Wagner - Lohengrin (Bayreuth, 2018)

Richard Wagner - Lohengrin

Bayreuth Festival, 2018

Christian Thielemann, Yuval Sharon, Georg Zeppenfeld, Piotr Beczala, Anja Harteros, Tomasz Konieczny, Waltraud Meier, Egils Silins

BR-Klassik - 25 July 2018

The premiere of Bayreuth's new production of Lohengrin for their 2018 festival tends to emphasise the colourful fairy-tale qualities of the work, but whether it gets to the mythological qualities that Wagner's opera aspires to is another matter. Whether the values the work puts forward have any meaning or application to the world we live in today is questionable in any case. Dresden's production would seem to think not, retaining the work's medieval legend setting, but Bayreuth usually take a much more adventurous analytical probing of Wagner's works for continued relevance and contemporary meaning, as the previous production by Hans Neuenfels demonstrated. With Lohengrin, there's always the tricky question of its legacy to consider, which Olivier Py's production for La Monnaie recently explored. The intentions of the latest Bayreuth production are a little more difficult to fathom.

Whether you take it at face value or probe deeper and more critically, Lohengrin however is inextricably related to the matter of German nationalism, Wagner seeking through mythology and legend to identify the characteristics that define the German people. Whether it's critical of certain unpleasant and dangerous aspects of that nature or laudatory and idealistic is questionable, but it's possible to see it both ways. Doing so of course risks polarising those aspects into broad definitions of 'good' and 'evil', and the fairy-tale setting does tend towards such a Manichean division at the cost of any finer nuance. There are certainly other elements that suggest other ways of looking at the work, but it has to be said that initially, the symbolism is confusing and difficult to pin down.

Part of the reason for this of course could be down to the fact that the set designers, the artist Neo Rauch and his wife Rosa Loy, worked independently on their conception of the work and then tried to integrate that with director Yuval Sharon's ideas. There's a clear difference of views then on what the intention, purpose and relevance of Lohengrin is, but that can also provide an interesting dialectic that can promote some interesting new thoughts on the work. Even if it's hard to fathom, I have to say I'm more taken with the visual aesthetic in this new Bayreuth production than with the contradictory thoughts that LA Opera director Sharon - the first American director invited to work on a Bayreuth production - entertains on the work.

Visually the production design is stunning, a vision in pale blue. There's nothing naturalistic about the mythological fairy-tale setting of Lohengrin, so there's no need whatsoever to have it in any realistic/idealistic depiction of medieval Brabant. Rauch and Loy's designs do pay lip service to period in the stylised costumes, but they also have more eccentric fairy-tale touches like wings attached to the backs of the main characters; long insect wings mostly, and little bat wings for Ortrud. There no real sign that these are used for flying, although the sword-fight challenge between Telramund and Lohengrin takes place in the air on wires. What does stand out as incongruous but spectacular is the huge wireless electrical generator tower where Lohengrin makes his appearance and the giant Tesla electrical coils that the accused Elsa is tied to in preparation for burning at the stake.

The imagery and the conflict of characterisation in this production does have a tendency then to highlight the divisions between good and evil. Is God on the side of the German people or against them, and is the struggle between Ortrud/Telramund and Lohentrin/Elsa a contest really to determine God's will as a resolution to King Henry's concerns about how to unite the people behind him? Admittedly, this view is probably influenced more by Waltraud Meier's brilliant interpretation in her expression of the word 'God' while she sets out to manipulate Frederic von Telramund. There is however also something about the division between old ways and new ways, between faith and magic that is highlighted in the traditional ceremonial heraldry and the 'magic' of electrical forces, the gods of technology.  There is even some hint of visual reference to Fritz Lang's Metropolis in this, where there is a similar need to reunite heart and mind in order to bring the people together as a nation.

Whether that's relevant to today is of course open to interpretation, but certainly viable in that it can be applicable to all kinds of contemporary issues, and perhaps particularly German ones. Yuval Sharon however takes a somewhat contrary viewpoint to the meaning and contemporary relevance of the work, seeing it as some kind of an expression of #MeToo and women's rights. His questioning in an interview whether "Can real love exist if you aren't allowed to know the partner?" and his view that Elsa and Ortrud are strong women who need to assert their own personality over "corrupt men" (including Lohengrin), since "blindly trusting and obeying someone is not permissible in our society" seems to me to be the complete opposite of the intended view of the opera on questions of faith and trust. There's nothing wrong in challenging or updating that view, and Wagner's views are certainly open to reevaluation, but I don't think that the director makes a convincing case by imposing modern gender politics onto the work when the real issues surely lie deeper than that on placing one's faith and trust in the concept of a nation.

The question is at least relevant in terms of power - if you want to consider the references to electricity simply in those terms - in who has the right to wield it and how they wield it. Nothing of course is that clear cut, and inevitably, by the time we get to the third Act it becomes harder to tie all the different symbols and imagery together into something meaningful. Frederic von Telramund's body isn't brought onto the stage for the last scene, but his detached wings are pinned to a flat piece of scenery that looks like a bush. The people carry flickering moth-shaped lamps, and the concluding return of Godfrey, the heir to the throne of Brabant, turns up not as a swan or a child on a swan but as a fully grown green man who resembles an East Berlin traffic light Ampelmann carrying an illuminated green shoot (the merging of nature and technology - who knows? It's Bayreuth).

Whatever you make of it all, it's a great Lohengrin that looks and sounds terrific and is certainly thought-provoking. Christian Thielemann can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned, conducting this performance with pace and vigour, but never aggressively, allowing the full Romantic flow of the work to dominate. The casting on paper looks close to ideal, but the few concerns you might have are borne out to some extent. Little needs to be said about Georg Zeppenfeld's clear authoritative King Henry; his acting abilities are maybe limited to eyebrow raising, but there's not a lot of room for interpretation in the role. Tomasz Konieczny is a superb Telramund; no cartoon villainy here, he combines a steely formidability in his voice with a weakness towards the machinations of Ortrud. Waltraud Meier is evidently not the force she once was, but her experience and interpretation count for a lot, bringing much to a vital role that deserves more than caricature. I've never been completely convinced with Anja Harteros as a Wagnerian singer, but she is capable of surprising you in the right role. Elsa is not the right role.

The star of the show as far as I was concerned (and the Bayreuth audience as well from the sound of it, although Meier also got a long enthusiastic and respectful ovation) was Piotr Beczala. Drafted into the production at short notice following the departure of the scheduled Roberto Alagna, who found himself not fully prepared for the role, Beczala was a luminous heroic Lohengrin (despite Sharon's misguided attempt to paint this Lohengrin as some kind of cruel authoritarian figure), his voice clear, bright and lyrical, his diction superb, sounding genuinely otherworldly. It's great to hear a different voice from the ubiquitous Klaus Florian Vogt in this role (quite how Alagna might have sounded is anyone's guess, but it might be intriguing to hear that one day) and Beczala, who already demonstrated his capability for the role in the Dresden production in 2016, is even better here, completely in command. There's no question whose side God is on here.

Links: Bayreuth Festival, BR-Klassik

Saint-Saëns - Samson et Dalila (Paris, 2016)

Camille Saint-Saëns - Samson et Dalila

L'Opéra de Paris, 2016

Philippe Jordan, Damiano Michieletto, Anita Rachvelishvili, Aleksandrs Antonenko, Egils Silins, Nicolas Testé, Nicolas Cavallier, John Bernard, Luca Sannai, Jian-Hong Zhao 

ARTE Concert - 13 October 2016

Originally conceived as an oratorio Samson et Dalila was, soon after a visit to see Das Rheingold at Bayreuth, developed by Camille Saint-Saëns into something more operatic. If there's little suggestion of Wagnerian influence, the unconventional method of opera composition led to Samson et Dalila having a unique and blend of music and drama elements that were perfect for the composer's strengths. It has Biblical drama, lyrical Romantic passions, lush Eastern musical arrangements and choral fervour that manage to express the contrasting sentiments at the heart of the work. If you like that sort of thing - and it's only slightly less extravagant in its exoticism than Aida - Samson et Dalila can be something fabulous, particularly when the Paris Opera get behind it the way they do in this 2016 production.

Like many other French composers around the end of the nineteenth century, Camille Saint-Saëns shared a fascination for all things oriental, travelling extensively in these exotic places and soaking up more than just a flavour of these new sounds. Mélodies persanes (1870), La Princess Jaune (1872) and Samson et Dalila (1877) are not just influenced by oriental rhythms and melodies, but positively seeped in them. There might be a tendency to regard such borrowings as kitsch or, in the parlance of our times, "cultural appropriation", but they really are what make these works distinctively beautiful.

While there might be a tendency to downplay such elements and attempt to find a middle-ground that is a little acceptable to modern tastes and sensibilities, that's not the strategy adopted by Philippe Jordan for Samson et Dalila. Quite rightly, Jordan conducts the orchestra of the Paris Opera in a manner that emphasises the true merits of the work. It's not only there that you find the sheer beauty of the composer's extravagant orchestration for the piece, but the heart of its drama. With two great singers in the principal roles and attention paid to the choral aspects of the work musically, I found this to be one of the finest and most persuasive performances of Samson et Dalila that I've come across.

Damiano Michieletto's direction of the work at the Bastille doesn't perhaps contribute quite as much as the musical performance to the success of the production, but it functions well enough to give a strong visual and dramatic context for the work. It is a typical Paris production in that, unlike the musical performance, it does tend to settle for a middle-ground. The period lies somewhere between modern and Biblical, with guns and togas (albeit used in an 'ironic' kind of way) and nothing much that adds up to any real conceptual or thematic coherence. Good vertical use is made of the stage, the Hebrew slaves confined to the darker lower levels, the misery of their captivity contrasted with the golden glow of the luxurious decadence of Delilah's bedroom above it.

It's in such contrasts however that Samson et Dalila thrives as a work of music drama, and those contrasts are well reflected also in the complementary casting of Aleksandrs Antonenko and Anita Rachvelishvili. Both artists are regulars at the Paris Opera, and their development there is paying dividends for French opera. While she is capable of great dramatic delivery and an impressive range, Rachvelishvili shows here just how versatile her voice is and how capable she is of expressing the kind of delicacy and tenderness that are vital to Delilah's allure. Evidently it's Delilah's beautiful 'Mon coeur s'ouvre à ta voix' aria that demonstrates what she is capable of, and her delivery of the line 'Réponds à ma tendresse!' is enough to send shivers down the spine.

It's a love/betrayal aria that turns into a duet of course, shared with Samson, and Antonenko blends perfectly. Antonenko is a tenor who is strong right across the range, but only really shines in certain roles. Verdi roles can be testing, and his voice can have a certain steeliness that doesn't open up and bloom as you might like, but here he complements Rachvelishvili well, providing the contrast that is necessary, giving the aria the edge of hesitancy and danger it needs before the recognition of betrayal that comes with the cry of 'Trahison!'. With Jordan and the Paris orchestra right behind this, the swooning loveliness exploding into rage, you have everything that is musically and dramatically great about this work all summed up the closing duet of Act II.

If much of Act III can feel rather kitsch with its soft choruses and oriental dance music, there similarly should be an underlying suggestion of anguish and menace for the coming fate of Samson and Delilah. The costumes don't quite manage this, the Philistines dressing up in praise of Dagon as if for a Roman orgy, all in glittering dresses and togas, with gold laurel crowns, throwing money down from Delilah's balcony onto the revellers, the downtrodden Hebrew slaves and the tormented Samson. If it studiously goes out of its way to deny the audience the expected toppling of the marble pillars conclusion - one of the few scenes of dramatic action that there is in the opera - the self-immolation scene carried out with a repentant Delilah's compliance nonetheless delivers the kind of bang the opera needs to end on.

Not providing the expected famous pay-off is a bit of a risk and it's not as if it is for the sake of any additional edge or to make some concession to a contemporary reality, but in its own way probably Damiano Michieletto's middle-ground production does more or less find an equivalent level of where Saint-Saëns's Samson et Dalila lies. More importantly however the work is given its due where it really counts; in the music and singing performances. And with this kind of account of one of the highlights of French opera of the Belle Époque, the Paris opera make the case that those merits are not inconsiderable.

Links: L'Opéra de Paris, ARTE Concert