan und Isolde. Bayerische Staatsoper, 7/27/2011. Production by Peter Konwitschny (revival), conducted by Kent Nagano with Nina Stemme (Isolde), Ben Heppner (Tristan), René Pape (König Marke), Ekaterina Gubanova (Brangäne), Alan Held (Kurwenal).

Peter Konwitschny’s production presents an eclectic, ambiguous aesthetic. The costumes are a mix of modern and medieval garb while Act 1 takes place on a modern (or at least twentieth-century) ship, Act 2 in front of a painted fairy-tale backdrop and on a silly yellow floral couch, and Act 3 in a stark modern space with a slideshow of photos from happier times. But the larger point is crystal clear. The upper, upstage part of the stage is the characters’ “reality” while Tristan and Isolde step forward, off this platform onto the apron of the stage to enter their own fantasy world. To illuminate their night in Act 2, visible Brechtian lights descend from above. The staging aims to be plausible and spontaneous and dramatic, downplaying the love potion and Marke’s wrath in favor of human empathy. It’s not that much to look at, but the thing is, it works, drawing you in at every moment.

This is thanks to the greatest asset of any Konwitschny production, the meticulous Personenregie he coaxes out of his premiere casts. The movement traces the motion more of the music than the text, giving his work a wonderful fluid quality. These details often can’t be quickly reconstructed for revivals, and my expectations for this festival revival were low (it premiered in 1998). But from the start I noticed that there was something happening with the direction. Bless the Bayerische Staatsoper, they actually got Konwtischny to come and rehearse a bit with this cast (he even took a bow at the end), and you could tell. From Brangäne flipping the pages of a magazine as the sailor sang his song on, it was elegant and integrated with the score. It was not as fearlessly physical as his Traviata, but this is Wagner singing.

(different cast)

The staging’s most unusual moment is during the Liebestod, where Isolde steps to the front of the stage and is joined by a revived Tristan. They both wear black. While Isolde might die in the text, in the world of the music and night she lives united with Tristan, and that’s what we see. The image had been foreshadowed with two English horn players at the beginning of the act. Wordless musicians, they also exist beyond the confines of the upstage space.

Kent Nagano conducted the excellent orchestra with restraint, clarity and controlled volume, a fine reading but a somewhat self-effacing one. The cast was about as all-star as it is possible to get. Nina Stemme is an astonishingly good Isolde. Her huge, dark voice is weighted towards the middle, but her high notes also cut through, she sings with an unwavering sense of the text and meaning of the music, and is an excellent actress. I doubt there is a better all-around Isolde today.

Ben Heppner is surely past his best days of singing, but pulled together a credible performance. I wouldn’t call it the triumph that a few Tweeters seemed to hear–at a half dozen or so spots everything threatened to fall apart in gurgly cracks, and he somehow derailed a bit of the Act 2 duet (skipping a phrase, I think?), making Stemme miss her next entrance. But he managed to recover each time and made it through to the end. That’s a higher compliment than it sounds like.

The biggest applause of the evening actually went to René Pape’s generous, honey-toned König Marke, who due to the usual Nationaltheater sightline problems I couldn’t see at all but sang with the kind of resonant authority and majesty that threatens to steal the opera. Ekaterina Gubanova as Brangäne got off to a muffled start but warmed up to be excellent if extremely Slavic in tone. Alan Held was a very good Kurwenal as well. A class act, all around.

This production is available on DVD with a different cast.

Photos copyright Bayerische Staatsoper/Wilfred Hösl (showing the cast from the DVD)

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Review

Katharina Wagner’s Bayreuth Meistersinger paints the town

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Katharina Wagner’s Bayreuth production of Die Meistersinger is widely loathed (and the director was indeed greeted by a torrent of boos at the end). A few people covertly whispered to me, “I actually kind of like it,” as if they were confessing on the sacred ground of the Green Hill that they prefer Verdi to Wagner. As a matter of general principle I would have loved to join this secret circle of Katharina admirers, but in the end I was unconvinced (though not loathing). Which is too bad, because there’s some genuinely interesting stuff in this thing. The only problem is that it’s a mess, and unfortunately not an entertaining one.

More disappointing was the low musical quality of this performance.

Wagner, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. Wagner-Festspiele Bayreuth, 7/26/2011. Production by Katharina Wagner, conducted by Sebastian Weigle with James Rutherford (Hans Sachs), Burkhard Fritz (Walther von Stolzing), Michaela Kaune (Eva), Adrian Eröd (Beckmesser), Norbert Ernst (David), Georg Zeppenfeld (Veit Pogner).

This production is already available on DVD, but it has undergone some changes in recent years. You can see a bit of the DVD at the end of this post.

The setup is clear enough. The masters are part of a museum-like space or academy dedicated to the worship of dead art, with the uniformed apprentices as their students. Their art is not just singing but, in vaguely-Gesamtkunstwerk-ish fashion, a little bit of all the arts. Scattered around the set are a cello, a piano, some Dürer and other paintings, and an enormous number of Reclam books (little yellow paperback editions of classic German literature). The worship is even takes the form of religion, with a communion-like ceremony around one of the Reclams.

Among this reactionary, mindless, and rule-bound worship of the past (David spends his rules lesson photocopying Reclams, and the apprentices take a good 10 minutes to assemble a big table in faultlessly ordered fashion), Walther is an action painter or graffiti artist who splashes paint on whatever is nearby, preferably some icon of past culture like a piano or a cello. The use of visual art as a realization of the various singer characters’ performances is a theme of the entire production, and ultimately for me its biggest sticking point. In Act 1, it’s clear enough: Given a giant jigsaw puzzle of Nuremberg, Beckmesser assembles it “correctly” and Walther makes an Escher-like crazy landscape.

Riot

After the heavy-handed, single-minded Act 1, Act 2 is more scattered. The apprentices, seated at tables, show no excitement about the upcoming party, content with their rules. Sachs, who flirted with Eva at the very opening and spent the trial scene as a barefoot hippie without the robes of the other masters, is also a creator of a sort, daring not to photocopy but to use a typewriter. There’s no shoemaking, and he pounds on the typewriter during the hammering song, but not on the beats that you would expect (this actually really bothered me). However, it does start raining sneakers at this point. Make of that what you will. Eva’s idea of flirting with Walther is to let him paint all over her. The Wahn that breaks lose in the riot involves a lot more thrown paint, more a large-scale act of performance art than anything violent. (After the curtain opened on the second and third acts, a whiff of paint remover gradually wafted through the theater.)

Beckmesser 2.0

This production wants to be a drama of ideas. Unfortunately, the first two acts have such a narrow concept that it turns obvious and repetitious. The stage is usually in motion, but without character development. You can only watch people dump paint on things for so long before you lose interest. This seems a shame for Meistersinger, which more than any other Wagner work is populated by accessible human characters. Katharina (sorry, her last name obliges us to be on first-name terms) doesn’t seem to be interested in that, and there’s not enough else going on.

The Act 3 staging is the stage direction equivalent of the Act 2 riot, and the content gets a lot more diverse and interesting. But suddenly there’s so much happening that it’s hard to keep up. Hans Sachs turns out to not be such a liberal after all, and tutors Walther in the painting of a realistic image of trees, later elaborated in the final scene’s Preislied into a tableau vivant stage set of old-school Wagnerian medieval kitsch. Walther’s supposed aesthetic realignment is one of bourgeois conformity, as in the quintet when he and Eva, David and Magdalene form picture-perfect nuclear families. He exchanges his purple pants, and Sachs his casual outfit, for fancy business suits.

Scary Sachs

As we move into the meadow, a bunch of icons of German thinkers in their underwear with oversized masks tie Sachs to a chair and perform a weird dance. This went right over my head. Somewhat clarifying was the subsequent appearance of a conductor, stage director, and designer, who bow and are then stuffed in a dumpster and melted down to form a golden stag (calf?) of some sort. Creativity has been demolished in favor of a new conservatism.

In turn with Walther’s transformation, Beckmesser becomes like the Walther of Acts 1 and 2, performing a weird performance art piece at the trial involving a sand sculpture and some naked people. The crowd, an identically-dressed group who could be Bayreuther Festspiele-goers, prefers Walther’s Mastersinger-like vision over Beckmesser’s incomprehensible avant-garde, and he is awarded a the golden calf, plus a giant check from the Nürnberger Bank like he just won a reality TV show. As Sachs warns about the threatened sacred German art, the stage dims to make him a sinister, solitary figure. The tyranny of the reactionary masses has triumphed again.

Katharina seems to owe something to Adorno. She suggests that Wagner’s argument in favor of revolutionary art is a mixed message, cloaked as it is in a decidedly non-revolutionary form, and reminds us that its subsequent legacy (particularly at Bayreuth) has been not an endorsement of artistic freedom but of arch-conservatism. This is interesting, and it’s a shame that the show itself is often so inept, poorly paced and blocked that it isn’t transmitted more clearly and engagingly.

I also think the interpretation works much more closely with the words than the music. It sets up the metaphor of mastersinging to visual arts, but then stages a transformation in both Walther’s and Beckmesser’s styles of painting that is not reflected in their music. Walther’s style changes between Act 1 and Act 3, but only in a matter of degree, not the radical shift of his painting aesthetic from splashing to realistic landscape. And Beckmesser’s Act 2 and Act 3 music is stylistically consistent, but his painting is not. This seems like a case of wanting to have one’s Regie cake and eat it too.

She also did not have the benefit of a good cast. The first problem was Sebastian Weigle’s soggy conducting. Granted, the Festspielhaus does not present an ideal acoustic for Meistersinger, but only he can be blamed for the weirdly quiet brass, leaden tempos (losing Sachs at several points during the Hammering Song, because he could not sing slowly enough), and complete lack of grandeur. The orchestral playing was mostly OK, though the woodwinds went out of tune a few times.

The singing was rather below A-list level and, despite enthusiasm, genuine charisma was in short supply. According to some regulars, last year’s Klaus Florian Vogt lent a degree of charm to this bratty interpretation of Walther, but I can say that this year’s tenor, Burkhard Fritz, most certainly did not. While he was rarely inaudible and never really made ugly sounds (more than can be said of many Wagner tenors), his completely underpowered, seemingly lyric tenor was colorless and lacking in thrust and ardor. Resembling, tragically, recent Mickey Rourke, he was more an aging B-list rocker than a revolutionary.

James Rutherford was a very youthful Sachs, and his cavernous but unfocused voice carried little gravitas. Michaela Kaune made an acceptable Eva, though sounded a bit overripe. Highlights were surprisingly two Wiener Staatsoper regulars: Adrian Eröd’s accurate and funny Beckmesser and, most of all, Norbert Ernst’s brightly sung David, who overpowered Fritz at times. With all due respect to Ernst, when David is your vocal highlight, that’s a Meistersinger with some problems. The other smaller roles were finely sung and well rehearsed.

My first Bayreuth performance was still a memorable experience, due to it being Bayreuth, but luckily I returned later in the week for what turned out to be an infinitely better experience. More on that shortly.

Photos copyright Enrico Nawarth/Bayreuther Festspiele

DVD trailer:

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Review

Der Rosenkavalier in Munich: Die schöne Musi!

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The Marschallin seems like a role that the elegant, meticulous soprano Anja Harteros was born to sing. She finally did it at the Bayerische Staatsoper this season, and repeated it with the fabulous Octavian of Sophie Koch at their Festspiele this Saturday (the July “Festspiele” consists of a few new productions plus a retrospective of the season with most of the same casting, fancier audience members, fewer rehearsals, and higher prices–fun but a little unpredictable). While Otto Schenk’s production would benefit from a good fumigation and energy injection, the all-star cast made this worth it.

Strauss, Der Rosenkavalier. Bayerische Staatsoper/Münchner Operfestspiele, 7/23/2011. Production by Otto Schenk, conducted by Constantin Trinks with Anja Harteros (Marschallin), Sophie Koch (Octavian), Lucy Crowe (Sophie), Peter Rose (Ochs), Piotr Beczala (Tenor).

This Rosenkavalier is an Otto Schenk extravaganza, similar but more opulent than Vienna’s Schenk. This run was originally planned as a new production this season, but intendant Nikolaus Bachler decided to keep the Schenk at the last minute, supposedly a bone thrown to staging conservatives. While the sets and costumes are in fine physical shape, age is still a problem. Most seriously, the Personenregie has gaps: there are many points where the singers simply stand still while the music cries out for stage action. As the Marschallin would point out, you can’t stop time.

Visually, the cluttered aesthetic is not to my taste–the von Faninals seem to gunning for a record for the largest china collection outside the Hofburg. But the level of detail (such as the inclusion of visible and detailed antechambers behind the main set) is impressive if you like that kind of thing. The Act 3 inn is more convincingly seedy than some other productions’, though the action in the opening was not as clearly laid out as it could have been. If you want to see this production in action back in its glory days, such as they were, you can do so on this excellent DVD conducted by Carlos Kleiber with Gwyneth Jones as the Marschallin.

I can’t really comment on many of the acting details of this performance, because, as is often the case at the Nationaltheater, my view of the stage was hopelessly bad. I could see the set and, once in a while, the singers, but as for most of what they were doing beyond the big rote blocking action you get in a standard issue Rosenkavalier (which is what this was), I’m not too sure.

Late replacement conductor Constantin Trinks (GMD in Darmstadt) seems like a good find, particularly when you allow for the limited rehearsal time of these festival productions. It wasn’t the most precise Rosenkavalier I have ever heard, and both stage-orchestra coordination and the faster orchestral business were off at times. But the light spirit, indulgently slow ending, and general sense of shape and dramatic timing worked really well, with a clear path through a score that can meander. Balance was something of an issue in Act 1, when the orchestra overpowered the singers, but improved over the course of the evening.

Anja Harteros has a wonderful way with the text, with beautiful diction and wit, and a conversational musicality that sounds both natural and graceful. Her voice is a little smoky and grainy, in a good way that makes her sound unique, and her middle voice has the strength needed for this role. Most notable is the detail and musicality she puts into every phrase, which is particularly good for Straussian style. Once or twice she sounded studious, but she is already my pick for the Marschallin of today.

Sophie Koch is an experienced Octavian. Like Harteros, she tends towards the aristocratic side of her role, welcome after too many slap-happy, excessively hormonal productions. But she is still convincingly youthful and masculine, funny in Act 3 without being over-the-top, and sings with expansive, lustrous tone, only sometimes sounding a little thin on the very top notes (Octavian did, after all, start as a soprano role).

The rest of the cast was perhaps not quite their match, though Lucy Crowe’s Sophie was very good, sung with richer, fuller sound than the thin twitterers you sometimes get, and acted with confidence but never brattiness. Unfortunately the pitch of her high notes wavered occasionally. Peter Rose’s Ochs is one of the better ones out there, more bumpkin than lecher and sung with style and fluidity, but his voice is rather hollow at both top and bottom. Supporting roles were universally solid and well-rehearsed.

In a delightful bit of luxury casting, Piotr Beczala appeared and knocked the Italian Tenor aria out of the park. Sure, it’s a kitschy bit of music, but given such a luscious rendition, it’s the best two minutes of tenorial bliss you could ask for.

Despite the boring production (which I couldn’t see too well anyway), a festival-worthy performance.

Photos copyright Bayerische Staatsoper.

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Review

Looking for Wagner’s Nuremberg

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I am behind on blogging! This is because I was very busy this week, and busy in Bayreuth at that, where I had trouble finding internet access. I have many notes and will be posting a lot in the next few days.

Wagner’s Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is in part a historical fable, drawing on the life of the actual shoemaker poet Hans Sachs and his guild of Mastersingers in post-Reformation Nuremberg. But Wagner builds on, distorts, and later abetted in Nuremberg’s history in more complex ways, some of which can still be seen today. I tried to find what remains.

Die Meistersinger is set in the sixteenth century, but it’s a parable about Wagner’s own time, and he meddled with historical details to get the aesthetic argument to work right. Nuremberg was an apt setting for this project because in Wagner’s time the medieval center was so well-preserved that it looked basically the same as it did Hans Sachs’s day. Audiences of his day could picture the drama happening in the past and present simultaneously without a gap imposed by changing architecture.

Wagner added to Nuremberg’s mystique, and of course the city was central to Third Reich iconography (most famously as the setting for The Triumph of the Will) due to both Wagner and the same reasons Wagner chose it. The city is still well-preserved, but after the twentieth century, hardly in the condition it was in Wagner’s day.

The current Rathaus (city hall)

The church where Walther spots Eva is identified by Wagner as the Katharinenkirche, located near the center of town. It was founded in 1295 as a Dominican cloister. But it probably couldn’t have played the role it does in Wagner’s libretto, because it remained Catholic until 1596. I’m guessing that he chose it for a different reason: after the nuns were gone, it was the meeting place for the Meistersinger guild:

Note that the plaque says they met in the 17th and 18th centuries (in the barely visible dark letters)–after the period of Meistersinger.

The church was bombed in 1945 and only the roofless reconstructed walls remain. But it is still devoted to music, serving as an open-air venue for indie/hipster-tending concerts in the summer. It was a little hard for me to take pictures because of surrounding construction.

Not far away is this statue of Hans Sachs in his eponymous Platz. It also has a sinister history.

Wagner noted that he was going to donate to the construction of a statue of Hans Sachs (based on dates, presumably this one), but changed his mind when it turned out that it would be installed opposite a “sumptuous” synagogue. Needless to say, the synagogue isn’t there anymore. There’s not much to see in the Platz, to tell the truth. But you can park your car.

It’s still a picturesque town center, though.

Craftwork was still on display in the central market’s organic fair, and Wagner would definitely have appreciated the vegetarian food at least. The four-woman band playing Cee Lo Green covers, well, probably not. Probably not these folks, either, who I think were Argentinian. They set up in front of an ugly modern building and sounded quite good:

I’m guessing that in the grüne Wiese of Act 3 there’s now a Lidl or something. There’s a “Meistersingerhalle” on the outskirts of town as well, but it’s a modern venue.

But my favorite Meistersinger-related place is located not in Nürnberg but in Vienna, across the street from the Staatsoper’s standing room line (photo from their official website, because I couldn’t find mine):

Yes, it’s a shoe store.

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