Gioachino Rossini - La Gazzetta
L'Opéra Royal de Wallonie, 2014
Jan Schultsz, Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera, Cinzia Forte, Enrico Marabelli, Laurent Kubla, Edgardo Rocha, Julie Bailly, Monica Minarelli, Jacques Catalayud, Roger Joakim
Culturebox, Medici - Live streaming - 26 June 2014
It's not surprising, now that we are able to explore and rediscover much more of Rossini's work, to find that there are many familiar melodies in La Gazzetta that we would have heard elsewhere. The composer would often rework or reuse material written for other works, but all of the music in La Gazzetta, a comic opera based on a play by Carlo Goldoni, would all have been new to a Naples audience in 1816 when Rossini arrived there to commence what would prove to be a most productive period. Almost 200 years later, the Opéra Royal de Wallonie at Liège also manage to bring something new to the work, with the rediscovery in 2012 of the missing Act I quintet restored to the work for the first time.
The Liège company are at their best and have a good track record with productions of this kind of light comic opera, whether it's in the French and Belgian repertoire (Offenbach and Grétry) or even some of the more obscure end of the Italian comic opera repertoire in works like Galuppi's L'inimico delle donne or rarely heard early Rossini (L'equivoco stravagante). The approach is much the same with their 2014 production of La Gazzetta, and the results are equally successful and entertaining. Colourful, slightly stylised and modernised, but true to the intentions of the work without unnecessary revision.
Directed by Stefano Mazzonis di Pralafera - the Artistic Director at Liège - La Gazzetta then takes into account rather more modern means of technological communications when ex-businessman Don Pomponino arrives at L'Aquila hotel in Paris and places an advert on the newspaper website lagazzetta.com that there will be a competition held at the hotel to find a suitable partner for his daughter Lisetta. Also staying at the hotel is Alberto, a wealthy young man who has unsuccessfully been searching the world to find a woman who matches his conception of beauty and perfection. Lisetta however has her own ideas about choosing the man she wants to marry.
Evidently, the arrangement and the path to finding one's perfect partner isn't as simple as that might make it might seem, and there is inevitably a lot of comic confusion over identities and a fair bit of donning of disguises. Alfredo mistakes various women for Lisetta and ends up finding the perfect match in Doralice. Lisetta meanwhile is actually in love with Filippo, an employee at the hotel, who tries to disrupt the competition by disguising himself as unlikely foreign suitors. With both fathers unhappy that their girls seem to be choosing suitors for themselves, the two couples dress up as Turks in order to escape and get married in a manner a little bit reminiscent of Così fan tutte.
With such creaky comic plot situations there's not really any call for modernising the work. There is possibly meant to be some kind of satire on the media involved in La Gazzetta, but not so much that you'd notice it or that it would distract from the fact that this is just a silly comedy at heart. So taking notes down on iPads, posting notices on the internet, and having a TV screen on up in the corner of the hotel reception doesn't really add anything, but it doesn't take anything away either. The Liège production at least looks sharp and stylish. Stylish, but maybe not fashionable as far as the ridiculous costumes go, but even this suits the farcical tone of La Gazzetta.
The set-designs by Jean-Guy Lecat also contribute perfectly to the breezy lightness of Rossini's comic touch. There's an exterior that shows the front of the hotel which rises to reveal the busy interior, with reception, lounge and even a corridor of rooms upstairs. It looks marvellous and it also gives plenty of scope for the drama to play out and flow smoothly from one scene to the next. As if this isn't enough, just for variety there are even some street-scenes that take place via projections of old Parisian streets and sights when Lisetta goes for a walk. Other than a few set-pieces that warrant it - a duel taking place using cannons - the comic exaggeration is never over-played in the direction or in the acting.
Liège also bring together a few regular performers who are well suited to this kind of opera. Cinzia Forte (last earlier this season on the Liège stage as Marzelline in Fidelio) stands out as Lisetta. Her voice is not a big one by any means, but she can scale up to those high notes with all the agility required of a Rossinian soprano. Just as importantly, she has a bright and sparkling personality that lights up the stage when she's on. Edgardo Rocha fulfils the same brightness on the tenor side as Alberto, and there are solid performances from Enrico Marabelli as Don Pomponino and Laurent Kubla as Filippo. The newly discovered quintet might not be considered a lost gem, but it's a critical part of the work and it's great to have it reinstated and hear it sung so well. Jan Schultsz's direction of this rare Rossini work is delightful in what is another fine and entertaining production from Liège.
Links: Culturebox, Medici.tv
Bernhard Lang - Re:igen
SWR Festspiele Schwetzingen, 2014
Rolf Gupta, Georges Delnon, Almerija Delic, Cornel Frey, Clara Meloni, Alin Deleanu, Amélie Saadia, Kai-Uwe Fahnert, Lasse Penttinen
ARTE Concent, Live streaming - 25 April 2014
Written in 1900, Arthur Schnitzler's play 'La Ronde' or 'Reigen' caused something of a scandal when it was first published. Using its circular structure, the play connects men and women of various social classes through ten sexual encounters that work their way like a relay back to the same prostitute who is seen in the first encounter. The play has a lot to say about the nature of class and society in turn-of-the-century Vienna, but it's also revealing about the attitudes and the relationships between men and women.
It's the fact that the encounters between them are sexual in nature that is significant here. Each of the scenes are brief, fleeting, lustful and exploitative on the part of at least one of the parties (usually the men), but each of the participants is looking for something, whether it's an escape from their regular partner or illicitly seeking love, attention and reassurance in the arms of another. The encounters are also each divided into a before and an after the act (which is not described), where instead of finding what they are looking for, there's a measure of dissatisfaction, shame and disappointment.
La Ronde doesn't seem to have the kind of structure that makes it suitable for adaptation to a traditional narrative format, but it has been successfully made into film (most notably by Max Ophuls in 1950), and has been the subject of at least one other opera that I'm aware of, Philippe Boesman's Reigen. Bernhard Lang's Re:igen, composed for the Schwetzingen Festival in 2012 and revived here in 2014, uses instrumentation and a "transformative iteration" technique of repetition that is very different from Boesman's more serial method. It's a technique that seems better suited to the cyclical and repeated structure of 'La Ronde', allowing it to have a consistency and a flow, with subtle variations of expression.
Lang's Re:igen retains the all-important structure of the original work and the social class/profession of its characters, the opera divided in to ten short sections (1. the prostitute and the policeman, 2. the policeman and the parlour maid, 3. the parlour maid and the young gentleman, 4. the young gentleman and the married woman, 5. the married woman and the husband, 6. the husband and the schoolgirl, 7. the schoolgirl and the author, 8. the author and the actress, 9. the actress and the rich man, 10. the rich man and the prostitute). It's worth noting that it's a married couple, the only legitimate encounter, that lies at the very centre of this circle of deception and disappointment.
What is evidently significant about the encounters is that they are somewhat ill-matched, the connections briefly made only to be just as quickly broken. Lang's score works to the rhythms of Michael Sturminger's libretto - the singing adhering also to regular speech patterns that rise to lyrical expression in moments of high emotion - but it has an instrumentation and language that allows it to describe situation and character. It's not an easy work to sing and act, and it's to the credit of the cast that they define these roles so well. The clash of types and personalities is evidently what is important and Lang finds a tone and a style for each character in each encounter (Eastern Turkish sounds for example suggest that the schoolgirl is of ethnic origin), all of them contained within an overarching and very distinctive sound world.
That sound world is far from conventional opera instrumentation and distinct even from what is more commonly heard in avant-garde or contemporary classical opera. The 23 musicians for the opera consist of members of the SWR Radio Symphonic Orchestra as well as SWR Big Band players. There's consequently a rhythmic pulse to score that is anchored with an electronic bass and a drum-beat, the rhythm having a definite jazz swing, or even a slightly sordid lounge quality of Kurt Weill-like decadence that suits the subject very well. There seems to be an effort to integrate the hopeful/lustful musical expression of each of the partnerships in the lead-up to sex into a common rhythm that inevitably breaks down into a resigned dissatisfaction in the 'after' section.
The staging also plays a significant part in retaining the sense of flow that is so much a part of the structure and purpose of the work. The dramatic action all takes place in what looks like the rear stalls of a rococo Baroque theatre, with chairs scattered around, TV screens and monitors, and even a descending chandelier. Despite the clutter on the stage Georges Delnon's direction allows situations to develop, change, flow and move on. Rolf Gupta conducts the orchestra from behind the stage, the musicians spread out around the boxes of the theatre's circle. A mattress is an important prop here and could be used to connect and make other implications of sharing and passing on, but there's a more realistic variety of positions adopted. Like the play however, the sexual act is elided.
Implications however are important in determining whether La Ronde has something more to tell us than just providing us with a snapshot of fin-de-siècle Vienna society. This production doesn't seem to have much to tell us about the divisions, deceptions and exploitation between class and position in our own society, nor does it seem to raise issues such as the transmission of STDs or AIDS. There are a few small tweaks in Lang and Sturminger's Re:igen - some doubling of roles that might suggest the interchangeability of partners, the "actress" moreover being a man in drag - but whether there is any intentional commentary made here is hard to determine. Whatever you read into it - and at the very least, it has much to say about what men and women expect from relationships - La Ronde remains a fascinating piece and Re:igen explores the depths and mysteries with wonderful fluidity.
Links: ARTE Concert
Giuseppe Verdi - Luisa Miller
Malmö Opera, 2012
Michael Güttler, Stefano Vizioli, Olesya Golovneva, Vladislav Sulimsky, Taras Shtonda, Luc Robert, Ivonne Fuchs, Lars Arvidson, Emma Lyren
Arthaus Musik - Blu-ray
It's not often that you see something new or conceptual attempted with an early Verdi opera. Partly that's because they aren't performed often enough and, on the rare occasions they are produced, it's usually safer to keep unfamiliar works in their original setting rather than confusing the audience with a high-concept production. Partly however, it's got a lot to do with the relatively straightforward subjects of the works themselves not really lending themselves to reinterpretation. The themes in Luisa Miller are based however on universal sentiments, so there's no reason why - despite some creaky plot points - that something a little more adventurous can't be attempted with the staging.
The Malmö Opera's 2012 production of Luisa Miller finds an excellent way to make Verdi's opera a little more visually interesting than this particular work might otherwise be, without having to obscure the original dramatic points in some ill-fitting modernised concept. The costumes remain period and traditional, all the drama is carried out according to the stage directions (there's no anachronistic use modern technology or appliances), but there's a little bit of stylishness applied to the set designs - and perhaps a little symbolism - that works well to give a little bit of extra emphasis to the dramatic situation.
Based on 'Kabale und Liebe' by Friedrich von Schiller, the plot of Luisa Miller is a familiar one, or at least familiar in Verdi adaptations of such material. In broad terms it's about fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, it's about family and duty, it's about love and betrayal, freedom and suppression. Luisa is planning to marry Carlo, who is in reality Rodolfo, son of a wealthy landowner. Rodolfo's father Count Walter however has other plans for a more favourable alliance that can be achieved by his son marrying the Duchess Federica. In between, there's the manipulative figure of Wurm, the Count's steward, who is in love with Luisa himself and does his best to blackmail her into renouncing her love for Rodolfo.
The plot doesn't really need any extra spelling out, and Verdi's score speaks plainly and eloquently enough for itself, but a little bit of theatrical reinvention can make some of the more melodramatic points sit a little better with a modern-day audience. Rather than merely providing backdrops, the staging at Malmö illustrates this situation well with some big gestures. Two giant hands split the platform of a grassy verge when Wurm makes his divisive entrance in Act I, boxed-in rooms close down Luisa's options in later scenes, and a huge hand puts the squeeze on the lovers in Act III. It's slightly abstract, but in keeping with the tone of the work, the colours and lighting playing just an important a role in matching the heightened reality of the drama.
Verdi traditionally scores rousingly for such material, and he does so here in Luisa Miller as well. The score doesn't perhaps quite have the mastery of characterisation that can be found in his subsequent works - not just the mature works, but the sophistication that can be found in the not-far-off La Traviata and Rigoletto - but it's perfectly attuned nonetheless to the dramatic narrative. As conducted here for Malmö Opera by Michael Güttler, the orchestra give Verdi's score a romantic sweep that is in keeping for this work, although I daresay it would be attacked more idiomatically and with a little less delicacy by an Italian orchestra. As it is, it sounds wonderful here, showing the beauty of Verdi's arrangements.
Verdi's other great achievement in Luisa Miller is in his writing for the voice. Arias are well-placed at key moments and have the necessary impact ('Quando le sere al placido' in Act II being one of the work's few famous highlights), but Verdi also drives the narrative through duets, punctuates it with some beautiful choral work and even throws in an acapella quartet to show off the beauty of the combined voices. It's wonderful if you have the right singers in the roles and the cast and chorus at Malmö show how impressive that writing is. In the main roles, that's Luc Robert as the conflicted Rodolfo and Olesya Golovneva as Luisa, but there's good support from Vladislav Sulimsky as Miller and Lars Arvidson as Wurm.
Golovneva in particular has the right temperament and timbre for this character. It should not an overpowering soprano voice but that of a delicate woman, initially bright, happy and in love who is gradually broken down by manipulative figures through fear of reprisals. The journey to her death is tricky to navigate, but Golovneva manages to sing the role without the melodramatic mannerisms that you might expect, yet still make her Luisa heartfelt and expressive. It's a style of performance that is perfectly in keeping with the intentions of the production and the staging here at Malmö, showing how effectively early-to-mid Verdi can be treated without revising or reinterpreting the work.
Malmö Opera's Luisa Miller is released on Blu-ray and DVD by Arthaus Musik. On Blu-ray, the disc is BD25, all region with subtitles in Italian, English, German, French and Korean. The filming is excellent, using lots of close-ups that show the intensity of the performances, the recording capturing the strong colour schemes that also play a part in setting the tone of the work.
Leos Janáček - The Cunning Little Vixen
Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2014
Franz Welser-Möst, Otto Schenk, Chen Reiss, Hyuna Ko, Gerald Finley, Donna Ellen, Andreas Hörl, James Kryshak, Donna Ellen, Wolfgang Bankl, Ilseyar Khayrullova, Lydia Rathkolb, Heinz Zednik, Wolfram Igor Dentl, Sabine Kogler
Vienna State Opera Live Web streaming - 30 June 2014
Janáček's The Cunning Little Vixen is proving to be one of the most popular works of 20th century opera, and it's not hard to see why. The music is beautiful, some of the most ravishing melodies ever composed that are instantly memorable as well as being sophisticated and idiomatic. Like the music, the subject is immediate and accessible, looking at the question of existence in a way that makes it meaningful to adults and children alike. It can be heartbreakingly sad, as well as uproariously funny. It's above all a life-affirming work.
Dealing with as much as it does - all life, nature, the seasons, the passing of time, the idea of being a solitary entity making little connections with others, the loneliness of existence and the realisation that it will end, the necessity of confronting the fact that the world just moves on - The Cunning Little Vixen is also a difficult work to strike an effective balance between the large scale and the small, between the profound and the intimate. Otto Schenk's production for the Vienna State Opera is one of the best balanced versions I've seen.
Balance however isn't everything. It certainly makes the work appealing to the largest, most conservative part of the audience who don't want their preconceptions of the opera challenged. For every choice the director makes however - and here it must be said the choices are mostly safe ones - he necessarily must abandon other ways of presenting the work that can be a little more exciting and enlightening. The primary choice any director has to make with The Cunning Little Vixen is whether to play the animal world as cute and cuddly in a way that won't frighten the children and upset the delicate sensibilities of the audience, or show nature as a more violent and uncontrollable force.
Amra Buchbinder's stage and costume design is lovingly and elaborately detailed. Set almost entirely in a wood that dissolves into a starry night, it means that the beauty of nature is ever-present, even in the scenes at the Forester's lodge and the tavern. All the animals are recognisable and realistic in their costumes, movements and actions without being cute or over-stylised. As important as the beauty of nature is in the work however, the fact that animals behave as animals and not like humans should not be overlooked. Vixen however is fairly harmless here. She doesn't massacre the hens in a frenzied animal bloodlust, for example, even if she sorts the rooster out all right.
While there is a case for making Vixen a little more feral, such an approach can over-dominate as much as making her too cute and cuddly. The human connection to vixen's nature is also vital, and in order to establish that it's not so much a case of making the animals seem more human as much as giving the humans in the work due consideration. The Forester, his reflections on his life, his sense of his relationship with other people and the world around him are a vital part of The Cunning Little Vixen, and surely the aspect that Janáček would most have identified with. There's a sense of disconnect and dissatisfaction in the Forester. He observes and loves nature and his place in the world, but there's something about it that remains beyond his grasp.
He sees what is missing in the vixen, or at least he eventually comes to a better understanding of life through his connection with Vixen. Initially, he just grabs her and tries to own this wild animal, as if he can tame her nature to a condition where it can fit into his vision of order in the world. That of course proves impossible, but in Vixen's escape - although it infuriates him - in her death and her "rebirth", the Forester gains a sense of hope or comes to peace with the idea of progress and renewal, that the world will move on, that nature will look after its own, regardless of our efforts to impose a presence and a will upon it.
Director Otto Schenk brings the kinship of these two incompatible creatures of nature in a very simple way. He brings the Forester and Vixen closer together and even has them embrace at one point. There's consequently a warmth or at least a respect that exists between one for the other, or at least a connection is established showing that they can at least co-exist, even if it's never on common ground. It's not a particularly clever idea but the director at least recognises how important and true it is to the intent of the opera and how critical it is in getting the principal message of the work across in a balanced and meaningful way.
Or at least it's one part of what is needed. What proves to be just as critical to the success of this production - as it often does in this opera - is not so much the casting and performance of Vixen, as the attention given over to the characterisation of the Forester. Gerald Finley's beautiful smooth baritone isn't a perfect fit for every role - he's a little lacking in sufficient character for as complex a personality as Don Giovanni, for example - but the warmth of his timbre and his presence fills the Forester with life and a zest for life. The fact that he can handle the rhythms and expression of the Czech libretto is also impressive. No less impressive is Chen Reiss' bright vixen, and her scenes with Hyuna Ko's adoring and adorable Fox are just delightful. Franz Welser-Möst's delicate reading of Janáček's rhythmic pulse is also sensitive to the varying tones in the work as well as the balance that is achieved on the stage.
Links: Wiener Staatsoper live streaming
Alfredo Catalani - La Wally
Grand Théâtre de Genève, 2014
Evelino Pidò, Cesare Lievi, Ainhoa Arteta, Bálint Szabó, Vitaliy Bilyy, Yonghoon Lee, Ivanna Lesyk-Sadivska, Ahlima Mhamdi, Bruno Balmelli
ARTE Concert - June 2014
Like most of Puccini's Italian contemporaries (Leoncavallo, Mascagni, Zandonai, Alfano), Alfredo Catalani's compositions are now rarely performed and all but forgotten. Some of those composers have at least one well-known work that is occasionally revived and performed, but in Catalani's case, although La Wally has some measure of recognition, it's mainly on account of one famous aria in the opera, "Ebben! Ne andrò lontana". Actual staged performances of the work however are rare indeed.
Maria Callas brought some recognition to the work, or at least its famous aria, but more recently its fame has chiefly been through the use of the aria in Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 French cult classic film 'Diva'. Involving the trade of a secret bootleg recording of the aria sung by a temperamental soprano who refuses to allow any recordings of her performances, the film played no small part in giving the aria from La Wally an air of mystique, glamour and prestige (and vice-versa the aria the film).
The revival of Catalani's La Wally at the Grand Théâtre de Genève for the first time since 1962 doesn't attempt anything as ambitious as linking it with Diva - although the theatre promoted their new production with free screenings of the more recognisable Beineix movie - but settles for a traditional staging that simply gives the audience the rare opportunity of seeing the aria in its original context and evaluating whether the opera has any attraction to a modern audience. It proves to be a fine performance of Catalani's opera, even if it doesn't make a convincing case for the work having any lasting qualities.
While it's a pleasant enough work, skillfully composed and dramatised, the problem with La Wally is that it doesn't have any real distinguishing characteristics. With an Alpine setting, family rivalries and romantic entanglements involving a virginal daughter being forced into an marriage of convenience, the subject of La Wally has much in common with opera semi-seria and bel canto works like Bellini's La Sonnambula, Donizetti's Linda di Chamounix and Halévy's Clari. Catalani may not be a Bellini or a Donizetti, but La Wally does have at least one thing going for it. It has one great aria and unfortunately that is likely to remain the opera's chief claim to fame.
The problem is not so much the plot as what you do with it, and musically, La Wally is not particularly adventurous. The subject of the drama could be adapted more closely towards an Alpine version of passions and family feuds in the verismo style of Catalani's contemporaries, particularly Mascagni's Cavalleria Rusticana. (There is even a village religious procession written into the work that is tied to La Wally's declarations of purity). There are in any case plenty of conflicting passions to evoke and bring to the surface and, on the face of it, we also have a heroine who is not entirely an innocent but rather a proud and temperamental figure who gives full vent to her passions. There's plenty here for a soprano to get her teeth into, and you can see why a performer like Maria Callas would be attracted to the role.
The cause of all Wally's problems is her secret love for Giuseppe Hagenbach, the son of her father's long-time enemy. Made aware of this by Gellner - observant to Wally's behaviour since he himself in in love with her - her father Stromminger declares that she will marry Gellner forthwith or leave the south Tyrolean village of Hochstoff forever. Wally chooses to leave ("Ebben! Ne andrò lontana"). Her father dies soon after however and Wally inherits the Eagle Tavern. Jealous over the attentions that Giuseppe shows to the barmaid Afra, Wally responds furiously and throws a drink in the girl's face. In revenge Giuseppe bets that he can steal a kiss from Wally and bring her pride down to size.
This is not a big deal, you might think, not anything that you are going to write an opera about, but Wally has just declared how even a kiss would be a defilement of virginal purity. As she is in love with Giuseppe, she's going to find that a hard position to maintain, and the young woman is indeed made a fool of before the whole of the village. The dramatic resolution to the dilemma that has arisen in La Wally at least gives the work another distinctive feature which makes great use of its south Tyrol setting at the same time as it makes it extremely difficult to actually stage effectively. Having rescued Giuseppe from a ravine that he is thrown into by a vengeful Gellner and achieved forgiveness and reconciliation with the man she loves, Wally dies caught up in an avalanche on the mountain.
That's quite a coup de théâtre if you can carry it off. Director Cesare Lievi at least keeps the drama moving well to take us credibly to this point, and Evelino Pidò conducts the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande with loving attention for Catalani's score. Ezio Toffolutti's production design for the Grand Théâtre de Genève's La Wally is however very much a traditional period costume production with painted backdrops, basic props to represent the village and the tavern in Acts I and II, so recreating an avalanche on the stage was always going to be a bit of a challenge. Act III and IV, where the landscape plays a large part in the drama, is a little more abstract, with walls like shards of ice and a projection of a moon-like skull behind the slope that drops into a ravine. The slope is however merely a long white sheet that drags Wally into the hole at the climax, with flowing dry ice spilling over the backdrop behind her.
It's a basic representation of the scene, but it works reasonably well. Principally that's because Catalani scores practically the whole of Act IV as a lament for all Wally's troubles without stretching to bel canto ornamentation, but mainly it's because Spanish soprano Ainhoa Arteta makes this position (a precarious one) feel achingly real. She's not Maria Callas by any means, but it's a challenging role that the success of the opera rests upon, and Arteta carries it through impressively. Act IV also gives Giuseppe the chance to match himself to the soprano in a glorious duet, and it's here that Yonghoon Lee also demonstrates his worth. The other roles are less critical, but are also well performed here with Ivanna Lesyk-Sadivska's pure, clear timbre marking her out in the trouser-role of Wally's only true friend Walter.
Links: ARTE Concert, Grand Théâtre de Genève
Gioachino Rossini - Guillaume Tell
Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich - 2014
Dan Ettinger, Antú Romero Nunes, Michael Volle, Bryan Hymel, Marina Rebeka, Evgeniya Sotnikova, Günther Groissböck, Jennifer Johnston, Goran Jurić, Christoph Stephinger, Kevin Conners, Enea Scala, Christian Rieger
Staatsoper.tv Live Web streaming - 28 June 2014
The qualities of Rossini's musical composition and the measure of how advanced his dramatic writing is in comparison to his earlier works, is clearly evident in his prematurely final work for the Paris Opera, Guillaume Tell. In part, that's much to do with the quality of the orchestra that Rossini had at his disposal, but there's clearly ambition on the part of the composer to move away from the standard number opera towards a more dramatic musical expression. In many ways, even though it is largely through-composed, Guillaume Tell points the way towards the grand opéra tradition, even as it looks back and retains a sense of the opera seria.
In both respects, whether it adheres towards one style or other, Rossini's final opera is a virtuoso work that requires performers of an extremely high calibre. It's a long work, almost four hours without cuts, with challenging vocal lines that push one tenor role to deliver fifteen high-Cs, many of them late in the second Act. The challenges extend to the staging of the dramatic action. Other than providing a sense of location for the Swiss Lake Lucerne setting, there aren't any conventionally difficult scenes to stage (other than an archer shooting an apple off a boy's head evidently!), but the real challenge lies rather in finding a way to make the staging visually and dramatically interesting. Without proper direction there can be a lot of opera seria-like standing around singing out one's emotional conflict to the audience.
Consequently, Guillaume Tell is not a work that is performed very often, but if the considerable musical and dramatic challenges can be overcome, there are great rewards to be found in this remarkable opera. Set during the Swiss revolt against the Austrian Hapsburg occupation in the thirteenth century and even managing to tie a doomed love affair into the storyline, there is at least a strong dramatic situation in Guillaume Tell. It's the kind of scenario that Verdi would come to specialise in, and Rossini's writing here sets a high bar for his successor to aspire to and eventually surpass. An oppressed nation under a hated foreign rule, stirrings of revolution and expressions of patriotic fervour, there's even a romantic situation of lovers torn in a conflict of love and duty to one's country.
The sense of the kind of passions that underlie Guillaume Tell are exemplified by the action that opens the opera. Leuthold, angry at an assault committed by Austria troops in his village, brutally attacks and kills the soldier responsible for the abduction of his daughter. This scene is shown silently before the opera starts, but rather than choose to follow this with the traditional overture, Act I of this production launches straight into the action with the village wedding celebrations that are soon to be interrupted by news of the Austrian governor Gessler's reprisals. The dropping the overture (or moving it, as it transpires, since cutting it would be unforgivable), and even the tone of the wedding celebrations indicate that this is going to be a production that emphasises the darker side of Guillaume Tell. And, being Munich, it's an abstract and modernised staging as well, looking like it is set sometime in the 1970s.
Instead of anything like traditional backdrops or even a sense of the setting even being anywhere in Switzerland, the production relies mainly on a layered series of columns on a darkened stage, the long tubular shapes rising and falling, symbolising or at least effectively evoking a sense of crushing oppression. In other scenes, the pillars float, revolve and strike angular positions, always matching the tone of the scene, whether it's a love scene or one of conflict. Or both, as is the case with Arnold Melcthal and his love for Mathilde, a Hapsburg princess whose life he once saved from an avalanche. On hearing that his father has been executed by Gessler, Arnold however has no choice but to join the call to arms that the intrepid archer William Tell is advocating against the oppressors.
Advocating, that is, with a gun rather than a traditional bow and arrow. Following the absence of the overture, this could lead the audience to wonder whether the director hasn't gone too far in taking Guillaume Tell away from the crowd-pleasing elements that contribute to its musical and dramatic greatness. That proves not to actually be the case. The shooting of the apple from Jemmy's head it staged with a crossbow and has full dramatic impact at the end of Act I, while the overture is reinstated after the interval before the start of the second act, a place where - arguably of course - it fits in well. It's not so much delayed gratification as using the melancholy tone of the solo viola to reflect Jemmy's sense of impending death - one that is populated it seems by fantasy figures from 'Where The Wild Things Are' - exploding into the famous march as the success of Tell's shot is seen to be sure and his turning on Gessler provokes the people to rise up in rebellion.
The Bayerische Staatsoper are of course well-known for taking on challenging works as well as for the experimental stylisations they take in their approach to opera stagings. For a work that is rarely staged which and has as many challenges as Guillaume Tell, the obvious approach would be stick with a familiar traditional period production, but playing it safe is never an option for the Munich opera company. Not that they get any thanks for it. The mindless booing that greeted Antú Romero Nunes and his team at the curtain call was inevitable then, but Munich should continue to pursue this kind of approach undaunted. It might infuriate a small section of the audience, but Nunes' approach succeeded in projecting a suitable tone for Rossini's opera, the measure of its success being plainly that the force of the work and the sentiments it expresses were fully achieved. I'm not sure why anyone would think the wearing of lederhosen and a few painted backdrops of the Alps would have improved it greatly.
There could however be little anyone would find lacking in the musical performance or the singing. Dan Ettinger finds a lush romanticism in the score, quite different from the familiar Rossinian romp, that drives the sweep of the drama wonderfully. The structure of the work is likewise tied more to dramatic requirements than to providing tailor-made roles to either showcase the performers' talents or spare their energies. It's a good hour and a half for example before the arch-villain Gessler even makes an appearance. Günther Groissböck doesn't quite have the depth of bass for a commanding governor, but donning a bull's head mask he presents a fearsome enough figure for Tell to defy. It was Marina Rebeka however who won most of the applause at the end of Act I for her Mathilde, and deservedly so.
Michael Volle and Bryan Hymel's Act I contributions were also acknowledged, but they really came into their own in Act II. Volle was as solid and reliable as ever as Tell, but it was Hymel who really impressed here. You have to give credit to any tenor who can hit all Arnold's high-Cs, but Hymel took them all effortlessly through a smooth vocal line and timbre that now seems more natural for Rossini than the heavy dramatic requirements of Verdi and Grand Opera. Evgeniya Sotnikova made the role of Jemmy count with a clear and expressive delivery, as did Jennifer Johnston as Hedwige.
Links: Bayerische Staatsoper.tv
Richard Strauss - Ariadne auf Naxos
Glyndebourne, 2013
Vladimir Jurowski, Katharina Thoma, Thomas Allen, Soile Isokoski, Kate Lindsey, Laura Claycomb, Dmitri Vargin, James Kryshak, Torben Jürgens, Andrew Stenson, Sergey Skorokhodov, Wolfgang Ablinger-Sperrhacke, Ana Maria Labin, Adriana Di Paola, Gabriela Iştoc, William Relton, Frederick Long, Michael Wallace, Stuart Jackson
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
The purpose or indeed the true worth of Ariadne auf Naxos isn't always immediately identifiable. Like Der Rosenkavalier, Arabella and Capriccio, the opera is partly a homage to opera and older forms of music and in how they clash with a more modern sensibility, and partly it's an experiment with style and form. Musically and poetically - even in its pastiche of "music hall" - it's clearly a work of exquisite beauty and sophistication, but isn't it really just a frivolous exercise that's overly contrived and ultimately inconsequential? Ariadne auf Naxos however has not only remained enduringly popular over the years but in spite of the apparent limitations of its construct it has also proved to be remarkably open to exploration, reinvention and reinterpretation.
Ariadne auf Naxos, of course, is only silly and inconsequential if it's allowed to be and only if it's played either too straight or too much for laughs. It's easy to underestimate it on the basis of its central conceit, which is a bit of an inside joke. The Prologue is set at the house of the richest man in Vienna who has commissioned the performance of two operas for his dinner party, one a rather heavy opera seria on a classical subject 'Ariadne auf Naxos', the other an opera buffa 'The Fickle Zerbinetta and her Four Suitors', a vaudeville comedy "with song and dance and a plot as clear as day". Due to an unavoidable change in the schedule for the evening's entertainment however, it's been decided that they now only have time to put on both works before the firework display at nine if they are performed simultaneously. The second part of the opera after the Prologue then is the "hilarious" clash between two works that seem to have nothing in common, but which remarkably work together to create something extraordinary.
The coming together of high art and low entertainment to reach out and say something meaningful to an audience then is the "message" of Ariadne auf Naxos. This can be summed up in an early exchange between the conflicting sides over how to bring the two works together. Discussing the Princess Ariadne's abandonment by Theseus and her abandonment on a desert island, her situation is described as "Wracked with yearning she longs for death", to which the rejoinder is "Death? What she really wants is another man." And in essence Zerbinetta's deflating of the lofty expressions of Ariadne's self-indulgent grief does reflect the belief that life's difficult questions may indeed be found in life's simple pleasures. Does the opera however really need so much artifice to deliver such a simple sentiment?
Well, Ariadne auf Naxos is about the transformative power of love, the creation and realisation of one's dreams and illusions, the creation of "little gods", and in a way that's what opera does too. It's not life, it's an artificial construct, but it's one that nonetheless contains essential truths, real emotions and feelings, and packages them up in a way that communicates directly to the listener through the magic of music and stagecraft. It's the stagecraft then - the sets, the lighting, the performances - that determines the success of Ariadne auf Naxos (or indeed any opera), and in terms of its presentation directed here brilliantly by Katharina Thoma for Glyndebourne 2013, the opera communicates to the audience everything it ought to.
The WWII period setting for this Ariadne auf Naxos has proven to be controversial in some parts - which I find hard to believe. In reality it's fully supportive of the themes of the work and its opera within an opera conceit by cleverly placing its country estate setting within the country estate setting of Glyndebourne. More than just being a clever self-referential idea however, Katharina Thoma makes the essential conflict within the opera work by relating it back to an issue that plagued Strauss and his librettist Hugh von Hofmannstahl through most of their working lives - the question of the split between the world of the artist and reality. As his career as a German composer spanned two world wars, this was a particularly thorny question for Strauss, whose neo-Classical style was regarded by many as being frivolous in the context of what was going on elsewhere in the world at that time, and even out of touch within the world of music.
Whether the artist has any responsibility for what goes on in the wider world or whether they should remain above politics and remain concerned with essential universal questions of human nature is debatable, but Strauss' work must be judged on its own terms and a good production - like this Glyndebourne one - can draw out those personal conflicts within it. It's not difficult to see the deeper question of Strauss' personal dilemma in the character of the Composer and his horror of the desecration of his glorious work of art - "Why drag me from my world into this?", he asks, and Thoma intelligently highlights this question by setting it against his reaction to the reality of the war breaking out during the Glyndebourne performance. The end of the Prologue sees fighter planes fly over the stately home, bombs explode and masonry falls from the ceiling onto the stage.
The actual performance of the two operas combined takes place subsequently in the same stately home that has now been converted into a field hospital for the wounded locals. The Composer can be seen wandering around throughout, his lofty dreams about the purity of his art in tatters. The correspondence however between his work and reality is - thanks to the insight provided by this production - plain to see. Ariadne awakens in an improvised hospital in the stately home to question "Where am I? Am I dead?", looking around her at the destruction created to conclude that "This can't be called living". Looking like a WWII entertainment company, Zerbinetta and her suitors however represent the spirit and tenacity of the ordinary citizen to pull through, no matter how bleak the situation, and they rally behind her.
Zerbinetta's chirpy optimism however and her welcoming of each new opportunity as a god in her coloratura aria is seen here as a kind of PTSD induced delirium. She is given a sedative by the nurses (Naiad, Dryad and Echo) and wrapped in a straight-jacket. Her words and her spirit nonetheless have a transformative effect by the time Bacchus arrives and the Composer watches this transformation occur in his Ariadne, seeing the truth of the situation through new eyes. Very cleverly characterised as a heroic fighter pilot here, shot down in the dogfight over the estate - a "Captain", a god raised indeed by "nurses" - Bacchus resists Ariadne's despair for "eternal rest" as she fumbles in his jacket for his pistol, and does indeed offer her the promise of a new world arising out of the horrors of the current reality. Even the Composer here is overawed by what his creation has revealed to him.
This is simply marvellous characterisation that gets right to the heart of the work's sentiments, while at the same time illuminating the deeper truths that lie in its construction. The power of art, theatre, music and - very specifically - music and opera to transform and illuminate reality is exactly what Ariadne auf Naxos sets out to demonstrate. There's nothing frivolous about it. And if the stagecraft helps brings these elements out, the performances are no less critical to getting the message across. Soile Isokoski is a soaring Ariadne; Sergey Skorokhodov a heldentenor Bacchus; Kate Lindsey is an intense Composer who sings marvellously and even makes her presence felt in the second part; Laura Claycomb is a sparkling Zerbinetta. Conducting the London Philharmonic, Vladimir Jurowski draws out the delicate beauty of the opera's reduced ensemble instrumentation, tying its deceptively simple melodies accurately to the tone and the intent of the production.
The Blu-ray presents the production well with a sharp, colourful video transfer and good sound mixes in LPCM 2.0 and DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 that reveal the quality of the singing and the orchestral playing. The usual Glyndebourne extra features give a good overview of the design and concept and the challenges of putting on a work like this. Jurowski is particularly impressed at how much insight into a difficult work this production achieves. The disc is BD50, region-free, with subtitles in English, French, German and Korean.
