Tchaikovsky - The Queen of Spades (Brussels, 2022)

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Pikovaya Dama

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2022

Nathalie Stutzmann, David Marton, Dmitry Golovnin, Laurent Naouri, Jacques Imbrailo, Anne Sofie von Otter, Anna Nechaeva, Charlotte Hellekant, Alexander Kravets, Mischa Schelomianski, Maxime Melnik, Justin Hopkins, Mireille Capelle, Emma Posman

OperaVision - 23 September 2022

Although visually it clearly takes place in late Soviet-era USSR, everyone wearing 1970s' costumes in the courtyard exterior and assumed interiors of a Soviet tenement block, it is of course tempting to see something of the current conflict in Ukraine in David Marton's 2022 production of Tchaikovsky's Pikovaya Dama/The Queen of Spades for La Monnaie, the production playing out much at the same time in September 2022 as the Russian invasion was at its height. While the period sets it apart and prevents it from making any ill-fitting and facile commentary on a serious and complex contemporary situation, Tchaikovsky's opera and indeed Pushkin's original ghost story do have something to say about the dangers of myths fuelling nationalistic delusions and war.

That's touched on in the children's chorus of the opening scene which otherwise has apparently little to do with the opera, a scene that would be difficult to imagine playing straight in the current circumstances and an example of how quickly 'innocent' intent can suddenly appear more sinister as times change. With this chorus of schoolboys lining up in a play-acted military march against Russia's enemies, Tchaikovsky could easily be outlawed (and has indeed been in some places) in the current climate where Russian artists and musicians are now viewed with suspicion. Marton however turns this into a more abstract scene, a Russian pianist centre stage, a radio playing the marching song, while a group of mothers listen to the broadcast of their sons with horror for what lies ahead.

It neatly sidesteps any controversy, not that La Monnaie ever work on the basis of playing safe in their productions, but it also sets the tone for what follows. The period and setting emphasise the divide between the rich and the poor, Liza the prize of the Prince that Hermann, hanging out with his chums in the tenement block, gambling, spending his money on black market goods, cannot hope to win. He knows he is a loser, not just in cards but in the game of life, and he feels that despair deeply, in the way that only the tragic figures of Russian literature can. And in a way that only a composer like Tchaikovsky, it his own troubled personal life, can put into music - as demonstrated in Stefan Herheim's 2016 production of this opera.

A creative director can of course delve into many different layers of this work, as Hans Neuenfels also did at Salzburg, using the children's march as a means of emphasising the strict rules of society that Hermann feels he has the right to place himself outside. What gives him the confidence to follow his own path in Marton's production is, like the empowerment of nationalistic exceptionalism expressed in the march, the lie of the myth of the Countess and the three cards that he chooses to believe in. He buys into it, but also buys a gun from a black market dealer to give him a little more power and influence. 

Marton of course doesn't keep it as simple as that and recognises the complexity of Tchaikovsky's music and the fact that art, opera and music have their part to play in exposing or examining the workings of the human mind, and indeed inspiring to go to war. Throughout the opera we see a man writing in a book, a libretto perhaps, and a pianist at the centre of the scene, Marton resisting however the temptation to go down Herheim's use of a Tchaikovsky doppelganger (or many of them, reflecting various sides of the composer). The two come together at the conclusion of the opera to reflect what they have experienced in the preceding episodes.

But art has other means and uses, particularly for ordinary people in the impoverished circumstances depicted in this era and this is also reflected in the setting. While the men are gambling, black market dealing or finding other ways of escape through alcohol, the women are seen looking to escape their surroundings, reading books, gazing into a glass of spirits, trying to catch a radio signal from the outside world. A young girl gazes at a globe, and Polina sings a melancholic song that observes: "What did I find in those enchanting dreams? A grave." Such scenes, as well as Tchaikovsky's pastorale and the arrival of Catherine the Great would feel out of place in this context, a divertissement in the middle of the near-contemporary realism depicted here, but it actually serves as another illusion to keep the peasants dreaming.

With a wealth of such material already provided by Tchaikovsky for a good director to use purposefully, there is no need then to bring any current conflict - which would certainly have been imminent during rehearsals - into the production. It's enough to perhaps just reference it to avoid any controversy of performing a Russian composer and let the opera deliver its own commentary on it, which it does most powerfully by taking things to their inevitable conclusion. Hermann is afflicted by madness to his 'cause', believing the words of an old woman on a payphone as if they are speaking a secret message to him. It means ruin and death and that is all that is left for Liza too. Dragged to her death by the same delusions of escape that had given her comfort.

Christian Friedländer set designs pitch the production into this ambiguous and divided world, somewhere between brutalism and romantic fantasy. The tenement block is stark enough to capture the romanticised view of the opera's ghost story running up against the harsh reality of ordinary people's lives, the contrasts of riches (or dreams of riches), with the impoverishment of their lives. Using the period, contrasting costumes of the real and the imagined, turning reality into art through the dreams of the secondary characters and chorus, in its own way it creates a visual representation of what opera does when art meets reality.

Conducted by Nathalie Stutzmann it's a strong musical performance, the orchestra delivering the high drama, matching the subtleties of Tchaikovsky's score to the underlying romantic sentiments and mad delusions. The singing performances are also a good fit for the roles, for the attack of the music and the intent of the stage direction. The Russian principals are excellent in this capacity, Dmitry Golovnin as Hermann and Anna Nechaeva as Liza both impassioned in their own ways. Jacques Imbrailo is fine as the Prince as is Anne Sofie von Otter, now at that stage in her career where she has the personality and character to take on the role of the Countess. There is good work also from the supporting roles and the chorus. It's not a classic production but one that is necessarily connected to a view of the times we are living under, a time of madness and a reminder that the only thing we can be sure of is death.

Links: La Monnaie streaming, OperaVision

Strauss - Capriccio (La Monnaie, 2016)

Richard Strauss - Capriccio

La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2016

Lothar Koenigs, David Marton, Sally Matthews, Dietrich Henschel, Edgaras Montvidas, Lauri Vasar, Kristinn Sigmundsson, Charlotte Hellekant, François Piolino, Elena Galitskaya, Dmirty Ivanchey, Christian Oldenburg

ARTE Concert - November 2016
 
"Primo le parole, dopo la musica" or is it vice-versa? There's obviously no definitive answer to the question of whether the words or the music are more important in opera. Even precedence is very much down to the practicalities and working methods of the creators and dependant upon the individual preferences of the listener. So on paper at least an opera about a composer and a poet, Flamand and Olivier, debating the subject with a Countess at a private concert soirée doesn't hold out much promise as a rivetting subject for an opera. And yet, Capriccio itself is a work of art that proves that opera can transcend such debates and distinctions.

There's a lot of truth then in what the boorish theatre director La Roche says; on paper both words and score are lifeless. It's a stage production that puts flesh and blood into an opera, that allows it to live and breathe, to reach out and touch the heart of an audience. Of course, even that distinction is academic if the work itself isn't of sufficient quality, insight and humanity, but Strauss's abilities and his work within opera are among the highest the artform has ever seen. Capriccio, his final work, might sound trivial and self-regarding, but it's a fitting testament that still has something important to say on the nature of people and the important role music and art plays in their lives.

Capriccio is indeed a masterpiece from a great composer but, in the spirit of the work itself, even Richard Strauss wouldn't be the opera genius he is without the collaboration of some great writers. His finest works are unquestionably those written by Hugo von Hofmannsthal, but Stefan Zweig and Joseph Gregor clearly also contributed the ideas and texts that would inspire Strauss to greatness in Capriccio. The writers are important, but so too presumably is the audience those works were written for and the artists who would perform them. And life itself. The genius of Capriccio is that it is there in this exquisite little work which might seem frivilous, but in reality touches on some fundamental questions about art and its relation to life.

So it is always a risk, but it would be a bit of a crime if a production of Capriccio only managed to come over as trivial and self-important. The words and the music are not enough - although they are a great place to start and Lothar Koenigs certainly brings out the luminous beauty of the orchestral colours - but Capriccio does need attention paid to its characters and their personalities, and that rests on the ability of the director and the performers to bring it to life. Fortunately that's handled very well indeed in David Marton's direction of the work for La Monnaie, and it's also very evident in the singing, with Sally Matthews in particular finding all the beauty and anguish of life in the words and music written for the Countess.

Marton's production does well to strike a balance between the intimacy of the work (that has a basis in the small chamber orchestra performance that opens the opera) and its expansiveness that takes in all the sentiments that the work touches on in passing. There's no avoiding the self-referential nature of the work (which is an opera about a group of people discussing opera and making an opera about themselves discussing opera), so it's not surprising that the set consists of a stage on the stage in a side view of a theatre. A small private theatre obviously that explores the inner workings of the human heart and human interaction as much as it does the craft that goes into writing, directing and performing a piece of music theatre.

It's not just a tussle for artistic recognition and it's not even a tussle between two men trying to seek the affections the Countess; there are other parties involved that have a role to play, however small it might seem. It's not always easy to work out who each of them are at first, or where they are coming from, but Strauss gives them all consideration and blends them into the little world of Capriccio's complications. The prompter, for example, might not seem to be all that vital a role, but without him, the whole enterprise might indeed fail. The Major-domo, the Haushofmeister, also looks on here, clearly in love with the Countess. He might be vital to the smooth running of the household, but he knows he can never be a solution to the conflicts in her heart.

This master/servant role as a metaphor for the impossibility of the mastery of the heart is a device that has been used for a similar effect between the Marschallin and her servant in some productions of Der Rosenkavalier. It's possible to see Madeline, the Countess of Capriccio, as an extension of the thoughts and sentiments that plagued Marschallin, a recap if you like to summarise such themes in this comprehensive work. Marten also uses the young dancer here, showing her in three ages from child to young woman to old lady, to touch on those considerations of the passing of time as it applies to the hard choices that the Countess has to make. Ostensibly that's about how she wants the opera to end, but also evidently it's about where she wants her life to go, knowing that the decisions she makes now will determine the rest of her life.

The successful direction of Capriccio is all about bringing out such undercurrents. What takes place on the surface of Capriccio, in all the discussions of art and opera, is just a metaphor for life. It's what goes on beneath that is just as important; the personalities and the interpretation of them. It would be a shame to miss out on the applying some personality to the richness of the sumptuous music that Strauss has composed for even the most seemingly minor of characters, but it doesn't mean that there have to be any big revelations or deep psychological underpinning. The big things are already there and Marten and the performers concentrate on the little moments and the finer detail.

There is always the danger of the Countess appearing detached, too caught up in the technicalities of the musical debate and her personal love dilemma. Sally Matthews isn't the most expressive actress but her singing is beautiful here, carrying the essential warmth of the Countess and a wider sense of her conflict as being one that applies to life in general. It helps that the other roles are also well defined and sung, with Edgaras Montvidas in particular wonderfully lyrical and charming as Flamand, and Lauri Vasar posing a credible threat as his rival Olivier. Kristinn Sigmundsson is a fine La Roche. I still find it hard to really grasp what the role of the Count brings to the opera, but Dietrich Henschel sings it well alongside Charlotte Hellekant's Clarion. All the performances really count here however in contributing to the rich fabric of the work.

Links: La Monnaie, ARTE Concert

Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice (Lyon, 2015 - Lyon)

Christoph Willibald Gluck - Orfeo ed Euridice

Opéra de Lyon, 2015

Enrico Onofri, David Marton, Victor von Halem, Christopher Ainslie, Elena Galitskaya

Lyon - 14 March 2015
 
For a work that was intended to be stripped-back of ornamentation according to Gluck's reformist agenda for opera seria, Orfeo ed Euridice is surprisingly amenable to elaboration and interpretation. Whether it has the full resources of La Fura dels Baus behind it, or Castellucci's reaching out beyond the myth to the reality, what matters most is that a production gives focus and emphasis to the all-important dramatic and emotional core of the work. I'm not sure that it matters then the new Lyon production takes a few liberties with a staging that fully supports Gluck's dramatic intentions, but it's in very unconventional territory in its musical choices and interpretation.

Like Castellucci's Orfeo, the key point to be addressed is the ending, which must be reconsidered if one is to convey the truth of the drama and the myth. The happy ending imposed on Gluck's opera isn't convincing and it actually goes against the intentions of the myth by showing that death isn't the end and that there is a possibility of second chances. What there should be is the possibility of reward and redemption for Orpheus or at least some sense of coming to terms with the bereavement of his beloved Eurydice, but it is only in his art, in his music, that he finds the ability to endure and come out stronger from the experience.

David Marton's production for Lyon, part of their 'Les Jardins Mystérieux' opera festival, attempts to address this issue without invalidating the orginal myth or how it plays out in Gluck's opera. As its starting point, it takes inspiration from Virgil and depicts Orpheus as an aged writer who has never recovered from the death of his wife. The house he was building for them remains unfinished, and sitting at his desk tapping at a typewriter, he pours his loss out into his writing (the text projected on-screen behind him derived from a work by Samuel Beckett), as he is haunted by visions of their wedding, her death and the impossibility of ever being able to recapture what has slipped from his grasp. In his tortured prose, the old man attempts to rewrite his idea of a perfect life as it might have been, but it is doomed to fail.

The production takes the very unusual step then of splitting the role of Orpheus into two - an old Orpheus, a writer, and the younger version of his memory who is seen in flashback. As such, the traditional story is played out in a way that bears little relation to the original. Orpheus's journey to the Underworld is one that is undertaken more in writing than in 'reality', the old writer trying to reclaim what he once almost had, still seeing himself as a young man. The idea of not looking back at Eurydice isn't adhered to then, but it's more a case that Eurydice, ever-youthful in death, recoils when she sees past the young image of Orpheus to the reality of him now as an old man. It's only when the old Orpheus himself dies at the end of this production that he is reunited in the afterlife, young again, with Eurydice, the couple sharing a domestic moment with Love (Amor), depicted here as five children.

It's all a bit confusing at first, but in theory the director's concept is sound, and the production does touch on the beautiful poignancy of the work - even more so with its twist on the ending - without betraying the intent of the original. Musically however, this is not how you might be accustomed to hearing Orfeo ed Euridice. Not only do we have two Orpheuses, but one is a bass and the other a countertenor. Scored for a countertenor or mezzo-soprano, I would never have imagined the role being sung by a bass, and I don't quite know musically how they managed to split the role between the extreme range of male voices, but somehow they do it, and it is surprisingly successful. As hinted above in the description of the drama, the role of Amor is also reworked as a small chorus of five boys. This is all very unusual and it can be initially very confusing.

These aren't the only musical liberties taken with the work for the sake of this twist in the dramatic presentation. The music is also slightly 'adapted', and it takes a little while to get used to the unfamiliar interpretation. In one scene, for example, a radio broadcast listened to by the old Orpheus plays a musical response in interplay with the orchestra in the pit. Is this just being clever, or is there a valid reason for it? It may be that memories are stirred by the music on the radio, sparking off a sequence that lies somewhere between memory and imagination - the Elysian fields scene and Dance of the Blessed Spirits, for example, taking the form of a wedding reception. There are likewise a few pauses in order to let some dramatic scene play out or for Orpheus to hammer some more on his typewriter, which is not entirely satisfactory either, breaking up the flow and rhythm of the piece.

On the other hand, Enrico Onofri's interpretation and the actual playing of the orchestra is just beautiful, the opera played with all the dances included, the work allowed to breathe freely in those heavenly melodies, some of the greatest music ever written. There's no rigid Baroque playing here, the music is allowed to be dramatically expressive, putting the solo clarinet player on-stage for relevant Orphic musical expression, and the chorus are just extraordinarily good, lifting those moments of intense dramatic feeling. Consideration in the conducting was given towards the lighter voices of Christopher Ainsley's countertenor and Elena Galitskaya's Eurydice, allowing the beauty of the voices to carry. Victor von Halem's resonant, lyrical Wagnerian bass needed no assistance, and it was simply amazing to hear Orpheus sung in this register.

As slightly troubling as it might have been to hear such sacrosanct material played around with in this way, and as confusing as it might have been dramatically, this was a brave gamble by Enrico Onofri, David Marton and the Opéra de Lyon. I'm not sure that the Lyon audience knew entirely what to make of it all. Victor von Halem rightly received the loudest applause for a touching and beautifully sung performance, even if it wasn't entirely what Gluck had in mind. The contribution of the production team on the other hand wasn't entirely appreciated by a small section of the audience, however it should have been clear that if the worked touched as deeply as it did, establishing the right tone as a contemplative Orfeo ed Euridice, a sad one but never sentimental, it's because of and not despite those unconventional production choices in the music and the staging.

Links: Opéra de Lyon