Richard Wagner - Tannhäuser
Staatsoper Unter den Linden Berlin, 2015
Daniel Barenboim, Sasha Waltz, Peter Seiffert, Ann Petersen, Marina Prudenskaya, Peter Mattei, René Pape, Peter Sonn, Tobias Schabel, Jürgen Sacher, Jan Martiník, Sónia Grané
Staatsoper Video on Demand
Some of Wagner's later operas lend themselves well to a more abstract expression by directors in collaboration with artists and sculptors, finding new ways to delve into the philosophical, spiritual and transcendental qualities of Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal. When it comes to Tannhäuser directors generally take a more conventional and literal approach to its divisions between the physical and the spiritual, and it has tended to be less effective when directors take the artistic conceptual approach like the one in the 2014 Bayreuth production. The work's big, bold and direct nature even constrains the more experimental directors like Calixto Bieito and Romeo Castellucci, limiting their ability to explore aspects of the work entirely successfully. And yet the limited dramatic potential versus the poetry of Wagner's libretto and the flow of his music does seem to call out for an imaginative response. Perhaps dance is the way?
There's certainly a ritualistic almost religious ceremonial aspect to Tannhäuser that can be developed as Castellucci did in a rather obscure fashion with topless archers during the work's overture, but recognising that there is a flow in Wagner's score throughout the opera, director and choreographer Sasha Waltz extends this sense of ritualised movement with additional dance elements. It should also be noted that Wagner introduced a ballet into the work for its infamous French premiere, so there's justification for seeing dance as very much part of the work.
Waltz's choreography moreover doesn't dominate or take over from the dramatic expression but it certainly enhances it and brings out or highlights that essential character in the score. Again, the limitations of this work are still felt, and although the Act 1 Venusberg Bacchanal features semi-naked dancers writhing languidly and feverishly to Wagner's music, capturing the hedonistic side of the scene, it goes on a long time in this hybrid version of the opera and - despite the nudity - runs out of ways to keep it dramatically interesting. The set is simple but beautiful, a cone at back of the stage that pours out bodies spilling over occasionally onto the stage, a whirlpool that holds Heinrich in a centrifugal force that proves difficult to escape.
Dancers also capture the rhythmic chants of the pilgrims in the subsequent scene, skipping around Landgrave and the singers of Wartburg who are dressed in stuffy formal costumes of tradition and convention as they try to spin Heinrich back into their orbit. Movement also ties into music and song, showing it as a force that Elisabeth can't live without, Waltz striving to make visible that fact that there is life and truth contained within this gracious. There are no static solid beams in the Wartburg hall either, the walls thick bamboo-like pillars that sway in response to the drama contained within them. These are simple sets yet they provide space for movement, even if it is just the flow of the figures with them, never allowing the work to become static and unyielding.
Choreography is not something I usually comment on in opera productions, for the obvious reason that they rarely have a significant presence in opera, but Sasha Waltz's choreography is superb here, keeping the work moving, only bringing the dance to the forefront to emphasise certain scenes, stepping back in others so that it never overshadow the singers or Barenboim's progression of the score, managing to be expressive and as one with the music. The procession of the pilgrims in Act III whirling to the chorus in the misty morning is just glorious. The dance choreography definitely contributes then, but it's also just good direction.
As a concept Waltz perhaps doesn't particularly have anything new to say but very much finds a personal expression for Tannhäuser. If nothing else, she finds an appropriate way to handle the miracle conclusion that fits with the overall theme of the production, visualising the staff sprouting green leaves as a human body, which is a nice touch and all the more effective for not bombarding the work with symbolism and imagery as others mentioned above. It's a beautifully designed and costumed production with lovely lighting that is moody and dramatic, all of which is very much in tune with the nature of Tannhäuser.
In musical and singing terms it's a ravishing account, persuasive that this is a work of balletic grace. Daniel Barenboim measures that flow of sensuous delight to perfection, glorying in the rousing majesty of the opera's choruses, and the singing performances are all outstanding. Ann Petersen brings a sweet lyric softness as Elisabeth. Peter Seiffert is magisterial as Heinrich, Peter Mattei is an outstanding Wolfram, René Pape a reliable Landgrave, and Marina Prudenskaya is an excellent Venus. Whether the dance elements work for you or not, this is a glorious Tannhäuser to listen to and see performed to this standard.
Links: Staastoper Unter den Linden
Toshio Hosokawa - Matsukaze
La Monnaie-De Munt, Brussels - 2017
Bassem Akiki, Sasha Waltz, Barbara Hannigan, Charlotte Hellekant, Frode Olsen, Kai-Uwe Fahnert
ARTE Concert - March 2017
Using music as a means of bringing out or fusing the drama with another more spiritual dimension is I imagine is something that most opera composers attempt to do, but based on the few works that I've heard from him, it seems to me that Toshio Hosokawa manages to do this rather better than most contemporary composers. It's perhaps because Hosokawa shares an affinity with traditional Japanese Nôh drama, an aspect that was alluded to in Hosokawa's most recent opera, Stilles Meer, but which is even more apparent in direct adaptation in his earlier 2011 opera Matsukaze.
Still, it's not easy to translate expression of the stylised movements and gestures from Nôh to the western form of lyric drama, and it usually requires other techniques and instruments to bring out a sense of the other. Adapting two Nôh dramas in her 2016 opera Only The Sound Remains, for example, Kaija Saariaho made effective use of the otherworldly sounds of the Finnish kantele harp. Hosokawa often uses recordings of sounds of wind, rain and waves as well as other instruments to evoke nature, but he also makes effective use of other Nôh elements not commonly used in opera to such an extent: movement and dance.
And to that end, Hosokawa has dance choreographer Sasha Waltz as an effective collaborator and in La Monnaie an opera company willing to explore such new collaborations and extend the range modern opera by commissioning such experimental works. Musically, theatrically, dramatically, in terms of performance and yes perhaps even spiritually, Matsukaze is one of the most successful new productions of contemporary opera and its 2011 production revived here for La Monnaie's 2016-17 season demonstrates this beyond any question.
As with Stilles Meer, Hosokawa takes time to establish a sense of mood and place that is outside of the common experience and the common opera tradition. To the sound of wind through trees and the distant sound of the sea, grey and white clad figures spin, swirl, roll and interweave like crashing waves, crosswinds or perhaps invisible spirits. Into this space walks a priest (Frode Olsen), again singing in a manner not typical of the western tradition, but more like a ritual chant or prayer. Hosokawa paints the scene of this introduction with a flurry of percussion, shimmering strings and whispering flutes that gasp and blow.
In an adaptation of the original 14th century Nôh drama, Matsukaze relates the story of two women, Matsukaze (Wind in the Pines) and her sister Marasame (Autumn Rain), whose names the priest sees carved in a memorial on a pine tree. In a dream, the ghosts of the sisters tell their tale, how they became the lovers of Yukihara, a courtier exiled to Suma for three years. Soon after his departure, the women learned of his death and died from grief. Unable to let go of their earthly longing however, they are condemned to remain tied to the world of mortals.
Although the question of abandoning earthly attachments in order to pass over to another state of is an important aspect of the Buddhist doctrine, there doesn't appear to be any deeper message or moral to be drawn from Matsukaze than this. As in the original Nôh drama however, the true meaning or value of the work is in the ritual and the expression of the drama in performance, and it's here that Hosokawa's music conducted by Bassem Akiki, its use of sounds and silence, the dance moves of Sasha Waltz and the set designs of Pia Maier Schriever and Chiharu Shiota all create an effective environment for Barbara Hannigan and Charlotte Hellekant to struggle to cast off those powerful human emotions.
The darkened stage following the priest's discovery of the memorial to the women related to him by a fisherman, opens up (to the rippling of a stream) to reveal a webbed background of black threads, representing the seaweed that the women gathered, as well as a barrier that separates the spirit world from the world of mortals (not unlike the curtains and barriers in Peter Sellars' production of Saariaho's Only the Sound Remains). Scurrying high up in the tangle of the netting are Matsukaze and Marasame, who descend - their white robes turning to black robes - to re-enact the story of their own entanglement with Yukihara in the mortal domain that they have not yet escaped.
The production, like the original Nôh drama, uses a variety of means to relate the story and find other ways to delve beneath the surface and represent the less tangible emotions that are in conflict. Much of that in the opera is taken up by the dancers, some of whose movements and roles are somewhat abstract and difficult to define. One figure with his upper face and eyes masked could be 'blind desire'. The use of props are limited, but a hat left behind by Yukihara is used as a representation of Matsukaze's emotional attachment to the material world, which is also represented in the latter part of the production as a large boxed frame. Within and without this the dancers also shift and gather to form the pine tree that is a representation of Matsukaze's love. Her sister Marasame is able to resist being wound up into the tree and consequently succeeds in eventually passing over to the other side.
The role of the singers then is somewhat unusual as in addition to the considerable singing challenges and differences that define the two sisters, Barbara Hannigan and Charlotte Hellekant also have to move, interact and dance with these abstractions, fluidly moving from one state to another. Hosokawa's score, conducted by Bassem Akiki, also works fluidly with Sasha Waltz's choreography to give the simple tale of Matsukaze's fate a sense of momentum and urgency. Matsukaze's ghost would appear to be doomed to remain unable to depart entirely from the physical plane, but Hosokawa and Waltz suggest a more peaceful if unclear resolution as an older woman, dressed in white, moves slowly across the stage as all the other elements fall away into a silence broken only by the rippling of water.
Links: La Monnaie-De Munt
