Beethoven - Fidelio (Salzburg, 2015 - Webcast)

Ludwig van Beethoven - Fidelio

Salzburger Festspiele, 2015

Franz Welser-Möst, Claus Guth, Jonas Kaufmann, Adrianne Pieczonka, Sebastian Holecek, Tomasz Konieczny, Hans-Peter König, Olga Bezsmertna, Norbert Ernst, Paul Lorenger, Nadia Kichler

Medici.tv - August 2015 

The 2015 Salzburg Festival production of Fidelio finds a way to bring out and emphasise the beauty of Beethoven's musical compositions for the opera, but it does so rather drastically by cutting all the spoken dialogue sections. This is a risky strategy since the work has a very important message on life, liberty and love that is contained within its drama just as much as in the music. Or does it? Is it not Beethoven's music that really carries the depths of the sentiments far above the rescue opera nature of the drama? The Salzburg production seems to confirm the impression that it's the music that takes precedence over the drama, but evidently the music and drama are intertwined and to such an extent in Fidelio that deconstruction of its elements might not really serve any valuable purpose.

Salzburg have a bit of a history with reworking familiar operas to see if a fresh approach can reveal new facets of the work. And not just in the expected manner of bringing in a director who can radically reinterpret the work. Salzburg aren't afraid to take an adventurous approach with the music and the structure of familiar works as well, such as Christian Thielemann's revelatory pared-down arrangement of Parsifal and the less successful attempt to reinstate a version of Molière's 'Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme' alongside Strauss's abandoned first version of Ariadne auf Naxos. In the case of Salzburg's Fidelio, the right director is also needed to compensate for the stripping away of the spoken dialogue, and the feeling seems to be that along with Beethoven's music, Claus Guth's probing psychological dissection of the work can be enough to get the essence of the work across, and perhaps even bring something more out of it. That's a bit of a gamble...

Musically at least, Fidelio appears to be in safe hands with Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic. More than safe, the work seems to just glow with all the splendour of one of the finest works of the Classical period played by one of the best orchestras in the world. The sweep of the drama is all there, along with sensitivity for the sentiments and attention to the sophistication of the human message in the arrangements - one of the strongest expressions of the beauty and resilience of humanity outside of Mozart. Mozart's influence indeed can be heard much more clearly when presented in this purely musical fashion without the awkwardness of some of the domestic elements and dramatic implausibilities intruding. Even those however are given new life here, with even Marzelline and Jaquino's opening duet sparkling and fresh.

Viewed purely in terms of the impact of cutting all the spoken text just so that the arias, duets and quartets can be better highlighted, Salzburg's Fidelio succeeds impressively. In no small part, the quality of the exceptional casting and singing has much to contribute to that. Jonas Kaufmann sings Florestan with all the intensity combined with sensitivity you would expect, possibly a little over-projected, but clearly in anguish for his unjust imprisonment, sustained only by the love of his wife and his belief that what is right will eventually overcome evil in the world. Adrianne Pieczonka is also about as good as you can get in this role nowadays. Hans-Peter König as ever phrases beautifully with rounded depth and resonance as Rocco. Olga Bezsmertna is a bright, lyrical and passionate Marzelline, well matched with Norbert Ernst's Jacopo. I found Tomasz Konieczny's baritone lacking in colour and dynamic when he sang Wotan in the 2015 Vienna Ring Cycle, but he is a little better here as Pizarro.

If the reconstruction, interpretation and performance allow the opera to flow more beautifully on a purely musical level, it does risk making a nonsense of the dramatic content. Christian Schmidt's sets for Claus Guth's production don't even bother with a jail or even any familiar sense of captivity. The action is set in what looks like a large undecorated ballroom or anteroom which is dominated by a huge black monolith that rotates to obscure and block the way between the characters, serving also to permit entrances and exits. Light and darkness are important symbols in this work, and this is emphasised by the black dress of Pizarro and his men contrasted with the immaculate white of the prisoners who troop out for "O welche Lust". No dressing in rags here. Shadows are also significant, reflected boldly on the walls, shifting in size and solidity.

The representation of a 'shadow side' is a common psychological device used by Claus Guth, and it's extended here - also not uncommonly - to a number of doubles. The most obvious candidate for such a division is of course Fidelio/Leonora, but at least Guth doesn't or seems not to make too much of the male/female persona of Leonora's disguise. Quite how he wants to mark that division however is anyone's guess, as the silent shadow double for Leonora here seems rather to be the underlying expression of the fear and confusion (over Marzelline's interest in Fidelio) that Leonora cannot show on the surface. Quite why the shadow Leonora frantically expresses herself using exaggerated sign-language gestures isn't obvious. Nor is it clear why the fairly one-dimensional Pizarro is the only other figure with a shadow-self, and indeed he doesn't seem to offer any more insight on the nature of the evil that is already there in the character's expressions and actions.

If the purpose of Guth's concept is difficult to determine, and can't exactly be said to fill in the gaps left by the cuts to the spoken dialogue (Guth in fact introducing industrial noise sounds and amplified breathing in their place), the setting looks good and works dramatically with the characterisation. Up to a point. I daresay prior familiarity with Fidelio aids understanding of what is happening and there are a few other concessions. The duets are still there, and a lot of the conflicts of light and dark occurs there. These are also superbly played and sung for all the necessary impact. It also helps to have a projected image of Florestan during the overture as a hint of the object of Leonora's mission. It's not a bad idea either even if it's just to remind the audience who have come to see him that Jonas Kaufmann will appear, since it's a good hour and a half and into Act II before we see or hear Florestan.

It's only when we see Florestan and the state that he is in that the nature of the opera and Guth's directorial touches hits home with more of an impact. As far as the opera goes this ought to be a big deal, and Franz Welser-Möst and the Vienna Philharmonic certainly set that up the drama of the outcome in the Leonore No. 3 introduction to the finale. Quite whether Guth's direction works to the same extent or even follows the same direction is less certain. By the time we get to the Finale where the black monolith has disappeared leaving behind only a pit in the floor of the ballroom and a huge chandelier refracts light everywhere, the set starts to look more like an emotional space rather than a physical one.

If it were not already obvious, particularly with the in-between breathing and the noise, Florestan's confused, exaggerated, horrified reaction to Leonora and his 'freedom' suggests that the whole idea of the rescue - with all the implausibilities that lie within the rescue opera itself - is just a feverish fantasy of the prisoner's mind. While psychologically this is likely to be more realistically the state of mind of a tortured man left to starve and die in isolation, it is not, I imagine, exactly what Beethoven had in mind. Leonora's shock at Florestan expiring on the final note of the opera suggests a mix of subjective and objective realities, so it could be that the rescue is just too much for Florestan's weakened body and spirit to take. That ending certainly has a big impact, but the confusion of the final scene does tend to detract from the spirit of what is truly great about the work.

Links: Salzburger Festspiele, Medici

Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (Met 2014 - HD-Live)

Richard Wagner - Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

Metropolitan Opera, 2014

James Levine, Otto Schenk, Annette Dasch, Karen Cargill, Johan Botha, Paul Appleby, Michael Volle, Johannes Martin Kränzle, Martin Gantner, Hans-Peter König, Matthew Rose

Met Live in HD - 13 December 2014

There's been quite a contrast between how New York's Metropolitan Opera present a mixture of modern and classic traditional Wagner productions. On the one hand you have the abstract otherworldly modernisations of Parsifal and the high-tech concepts of their Ring cycle, and on the other you have literal realism of the Otto Schenk's twenty year old production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg. It demonstrates how opera tastes and approaches to production design and direction have changed over the years, but what hasn't changed (in my view anyway), and specifically in relation to Wagner's operas, is that they each in their own way seek to represent the essence of Wagner's music on the stage, as well as the literal narrative depiction of the drama.

Although the approach is quite different then, and the subjects evidently are as far apart as you can get on the Wagner scale, the Otto Schenk's production of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and the Robert Lepage's Ring cycle for the Met both adopt the necessary approaches that they find best convey the qualities of the work. And, inevitably, both in their own way are doomed to fail to cover the totality of what is in each of those respective works, but that's the challenge you face when taking on works of such enormous richness and complexity. It's precisely because there is so much to be gained from those works that Wagner's music-dramas continue to inspire new ideas and radically different approaches and interpretations.

Despite the differences in the content and length, Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is indeed a work that is just as rich and expansive in its outlook as the combined works of the Ring cycle. One specific common aspect of the Met's Ring and their Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg that serves as the backbone for each of the productions, is the necessary impression of solidity and firmness of purpose. That of course ought to be there, as it reflects the muscular complexity of the music score, which in turn serves to reflect the enduring universality of the subject - whether that be the nature of the gods in one or the nature of being human in the other. The Met's Machine gives a firm and consistent foundation to explore the Ring, while the detailed wood and stone structures for the set for Schenk's production give a little more of a human presence, one that is perhaps no less enduring, but also subject to change. The period setting for Meistersinger and the universality of the situations within it reminds us of that fact.

Aside from the strictly literal depiction of Nuremburg in the 16th century and the impressive visual impact of seeing whole streets, houses and workshops recreated in meticulously realistic detail and scale, the sets for Schenk's production fulfil another vital aspect of the work - the question of community. Whether you want to see the humanity within the work as Christian in nature - the opera even opening with a mass scene - other elements suggest that it's the community aspect that is what really matters. That's retained in the context of the period here, in the Christian worship and in the religious subjects that are the basis for the Meistersinger's songs. This of course is challenged by the youthful irreverence of Von Stolzing, but he is cautioned and coached by Hans Sachs not just in the rules of being a Meistersinger, but also how to respect the traditions and the values that underpin them. The community and the rules that govern it might seem restrictive, but - as the inclusion of the watchman suggests - it provides order and protection from, well... let's just for the purposes of this review politely call them "outside threats" to our way of life.

The Met's sets hold all this together, as well as being simply perfect for the functional demands of how the stage is used and filled by the huge choruses. Everything that occurs in Die Meistersinger is designed towards bringing about a showpiece conclusion that has real impact and meaning, and everything should lead towards this. The community and the values they hold are all there in the church setting of Act I, in the craft of the Meistersinger's trades, in the whole street scenes of Act II, in the setting of St John's Eve and the twilight evening, and in the honest labour of Hans Sachs' workshop where von Stolzing learns the value of the song. Act III's conclusion then is everything it ought to be, gathering together the youth and experience, the wisdom and folly, the generosity and the mean-spiritedness of the preceding acts into one glorious celebration of life.

If it's difficult to put all that humanity into the production design (even as it remains one of those challenges that will always attract ambitious directors like Stefan Herheim), the direction of the orchestra and the singing performances are there to bring in that very necessary dimension, and the Met's production consequently does that tremendously well. Principally, it's Levine's conducting of the work that brings all the human colour and nuance out of the score and it's representation of so many facets of the human condition that are there in Die Meistersinger. It is a glorious work, expressing a warmth, a humour and a human sensitivity that does not exist in quite the same way in any other Wagner opera. And although it exalts the qualities and capabilities that love brings to human existence, Wagner also recognises - intentionally I believe - the flaws, the meanness, pettiness and the vainglorious side of human nature that is there in Hans Sachs and Walther von Stolzing as much as in Sixtus Beckmesser. Maybe I'm being overly generous in that view.

Levine's conducting brings all those elements out, but not in isolation. He's clearly working with what is depicted on the stage and is sensitive also to the nature and characteristics of the individual singers. You would expect nothing less from James Levine, but in the context of this particular work, it's more important than ever, and the rewards it yields are even greater. The measure and the pacing through Acts I and II are delightful, revealing the beautiful flow of this work through to its epic conclusion, but with wonderful attention to detail in individual instruments - the individual or the artist's contribution in the harmony of the whole being part of what this work is about. Levine's conducting makes this aspect beautifully meaningful and relevant.

The singing is not quite as nuanced as Levine's contribution - I suspect a lack of direction in this revival - but all of the performances supported the work as a whole. There was perhaps not as much warmth and humanity in Michael Volle's Hans Sachs as you might like, and you didn't really get the sense of what he and Eva meant to each other, but he was drafted in at short notice and his singing was nonetheless marvellous. There's brightness and life in the timbre of his voice, his line was assured, and he has all the ability and charisma required to carry such a role. Johan Botha was perhaps not as strong in the role of Walther von Stolzing as he might have been in the past or in other Wagner roles, but if there is any decline in performance it's minor. Annette Dasch might have had one or two moments of unsteadiness but was a good Eva, although again failing to exude any warmth or character. This production's Beckmesser was more of an amiable blustering buffoon, posing no real threat to the "natural order", but whatever way it's played, Johannes Martin Kränzle experience of this role injects it with the good-natured humour and humanity that is lacking elsewhere.

Led by Levine, it was the underlying humanity that shone out of this production of Wagner's Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg and that's what marks it as one of the greatest operas ever written. It's remarkable that it takes six hours to perform this work, but there's nothing you would have taken out or reduced, nothing that seems too much or unnecessary. The impression you should be left with rather is that everything feels absolutely right. The genius of Wagner's Die Meistersinger is that it leaves you with a sense of wonder and satisfaction that there may indeed be purpose, order and meaning to life that is within our grasp. In Die Meistersinger, art is the force that elevates humanity, demonstrates man's capacity to express and endure their condition and achieve their potential. It's a philosophy that lies at the heart of all Wagner's work, and it's recognised and brought out marvellously in this New York Met production.

Wagner - Die Walküre

Richard Wagner - Die Walküre

The Metropolitan Opera, New York

James Levine, Robert Lepage, Deborah Voigt, Bryn Terfel, Stephanie Blythe, Eva-Maria Westbroek, Jonas Kaufmann, Hans-Peter König

The Met: Live in HD - May 14, 2011

The second part of Wagner’s Der Ring des Nibelungen, Die Walküre, closed the Metropolitan Opera’s Live in HD series for a 2010-11 season that had opened with the first of the Met’s new and ambitious Ring Cycle, Das Rheingold. Robert Lepage’s production of the prelude of the epic opera cycle certainly showed a lot of ambition and ingenuity, with a specially designed and constructed piece of twisting, revolving high-tech machinery that would serve as a backdrop and stage over and above the (reinforced) Met stage, but as to whether this Ring cycle would be one of the greats, well, like any staging of the complete work, judgements really need to be reserved until we get to Die Walküre. On the basis of now having two parts of Wagner’s massive work performed (with the remaining two parts Siegfried and Götterdämmerung to be staged in the Met’s 2011-12 season), it’s still a little too early to say, but the Lepage production is certainly looking like being a highly memorable new staging of the Ring Cycle.

What was at least already evident from Das Rheingold, beyond the obvious and impressive ingenuity of the morphing huge mechanical structure of “planks”, was the quality of the singing that lent the prelude’s entertaining fairytale of gods, giants and dwarfs with their lust for gold and power a deeper and rather more human quality than the opening part of the story is traditionally accorded. Whether that element would be sustained in Die Walküre was however in little doubt, with Bryn Terfel and Stephanie Blythe reprising their roles as Wotan and Fricka and a terrific casting that would see Deborah Voigt in the role of the Valkyrie Brünnhilde, Eva-Maria Westbroek (recently seen at the Royal Opera House as Anna Nicole) playing Sieglinde, Jonas Kaufmann as Siegmund and Hans-Peter König as Hunding.

Die Walküre is structured in such a way that all these roles are of vital importance and any one weak link could bring the whole construction down. Act One depends on a strong bond being developed between Siegmund and Sieglinde, two twins, human Wälsung offspring of Wotan, separated at birth who meet and fall in love in an incestuous relationship that is to produce the important figure of Siegfried; Act Two is largely sustained and dramatically driven by the argument between Wotan and Fricka over Wotan’s meddling in human affairs and the threat to the sanctity of marriage that this incestuous relationship represents; Act Three, and really the opera as a whole, relies on the bond that exists between Wotan and Brünnhilde, his favourite daughter and leader of the Valkyrie, a warrior band of sisters whose task it is to lead heroes who have died in battle to Valhalla, who defies the will of her father to tragic consequences.



As fine as the singers all are in these roles, Wagner’s Die Walküre presents tremendous vocal challenges that can expose those unused to its demands, so there were nonetheless potential dangers in each of the music-drama’s key relationships. More used to lyrical Italian tenor roles, Jonas Kaufmann however switched to a different register without too much difficulty, while Eva-Maria Westbroek, who I’ve seen do Puccini, Strauss and Turnage, clearly seems to be best suited to being a Wagner soprano, delivered the finest performance I have ever seen from her to date. Stephanie Blythe succeeded in making her Fricke seem more than a bitter shrew in the Second Act, the audience able to sympathise to some extent with her position, short-reaching and motivated by personal jealousy though it is, while Bryn Terfel’s Wotan at the same time did not seem weak in bowing to her demands, but rather fatalistically yielding to the inevitable fate that has been predicted by Erda at the end of Das Rheingold. The conclusion to Act II that brings all the characters together was therefore every bit as effective and doom-laden as it ought to be.

Where Die Walküre stands or falls however is in the father-daughter relationship between Wotan and Brünnhilde, and it was by no means certain that it would work in this production any better than the most recent Bayreuth production. Deborah Voigt showed a few wobbles in her earlier Met performances as Minnie in Puccini’s La Fanciulla del West, while Bryn Terfel – as terrific a singer and performer as we all know he is – failed to make a significant impression as Wotan in a Rheingold filled with much stronger Wagnerian voices. The real test of his Wotan however is in Die Walküre. It’s an opera I’ve seen him sing before most powerfully back in 2005 (in concert for the BBC Proms), and if anything his singing here was even better and his interpretation of the role much improved. And that is saying something. Deborah Voigt didn’t have the rich middle register that you’d ideally like to hear in the role of Brünnhilde, but she sang the role superbly and her lighter voice actually worked well in establishing her as an impetuous child torn between pleasing her father and incurring his wrath through an act – intervening in the fate of Siegmund – that she believes is necessary.



The relationship between father and daughter is critical in dramatic terms and in human terms for the tragedy that unfolds, and Terfel and Voigt get it right, and not just in the Third Act. Act II establishes the nature of their relationship well, with some playful kidding around and punches to the shoulder that other productions would find difficult to countenance as being the actions of dark, serious immortals. The nature of the relationship changes as the drama progresses, and at every stage the two singers seem to be on the same page, Voigt’s sensitive Brünnhilde supporting the depth of feeling that Terfel draws out of Wotan’s terrible dilemma, truly giving him something to agonise over. It’s absolutely wonderful to see.

Also wonderful is watching the Met’s Ring Machine in operation, transforming fluidly in an instant from the dark and imposing forest of the opera’s stormy Vorspeil to Hunding’s lodge, the synchronised projections creating the necessary textures. It’s not overused either in a way that would dominate over the drama or the singing, blending subtly rather to meets the demands of the narrative and the mood, as it should. I would prefer it however if it was a little more integral to the opera and had some more obvious conceptual meaning. In an interview for ‘Opera News’ Robert Lepage makes interesting observations about Time and about the Ring Cycle being not so much a circle as a series of spiralling events, but it’s difficult to grasp this from watching Das Rheingold and Die Walküre alone. The remaining two instalments will prove whether something is made of that necessary conceptual element that will determine whether this is to be a truly great Ring Cycle or not, but even from a spectacle viewpoint and from the quality of the performances so far – not least with James Levine leading a storming Metropolitan orchestra performance – this is shaping up to be a memorable staging of one of the opera’s greatest achievements.

Wagner - Lohengrin

Richard Wagner - Lohengrin

Festspielhaus, Baden-Baden, 2006

Kent Nagano, Nikolaus Lehnhoff, Hans-Peter König, Klaus Florian Vogt, Solveig Kringelborn, Tom Fox, Waltraud Meier, Roman Trekel

Opus Arte

This romantic opera from the end of Wagner’s early period, just before embarking on his more mature work, is rather more conventional and accessible than, for example, the romance of Tristan und Isolde, but by the same token Lohengrin doesn’t have the conceptual weight of later Wagner dramas. The characters are rather one dimensional, divided quite clearly as being on the side of light or darkness, and the score is not as refined as later Wagner. On the other hand, there are some wonderful singing roles, some dynamic scoring that colours the difference between the physical and the spiritual, a terrific drama, and of course the opera is of great interest for the thematic links it has with the composer’s more celebrated works, to say nothing of the fact that the traditional Wedding March originates from this opera.

Lohengrin starts off like a courtroom drama, but it’s one that, being a Wagner opera, is dressed up in regal grandness, heroic declamations and with a strong element of ancient Teutonic mythology underlying it all. On the eve of going to war against Hungary, King Heinrich calls a tribunal meeting to settle a dispute that has arise over the territory of Brabant. Friedrich von Telramund has accused Elsa, the daughter of the late Duke of Brabant, of murdering Gottfried, her brother and the rightful heir to Brabant. Elsa defends her position and calls on a heroic knight of her visions to take up arms and defend herself in combat against Telramund. Her knight in shining armour (quite literally) cannot reveal his name, and begs her not to ask of it, but it transpires – no surprise here since it is the title of the opera – that he is Lohengrin, the son of Parsifal, guardian of the Holy Grail, who is himself the subject of Wagner’s final opera. The themes of this opera deal similarly – if not quite as abstractly – with questions of virtue, purity and innocence, but above all here with the noble virtues of complete love and unconditional trust.

Nikolaus Lehnhoff’s 2006 production for the Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, conducted by Kent Nagano, brings a new dimension to those themes. His use of the stage, as ever, is simply magnificent, the use of props minimal, the sets nonetheless majestic and impressive, yet simple and not overly ornate. The stage is immaculately lit, balancing light and shade, foreground and background, using colours to highlight and give appropriate emphasis. Whatever angle you look at this from – and the cameras do a fine job in their coverage – the stage and the positions of the characters within achieves maximum impact. At the same time, by making the period non-specific, although certainly more modern than its middle-ages origins, Lehnhoff downplays the fairytale trappings of a heroic knight borne on a chariot drawn by a wild swan (as well as leaning it well away from any troubling National Socialist conceptions that could be applied to the themes), while still remaining true to the opera and its purpose, without over-emphasising or lessening the impact of its musical strengths.

Solveig Kringelborn’s Elsa doesn’t have quite the power of the other singers, nor indeed does Klaus Florian Vogt’s Lohengrin, but the nature of their characters is purer than the others, with a bond of trust between them that their counterparts Ostrud and Telramund do not possess, and consequently their voices are softer – more angelically toned than the more typical Wagnerian heldentenor in the case of Lohengrin – but clear, ringing and forceful where required. Tom Fox, as Telramund and Waltraud Meier as Ostrud are however terrific, playing their baddies to the hilt and with delightfully over-the-top almost pantomime eye-rolling madness in the case of Meier’s sorceress – both perfectly appropriate nonetheless for this particular opera and for roles that shouldn’t be underplayed. Kent Nagano conducts the Deutsches Symphonic-Orchester of Berlin for similar dramatic force, but the dynamic and subtle tones are there also, brought out in the fine PCM surround sound mix that comes on the Blu-ray.

The Blu-ray quality cannot be faulted either on its image quality, or the manner in which it is filmed. It captures perfectly the qualities of the stage sets and the lighting and allows you to get right up close with the performers. A 68-minute documentary is also included on the 2-disc set which looks at the opera and its staging in some detail with interviews from most of the principals involved, but it is overlong in its walk-through description of the plot, extensively illustrated with scenes from the opera. Kent Nagano however provides interesting analysis on the tone and complexities of the score, particularly in the preludes to each of the three acts.