Weber - Der Freischütz (Munich, 2021)

Carl Maria von Weber - Der Freischütz

Bayerische Staaatsoper, Munich 2021

Antonello Manacorda, Dmitri Tcherniakov, Golda Schultz, Anna Prohaska, Kyle Ketelsen, Pavel Černoch, Boris Prýgl, Bálint Szabó, Tareq Nazm, Milan Siljanov, Eliza Boom, Sarah Gilford, Daria Proszek, Yajie Zhang

StaatsoperTV Live - 13 February 2021

One sure thing you can count on with an opera production by Dmitri Tcherniakov is that it's never going to be short of talking points and in some cases (Dialogues des Carmélites) downright controversy. Tcherniakov is still the only opera director I know to have had one of his works actually banned by the courts on the objection of the estate of the work's original author for subverting the true intentions of the work. You will definitely question whether he is true to the spirit of Romanticism in his setting of Weber's Der Freischütz in the executive room of the owner of a large corporation.

Furthermore, rather than opening the opera with a traditional shooting contest Tcherniakov has the competitors being urged to train a gun on and take down an unsuspecting member of the public from a window vantage point high on the office block of businessman Lord Kuno. Sure, you expect a modern director to find a new way to express the intentions of an old fashioned opera (albeit one of the most important in the history of German opera) but does this really conform to the original intentions and meaning of the original? Is Tcherniakov not again just seeking to be controversial by overturning and subverting a reactionary agenda?

For Tcherniakov, evidently the idea of a work that extols any kind of nationalist sentiment, superstition, romanticism or dealings with magic can't possibly be played straight to a contemporary audience and have the same impact as it might have had for its original audience. On the other hand there are deeper human qualities brought out in Weber's opera, and likewise Tcherniakov's intention is not to subvert the work, but use a similar exaggeration and shock factor to highlight an underlying idea. How far would someone go to impress the boss and marry into an influential family?

Well one thing you don't want to do is strike up a deal with the devil, or in the case of this production, get too friendly with and take the advice of the office weirdo, Kaspar. What he really does is encourages Max to pull the trigger that will open up his future destiny. He seems powerful and in control, but has strange ideas and hears voices and seems to be possessed, conversing with a split personality that he calls Samiel. He's also a bit of a gun freak. Too late, Max worries what he has got himself into and he has good reason to be concerned when he agrees to follow Kaspar to Wolf's Glen.

It does take a little twisting of the narrative to make this work, and where some might have more of an objection is in the director constructing his own narrative to put it into a quite different context from the original. In the gaps between scenes and in instrumental passages, Tcherniakov inserts subtitles that enter into the mind of the people involved and even creates a new narrative that you would think adds little, such as Agathe having previously been in a same-sex relationship with Ännchen, who dresses in a masculine if somewhat dandyish fashion. His take on the shock conclusion of the Hermit's forgiveness being a mere delusion and Agathe indeed being a victim of the magic bullet, is like Carmélites revisionism again, but it's enormously effective and appropriate here.

The more Romantic outlook on Der Freischütz would be the question of how far you would go for love when the path of virtue is the only road to salvation from the dark forces in the world, but Dmitri Tcherniakov's take on it as ambition and social climbing corrupting the soul can sit alongside that. You can debate whether that really gets under the skin of what the opera is all about, but there's no doubt - as is always the case I find - that he fully brings dramatic power and conviction to whatever he works on. If you didn't already know what a masterpiece Der Freischütz is, you would definitely feel it from the treatment here.

It also helps that the opera is played beautifully with Antonello Manacorda conducting the Bayerisches Staastorchester and there are some excellent singing performances. Golda Schultz in particular is impressive as Agathe and Pavel Černoch perfect as the rather unfortunate Max who falls under the spell as a wonderfully deranged Kyle Ketelsen as Kaspar/Samiel. It's also a very handsome production as most of Elena Zaytseva designs are for Dmitri Tcherniakov. In his latest mode of using elegant, tasteful wooden panel lined rooms to satirise middle- and upper-class luxury homes and offices (La Traviata, Tristan und Isolde, Pelléas et Mélisande), they could be showcase exhibits for interior design. In every respect, Tcherniakov's aim is perfect and his shot unerringly finds its true target.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, StaatsoperTV

Weber - Euryanthe (Vienna, 2018)

Carl Maria von Weber - Euryanthe

Theater an der Wien, 2018

Constantin Trinks, Christof Loy, Jacquelyn Wagner, Norman Reinhardt, Theresa Kronthaler, Andrew Foster-Williams, Stefan Cerny, Eva-Maria Neubauer

Naxos - Blu-ray

There are often good reasons why some works remain neglected and rarely performed, but it's at least nice to be able to have the opportunity to hear them and judge for yourself, even if in most cases you have to admit that few are really lost masterpieces. Carl Maria Von Weber's 1823 opera Euryanthe however may genuinely be considered a neglected masterpiece.

Euryanthe is one of those works whose reputation is better known than the work itself, that reputation being that it has some lovely music but is let down by a poor libretto. Considering Weber's importance in the world of German music and his huge influence on Richard Wagner, it's surely a shame that other than Der Freischütz, the composer's operas haven't been given due attention in performance. Christof Loy's production of Euryanthe for the Theater an der Wien however suggests that this is a great work worthy of re-evaluation.

In terms of plot Euryanthe does indeed just appear to adopt another variation on a classic Romantic theme based around challenges against the virtue of innocent women. It's there in Schumann's only opera Genoveva, but the subject can also be seen in Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucretia and Cymbeline. Mozart also took an apparently more light-hearted comic angle on the subject in Così fan tutte, but as several recent productions have demonstrated (Teatro Real 2013, Aix 2016), Mozart and Da Ponte's approach is far more subtle, balanced, darker and nuanced than it might seem. Despite the reputation of its libretto and plot, and the relentless darkness of the treatment, Christof Loy successfully shows that there is similar nuance and sophistication worth exploring in Euryanthe.

Like The Rape of Lucretia there's an underlying context of war having a dehumanising impact on men and influencing how they behave towards women in Euryanthe. At the beginning of the opera Count Adolar is returning from war, disillusioned but revived at the thought of returning to his wife Euryanthe. Having only seen the worst of what man is capable, the one thing that can restore his faith in humanity is the assurance of his wife's purity and fidelity. Count Lysiart however is rather more cynical and bets Adolar that he could seduce Euryanthe. Adolar is outraged and ready to duel Lysiart for this insult to his wife's honour, but has such faith in Euryanthe that, with King Ludwig's intervention, he is prepared to accept the bet to prove the point beyond dispute.

So far there's nothing unusual in a subject like that, it's a stirring situation that gives rise to conflicts of passions and moral dilemmas. There is however a complicating factor here in Eglantine, the daughter of a disgraced noble that Adolar has taken into their home, and her being in love with Adolar adds more than just another level of dramatic conflict. The introduction of a kind of ghost story around the untimely death of Adolar's sister Emma, who killed herself after her betrothed Udo died in battle, is another factor that comes into play, a shameful secret that Eglantine plans to use against Euryanthe in collaboration with Lysiart, but it also relates to Emma and Udo both being victims of war as a destructive force.

All this can seem like the plot has a few too many high-flown Romantic sentiments - the opera is subtitled 'A Great Heroic Romantic Opera' - but Christof Loy's approach to this melodrama is as usual to find the real human feeling in the work. Not unexpectedly that can be found with considerable depth in the music of Carl Maria Von Weber. It might fall back now and again on conventional elements of dramatic villainy, ghostly apparitions and wistful musing of innocents, but only in the same way that Mozart also made use of a similar wide range of means to plunge ever deeper into the darkness of Don Giovanni's soul. Weber's music, conducted her by Constantin Trinks, is beautifully aligned to the mood and the drama of Euryanthe and it's not difficult to see how Wagner would develop on this to an epic scale, particularly evident in a similar confrontation between innocence impugned and villainy given credence in Lohengrin.

Loy seizes on the power of such situations and music applies it to characterisation that can be seen to be much more three-dimensional than its reputation would have you believe. The director never lets the characters emote alone or soliloquise to the audience in an indulgent manner, but rather shows them tapping into the deepest human feelings of love, jealousy, lust and betrayal. And if that means having the object of one's affections present when their spirit - and other parts - are being bared, then so be it. Rather like the spirit of Emma, it makes these emotions present and tangible, generating a highly charged atmosphere.

The stage design is appropriate for the context and, rather than relying on typical Der Freischütz-like Romantic locations of woods, glens and dramatic landscapes, Loy keeps the drama confined to an elegant mansion. The cool minimalism of the rooms only serves to heighten and contrast the surface manners of high society with the barely contained lusts and prejudices simmering beneath. It's not so far away from Loy's more recent take on Schreker's similarly heated drama Die ferne Klang, or indeed his stripping of those emotional charges literally stark naked as with his production of Korngold's Das Wunder der Heliane. Andrew Foster Williams is the unfortunate who has to bear all this time, his "wild impulses of glowing desire" out there for the viewer to see, but spared anything too close up. It certainly makes the idea of intended rape more viscerally real and the subsequent teaming up of Lysiart with Eglantine after this is deliriously demented and utterly convincing.

It's the singing too of course that makes this convincing and the principal cast, as well as the chorus, are simply superb. Jacquelyn Wagner has a perfect clean soaring timbre that is perfect for the part of Euryanthe. She's more than just an innocent victim, but the vocal line tells us more than the words alone about her firmness of purpose and her pureness of heart, and Wagner brings out the real human feeling that is scored into the role. Norman Reinhardt shows how Adolar is a prototype Heldentenor, an idealist conflicted between the purity of vision and his response to the baseness of the world.

Theresa Kronthaler and Andrew Foster-Williams bring a chilling edge of menace in roles that are even more villainous and - in this production at least - even more deranged and cruel than Ortrud and Telramund. Looking at the opera this way pointing towards towards Lohengrin, King Ludwig IV is very much a Heinrich der Vogler type of role and it's one that bass Stefan Cerny is not only capable of performing to a Wagnerian level but he also brings some character and personality to make it count within the dramatic development of the plot. Rather than being a forgotten minor work by a respected but neglected composer, Euryanthe turns out to be essential listening for any Wagnerian, a wondrous rediscovery, and Loy's treatment of the work at Theater an der Wien will not disappoint.

The production looks good on the High Definition Blu-ray release from Naxos, although there are some minor niggles. The strong contrasts make whites look a little blown-out, and the image is a little bit shimmery and blurring in movement. Whether that's an authoring issue with the transfer bit-rate I don't know, but it's not too distracting. It doesn't appear that radio mics are used so there's a wider open acoustic theatrical sound here, which means that it also picks up a bit of ambient noise, including creaking floorboards, but the LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mixes still capture the power and the detail of the performance. The BD is all-region compatible, with German, English, French, Japanese and Korean subtitles. The booklet contains a synopsis and an interview with Christof Loy.

Links: Theater an der Wien

Weber - Oberon, König der Elfen (Munich, 2017)

Carl Maria von Weber - Oberon, König der Elfen

Bayerische Staatsoper, 2017

Ivor Bolton, Nikolaus Habjan, Julian Prégardien, Alyona Abramowa, Annette Dasch, Brenden Gunnell, Rachael Wilson, Johannes Kammler, Anna El-Khashem, Manuela Linshalm, Daniel Frantisek Kamen, Sebastian Mock

Staatsoper.TV - 30th July 2017

The spirit and influence of Mozart's The Magic Flute weighs heavily upon Carl Maria von Weber's Oberon, König der Elfen, although it has more of a mythological quality and less of the masonic rituals. To bring it a little more down to earth in terms of human feelings and away from the fairies, the opera also borrows from the romantic complications of Mozart's Die Entführung aus dem Serail, where the constancy of love is put to the test. It's a kind of experiment then, and this aspect is very much taken up in the Bavarian State Opera's entertaining production for their 2017 summer festival.

Oberon and Titania, like Sarastro and the Queen of the Night, are unable to reconcile their views on mankind, specifically on their capacity to love and remain constant and faithful in such matters, and they decide to conduct an experiment. Oberon selects a brave knight, Huon von Bordeaux to be his champion, his Tamino, with Scherasmin his valet as his Papageno. He is given a vision of a beautiful young maiden, Rezia, the daughter of the Caliph of Baghdad and the young knight is immediately enchanted, singing a Tamino-like 'Dies Bildnis ist bezaubernd schön' style aria.

The Magic Flute parallels continue to come with not one but three Pucks being in service to Oberon and the two adventurers being gifted with magical objects that will aid them on their quest: Huon, a horn, and Scherasmin a magic goblet. Immediately on their arrival in Baghdad, Huon is attacked by a fierce lion which he manages to overcome. Once in the caliph's court, where Huon helps Rezia escape from an unwelcome marriage to Prince, the opera becomes a little more Die Entführung aus dem Serail-like in its treatment.

Like The Magic Flute, and indeed Die Entführung aus dem Serail, the spirit in which the opera is played has a lot to do with how successfully it comes across. Nikolaus Habjan's production takes the 'experiment' side of the work at a little more literally, setting the production in a science laboratory where 'Oberon' and 'Titania' are scientists. The humans are not spirited away to Baghdad, but with a few puppet props (and a very large one for Oberon), and with the assistance of a 'magic spell' (delivered via hypodermic needle), the ordinary humans are led to believe that they have been transformed into knights on a noble quest to win the love of a beautiful damsel and her maid.

The distancing effect of this framing from a fairy tale is by no means a way to allow the work to be looked on ironically or in an inappropriately serious deconstruction, but rather as a way of making it even more playful. And perhaps a little more human. At the same time however, it's important to retain some of the magic and wonder of the fairy tale, and the Austrian director does that wonderfully by drawing on the traditional puppet shows that he grew up watching. Here they are full-sized puppets, used mainly for the Arabian characters and operated by technicians in the laboratory, and they do successfully inject a larger-than-life quality to the work.

It's a simple twist on the story, but one that is enough to lift it out of an antique fairy tale structure into the realm of the modern day without losing the essential magic spirit and the colourful character of the original work. Still, there aren't too many challenges faced by our 'heroes' in the first half of the story. As they make their escape on a ship to Greece in the second part of the work, Titania thinks that things need shook-up a little, and - in full Queen of the Night mode - she sends a huge storm to see how constant the couples remain when some turbulence is thrown their way.

And a few challenges are exactly what the opera itself needs, having coasted along fairly easily on the tails of Mozart for the first half.  Weber rises to the challenge with some lovely choruses and a huge dose of Romanticism that provides plenty of opportunity for spectacle with musical and singing fireworks to match. The production, the singing and the musical performance from Ivor Bolton all live up to those requirements as well. Brenden Gunnell is excellent as Huon, exhibiting a fine lyrical Tamino-like tenor and fully entering into the spirit of the piece. Annette Dasch is no less committed as Rezia, bringing considerable character to the role, even if she doesn't always land well when she launches at those high notes.

Oberon, König der Elfen is certainly less well known than Weber's classic Der Freischütz, but it's an enchanting piece. It's less ambitious than Mozart in sentiment and execution and certainly doesn't have the same musical genius or memorable pieces, but it has considerable character of its own, particularly when a good production like this shows its merits.

Links: Bayerische Staatsoper, Staatsoper.TV

Weber - Hunter's Bride

Carl Maria von Weber - Hunter's Bride

A Film Opera by Jens Neubert

Jens Neubert, Daniel Harding, Simon Halsey, Michael König, Juliane Banse, Michael Volle, Regula Mühlemann, René Pape, Franz Grundheber, Benno Schollum, Olaf Bär

Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray

Considering the amount of pitfalls and difficulties inherent in making an opera film as opposed to making a recording of a live theatrical performance, it's not surprising that there are very few good films of this kind around. Jens Neubert's film opera Hunter's Bride is therefore a pleasant surprise, the director bringing to the screen a work that is not as popular and well-known as Carmen, Tosca or La Bohème, but one that is nonetheless one of the most important works in German opera - Carl Maria von Weber's Der Freischütz. What's even better, and even more rare, is that it proves to be satisfying just as much as a film in its own right as it does as an opera.

There are several crucial elements that it is essential to get right in order for this to work on the screen. Firstly, it's essential that the work doesn't look stagey and theatrical. Despite the supernatural content of the opera's Gothic ghost story origins, Jens Neubert has a very clear focus that he successfully translates into a meaningful real-world context. Recognising that the nature and outlook of the characters in Der Freischütz is shaped and determined very much by what was happening in the world in Weber's own time, Neubert updates the opera from the just after the Thirty Years War (1648) to the time of the composition of the work itself close to the end of the Napoleonic Wars, setting it in Dresden in 1813.

Max and Kasper then are here both soldiers in the army of King Friedrich August I of Saxony just after Napoleon's defeat in Russia around the time of the break-up of his alliance with Austria and Saxony. The nature of the times lends a little more weight then to Max's desire to prove himself a master huntsman, to the importance of his being worthy of Agathe's love and to his bleak pronouncements that "Dark forces that gather round me. I am seized by despair. Does fate rule blind? Is there no God?". If the relationship to those sentiments and the war isn't clear enough, it's emphasised brilliantly in the Wolf's Gorge scene. Here, when Kasper summons Zamiel the Black Hunter to forge a "free bullet" that will ensure Max's victory in the hunting contest, the rocky gorge is filled with the bodies of dead soldiers, some of them dragged over to form a grim pentagram. The supernatural element consequently takes on a very real and sinister aspect.

The other vitally important element that will determine the success or otherwise of a filmed opera story is the performance of the cast. Jens Neubert, in his notes on the production, is very proud that the cast assembled here are world-class singers, and rightly so. With Michael König, Juliane Banse, Michael Volle, René Pape and fresh talent in Regula Mühlemann, it's an outstanding cast that is not only well-suited to this type of German Classical/Romantic-era opera, but they all have good screen presence and can act. It's a very different kind of acting skill that is required here where there is singing involved and it's not so easy to achieve either within the context of this work's supernatural elements. There are however no theatrical mannerisms here whatsoever, every performance pitched perfectly for the requirements of the camera close-up and in terms of the very real historical setting of the work.

That's not to say that the director neglects what are after all the essential Gothic qualities of the work, using special visual effects where necessary and mixing in sound effects. The use of natural sounds means that you don't always get a traditional performance where the emphasis is totally on the opera, but rather a balanced account between the music, the singing and the use of sound effects and natural sounds that would normally be considered intrusive. The director however seems to strike exactly the right balance, giving the score and singing centre stage, but not being afraid to let more natural sounds and dialogue take prominence when it is in service of the dramatic requirements of the story and the naturalistic setting of the film.  

By using the title The Hunter's Bride (in English for the international market), it might appear that the filmmakers are attempting to distance the film or mark it as distinct from the opera Der Freischütz, but this is not the case. The title is taken from Weber's intended title for the opera Die Jägersbraut, and Neubert hopes that reverting to the composer's original title will bring the emphasis of the work back to Agathe rather than shifting the focus, as it is traditionally held, from Max (Der Freischütz means The Marksman).  This is just one of the careful considerations that has gone into making sure that this is as fine and authentic an account of Weber's masterwork as the filmmakers are capable of presenting.  With this kind of cast, that's even more apparent and when combined with the setting in authentic Saxony locations, this Der Freischütz actually feels more at home on film than it does on the modern opera stage.

On Blu-ray, presenting the film at its aspect ratio of 2.35:1, the film looks marvellous in High Definition.  The DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 track is also well worth mentioning, the director going to great length to create what he calls a kind of "3-D" presence that incorporates and balances the music and the natural sound effects.  A PCM stereo option is also available.  The audio is of course necessarily studio recorded and then lip-synced for filming, but this works very well, and the performance is superb.  There are numerous extra features, including a 'Making Of' that is almost an hour long, a full-length Director's Commentary, Interviews and a Synopsis.  Further information on the production and a Q&A with the director is also printed on the booklet attached to the inside cover of the digipak case.  Subtitles are provided in German, English, French, Spanish, Italian and Korean.  These can only be selected from the pop-up menu when the film is playing, or from the BD player's remote control.