Ludwig van Beethoven - Fidelio
Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 2014
Daniel Barenboim, Deborah Warner, Klaus Florian Vogt, Anja Kampe, Peter Mattei, Falk Struckmann, Mojca Erdmann, Kwangchul Youn, Florian Hoffmann
ARTE Concert - 7 December 2014
The choice of Beethoven's only opera Fidelio for the La Scala's 2014 showcase opening night production was, as it often is in Milan, as much a political statement as a musical one. While the anti-austerity protests took place outside and the ever-looming threat of cuts to arts funding continues to hang over the famous theatre, there were times when you got the impression that the trouble had spilled over into the theatre. Thankfully however, it wasn't the loutish bad behaviour of the logginisti this year - they were kept very happy indeed by a magnificent account of the work conducted by Daniel Barenboim in his valedictory performances for the house - but on the stage itself in Deborah Warner's production.
Beethoven's Fidelio itself doesn't make a political statement as such. It's more interested in basic human moral questions, but as generalised as the politics of the libretto are, the moral questions can't be entirely removed from the revolutionary age in which the work was written. If there's one area where Deborah Warner's production brings out the meaning and significance of Fidelio - and it is possibly the only worthwhile and discernible point about the stage concept - it's that it helps distinguish the class and social order that is an important aspect of the work, and one that too often gets lost in the lack of specificity and in the generic period setting of some productions. It's not that Fidelio is about class as much as it represents and exalts the capacity of human nature to show decency, love and respect for others - even in the face of tyranny - by relating it to the degree to which people place their faith in the most basic human values such as love, compassion and freedom.
If you didn't know that Fidelio was set in a state prison outside Seville, you would think that Deborah Warner's production takes place below an underpass at the back of a factory or a homeless shelter. There's a small office-booth and a table to take care of practicalities, but the dress of Rocco and his Marzelline is rather more casual than you would expect for a prison jailer and his daughter. The costumes appear to be significant, Rocco's assistant Fidelio looking like a binman, Don Pizarro, the Governor (or Guv'nor) wearing an ill-fitting suit that marks him out as a step above, albeit somewhat let down by the rather faded polo-shirt he wears underneath it. The Minister Don Fernando, when he arrives late in the day, is rather more smartly dressed in a shirt and a tie.
The prisoners themselves are all very much working class, Warner going as far as showing many of them wearing hard-hats, but there are lower orders still. In the deepest pit of the darkest dungeon is Florestan, a political prisoner of conscience, a 'desaparecido', cut off from the world because of his dangerous views on freedom, starved almost to death, his life about to be extinguished forever on the orders of Don Pizarro, who is holding him there illegally. Someone however hasn't given up hope. Florestan's wife Leonore, disguised as the prison jailor's assistant Fidelio believes her husband is still alive and hopes to rescue him by securing the confidence of Rocco, even going so far as to become 'engaged' to his daughter Marzelline.
And that's what is important about Fidelio. It's not class, it's not politics, it's hope. It's faith and belief (which is perhaps why Beethoven settled on the title Fidelio in the revised work rather than the original Leonore), of refusing to believe that the better nature of man can be completely extinguished. The same spirit can be found to differing degrees in Marzelline and Jaquino, in Rocco's act of kindness towards the political prisoners, allowing them to see the light of day in that stirring scene ('O welche Lust, in freier Luft'). It's significant that this concession is made on the occasion of the king's birthday, the degree to which freedom is granted or demanded dependent upon how much one defers one's freedoms to higher powers. Those who have to fight for their freedom with their lives inevitably have a greater sense of what true liberty means, but not exclusively. Clemency on the part of the 'nobility' (Don Fernando wears a tie but he also has a loose jacket) is also recognised for the greater good it can achieve.
If you didn't know all that was there in Fidelio - and even as it recognises these characteristics Warner's often confusing production isn't the most enlightening - you could tell it from the music alone, and in this production you can hear it in the singing as well. Recognising that Fidelio looks ahead even as it rests on the foundations of the old model of German opera, Barenboim conducts with an anticipatory eye on where Fidelio is to have influence later, giving Wagnerian force and character to the nobility and lyricism of Mozart. The casting for Fidelio is also typically Wagnerian, but this production finds that there are certain types of Wagnerian voices that suit Beethoven's opera better than others. Chiefly, this can be heard in the beautiful lyricism of Klaus Florian Vogt's Florestan. His voice is first heard ringing out from the darkness of Act II and his 'In des Lebens Frühlingstagen' aria really does suggest a pure spirit undefeated, his faith keeping him alive. I don't think I've seen or heard Vogt perform better than he does here.
Just as impressive is Anja Kampe's soaring Leonore. In her we get not just Leonore's anguish and fear for the fate of her husband, but her strength, determination and the beauty of her spirit in the lyrical flights of her singing. Strength and lyricism is there elsewhere towards different ends in Kwangchul Youn's Rocco and in Peter Mattei's Don Pizarro. Mojca Erdmann's and Florian Hoffmann bring out the brighter, youthful nature of Marzelline and Jaquino, while Falk Struckmann's Don Fernando is firm of purpose, directing the work towards its uplifting conclusion. Perfect casting all around in other words, each role bringing out the beauty and character of Beethoven's writing for the value it adds to the dramatic purpose of the opera. Whether there was recognition for Deborah Warner's contribution to how those characters are defined is hard to say, but on every other level the impact of the work clearly carried across to the audience on the night as much as Daniel Barenboim's significant part in it all.
Links: ARTE Concert, Teatro alla Scala
Benjamin Britten - Death in Venice
English National Opera, 2013
Edward Gardner, Deborah Warner, John Graham-Hall, Andrew Shore, Tim Mead, Laura Caldow, Sam Zaldivar, Joyce Henderson, Marcio Teixeira, Peter van Hulle, Anna Dennis
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Thomas Mann's 'Death in Venice' would have been a work that chimed with Benjamin Britten's sensibility on a number of levels. It deals with several recurring subjects - children, innocence, death and corruption - that can be found in the composer's most famous works. If Britten's final opera has however never achieved the same recognition or popularity as his masterful treatment of those themes in Peter Grimes and The Turn of the Screw, it's probably less to do with the strength of the musical composition itself - which is among Britten's most adventurous and powerful - as much as the difficulty of presenting the awkward subject matter and the dark undercurrents found in Mann's short novella in an accessible way to a modern audience.
On a personal level, Death in Venice deals with some less comfortable private matters that Britten himself struggled with in regards to his homosexuality and his attraction to young boys. Perhaps more significantly, or at least deeply connected to these issues, the work also deals with the question of the nature of the artist in the later stages of his life. In the figure of writer Gustav von Aschenbach, Britten would surely have recognised the nature of the artist's struggles with his darker impulses, the line between maintaining order and finding freedom of expression, the need to keep some matters private and make other personal observations public, the recognition of what is an elevated thought and what is derived from a basic urge. All the while Britten, like Aschenbach, has to deal with ordinary human struggles with illness, age, and with the fear of being isolated or set apart from other people.
Thomas Mann's extraordinarily rich work then is fully comprehended by Britten and brought across into musical terms with remarkable facility and precision. The libretto, by Myfanwy Piper, captures the detail and essence of the work while Britten's music makes it come alive and feel real, allowing us to sympathise with the elderly writer's queasy fascination for a beautiful young boy observed on the Lido beach in Venice. The attraction is more than just lustful, but is inspired by the love of youth itself. As a writer, Aschenbach recognises however that there is something of a self-destructive urge in his abandoning himself to the passions stirred up by the Polish boy, Tadzio, whom he observes playing with his brothers and sister, but never actually approaches.
Already on his way to his hotel in Venice through an encounter with Apollo and Dionysus and in his crossing the Styx on a "coffin black" gondola, the elderly writer already has an awareness that his travelling entails a certain amount of self-exploration, a "sudden desire for the unknown" that involves breaking down his formerly rigid position on simplicity of beauty and form. Ordered, stylised and measured, he feels the need to give himself up to something freer, something closer to purity and perfection that can only be achieved through a recognition of the darker side of perfection. "To exist in it and of it", to live it and make it more than merely words on a page.
Such self-knowledge however only comes in old age from the experience of a life lived, and that there is a bitter cruelty or irony when this is confronted with the beauty and perfection of blithely ignorant youth. In youth there is everything that one aspires to enjoy, but the knowledge only comes when one has lost it and can never regain it. There's a fatal attraction then in what this old man feels for the young boy, a idealised desire to possess what one cannot have, a sincere wish to see this wonder of youth and beauty elevated and worshipped, but also a horror at the possibility of his own corruption, sickness and old age corrupting it.
Words can only take this description of Aschenbach's sentiments so far, and Piper's libretto achieves this extremely well, but Britten's extraordinary music takes our understanding for it much further and allows those other unspoken and undignified sentiments to be expressed. Most obviously there are Eastern references in the music and the instrumentation that speak of the Sirocco conflating it with Aschenbach's old age, sickness and corruption, but the musical language and small-scale, chamber-like structure finds other unconventional means of expression, including a counter-tenor to sing Apollo and using a dancer instead of a singer for Tadzio.
Small-scale and intimate it may be, but the sweep of the ideas expounded requires a much bigger canvas, and that presents certain challenges for the theatrical presentation of the work. Deborah Warner's critically acclaimed production for the English National Opera with Tom Pye's inventive set designs achieve that quite brilliantly. There's an openness and simplicity to the designs that works with the text of the libretto without over-illustrating it, creating the mood and atmosphere of Venice through the use of colour, light and silhouettes with imagery suggesting water and skies. It looks ravishingly beautiful as well as suggesting an openness of scale. The space also allows room for the ballet dancers to express all that youthful freedom and ambiguity that is contained within the figure of Tadzio, or projected upon him by Aschenbach.
A lot then evidently rests on this first-person perspective of Aschenbach and it could hardly be better expressed than John Graham-Hall's performance here. Seen recently on DVD in a vivid and fearless performance of Britten's Peter Grimes, Graham-Hall's light tenor, beautiful in timbre and enunciation, is also perfectly suited to the character of Gustav von Aschenbach. In an interview made during the live television broadcast of this performance, the singer stated that despite the challenges of being the centre of the entire work and singing on-stage for a large part of the opera, the quality of Britten's writing makes the performance easy. He may be right, but there's more to it than he modestly suggests. It's a role that requires commitment and sensitivity to the variations of tone in Aschenbach's descent from order to chaos, and Graham-Hall's demeanour from sophisticated traveller to crumpled madman is perfectly judged and delicately phrased throughout.
English National Opera have really only recently embraced the idea of filming, broadcasting and releasing productions for the cinema and DVD, and if this production is anything to go by, we've a lot to look forward to in future projects. On Blu-ray this looks and sounds outstanding. The image quality is crisp and captures this magnificent, colourful production of Death in Venice beautifully. It might be a little to clinically perfect for some even. The audio tracks are also impressive, both LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 crystal clear, revealing all the detail of Britten's unconventional instrumentation. You can hear every single instrument and note in the superbly balanced mix and the quality and clarity of the singing. There are no extra features on the disc other than a Cast Gallery, but the booklet contains an essay and an outline synopsis of the 17 scenes. Subtitles are English, French, German and Korean only.
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky - Eugene Onegin
Metropolitan Opera, New York, 2013
Valery Gergiev, Deborah Warner, Fiona Shaw, Anna Netrebko, Mariusz Kwiecień, Oksana Volkova, Piotr Beczala, Elena Zaremba, Larissa Diadkova, John Graham-Hall, Alexei Tanovitski, David Crawford, Richard Bernstein
The Met: Live in HD - 5th October 2013
No matter how many times the story is told, no matter how simple that story seems to be on the surface, there always seems to be something new you can draw out of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin, a fact that testifies to its reputation as being a supreme work of art. The artistry of the opera was in evidence in some aspects of the Met's new 2013 production season opener - broadcast live in HD to cinemas across the world - but in others it didn't quite live up to the high expectations we've come to expect from Tchaikovsky's masterpiece or the strengths in it that have been recognised in other recent productions.
Musically, everything was in place with Valery Gergiev drawing a muscular performance out of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, sensitive to the distinctly Russian rhythms and tones of the work. Grandly romantic and at the same time intimate, any sense of sentimentality or wishy-washiness would be fatal to the work (particularly in this production), but there wasn't a trace of it here. As if to emphasise this robust performance, the Met's chorus were also in fine voice, bringing their presence to bear on each of the scenes where they appear, alerting the viewer to the fact that they are there for more than just mere decoration, but are an integral part of the Russian character of the work and the society.
What was also apparent when conducted in this way is how much the characters develop throughout Eugene Onegin and how the story - which on the surface is simple enough - develops in accordance with the growth of each of the characters. Circumstances force each of the main characters - Tatiana, Onegin and Lenski - to reflect on their situation at various points, principally in their monologues, which they come out from as different people. For Tatiana, it's the crushing humiliation of Onegin's response to her love letter in Act I, for Lenski it's the reflection on the golden days of his youth as he faces death in a duel in Act II, and for Onegin it all comes much too late in Act III. In a very Russian way however, all of the characters feel compelled to play out their fates, Tatiana as much as Onegin, already aware as soon as she places pen to paper that she's writing her future one way or the other.
Like the characters, the opera also grows and accumulates greater force, meaning and significance as it reaches each of those points and builds towards its devastating conclusion. Unfortunately, the Met's production by Deborah Warner, directed here by Fiona Shaw, seemed determined to undercut each of those important three act moments with ill-advised physical contact between the characters, when they should really be alone in their own world. Act I bewilderingly ended with Onegin kissing Tatiana after rejecting her, Act II featured an unlikely brotherly embrace between the two combatants of a duel of honour, and Act III climaxed with a passionately reciprocated kiss from Tatiana after she deals the defeated Onegin his fatal blow. No, no and no. None of it made any sense in terms of the drama or in terms of what the music is expressing.
Aside from these appalling missteps, there wasn't much to recommend in the production as a whole either. Tom Pye's sets were functional and representational of the Larin estate and Gremin ballroom in St Petersberg. The Polonaise and the Ecossaise that have been put to good use in other productions as connecting interludes for the passage of years between the duel scene and Onegin's return many years later to St Petersberg, were wasted here as mere background dance music to the ball in Act III. Compared to recent productions of the opera from Kasper Holten's dancers at the Royal Opera House, Stefan Herheim's huge tapestry of Russian life in the Amsterdam production, Krzysztof Warlikowski's queer reading of the work for Munich or indeed the Met's previous version employing Robert Carsen's seasonal light-box, this was a very drab and uninspired production that had neither the epic qualities nor the intimacy that the work should achieve.
With some minor or perhaps not so minor reservations, the singing however almost made it all worthwhile. It would be disingenuous not to acknowledge that the Met's opening production was almost entirely constructed to be a showpiece (yet again) for Anna Netrebko, and if the production didn't entirely live up to expectations, the same can't be said about Netrebko. The Russian soprano has been taking some good advice, or perhaps just letting her own voice tell her when it was ready to leave behind the bel canto roles and start to tackle some of the darker dramatic repertoire. The combination of a youthful innocent appearance with maturity of voice and expression for Tatiana is a difficult balance to achieve in one singer but Anna Netrebko has it all in looks, in voice and in acting ability, her burnished dark timbre soaring through those intensely dramatic moments with the sincerity of feeling that the role needs.
Despite the billing, this was no diva star-turn either, and Netrebko gave as much in her performance to all those sharing the stage with her. Some of them however weren't quite up to her stature, and unfortunately for the success of the production as a whole, that includes Mariusz Kwiecień's Onegin. There was little wrong with his singing, Kwiecień clearly a strong performer who is more than capable for the role, but he just didn't have the personality or character to be an Onegin opposite Anna Netrebko. I don't think the confused direction did him any favours either. Elsewhere however, the singing performances were just superb. Piotr Beczala is becoming a house favourite at the Met, and deservedly so. Whether he has great personality of his own or not, he's a fine singer in the classic tenor mould and capable of great beauty in his expression, bringing the necessary quality to those key emotional moments and famous arias. For Lenski, that's 'Kuda, kuda vï udalilis', and Beczala's delivery of it was heartfelt and beautiful.
Oksana Volkova was an impressive Olga and there were even solid, shining contributions from Elena Zaremba's Madame Larina and from Larissa Diadkova as Filippyevna. John Graham-Hall's Monsieur Triquet was however just bewildering, his role overworked in the context of the opera to little real effect. Sadly, it was this kind of misplaced emphasis that contributed to the imbalance between the work, the music and the dramatic presentation of its real human qualities. Combined with the lack of any real insight or ideas this Eugene Onegin was far from being totally satisfactory, but all the same there was nothing here to take the shine off Anna Netrebko's impressive venture into the new territory and future greatness.
